Wow, of all the rancid, racist, sexist, misogynist takes on DW, these comments of Davies’ are the worst I’ve seen in a while.
Let me break this down very carefully to make sure that I understand.
Apparently David Tennant, a man, appearing in the outfit worn by Jodie Whittaker, a woman, as the Thirteenth Doctor would be very bad. It would be like “drag” or “men dressing in women’s clothes.” It would be a “weaponized” “mockery of feminine traits.” In fact, Davies claims that having the clothes “regenerate” with David Tennant is a matter of “respect to Jodie and her Doctor.”
Furthermore, Davies implies that the sight of David Tennant in Jodie Whittaker’s Thirteen costume would do irreparable damage to the show. He claims, “I guarantee it’s the only photo that some of the papers would print for the rest of time,” and he wants to avoid this “sarcastic or critical response.”
Wow. Where do I even start with this? Well, why don’t I start with Davies’ conclusion that David Tennant in Jodie Whittaker’s Thirteenth Doctor outfit automatically equals “drag” or “men dressing in women’s clothes”? Davies appears to think that, because Jodie Whittaker, a woman, wears certain clothes as the Thirteenth Doctor, those clothes somehow irrevocably assume inherent femininity by virtue of being worn by a female person. That’s not how clothing works. That’s a completely stupid assumption with no basis in reality.
Furthermore, Jodie Whittaker’s Thirteenth Doctor outfit is explicitly designed to be accessible to people of many genders. With the exception of underwear, nearly all elements of the Thirteenth Doctor’s standard wear are NOT popularly considered the province of any particular gender. Teeshirt, suspenders, trench coat, stripey socks, and stompy boots are not gendered. Culottes, which are generally worn these days by women [but originated with male French working-class revolutionaries], may arguably be gendered, or you could just think of them as nongendered trousers cuffed way too high [like the Spymaster’s!].
In summary, Jodie Whittaker’s Thirteenth Doctor costume is made up of clothes and is worn by a woman. The costume is not, however, intended or designed as specifically feminine in gender, so the costume cannot accurately be described as women’s clothing. There’s no “drag,” no “mockery.” Davies is being willfully obtuse in his interpretation.
Second of all, there’s nothing intrinsically humiliating about women’s clothing anyway. Davies has a sadly small concept of clothing if he has only two visions of men in feminine clothes: either “drag” or “mockery.” This binary choice really limits the many ways in which a person can define, play with, and investigate being a man and wearing feminine clothes. It leaves no room for experimentation, expression, and acting out the role of an extraterrestrial character like the Doctor, who, in the immortal words of Bill Potts, is a “bit flexible on the whole man/woman thing.” In other words, David Tennant playing the Doctor in Jodie Whittaker’s Thirteenth Doctor garb doesn’t have to be the disaster that Davies thinks it would be.
If only we had an example of outfit swapping/regeneration in DW that didn’t turn into some sort of horrible drag or mockery of femininity, then we could prove that the scenario could be handled with respect to all involved.
Oh wait! We do have such a scenario! We can prove it!
The Power of the Doctor features something very similar to the scenario that Davies describes here. The Spymaster, played by Sacha Dhawan, who is a man, forces the Thirteenth Doctor, played by Jodie Whittaker, who is a woman, to regenerate into him. I’m not exactly clear on how this works, but we end up with a character played by a man in the exact outfit that was previously worn by a character played by a woman.
Both inside and outside the story, no one makes a big deal about this. Inside the story, the Spymaster’s first order of business after commandeering Thirteen’s TARDIS is to find some clothes, but not because he feels like he’s in drag. Instead, he feels insufficiently Doctory, so he layers on the Doctor signifiers to bolster his flagging confidence. Outside the story, the subject of the Spymaster’s multiple guises comes up in Sacha Dhawan’s interviews, but I have seen precisely zero comments about how his appearance in Thirteen’s outfit compromises his dignity or that of the show. In other words, absolutely no one inside the story or outside the story reacts to the Spymaster in Thirteen’s clothes with the scoffing critical mockery that Davies fears.
But wait. There’s something different about the outfit swapping in The Power of the Doctor–actually two things.
First, Sacha Dhawan isn’t white, like David Tennant. He’s brown.
Second, Sacha Dhawan isn’t “a great big six-foot Scotsman.” He’s about 5 feet, 7 inches tall [170 cm].
So let’s draw out the implications of Davies’ remarks as they relate to Sacha Dhawan. A horrible “mockery” and bad example of “drag” would occur if white, six-foot-tall David Tennant were to wear Jodie Whittaker’s Thirteenth Doctor outfit. However, a horrible “mockery” does NOT occur when brown, 170-cm-tall Sacha Dhawan wears Jodie Whittaker’s Thirteenth Doctor outfit in The Power of the Doctor.
Why is that? Well, according to Davies, the dreaded “mockery” and loss of dignity occurs with “a man in what they [popular newspapers] consider to be women’s clothes.” Since there’s no “mockery” in The Power of the Doctor, Davies’ statement, if we follow its questionable logic [which I do NOT], offers two possibilities as to why.
A) Jodie Whittaker’s Thirteenth Doctor outfit is not women’s clothes.
B) Sacha Dhawan is a woman/is not a man and thus isn’t doing bad “drag” when he wears Jodie Whittaker’s Thirteenth Doctor outfit.
However, Davies clearly states that Jodie Whittaker’s Thirteenth Doctor costume is “her clothes” and therefore women’s clothing. Because he obviously thinks that Jodie Whittaker’s Thirteenth Doctor costume is women’s clothing, we can rule out option A.
By process of elimination, Davies’ line of reasoning points to option B. Namely, there is no problem with Sacha Dhawan as the Spymaster in Thirteen’s clothes because Sacha Dhawan either is a woman or is not a man.
Again, I am not saying that I support, agree with, or follow this line of reasoning. I do not. I am just explicating the subtext here so we can clearly identify the rancid assumptions at work.
Davies’ comments associate Sacha Dhawan’s race and height with lack of manliness and femininity. His comments also draw on the colonialist view of South Asian men, who have long been portrayed as less powerful, less masculine, more feminine, and generally inferior to white British men.
In conclusion, Davies’ decision to regenerate clothes along with David Tennant’s Fourteenth Doctor rests on truly rancid assumptions about men, women, gender in general, whiteness, brownness, and race in general. Though he repeatedly invokes “respect,” Davies ends up insulting David Tennant, Jodie Whittaker, and even Sacha Dhawan, who isn’t even mentioned in Davies’ asinine self-justification.
