User:SOTO/Forum Archive/The Panopticon/@comment-1451563-20180913002703/@comment-1451563-20190110201503

Wow, I don’t why I keep missing notifications for this thread! Well, anyway, I would just like to thank all of the admins and other users here trying to keep order even when figuring out how to do that right gets tricky!

I would also just like to respond to the idea that has been mentioned regarding the dominant gender idea not being consistent with the Wiki’s policies on an objective, end-of-universe perspective. I don’t see how there is any more problem going with the dominant or birth gender system of pronoun use under our perspective rules on this Wiki than there is with how we have only up to the Thirteenth Doctor represented in the Wiki even though there will be more to come that we will have to add later, or how the Doctor’s personal history is only recorded up to the most recent episode of the show, or how the Sonic Screwdrivers are referred to as the X Doctor’s Sonic Screwdriver initially even though it might eventually become known as the X and X Doctors’ Sonic Screwdriver.

As for the conclusion that “they” is the clear best option grammatically speaking, once again I would like to point out that that is not really a perfectly accurate representation of the true complexities behind the situation, and it might not in fact be the best option in all cases, necessarily.

But that Beltempest quote is VERY interesting. A bit more vague and not elaborated upon than I would have preferred, but very good. Though I suppose one could argue that it is not meant to be taken literally, given the nature of the Doctor’s description of his inhumanness there, the distinction given to both “man” and “human” definitely does to me suggest something more like the view of gender described by 12 to Bill. But if we are to then take that scene with 12 more seriously, that still does not help much with the “they” pronoun argument, since, as has been explained before, that scene does still support a he/she usage as opposed to they.

Also, just a reminder of the gendered precedent that the show has pretty consistently set with multi-sexed Time Lords and the inevitable consequences to the rest of the characters and things indirectly affected by that (namely how to deal with the Master’s name switching which supports the he/she distinction and the fact that that will mean ALL Time Lords should be “they” regardless of whether they’ve ever regenerated into the other sex or not).