Just after Wimbledon Men’s Final, fans everywhere learned what they had been waiting till the end of the match for. Not who won, but who would be the new Doctor Who.
To the shock of few, the new Doctor is to be a woman.
This could raise some really interesting gender pronoun questions and bring them into mainstream discussion. How will people refer to the Doctor’s previous incarnations? And will it inadvertently, even by implication, address some of the issues that a transperson faces being mis-gendered when people refer to their old gender?
Of course, it does nothing to change the perception of gender binary as The Doctor has merely transitioned from one gender binary to the other, but it could rather ironically be a positive step as the issue becomes part of pop culture.
It will be interesting to see how things go. Will they will just whitewash it by having everything refer to the Doctor as “she”, and nobody ever getting it wrong, even if they are a recurring character who doesn’t know about the transition? Or will they will play on it by making her suffer the same awkward situations that many transpeople face of people using the wrong pronoun for them?
Pop culture has a habit of altering language and perception, so it will also be interesting to see what, if any, wider ramifications there are to this in society in general.
One thing is for sure, the internet will be awash with misogyny and transphobia right now.