User:SOTO/Forum Archive/The Panopticon/@comment-44988386-20200416234118/@comment-6032121-20200527002418

User:SOTO/Forum Archive/The Panopticon/@comment-44988386-20200416234118/@comment-6032121-20200527002418 I'd quibble with the notion that the Doctors played by male actors were "always portrayed as cis", though certainly that was the usual assumption.

There have been the occasional hints that the Doctor (or Time Lords in general) didn't really have a gender as humans understand it, just a physical form that looked more male than female by human standards in terms of sex. The Fifth Doctor being able to open the box in Kinda comes to mind, though that has other explanations. And of course, though this is post-cross-gender-regeneration, the Thirteenth Doctor describes herself at one point in The Good Doctor as not really being a woman or a man.

Still, I broadly agree that there is no cause to put any page about the Doctor yet recorded in a "Non-cis individuals" category due to the fact that gender, however specific Doctors identify in any given incarnation, is different for Time Lords than it is for humans. You do have a couple of valid stories saying that the First and Second Doctors were human beings, but, of course, none of these 1960's children's comics (bless their corny hearts) have any support whatsoever for the notion of the Doctor being something else than a man.

I'll go further and cover a hypothetical not yet brought up: let's say that someday, as a big new story arc, the Doctor (or another Time Lord) is shown regenerating into a body which appears to be male, only to realise this isn't who they want to be inside and go through a "human-like" transition, described in the language of trans humans. Well, I think even in such a high-profile case, we'd be well-served with plentiful coverage on the Transgender page without needing the category, so there.