Pushing the envelope

Two nights ago, I watched "The Star Beast," the first of three sixtieth anniversary specials of my favorite show, Doctor Who.  As I might have expected, it was campy good fun, and featured the return of my favorite of the Doctor's companions, Donna Noble (played brilliantly by the inimitable Catherine Tate).

As I also might have expected, the howling from the right-wingers started almost immediately.

The problem this time is Donna's daughter, Rose (played by the wonderful Yasmin Finney), who is a trans woman.  The script looks at her identity head on; our first introduction to Rose shows her being taunted by some transphobic classmates, and there was a scene where Donna's irascible mother Sylvia struggles with her own guilt about sometimes slipping up and misgendering her granddaughter.  It was handled with sensitivity, and not with any sort of hit-you-over-the-head virtue signaling, but there's no doubt that Rose's being trans is an important part of the storyline.

Then later, one of the aliens in the episode, Beep the Meep (I shit you not, that's this alien's name), is talking with the Doctor, and the Doctor asks what pronouns the Meep uses, and gets the response, "My chosen pronoun is the definite article.  The.  Same as you, Doctor."

Which is a funny and poignant line -- especially considering that the Doctor's previous incarnation was female.

Well, you'd swear Doctor Who had declared war on everything good and holy in the world.

"Doctor Who has gone woke!" one ex-fan shrieked.  "I'm done with it for good!"  Another declared that Doctor Who "hates men."  Yet another made a whole YouTube video dedicated to the statement that the show had "set its legacy on fire."

To which I respond: my dudes, have you ever even watched this show?

Doctor Who has been on the leading edge of social acceptance and representation ever since the reboot in 2005.  Captain Jack Harkness gave new meaning to "pansexual" by flirting with damn near everyone he came into contact with, ultimately falling hard (and tragically) for a Welshman named Ianto Jones.  Freema Agyeman and Pearl Mackie were the first two Black women to play companions; Mackie's character, Bill Potts, was lesbian as well, as was the Thirteenth Doctor's companion Yasmin Khan (played by Mandip Gill).  Then there's the wonderfully badass Madame Vastra (Neve McIntosh) and her wife Jenny Flint (Catrin Stewart), who are in a same-sex relationship that is also an interspecies one.

Not only has this show steadfastly championed representation, its themes frequently press us to question societal issues.  It's addressed racial prejudice (several episodes, most notably Rosa and Cold Blood), slavery (The Planet of the Ood), climate change (Orphan 55), whether it's ever possible to forgive your sworn enemies (Dalek), the terrifying evils of tribalism (Midnight), how power eventually corrupts anyone who wields too much of it (The Waters of Mars), how easy it is to dehumanize those whom we don't understand (The Rebel Flesh/The Almost People), if vengeance ever goes too far (Human Nature/The Family of Blood), and the devastating horrors of war (The Zygon Inversion).

So it's not like the people running this show shy away from looking hard at difficult issues.  It's pushed the envelope pretty much from day one.

More to the point, though -- the most troubling part of all the backlash is the subtext of the whining about how "woke" Doctor Who is.  What they're saying is they want to be able to pretend that those who are different -- in this case, trans people, but more generally, LGBTQ+ individuals -- don't exist.  They don't want to be reminded that everyone isn't straight and White; even having queer folks or people of color appear on a show like this is "ramming wokeness down everyone's throats."

Well, let me say this loud and clear -- as a queer guy who was in the closet for four decades because of this kind of mindless, heartless bigotry: never again.  We will never again be silent, never again be shamed into hiding, never again pretend we're invisible, never again quietly accept that we don't deserve exactly the same respect -- and representation -- as anyone else.  I can only imagine how different the trajectory of my life would have been if there'd been these kinds of positive depictions of queer people on the shows I watched as a teenager; how dare you wish that fate upon yet another generation of young adults.

So if that makes you stop watching Doctor Who -- I think I can speak for the majority of fans by saying, "Oh well."  *shoulder shrug*  We don't need you.  However, it does make me wonder how you don't see the irony of calling us snowflakes, when you are the ones who get your knickers in a twist because of someone asking what pronouns a furry alien prefers.  

In other words, don't let the door hit you on the ass on your way out.  Because we LGBTQ+ people are here to stay, as are people of other races, ethnicities, cultures, and religions.  If you don't like that, you might want to sit and think about why you believe the world has the obligation to reshape itself in order to conform to your narrow-mindedness and prejudice.

As for me, I'm going to continue to watch Doctor Who and continue to enjoy it, and -- to judge by the great ratings "The Star Beast" got -- so are millions of other "woke" fans.

Deal with it.

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Ken Paxton's registries

When the Nazi party first came into power in Germany in the mid-1930s, one of the first things they did was to dramatically improve the efficiency of record-keeping, especially with regards to people they considered "undesirables."

A 1946 report on their practices by Robert M. W. Kempner, which appeared in the Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, is as impressive as it is horrifying. Kempner writes:

The most important are the Gestapo card indices: the register of persons politically undesirable to the National Socialist regime, such as former members of democratic parties, lodges, etc.  This register consists of five different sets of alphabetical card indices for (1) highly dangerous persons, (2) less dangerous persons, (3) dangerous persons, (4) Jews, (5) part Jews (Mischling).  These card indices were kept in the offices of the Secret Police (Gestapo), i.e., in the central headquarters of the Gestapo in Berlin, Prinz Albrechtstrasse. Duplicates were kept by the supervisory offices (Staatspolizeileitstellen) or the approximately 100 district offices of the secret police (Staatspolizeistellen) which are located in the larger cities throughout Germany, e.g., in Munich, Stuttgart and the seats of the district governments...  The index cards are brown for males and green for females.  The first item is year, day, month, and place and county of birth.  Then follow the statements about occupation, name, marital status, school, and professional education, examinations passed, residence in foreign countries, knowledge of foreign languages, special abilities, service in the armed forces, or in the labor service, and residence...  Cards of Jews are marked by black index tabs.

The horrors of the Nazi regime and the Holocaust were only possible because of the extensive records the government had on damn near everyone in the country.

You may be thinking, by this point, "how is this so different from the records governments today keep on citizens?  Most of this same information is now routinely kept by government agencies, and no one bats an eyelash."  It's a reasonable question.  Census and tax forms, drivers' license registration, school registration, job applications... unless you somehow have avoided all that, which is hard to imagine, you're a known quantity.

The difference, of course, is intent.  What do the governments of the United States and other democracies intend to do with the information they have?  My own probably Pollyanna-ish idea is that most of the time, the answer is "nothing."  As long as you pay your taxes and abide by the law, the powers-that-be have neither the time nor the interest to worry about what color your eyes are, what your marital status is, or what exactly you're doing.

It's the exceptions that are downright terrifying.  Which brings us, unsurprisingly, to Attorney General Ken Paxton of Texas.

It was just revealed that earlier this year, Paxton demanded a list of all of the people in the state who requested a change in their gender designation on their drivers' licenses.  In other words, trans individuals who wanted to have legal documentation of their gender identity.  It's disingenuous not to see the comparison to the "black index tabs" on Jewish registration cards in Nazi Germany.  Add to this the fact that earlier this year, Texas passed one of the harshest anti-trans laws in the nation -- it explicitly forbids gender-affirming medical treatment for teenagers, and mandates criminal prosecution and jail time not only for medical professionals who carry it out, but for teachers, counselors, therapists, and so on (people considered "mandated reporters" for child abuse) if they find out about a teenager's trans status and fail to notify the authorities.

Don't tell me that LGBTQ+ people are "overreacting" if they're terrified by Paxton's demand for a trans registry.  And if you think I'm engaging in hyperbole by comparing it to the Nazi registries, you're being willfully blind.

"This could be a mass outing of a whole bunch of trans people because a lot of us change our documents and then choose to live in private," said Eden Rose Torres, a trans Texan who chooses to be out.  "We don't have to disclose our transness."

The only good news is that the request from Paxton's office was denied -- but not on the grounds of its being potentially used to harm trans Texans and the people who aid them, but because of practicality.  "Ultimately, our team advised the AG’s office the data requested neither exists nor could be accurately produced," said Travis Considine, of the Department of Public Safety, to which the demand had been directed.  "Thus, no data of any kind was provided...  It [would] be very difficult to determine which records had a valid update without a manual review of all supporting documents."

What really needs to happen, of course, is that Paxton be required to produce, in writing, a statement (1) justifying why he has the right to the information, and (2) outlining in detail what he intends to do with it.  Not, frankly, that I trust Paxton as far as I could throw him.  But at least then it would push him into defending his actions, rather than what's happened thus far, which is giving him carte blanche.

The refusal of the DPS to cooperate is not going to be the end of this.  People like Ken Paxton are never, ever going to give up their campaign against LGBTQ+ people, despite the fact that all we queer people want is to live our truth in peace and safety, the same as straight White Americans do, and to be in control of when and to whom we reveal our private lives.  Paxton sees himself as the leader of a religious-inspired crusade, and if he succeeds with his attempt at a trans registry, that's only going to be the beginning.

We have only to look back ninety years to see where this kind of thing can lead.

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