Virtue signaling

Well, I once again broke the Cardinal Rule of the Internet, namely: don't argue online with strangers.

This time, the source of the argument was the one and only television show I really obsess over, which is Doctor Who.  On Saturday, we watched the eagerly-awaited New Year's special, "Eve of the Daleks," and (IMHO) it was fantastic, easily one of the best in the last three seasons.

It was not only a nifty story with some really funny moments (especially from the character of Sarah, played with deft wit by the Irish comedienne Aisling Bea as the weary, snarky owner of the self-storage facility where the entire episode takes place), but it featured a revelation that got the fan base buzzing.  About 2/3 of the way through, we find out that the Doctor's companion Yaz (played by Mandip Gill) has fallen in love with the Doctor (currently in a female incarnation, played by Jodie Whittaker).  The scene is sweet and subtle, and Mandip Gill does a beautiful job expressing the painful difficulty many LGBTQ people have in admitting who they are (as Yaz says, even to herself).

While it was a wonderful scene, to many Who fans it was hardly a surprise; there have been clues throughout the last two seasons that Yaz was falling for the Doctor.  Having it confirmed, however, was nice, and for queer fans of Who (myself very much included) it was a welcome sign of acceptance and representation of LGBTQ identity.

But then the backlash started.

I'm sure you can imagine it, so I'll only give you a handful of examples:

• Of course Chibs [showrunner Chris Chibnall] had to take the opportunity to ram his woke agenda down our throats.  I don't know why we can't just have a good story for a change.
• Oh, god, here we go with the fucking virtue signaling.  The characters have to tell us what we should think, feel, and approve of.
• If Yaz and the Doctor kiss, I'm done.

My responses were pretty much what you'd expect, and their responses to my responses also pretty much what you'd expect.  Nothing much accomplished, but I've been stewing about it ever since, so I thought I'd write about it here.

What gets me is it's gotten to be that any time some bigot sees something in a movie, television show, or book that pushes the cultural envelope, it's labeled as "virtue signaling" or "wokeness," and forthwith dismissed as a manipulative attempt by the writer to force an agenda.  They seem to see no difference between LGBTQ people and minorities appearing in a work of fiction, and a deliberate attempt to push an opinion -- as if merely being visible is an affront to their sensibilities.

I've run into this repeatedly myself, as an author.  I have been asked more than once why the characters of Dr. Will Daigle (in Whistling in the Dark and Fear No Colors) and Judy Kahn (in Signal to Noise) were written as LGBTQ.  I used to answer this question by going into how I create characters, but I finally ran out of patience -- now my tendency is to snap back, "Because queer people exist," and then watch the person squirm (which, at least, most of them have enough self-awareness to do).  Not once have I ever been asked why (for example) I made the character of Seth Augustine (in The Snowe Agency Mysteries) 100% straight.

Straight, apparently, is the default, and anything else is due to the author trying to make a point about how virtuous and woke (s)he is.

This is reminiscent of the furor that surrounded the choice of actress Jodie Turner-Smith (who is Black) to play the lead role in Channel 5's miniseries Anne Boleyn.  It wasn't historically accurate, people said; the real Boleyn was (of course) a White Englishwoman.  Conservative commentator Candace Owens, who never can resist an opportunity to throw gasoline on a fire, said that she had no problem with a Black Anne Boleyn "so long as the radical left promises to keep their mouth shut if in the future Henry Caville [sic] is selected to play Barack Obama and Rachel McAdams can play Michelle."

Which isn't just tone-deaf, it's a false equivalence ignoring the fact that for decades -- in fact, since the beginnings of cinematic history -- filmmakers have been doing exactly that.  Take, for example, the evil Chinese mastermind Fu Manchu, who has been played in movies and television by a long list of actors -- Christopher Lee, Boris Karloff, Warner Oland, Harry Agar Lyons, Henry Brandon, and John Carradine, to name a few.  Notice anything about this list?

Not one of them is Chinese.  In fact, Fu Manchu has never been played by a Chinese actor.

John Wayne played Genghis Khan in The Conqueror.  Yul Brynner played King Mongkut of Thailand in The King and I.  Laurence Olivier played Othello in the 1965 movie adaptation of the play.  It's not a thing of the distant past, however.  In 2007 Angelina Jolie played (real-life) Afro-Cuban journalist Mariane Pearl in A Mighty Heart.  Johnny Depp played Tonto in the 2013 movie The Lone Ranger -- although the character of Tonto isn't exactly a realistic portrayal of Native Americans anyhow, so maybe that one shouldn't count.  Worse, in 2016 White actor Joseph Fiennes played Michael Jackson in the movie Elizabeth, Michael, and Marlon.  Going back to Doctor Who, there's the 1977 episode "The Talons of Weng Chiang," which is not a bad story at its core but is rendered unwatchably cringe-y by White actor John Bennett's attempt to portray the Chinese bad guy Li H'sen Chang, and a script that bought into every one of the ugly "sinister Asian devils" stereotypes in existence.

What about the recent turning of the tables?  Could it be that some of the inclusion and representation, and some of the casting choices, were made as a deliberate attempt to prove a point?  I guess, but then you'd have to demonstrate to me how you knew what the intentions of the writers are.  If you don't know the writers made those decisions based upon a desire to appear "woke," then it's hard to see how you'd distinguish that from simply representing the diversity of people out there.  Or, in the case of Turner-Smith's portrayal of Anne Boleyn, that she was the best actress for the role.

But back to Yaz, the Thirteenth Doctor, and "Eve of the Daleks."  I've yet to hear anyone come up with a cogent reason why Yaz shouldn't be a lesbian.  And as far as Chris Chibnall's alleged attempt to force a "woke agenda" on us, allow me to point out that Doctor Who has been at the forefront of representation pretty much since the beginning of the modern era in 2005, with people of color playing major roles (to name only two of many examples, Freema Agyeman as companion Dr. Martha Jones, and Pearl Mackie as companion Bill Potts -- who was also queer).  The character of Captain Jack Harkness (played by John Barrowman) gave new meaning to "pansexual" by flirting with anyone and everyone, ultimately falling hard -- and tragically -- for a Welshman named Ianto Jones.  My favorite example, though, is the relationship -- not only queer but inter-species -- between the inimitable Silurian Vastra (Neve McIntosh) and her badass partner Jenny Flint (Catrin Stewart).

So if you don't like representation, stop watching the fucking show.  Because it's here to stay -- as it should be.

And I, for one, will cheer loudly if Yaz kisses the Doctor.  High time that happened.

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One of my favorite writers is the inimitable Mary Roach, who has blended her insatiable curiosity, her knowledge of science, and her wonderfully irreverent sense of humor into books like Stiff (about death), Bonk (about sex), Spook (about beliefs in the afterlife), and Packing for Mars (about what we'd need to prepare for if we made a long space journey and/or tried to colonize another planet).  Her most recent book, Fuzz: When Nature Breaks the Law, is another brilliant look at a feature of humanity's place in the natural world -- this time, what happens when humans and other species come into conflict.

Roach looks at how we deal with garbage-raiding bears, moose wandering the roads, voracious gulls and rats, and the potentially dangerous troops of monkeys that regularly run into humans in many places in the tropics -- and how, even with our superior brains, we often find ourselves on the losing end of the battle.

Mary Roach's style makes for wonderfully fun reading, and this is no exception.  If you're interested in our role in the natural world, love to find out more about animals, or just want a good laugh -- put Fuzz on your to-read list.  You won't be disappointed.

[Note: if you purchase this book using the image/link below, part of the proceeds goes to support Skeptophilia!]

The necessity of representation

This past weekend, I got into two apparently unrelated conversations with online acquaintances that at their basis amount to the same thing.

The first revolved around the one and only television series I am at all dedicated to, which is Doctor Who.  I've been a near-fanatical Whovian since my wife persuaded me a few years ago to watch a selection of iconic episodes like "Blink," "Silence in the Library," "Turn Left," and "Empty Child," resulting in my being hooked for life.  The conversation I got into, which honestly crossed the line into a heated argument, had to do with the choice three years ago of Jodie Whittaker for the Thirteenth Doctor, replacing Peter Capaldi (and a string of eleven other white males stretching back to the series's beginnings in 1963).

The topic came up because of rumors (thus far unsubstantiated, as far as I've seen) that Jodie Whittaker may be leaving the show at the end of this season.  I mentioned how disappointed I'd be if this was true, and how much I liked her portrayal of the character -- that she'd be in my top three Doctors ever -- and this brought up the same "the Doctor is male" nonsense I first saw popping up all over the place when she was chosen.

The choice of a woman, this fellow said, was "virtue signaling."  So, actually, was the choice of an American-born Black actor (Tosin Cole) to play one of the Doctor's current companions, Ryan Sinclair, and British people of Indian descent both for another companion, Yasmin Khan (played by Mandip Gill) and also the most recent regeneration of the Doctor's arch-enemy, the Master (played with brilliantly insane glee by Sacha Dhawan).  The whole thing, said the man I was talking to, amounted to the writers of Doctor Who saying "Look at us, how enlightened we are, having a bunch of people of different races in prominent roles."

My response was that Doctor Who has long been on the cutting edge of representing people of all configurations -- three early examples being in 2005 the character of Captain Jack Harkness giving new meaning to the word "pansexual," two years later the Tenth Doctor pairing up with Dr. Martha Jones (Freema Agyewan) as companion, and a bit after that, the fantastically badass couple Vastra and Jenny, not only a lesbian romance but an interspecies one.

Nope, he said.  That was virtue signaling too.

At that point I told him I thought all he was doing was making excuses for maintaining the illusion of a straight white male hegemony despite the fact that it doesn't accurately reflect the reality of who is actually out there, and he told me to "fuck off with my leftist agenda" and the conversation ended.

The other, marginally less frustrating conversation centered around my novel released a year ago, Whistling in the Dark.  I was asked a question about Dr. Will Daigle, one of the main characters both in this book and in its sequel Fear No Colors (scheduled for release in March).  The reader said she liked the character just fine, but why did I "choose to make him gay?"  It had nothing particular to do with the plot, she said; nothing he does in the book couldn't equally well be done by a heterosexual person.  Then she asked the question that made me realize immediately the parallel with my earlier discussion with the disgruntled Doctor Who fan: "Did you feel like you had to include a gay character to be politically correct?"

Whenever I'm asked about why I wrote a character a particular way, my usual reaction is to say, "I didn't make the character that way.  The characters come to me the way they are, and I just write it down."  But I realized that the reader's question went way deeper than that, that she wasn't asking me why I gave the character of Aaron Vincent green eyes or the character of Rose Dawson long gray hair she wore in a braid.  She was asking me about inclusion and representation, not just how I visualize characters.

So I said to her, "Okay, tell me some reasons why Dr. Will shouldn't be queer."  And she sputtered around a bit and said, "Well, I didn't mean that, of course."  But having already had my blood pressure spiked by a bigot earlier that day, I decided I'd made my point and withdrew from battle.

I found the whole thing profoundly frustrating, both because of the self-righteousness of the people I was talking to (especially the first one), and because they were seemingly blind to two things.  First, representing diversity isn't just "nice;" it's reality.  As far as the choice of Jodie Whittaker as the Thirteenth Doctor, I'm reminded of the wonderful quote from the late Ruth Bader Ginsburg: "When I'm sometimes asked, 'When will there be enough [women on the Supreme Court]?' and I say 'When there are nine,' people are shocked.  But there'd been nine men, and nobody's ever raised a question about that."

Second, representation is important.  How many of us have looked up to characters from fiction, especially ones we found as children, and formed our attitudes of what is right and wrong, normal and abnormal, acceptable and unacceptable, based upon their actions?  Being a white guy I can't speak to the racial and sexist aspects of this, and wouldn't presume to claim a visceral understanding of those perspectives; but as someone who is queer and who hid it (literally) for decades, I can say with some assurance what a difference it would have made to me if there had been positive LGBTQ role models in the books, television, and movies I'd been exposed to when I was a teenager.  Honestly, the only LGBTQ character I can remember from those days is the character of Jodie Dallas (played by Billy Crystal) from the brilliant sitcom Soap, but those of you who recall the show will probably remember that Jodie's homosexuality was almost always played off as a joke -- it never came up in any other context than generating a laugh.

Hardly something that would establish queer identity as normal and positive in the eyes of a bisexual fifteen-year-old boy growing up in a conservative, religious culture.

Myself, I've had just about enough of the phrases "politically correct" and "virtue signaling."  In what context is it wrong to avoid being offensive, to include people of all races, ethnic origins, religions (and lack thereof), and sexual orientations?  To create fictional characters who represent the length and breadth of diversity that actually exist in the world?  To break stereotypes like "white men have to be in charge" and "queer people should stay hidden"?

If you want to ask why when the time comes the Fourteenth Doctor should be played as (for example) a Black lesbian woman, you better be prepared to answer the question of why the character shouldn't be.

Anyhow, those are some early-morning thoughts about representation and inclusion.  I wish I'd thought to say all this to the people I was arguing with, but I tend not to be a very fast thinker (thus would make a lousy debater).  It took me a couple of days to let it all stew, and I decided instead to write about it here.

But maybe I'll send a link to this post to my two adversaries, if later on I'm feeling like kicking a hornets' nest.

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What are you afraid of?

It's a question that resonates with a lot of us.  I suffer from chronic anxiety, so what I am afraid of gets magnified a hundredfold in my errant brain -- such as my paralyzing fear of dentists, an unfortunate remnant of a brutal dentist in my childhood, the memories of whom can still make me feel physically ill if I dwell on them.  (Luckily, I have good teeth and rarely need serious dental care.)  We all have fears, reasonable and unreasonable, and some are bad enough to impact our lives in a major way, enough that psychologists and neuroscientists have put considerable time and effort into learning how to quell (or eradicate) the worst of them.

In her wonderful book Nerve: Adventures in the Science of Fear, journalist Eva Holland looks at the psychology of this most basic of emotions -- what we're afraid of, what is happening in our brains when we feel afraid, and the most recently-developed methods to blunt the edge of incapacitating fears.  It's a fascinating look at a part of our own psyches that many of us are reluctant to confront -- but a must-read for anyone who takes the words of the Greek philosopher Pausanias seriously: γνῶθι σεαυτόν (know yourself).

[Note: if you purchase this book using the image/link below, part of the proceeds goes to support Skeptophilia!]