User:SOTO/Forum Archive/The Panopticon/@comment-1451563-20180913002703/@comment-6032121-20181205203730

So no offence was intended. Simply a statement that taking multiple quotes together invalidates the theory that Series 10 quote was a joke.

Oh, I didn't mean to imply that you intended any offence. I simply thought it plausible that in this gargantuan discussion you'd lost track of some of the arguments involved.

For the record, I'm still not convinced that the Series 10 quote wasn't a joke. What has been proven is that gender is a fluid concept for Time Lords; that much is clear. But the particular statement in the Series 10 quote was that "[they]'re well past humans' petty obsession with gender and its stereotypes", against which Bill argued (and the Doctor had nothing to reply to that) that they still called themselves Time Lords as a species, calling attention to a stereotype of "males = in power". The joke being in the Doctor's rose-tinted statement being shot down by something so fundamental as the name of the species they're discussing.

But again, those two nuggets of information (the one from the other quotes: that gender is famous fluid and complex for Time Lords, and the one from taking the Series 10 quote as a joke: that they are, despite the Doctor's claims, not free from the stereotypes associated with various genders) are not incompatible. It could very well be, just off the top of my head, that precisely because Time Lords can more-or-less-subconsciously elect to be any gender by their next regeneration, gender stereotypes are more widespread in their society than on real-life Earth, since they're way less offensive and objectionable when you're not denigrating anyone's fundamental nature but rather something they can change as easily as humans can change haircuts.

Or, you know, a billion other possibilities. Going further than that would be Howling territory. But the Series 10 quote can still be a joke without putting the other quotes into question.