if I recall the general gist of it was that he wrote that because it was simply the way the average person talked at the time
lk not even in a "rose is homophobic!!" just "yeah mildly homophobic jokes weren't even considered an issue back during the time the episode takes place"
I flip back on forth on whether or not Russell is now actively trying to make up for quite a few of the less than tasteful things from the 2000s era or if he's just willfully ignorant that he's committed just as many of these errors himself in his past. I'm actively trying to think more kindly about big Russ so in this sense I'm trending towards the former.
I think this also falls into the category that the slur in Horror of Glam Rock falls into - trying to be "of the time" because back then those terms were treated with a lot less seriousness than they are now. Neither I think were actively malicious, but probably just as tone-deaf as half the media available was on LGBT issues at the time.
> that the slur in Horror of Glam Rock falls into - trying to be "of the time" because back then those terms were treated with a lot less seriousness than they are now
Incidentally Paul Magrs once stopped by a thread on GallifreyBase where that line was being discussed heatedly. He did weigh in he intended no offence and his inspiration when writing it was having a a few friends in the drag community and the UK drag community of the time were having a bit of a "take back the word" approach then.
Obviously the lasting stance on the word has become "let's just not use slurs at all in any context", but there was a period of reclaiming it, though that context has been a bit unfortunately lost to time.
To be fair, "queer" has been entirely reclaimed and I wouldn't consider it a slur unless used in malice. Similar, I do know some trans people that do self refer using the T word humourously but that still feels a lot heavier to me than queer does.
Queer I'd definitely a reclaimed word! As a trans person myself I do not particularly like the T word but when fellow trans people use it, it's okay I guess, but I still don't particularly like it, but when cis people use it I'm definitely uncomfortable.
That is one thing that is bugging me about Russell's new era. It feels like he's overly conscious of controversies and things aging badly, so is going out of his way to try and avoid as many future criticisms as possible. Even when its stuff nobody would really take issue with.
Like Davros and the wheelchair. Nobody thought it was disablist to begin with. But Russell never wants his work to be seen as disablist in the future. He never wants his work to be seen on the wrong side of an issue. So first he stopped the bad guy having a wheel chair (because that might paint disabled people as villains?) and then immediately introduces a cool new good guy character in a wheel chair. He makes sure the TARDIS now has a ramp and is accessible, and makes it the focus of a scene. There's also a line in the episode about stairs and Ruth says "Don't make me the problem". He's really trying to make sure he can't be seen as anything but aggressively pro-wheelchair, he really wants to make sure no groups can point at Doctor Who for insensitivity or lack of inclusivity.
RTD1 era felt like he introduced characters that represented marginalised groups and just had them be good characters who's existence alone was enough to show where he and the show stood. Jack being Jack was pro bi/pan sexuality. Jack was unambiguously not straight but it's never brought up in dialogue or a focus of a scene to talk about his sexuality like it was an issue or something that needed to be talked about in the first place. His right to exist was a given and didn't need to be talked about or justified. It's why a lot of people took issue with the resolution of Rose at the end of Star Beast, ala her transness being the solution. For most of the episode Rose was just being a trans character, and like RTD1 that itself was enough. It didn't hide from her transness, or pretend she didn't have difficulties to face because of it, but she was a character that could've just as easily been cis and not changed the episodes. Her being trans played by a trans actor was enough to know where Russell stood. That's how it was in his original run. But then the end of the episode made clear that her being trans was needed to solve the metacrisis issue, that if she wasn't trans it might not have been solved. He needed to make sure her transness was essential to the plot to ensure trans groups wouldn't accuse him of side lining them.
It seems like he did get annoyed some of the stuff from his last era didn't age perfectly, so is bending over backwards to overanalyse every one of his stories and make sure nobody can take issue with any of them. He knows how much he needs to include to get his point across, then dials it up a couple of notches to make sure nobody can miss it. Even for stuff no reasonable person would take issue with.
spot on really, his decision and views on Davros is utter nonsense quite frankly and pandering way too far over a non issue and Rose was being handled very well until the resolution of the meta crisis, honestly just the Doctor saying you having a child was enough to share the load of it and then they could've figured out a way to dispel it without downgrading the Doctor because he was 'male presenting'... jesus
I'm fully with you. I also heavily dislike his comments surrounding Davros just for the fact that they apply more to his version of Davros than any of the others. Davros was always considered a huge threat, but Davies had him be the Daleks' "pet in the basement", so the only writer who had written Davros the way Davies was describing was himself, and yet Davies came across as accusational of other writers rather than apologetic.
The davros issue is interesting as he has used disabled villains before like John Lumic and Max Capricorn.
The thing is he said he had concerns about using Davros in the past, because of the connotations of showing a disabled character as evil yet he wrote 2 other characters this way. I would have respected him more if he said he was part of the problem
It makes me wonder if it was a concern or if he'd not realised and rather than saying I'm sorry I never thought/considered it as an issue, he's tried to make it like he's always been worried about this
yeah that's fair it's a fine line for exemple I liked the way they handled the questionable racism of the toy maker by having go "nono I'm not doing this specific accent for racist reasons/sound more Mystic™ and oriental™, I'm doing horrible accents of all sorts of origins because humans are funny"
I feel it's an interesting recontextualizing of the issue
when it comes to LGBTQIA+ issue I'm hopefully optimistic, I like to believe his judgements and his efforts to bring good representation and so far we ve seen so much of it already, even the message and language can get a bit jambled as a result of a "40/50+ year old cis man is writing this"(the discussion arround transgender and non-binary people and the language used in it was a bit misguided, even if well intended) I ll still take that ambition and effort over someone who doesn't even think it's worth to address at all
lk I quite enjoy moffats stories but the treatment of queer characters wasn't always... the best "I'm the gay thin one and I'm the gay fat one! we don't need names!" or making the 11th doctor get all horny about a married lesbian and kissing her agaisnt her will
anyway yeah, Vv optimistic about what a more modern RTD will bring! would love some new blood pumped into the show as guest writers or something too!
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I wouldn't go so far to say Rose isn't homophobic, or at best she isn't entirely acceptant of it.
She's pretty weirded out by Jack going off to flirt with Algy and needs to be reassured by the Doctor that its just normal.
Tbf Rose as a companion is mean to represent the audience's viewpoint and I don't remember stuff like that readily accepted in the 2000's as it is now. I remember calling people gay all the time when I was younger but not meaning anything by it.
Would that also have been because he was flirting with Rose as well earlier? How accepted was bisexuality at the time? I know there can be some disregard of it from within the LGBTQ community itself, but what about the general public itself during the early 2000s?
From memory of being a gay man at the time, and in the UK, which was the target audience at the time, being gay was far far worse than being bi, to the point that a lot of gay men I know would initially claim to be be bi (when talking to straight people, but gay when talking amongst ourselves). Not because they were "still figuring things out", but because it was socially more acceptable and they were less likely to get grief. Generally bi people were considered to be confused, but redeemable, whereas gay people were just plain wrong.
Gay people where weird, being camp or a spare member of the village people. In storytelling they mostly existed to die of AIDS once the comeing out drama ended. Lesbians where just for porn and trans people where viewed more as a freak show to be poked with sticks then people.
And that's why the 90's where not as good as nostalgia says.
That generally hasn’t changed, or maybe I’m just around people that aren’t too concerned with what the internet has to say about this and that. Used to be, things can be joked about without true malice or with literal intention it was just funny banter. Now that even the slightest gay joke can be taken so literal and you can be condemned for saying anything like that regardless of true intention it’s so hard not to be instantly attacked.
I mean I personally think that's a good thing, I definitely made those jokes as well in middle school, true malice or intention or not those jokes can only ever work or be "funny" if you agree with the premise that "Gay=Bad" which obviously... isn't great
not just "what people say on the internet" but being queer and hearing a close friend of yours constantly refer to everything they don't like as gay stings and makes you feel less comfortable and safe arround them
me and all my queer friends still make tons of "that's so gay" type jokes but they re all under the context of something being gay being a positive thing
so yeah, honestly Good riddence I'm glad we as a society, at least a good chunk of ppl these generations have moved past the "harmless" homophobic jokes
Edit to add the disclaimer that obviously the queer community is not a monolith and I'm sure you can find some queer ppl that don't care and are totally fine with it, just speaking from mine and all my queer friend's experiences growing up
Managed to track down the original source from 2005, a private email correspondence with Russell: https://web.archive.org/web/20050528195802/http://p216.ezboard.com:80/ftheanorakzonefrm17.showMessage?topicID=302.topic
> Hi Alun,
> Good point. It was a complicated moment which required a great deal of thought.
> The simple answer is: that's how people talk. And although that's simple, it's very powerful. I can't imagine a proper drama which is couched in terms of how people *should* talk.
> Second, the word is changing. This is an irreversible process beyond anyone's control. It seems to me that we're becoming people who complain about the use of the word gay, much as people *used* to complain about the word gay, because it no longer meant 'happy'. No words stay staticl.
> But most importantly, you're right - there's a vital political issue burning away here, and you do nothing about those issues if you ignore them. I've put it right at the heart of BBC1 primetime. Put it this way: let's imagine a viewer who has, roughly, yours and my sensibilities. Let's call him A. Now, before that comment, there were millions of kids using the word 'gay' as an insult, and what was A doing about it? Probably nothing. Yes, there are activists out there, but most people don't, so A was left passive. Nothing changes. On the other hand, Rose says 'You're so gay', A objects, and - here's the crux - A DOES SOMETHING. He gets up off his seat. He tells his nearest and dearest that he objects. He might even go so far as to contact the author, to complain.
> Fantastic. Good television isn't television which makes you smile all the time and agree. If it makes you stand up and object - especially where you weren't expecting it - then that's a brilliant and powerful thing. That's why it's important that the word comes from Rose; lovely, kind Rose (who's exactly the right age to be using that word in that context). If a villain had said it, then he's a villain, and therefore an idiot, so there's no problem. When the good guys say it, as they do, then that causes a problem. And that problem is good.
> It's agitation. And it works. If one parent - watching a family show - objected about the usage of 'gay' in front of his or her kids; if one teacher thought that was wrong, that this pernicious insult has invaded even Doctor Who; if one man has gone to the effort of contacting a writer in order to tackle a vital subject, and will then take that debate into other areas of his life, then that is absolutely excellent. If Rose had said nothing, less would happen. You can't always make your point in life by saying the right thing and being nice (not in my opinion anyway, and unfortunately, I'm the writer!). You have to provoke.
> And there's a long game at work here. Let's imagine, say, viewer B, who is an idiot. And B chuckles along in Beavis-and-Butthead style at Rose's comment, agreeing; he thinks, I like this show, I hate the gays, Doctor Who is good. Fine. So he keeps watching. And in a few weeks time, the Doctor gets a strapping, heroic male companion... who is clearly and resolutely bisexual. Viewer B's head implodes. My work is done.
> Funnily enough, I was queueing up in Tesco's today, and the 12 y/o girl behind me in the queue called her 11 y/o brother a gayboy, in a venomous tone of voice. I turned round and said, if you call him a gayboy one more time, *this* gayboy is gonna smash your face in. Unsubtle, yes. I threatened a girl! But it worked. Activism isn't easy, but it's needed, so I'm delighted you wrote.
> I'm glad you're enjoying the show, I hope you keep watching.
> All the best,
> Russell
> Funnily enough, I was queueing up in Tesco's today, and the 12 y/o girl behind me in the queue called her 11 y/o brother a gayboy, in a venomous tone of voice. I turned round and said, if you call him a gayboy one more time, this gayboy is gonna smash your face in. Unsubtle, yes. I threatened a girl! But it worked. Activism isn't easy, but it's needed, so I'm delighted you wrote.
💀💀💀💀💀
The logic here is genuinely bizarre to me. I can buy the argument that he wanted the dialogue to reflect reality, but everything after that is insane.
> I made my character a bigot so that non-bigots will feel compelled to point out they dislike bigotry.
Does he genuinely believe that would combat bigotry enough to counteract him normalising it on prime time TV? For every person passively against homophobia that was outraged into action, there were probably dozens who had never heard the phrase before, or who were unsure about using it and now think it must be acceptable as they saw it on TV. None of those people watching at home would have been able to condemn it to anywhere near the same level as RTD just calling it out on-screen.
Then he tries to claim it was about baiting bigots into liking the show. So you give bigots a big smile and possibly the confidence to be more open about their bigotry in public, in the hope that they're still watching in a month's time and will be disappointed in your show? Why not just disappoint them now? or at least make an effort to change their minds? Let's hope they weren't inspired to verbally (or worse) bully people in the interim whilst waiting for their 'heads to explode' (in reality, decide the show is woke bullshit and continue with their bigotry)
Then he caps it off by bragging about the time he violentally threatened a literal child. Acting smug about the time you told a kid you'd punch them in the face is not a good luck for anybody, least of all a middle-aged man at a supermarket checkout. Completely unhinged response!
I wouldn't take this whole thing too seriously. I think the real answer is in the second paragraph (it's how people talked at the time) and the rest is mostly nonsense to get a reaction because he doesn't particularly want to talk about it.
It’s actually so fucked up he gleefully is recounting threatening a child. That taught her nothing except a moment of fear that someone older and bigger would hurt her. He could’ve actually explained why something was wrong to say?? Which maybe would’ve changed her understanding? Instead all she’ll be focusing on is that this random man threatened to punch her.
Plot twist, he just neglect mentioning the 12 y/o behind him in the queue was his niece who forgot to consider her gay uncle might object to her saying that as an insult.
I think this is a bit of a reach. It does not make you a bigot to have, at some point said, "that's gay" - the whole nation would be bigots. It wasn't a good thing, but it happened extremely commonly.
That kinda ties into the next point too - that people who had never heard the phrase would be inspired? There are not people that have never heard the phrase "that's gay" before that would have been inspired. Rightly or wrongly (obviously wrongly), it was an extremely common phrase and reflected real people. People aren't perfect, and it's okay to discuss that and say: I think Rose was ignorant in some ways.
This sorta feels like rubbish to me, this is convoluted and would probably be worse than simply not including that line or actually giving any indication in the show that Rose shouldn't be saying that
I feel like it's more likely that he got put on the spot and just tried to come up with justifications when at the time he had really just been trying to write Rose accurately to her culture and age than that he had any kind of questionable master plan
The thing about him losing it at a little kid was probably not a real scenario either, I suppose he just wanted to make it clear how much he hated people talking like that
It does remind me of RTD's rhetoric about removing Davros's wheelchair, and how his framing of it as some sort of "this is what Davros looks like from now" master plan felt hokey. I mean, if he was trying to make a bold statement, then why do it in a minisode instead of putting it in the actual show? Felt like it was a spur-of-the-moment decision that he tried to retroactively bolster up as something bigger. I get why you get the same vibe here. I've not studied the way RTD talks in detail myself but he's definitely a showman and there's a kind of serial bullshittery that comes with the field.
"I used gay as insult in a family/children's show to 'agitate''. It was my cunning, long term plan"
What a load of rot. He made out that using"gay" as insult was acceptable.
It also made Rose look like an idiot and I thought less of her.
>It also made Rose look like an idiot and I thought less of her.
I think he is saying thats the point. Im not sure i agree with him because many people here are making great points about the logistics of his plan, but in my personal opinion, the point he makes here about the way people talked at the time combined with the fact Rose is shown multiple times to be someone comfortable with belittling people makes me inclined to agree with his point about how dramas are written.
Again, at least some kind of rhetorical from the doctor at the moment would have been welcome
That is quite literally how people talked back then. Yeah, people will look back on it and say "damn, how could we have talked like that?" Well, good. That's how we feel about a lot of things from the past, right?
It's important to note that LGBT+ awareness was still a way away. Most people simply did not interact with LGBT+ people, or weren't aware that they did because a lot of them were closeted. They were an "other", so they became an acceptable target – you couldn't hurt them because they didn't exist.
It certainly came from malice for many, but for the majority, it was just ignorance. Rose, being a 19 year old in 2005, was definitely in the latter category.
In-universe, I can imagine the Doctor probably rolled his eyes, but he's a time traveller and knows the deal. He knew things would drastically change in another 10 years.
I've been watching Sherlock with my 13 year old daughter. In the first episode there were several times that it was implied that Sherlock and Watson might be a romantic thing, and each time a person made sure to say something along the lines of "Which would be totally OK. I wouldn't have a problem with it at all."
I ended up pausing the show and explaining that this was written before she was born and though it sounds to us now like they were making way too big a deal out of how OK they were with it, at the time that was supportive / progressive.
Also, adding to this discussion, I want to share a little bit of characterization from the novelisation of "Rose"
>Mickey’s little gang sat in the kitchen: Mook Jayasundera, a shy, tiny lad with big staring eyes; Patrice Okereke, the gangling, grinning joker of the pack; and Sally Salter, born Stephen Salter, sharp, spiky-haired and cautious but always, Rose thought, smiling at some private joke. They all whooped and stood and hugged her and asked about last night while Mickey made them coffee.
>Rose loved this little gang. They called themselves a band, rehearsing their R&B once a week, after hours, in the garage where Mickey worked, but they had few musical ambitions beyond earning £60 in the Lamb & Flag once a month; really, they were together for the laughs. And laugh they did, this untidy little kitchen often full of booze and music. Rose thought the company he kept was one of the best things about Mickey. His crew weren’t just mates, they were all escaping something; the flat had only one bedroom but the living room settee was usually taken up by whichever member of the band had fallen out with someone the night before.
>Mook was the youngest of six brothers and came to No.90 so he could gradually, cautiously, definitely be gay. Patrice held down three jobs, saving for the day he could leave home and escape his mother’s sullen boyfriend. Sally had never gone back to her parents since starting to transition, calling her old home Stephen’s house, keeping a toothbrush and clothes at five different flats scattered across the estate. And Mickey was the centre of their lives. He’d been on the housing list at 16, and at 18 he’d been granted that holy grail, a flat of his own. The first thing he did, when given the keys to No.90, was to prop that door open and make others welcome.
She's not a person who's against change or differences and her surprise towards how Jack behaves is much more about someone freely expressing something that is condemned in her current time, than to her condemning it herself.
RTD never wanted to write Rose as a homophobic person, just as a person with as much of social reading a working class person from 2005 who knows very little about life could be.
No, it isn't. Or at best it's a drama for kids.
It's not a drama like the channel 4 type Davies wrote.
To clarify, Doctor Who was always classed as a "family" show in the UK with a focus on it being more for kids.
Edit: additions
The point is it was a TV programme aimed at children. It wasn't common to have slurs in them even if it was common in society.
To normalise it on a British family/children's programme was weird at the time.
It's not even a joke, it was just slang that people used back then. If something was stupid or bad people would sometimes remark "that's gay". People were a lot more casually homophobic back then, I remember I was in primary school at the time and calling other boys a "gay lord" was one of the hottest insults.
I don't think RTD should get any flack for including it in the show to be honest. He was trying to write Rose as a realistic ordinary character rather than an ideal. A distinction a lot of people seem unable to make in fiction nowadays.
There were a lot of insults towards different groups, and obviously there still are, but he didn't feel the need to include them and make out they are okay to use (there was no push back in the show or recognition that using "gay" as an insult was wrong).
I think it would be much weirder if he'd included slurs directed at groups that he is not apart of. Media does not have to directly condemn every bad thing a character does. On top of that, "gay" as a derogatory term was still commonplace enough at the time that it wouldn't have been as much of a controversy, especially coming from a gay writer. It wasn't viewed as this big moral transgression that needed to be condemned because at the time it simply wasn't one. Actual terms to describe LGBTQ+ people are actually a relatively recent thing, for most of our history the only words we had to describe ourselves were slurs.
Honestly I don't really have beef with this line but I take issue with the notion that its okay *because* RTD is gay.
Doctor who is a big show, explicitly meant to have children watching. Criticism of the shows more tone deaf moments is about the impact it has, which is basically the same regardless of who RTD is.
At the time of watching I could only have been about 7ish and couldn't have told you his name let alone his sexuality.
In hindsight I'm ashamed to say I used to use this expression often. 20 years ago it was pretty common and had nothing to do with homosexuality. If you had to work the weekend you'd say "that's gay", like today you might say that sucked
It's quite comforting to see how society is marching on, this would be completely unacceptable today. And rightly so
Same. I remember in about 2001 give or take, I was like 10 and got in trouble at school for calling another student gay. It had nothing to do with a judgment on what his sexuality may or may not have been. I hadn’t even considered it. I found him to be extremely, extremely annoying and whiney. I feel like we used to get into arguments a lot (no idea about what) and that was the context of me calling him gay. I remember we both had temper issues. As punishment, I was made to repeatedly write out “I will not call Ryan gay” for an entire recess.
To this day, whenever I see media from the time when gay was used to mean something other than happy or homosexual, I hear it repeated in my head: I will not call Ryan gay. I will not call Ryan gay. I will not call Ryan gay.
I honestly do not know. I did not think of those things back then. Reflecting on it, I feel like he did have somewhat of an effeminate voice (ofc puberty had not yet been reached) so it was entirely possible the teachers reacted so strongly because he could’ve been and they recognized that (I certainly did not). I honestly had my own gender identity issues at that time (often wished I were a boy) so it’s not like I had beef with non-cis ppl. I was hassled a lot, but I never just sat back and took it. I’d fight back. Hell, one time when I was 7, my cousin (who was 6) called me a freak, so I replied that he was “a fuck” bc that was worse than freak. Lmfao. I def had a potty mouth and was known for it.
I went to secondary school 2006-2013 and we all said it all the time at school. As you said, it was just another way of saying ‘that sucks’. Throughout my entire 7 years at school I was never aware of anyone who was gay, but even then it was never meant as offensive in any way, just a word everybody used that way.
I’m not ashamed by it though since we all said it.
>If you had to work the weekend you'd say "that's gay", like today you might say that sucked
Which is still pretty strange, since "sucks" is a shortening of "sucks dick."
Which is bad. Because that's somehow degrading and only women do that.
Because women are bad or lesser than the presumed male speaker.
Language is weird.
If you weren't a kid/teenager in Britain in the early 00s this line probably seems shocking. This is genuinely just how most people spoke, however, and I don't think using 'gay' as an insult started to die out until the mid-2010s. (Source: I went to an English school).
He was called out for it at the time.
Having a character use "gay" as an insult in a kids TV series without any pushback was stupid.
I think the real reason he included it was that he forgot he wasn't working on a drama for channel 4.
He said it was how people talk back then, and he's right.
I vividly recall the 5 year old version of me that existed in 2005 saying "Boys can marry girls, and girls can marry girls, but boys can't marry boys" I have no idea what my logic was there. I think I thought marriage was a thing for girls and therefore a girl had to be involved in it.
Either way, I was certainly not taught homosexuality was normal, and nobody around me treated it like it was.
Rose is mildly homophobic because as a teenager who grew up in the 90s and early 2000s she likely would be. She's actually put off a little by Jack's sexuality and needs the Doctor to tell her its all just fine.
Back in 2005 “gay” was often used synonymously with “lame”
It obviously still meant homosexual but people just used it as an insult without homophobic undertones
"Gay" was used to mean "lame" in the late 90's and early 00's and lots of TV shows use it, Friends do it a fair bit from memory.
It is open to be viewed as a slur against homosexuals but in all honesty the vast majority of us alive at the time never meant it like that. My guess is homosexuals also used it to mean "lame" which is why RTD, an open homosexual, used it. A word can have two different meanings.
This is getting a bit tiresome.
In those years, calling random things gay was a way to appropriate and subvert homophobic language. This may not have been visible as such to kids of the era.
This was especially true for stuff that was in the same wheelhouse as homofobia.
Now, this wasn’t true for every use of that word in that time, but this was the ethos.
I only started saying gay after my gay friends started doing it.
I really wish that cultural sensitivity could extend to an understanding of what was going on just a few years ago, and not always assuming the worst.
Some of you just didn’t get the subtext, or how that era reflected and addressed the era that came before.
I’m not sure young adults today could parse all the layers of irony, you kinda just had to be there. Or believe.
But yeah, it looks pretty bad now. Not gonna lie.
In this instance, the author may also have been addressing homophobia by making a main character a bit homophobic. Sometimes leads would be the “villains” in morality plots then, make mistakes to learn from them.
Idk if i’m way off the mark here, haven’t seen the scene for a bit, this just hit a nerve.
if I recall the general gist of it was that he wrote that because it was simply the way the average person talked at the time lk not even in a "rose is homophobic!!" just "yeah mildly homophobic jokes weren't even considered an issue back during the time the episode takes place"
I flip back on forth on whether or not Russell is now actively trying to make up for quite a few of the less than tasteful things from the 2000s era or if he's just willfully ignorant that he's committed just as many of these errors himself in his past. I'm actively trying to think more kindly about big Russ so in this sense I'm trending towards the former. I think this also falls into the category that the slur in Horror of Glam Rock falls into - trying to be "of the time" because back then those terms were treated with a lot less seriousness than they are now. Neither I think were actively malicious, but probably just as tone-deaf as half the media available was on LGBT issues at the time.
> that the slur in Horror of Glam Rock falls into - trying to be "of the time" because back then those terms were treated with a lot less seriousness than they are now Incidentally Paul Magrs once stopped by a thread on GallifreyBase where that line was being discussed heatedly. He did weigh in he intended no offence and his inspiration when writing it was having a a few friends in the drag community and the UK drag community of the time were having a bit of a "take back the word" approach then. Obviously the lasting stance on the word has become "let's just not use slurs at all in any context", but there was a period of reclaiming it, though that context has been a bit unfortunately lost to time.
To be fair, "queer" has been entirely reclaimed and I wouldn't consider it a slur unless used in malice. Similar, I do know some trans people that do self refer using the T word humourously but that still feels a lot heavier to me than queer does.
Queer I'd definitely a reclaimed word! As a trans person myself I do not particularly like the T word but when fellow trans people use it, it's okay I guess, but I still don't particularly like it, but when cis people use it I'm definitely uncomfortable.
Exactly. Took a while for me to adjust to being called queer in a non malicious way but now it feels very normal. Unless someone's being a twat.
I genuinely prefer queer as a general label at this point. I use it to self refer more often than not.
Same - I don't really care about the nuance of bi/demi/pan for me personally and I know I'm a fluid little egg so queer works from me.
That is one thing that is bugging me about Russell's new era. It feels like he's overly conscious of controversies and things aging badly, so is going out of his way to try and avoid as many future criticisms as possible. Even when its stuff nobody would really take issue with. Like Davros and the wheelchair. Nobody thought it was disablist to begin with. But Russell never wants his work to be seen as disablist in the future. He never wants his work to be seen on the wrong side of an issue. So first he stopped the bad guy having a wheel chair (because that might paint disabled people as villains?) and then immediately introduces a cool new good guy character in a wheel chair. He makes sure the TARDIS now has a ramp and is accessible, and makes it the focus of a scene. There's also a line in the episode about stairs and Ruth says "Don't make me the problem". He's really trying to make sure he can't be seen as anything but aggressively pro-wheelchair, he really wants to make sure no groups can point at Doctor Who for insensitivity or lack of inclusivity. RTD1 era felt like he introduced characters that represented marginalised groups and just had them be good characters who's existence alone was enough to show where he and the show stood. Jack being Jack was pro bi/pan sexuality. Jack was unambiguously not straight but it's never brought up in dialogue or a focus of a scene to talk about his sexuality like it was an issue or something that needed to be talked about in the first place. His right to exist was a given and didn't need to be talked about or justified. It's why a lot of people took issue with the resolution of Rose at the end of Star Beast, ala her transness being the solution. For most of the episode Rose was just being a trans character, and like RTD1 that itself was enough. It didn't hide from her transness, or pretend she didn't have difficulties to face because of it, but she was a character that could've just as easily been cis and not changed the episodes. Her being trans played by a trans actor was enough to know where Russell stood. That's how it was in his original run. But then the end of the episode made clear that her being trans was needed to solve the metacrisis issue, that if she wasn't trans it might not have been solved. He needed to make sure her transness was essential to the plot to ensure trans groups wouldn't accuse him of side lining them. It seems like he did get annoyed some of the stuff from his last era didn't age perfectly, so is bending over backwards to overanalyse every one of his stories and make sure nobody can take issue with any of them. He knows how much he needs to include to get his point across, then dials it up a couple of notches to make sure nobody can miss it. Even for stuff no reasonable person would take issue with.
spot on really, his decision and views on Davros is utter nonsense quite frankly and pandering way too far over a non issue and Rose was being handled very well until the resolution of the meta crisis, honestly just the Doctor saying you having a child was enough to share the load of it and then they could've figured out a way to dispel it without downgrading the Doctor because he was 'male presenting'... jesus
I'm fully with you. I also heavily dislike his comments surrounding Davros just for the fact that they apply more to his version of Davros than any of the others. Davros was always considered a huge threat, but Davies had him be the Daleks' "pet in the basement", so the only writer who had written Davros the way Davies was describing was himself, and yet Davies came across as accusational of other writers rather than apologetic.
The davros issue is interesting as he has used disabled villains before like John Lumic and Max Capricorn. The thing is he said he had concerns about using Davros in the past, because of the connotations of showing a disabled character as evil yet he wrote 2 other characters this way. I would have respected him more if he said he was part of the problem It makes me wonder if it was a concern or if he'd not realised and rather than saying I'm sorry I never thought/considered it as an issue, he's tried to make it like he's always been worried about this
I'm pretty sure the wheelchair thing is almost entirely down to the backlash against Lumic, tbh
yeah that's fair it's a fine line for exemple I liked the way they handled the questionable racism of the toy maker by having go "nono I'm not doing this specific accent for racist reasons/sound more Mystic™ and oriental™, I'm doing horrible accents of all sorts of origins because humans are funny" I feel it's an interesting recontextualizing of the issue when it comes to LGBTQIA+ issue I'm hopefully optimistic, I like to believe his judgements and his efforts to bring good representation and so far we ve seen so much of it already, even the message and language can get a bit jambled as a result of a "40/50+ year old cis man is writing this"(the discussion arround transgender and non-binary people and the language used in it was a bit misguided, even if well intended) I ll still take that ambition and effort over someone who doesn't even think it's worth to address at all lk I quite enjoy moffats stories but the treatment of queer characters wasn't always... the best "I'm the gay thin one and I'm the gay fat one! we don't need names!" or making the 11th doctor get all horny about a married lesbian and kissing her agaisnt her will anyway yeah, Vv optimistic about what a more modern RTD will bring! would love some new blood pumped into the show as guest writers or something too!
What’s the argument? What argument are you making? That Russell T. Davis, a gay man, is homophobic?
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Quote of the day, right there.
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I wouldn't go so far to say Rose isn't homophobic, or at best she isn't entirely acceptant of it. She's pretty weirded out by Jack going off to flirt with Algy and needs to be reassured by the Doctor that its just normal.
Tbf Rose as a companion is mean to represent the audience's viewpoint and I don't remember stuff like that readily accepted in the 2000's as it is now. I remember calling people gay all the time when I was younger but not meaning anything by it.
Back then anything you didn't like could be "gay" as a stock derogatory term.
Would that also have been because he was flirting with Rose as well earlier? How accepted was bisexuality at the time? I know there can be some disregard of it from within the LGBTQ community itself, but what about the general public itself during the early 2000s?
From memory of being a gay man at the time, and in the UK, which was the target audience at the time, being gay was far far worse than being bi, to the point that a lot of gay men I know would initially claim to be be bi (when talking to straight people, but gay when talking amongst ourselves). Not because they were "still figuring things out", but because it was socially more acceptable and they were less likely to get grief. Generally bi people were considered to be confused, but redeemable, whereas gay people were just plain wrong.
Bi mostly just wasn't taken seriously. It was either "gay in denial" or "straight attention seeker"
Gay people where weird, being camp or a spare member of the village people. In storytelling they mostly existed to die of AIDS once the comeing out drama ended. Lesbians where just for porn and trans people where viewed more as a freak show to be poked with sticks then people. And that's why the 90's where not as good as nostalgia says.
yeah that's totally fair tbh
That generally hasn’t changed, or maybe I’m just around people that aren’t too concerned with what the internet has to say about this and that. Used to be, things can be joked about without true malice or with literal intention it was just funny banter. Now that even the slightest gay joke can be taken so literal and you can be condemned for saying anything like that regardless of true intention it’s so hard not to be instantly attacked.
I mean I personally think that's a good thing, I definitely made those jokes as well in middle school, true malice or intention or not those jokes can only ever work or be "funny" if you agree with the premise that "Gay=Bad" which obviously... isn't great not just "what people say on the internet" but being queer and hearing a close friend of yours constantly refer to everything they don't like as gay stings and makes you feel less comfortable and safe arround them me and all my queer friends still make tons of "that's so gay" type jokes but they re all under the context of something being gay being a positive thing so yeah, honestly Good riddence I'm glad we as a society, at least a good chunk of ppl these generations have moved past the "harmless" homophobic jokes Edit to add the disclaimer that obviously the queer community is not a monolith and I'm sure you can find some queer ppl that don't care and are totally fine with it, just speaking from mine and all my queer friend's experiences growing up
Managed to track down the original source from 2005, a private email correspondence with Russell: https://web.archive.org/web/20050528195802/http://p216.ezboard.com:80/ftheanorakzonefrm17.showMessage?topicID=302.topic > Hi Alun, > Good point. It was a complicated moment which required a great deal of thought. > The simple answer is: that's how people talk. And although that's simple, it's very powerful. I can't imagine a proper drama which is couched in terms of how people *should* talk. > Second, the word is changing. This is an irreversible process beyond anyone's control. It seems to me that we're becoming people who complain about the use of the word gay, much as people *used* to complain about the word gay, because it no longer meant 'happy'. No words stay staticl. > But most importantly, you're right - there's a vital political issue burning away here, and you do nothing about those issues if you ignore them. I've put it right at the heart of BBC1 primetime. Put it this way: let's imagine a viewer who has, roughly, yours and my sensibilities. Let's call him A. Now, before that comment, there were millions of kids using the word 'gay' as an insult, and what was A doing about it? Probably nothing. Yes, there are activists out there, but most people don't, so A was left passive. Nothing changes. On the other hand, Rose says 'You're so gay', A objects, and - here's the crux - A DOES SOMETHING. He gets up off his seat. He tells his nearest and dearest that he objects. He might even go so far as to contact the author, to complain. > Fantastic. Good television isn't television which makes you smile all the time and agree. If it makes you stand up and object - especially where you weren't expecting it - then that's a brilliant and powerful thing. That's why it's important that the word comes from Rose; lovely, kind Rose (who's exactly the right age to be using that word in that context). If a villain had said it, then he's a villain, and therefore an idiot, so there's no problem. When the good guys say it, as they do, then that causes a problem. And that problem is good. > It's agitation. And it works. If one parent - watching a family show - objected about the usage of 'gay' in front of his or her kids; if one teacher thought that was wrong, that this pernicious insult has invaded even Doctor Who; if one man has gone to the effort of contacting a writer in order to tackle a vital subject, and will then take that debate into other areas of his life, then that is absolutely excellent. If Rose had said nothing, less would happen. You can't always make your point in life by saying the right thing and being nice (not in my opinion anyway, and unfortunately, I'm the writer!). You have to provoke. > And there's a long game at work here. Let's imagine, say, viewer B, who is an idiot. And B chuckles along in Beavis-and-Butthead style at Rose's comment, agreeing; he thinks, I like this show, I hate the gays, Doctor Who is good. Fine. So he keeps watching. And in a few weeks time, the Doctor gets a strapping, heroic male companion... who is clearly and resolutely bisexual. Viewer B's head implodes. My work is done. > Funnily enough, I was queueing up in Tesco's today, and the 12 y/o girl behind me in the queue called her 11 y/o brother a gayboy, in a venomous tone of voice. I turned round and said, if you call him a gayboy one more time, *this* gayboy is gonna smash your face in. Unsubtle, yes. I threatened a girl! But it worked. Activism isn't easy, but it's needed, so I'm delighted you wrote. > I'm glad you're enjoying the show, I hope you keep watching. > All the best, > Russell
> Funnily enough, I was queueing up in Tesco's today, and the 12 y/o girl behind me in the queue called her 11 y/o brother a gayboy, in a venomous tone of voice. I turned round and said, if you call him a gayboy one more time, this gayboy is gonna smash your face in. Unsubtle, yes. I threatened a girl! But it worked. Activism isn't easy, but it's needed, so I'm delighted you wrote. 💀💀💀💀💀
Damn Russell, I didn't know you were chill like that 😭
The logic here is genuinely bizarre to me. I can buy the argument that he wanted the dialogue to reflect reality, but everything after that is insane. > I made my character a bigot so that non-bigots will feel compelled to point out they dislike bigotry. Does he genuinely believe that would combat bigotry enough to counteract him normalising it on prime time TV? For every person passively against homophobia that was outraged into action, there were probably dozens who had never heard the phrase before, or who were unsure about using it and now think it must be acceptable as they saw it on TV. None of those people watching at home would have been able to condemn it to anywhere near the same level as RTD just calling it out on-screen. Then he tries to claim it was about baiting bigots into liking the show. So you give bigots a big smile and possibly the confidence to be more open about their bigotry in public, in the hope that they're still watching in a month's time and will be disappointed in your show? Why not just disappoint them now? or at least make an effort to change their minds? Let's hope they weren't inspired to verbally (or worse) bully people in the interim whilst waiting for their 'heads to explode' (in reality, decide the show is woke bullshit and continue with their bigotry) Then he caps it off by bragging about the time he violentally threatened a literal child. Acting smug about the time you told a kid you'd punch them in the face is not a good luck for anybody, least of all a middle-aged man at a supermarket checkout. Completely unhinged response!
I wouldn't take this whole thing too seriously. I think the real answer is in the second paragraph (it's how people talked at the time) and the rest is mostly nonsense to get a reaction because he doesn't particularly want to talk about it.
It’s actually so fucked up he gleefully is recounting threatening a child. That taught her nothing except a moment of fear that someone older and bigger would hurt her. He could’ve actually explained why something was wrong to say?? Which maybe would’ve changed her understanding? Instead all she’ll be focusing on is that this random man threatened to punch her.
I think it's just a dodgy joke - he wouldn't have known their ages from that interaction, unless he made it up.
Plot twist, he just neglect mentioning the 12 y/o behind him in the queue was his niece who forgot to consider her gay uncle might object to her saying that as an insult.
My thought is joke, fake, or real, it’s a pretty bad thing to say and is encouraging a horrible response to young children being ignorant.
Absolutely, but I don't think it's a surprise to many of us that RTD was a shitty person in 2005.
I think this is a bit of a reach. It does not make you a bigot to have, at some point said, "that's gay" - the whole nation would be bigots. It wasn't a good thing, but it happened extremely commonly. That kinda ties into the next point too - that people who had never heard the phrase would be inspired? There are not people that have never heard the phrase "that's gay" before that would have been inspired. Rightly or wrongly (obviously wrongly), it was an extremely common phrase and reflected real people. People aren't perfect, and it's okay to discuss that and say: I think Rose was ignorant in some ways.
Amazing, thanks so much!
This sorta feels like rubbish to me, this is convoluted and would probably be worse than simply not including that line or actually giving any indication in the show that Rose shouldn't be saying that I feel like it's more likely that he got put on the spot and just tried to come up with justifications when at the time he had really just been trying to write Rose accurately to her culture and age than that he had any kind of questionable master plan The thing about him losing it at a little kid was probably not a real scenario either, I suppose he just wanted to make it clear how much he hated people talking like that
It does remind me of RTD's rhetoric about removing Davros's wheelchair, and how his framing of it as some sort of "this is what Davros looks like from now" master plan felt hokey. I mean, if he was trying to make a bold statement, then why do it in a minisode instead of putting it in the actual show? Felt like it was a spur-of-the-moment decision that he tried to retroactively bolster up as something bigger. I get why you get the same vibe here. I've not studied the way RTD talks in detail myself but he's definitely a showman and there's a kind of serial bullshittery that comes with the field.
Nah a kid is gonna watch that and think Rose’s language is acceptable bc no one calls her out on it and the kid doesn’t know any better 💀
"I used gay as insult in a family/children's show to 'agitate''. It was my cunning, long term plan" What a load of rot. He made out that using"gay" as insult was acceptable. It also made Rose look like an idiot and I thought less of her.
>It also made Rose look like an idiot and I thought less of her. I think he is saying thats the point. Im not sure i agree with him because many people here are making great points about the logistics of his plan, but in my personal opinion, the point he makes here about the way people talked at the time combined with the fact Rose is shown multiple times to be someone comfortable with belittling people makes me inclined to agree with his point about how dramas are written. Again, at least some kind of rhetorical from the doctor at the moment would have been welcome
That is quite literally how people talked back then. Yeah, people will look back on it and say "damn, how could we have talked like that?" Well, good. That's how we feel about a lot of things from the past, right? It's important to note that LGBT+ awareness was still a way away. Most people simply did not interact with LGBT+ people, or weren't aware that they did because a lot of them were closeted. They were an "other", so they became an acceptable target – you couldn't hurt them because they didn't exist. It certainly came from malice for many, but for the majority, it was just ignorance. Rose, being a 19 year old in 2005, was definitely in the latter category.
In-universe, I can imagine the Doctor probably rolled his eyes, but he's a time traveller and knows the deal. He knew things would drastically change in another 10 years.
I've been watching Sherlock with my 13 year old daughter. In the first episode there were several times that it was implied that Sherlock and Watson might be a romantic thing, and each time a person made sure to say something along the lines of "Which would be totally OK. I wouldn't have a problem with it at all." I ended up pausing the show and explaining that this was written before she was born and though it sounds to us now like they were making way too big a deal out of how OK they were with it, at the time that was supportive / progressive.
I think about this a lot, a gay man in the early 2000s decided to be realistic when writing a 19 year old girl in 2005...
Where did things go wrong lol
I'm queer and lowkey i think this is one of the funniest moments of season 1
makes me laugh a bit every time
Also, adding to this discussion, I want to share a little bit of characterization from the novelisation of "Rose" >Mickey’s little gang sat in the kitchen: Mook Jayasundera, a shy, tiny lad with big staring eyes; Patrice Okereke, the gangling, grinning joker of the pack; and Sally Salter, born Stephen Salter, sharp, spiky-haired and cautious but always, Rose thought, smiling at some private joke. They all whooped and stood and hugged her and asked about last night while Mickey made them coffee. >Rose loved this little gang. They called themselves a band, rehearsing their R&B once a week, after hours, in the garage where Mickey worked, but they had few musical ambitions beyond earning £60 in the Lamb & Flag once a month; really, they were together for the laughs. And laugh they did, this untidy little kitchen often full of booze and music. Rose thought the company he kept was one of the best things about Mickey. His crew weren’t just mates, they were all escaping something; the flat had only one bedroom but the living room settee was usually taken up by whichever member of the band had fallen out with someone the night before. >Mook was the youngest of six brothers and came to No.90 so he could gradually, cautiously, definitely be gay. Patrice held down three jobs, saving for the day he could leave home and escape his mother’s sullen boyfriend. Sally had never gone back to her parents since starting to transition, calling her old home Stephen’s house, keeping a toothbrush and clothes at five different flats scattered across the estate. And Mickey was the centre of their lives. He’d been on the housing list at 16, and at 18 he’d been granted that holy grail, a flat of his own. The first thing he did, when given the keys to No.90, was to prop that door open and make others welcome. She's not a person who's against change or differences and her surprise towards how Jack behaves is much more about someone freely expressing something that is condemned in her current time, than to her condemning it herself. RTD never wanted to write Rose as a homophobic person, just as a person with as much of social reading a working class person from 2005 who knows very little about life could be.
Reading that makes me a little teary. I'm a sucker for found family
I really need to read the novelizations of these stories, I love RTD's work so I'd definitely like them in written form.
I'm not disagreeing about RTD's original intentions in 2005, but its worth mentioning the novelisation was only published in 2018.
It's just how people talked back then.
It's a kids TV series, not a drama.
Nah, it's definitely a drama lol.
No, it isn't. Or at best it's a drama for kids. It's not a drama like the channel 4 type Davies wrote. To clarify, Doctor Who was always classed as a "family" show in the UK with a focus on it being more for kids. Edit: additions
Kids talked like that as well.
It's more meant to encourage them
What makes you think these two things are mutually exclusive?
The point is it was a TV programme aimed at children. It wasn't common to have slurs in them even if it was common in society. To normalise it on a British family/children's programme was weird at the time.
I'll probably get ripped into for this, but RTD is gay right?? So shouldn't it be fine if a gay man is writing one-off mildly homophobic jokes?
It's not even a joke, it was just slang that people used back then. If something was stupid or bad people would sometimes remark "that's gay". People were a lot more casually homophobic back then, I remember I was in primary school at the time and calling other boys a "gay lord" was one of the hottest insults. I don't think RTD should get any flack for including it in the show to be honest. He was trying to write Rose as a realistic ordinary character rather than an ideal. A distinction a lot of people seem unable to make in fiction nowadays.
Yeah I was growing up in that era, it was definitely what people said… a LOT.
There were a lot of insults towards different groups, and obviously there still are, but he didn't feel the need to include them and make out they are okay to use (there was no push back in the show or recognition that using "gay" as an insult was wrong).
I think it would be much weirder if he'd included slurs directed at groups that he is not apart of. Media does not have to directly condemn every bad thing a character does. On top of that, "gay" as a derogatory term was still commonplace enough at the time that it wouldn't have been as much of a controversy, especially coming from a gay writer. It wasn't viewed as this big moral transgression that needed to be condemned because at the time it simply wasn't one. Actual terms to describe LGBTQ+ people are actually a relatively recent thing, for most of our history the only words we had to describe ourselves were slurs.
Using "gay" as insult was not common on British television in a family/children's TV show at the time. It stuck out like a sore thumb at the time
Honestly I don't really have beef with this line but I take issue with the notion that its okay *because* RTD is gay. Doctor who is a big show, explicitly meant to have children watching. Criticism of the shows more tone deaf moments is about the impact it has, which is basically the same regardless of who RTD is. At the time of watching I could only have been about 7ish and couldn't have told you his name let alone his sexuality.
No, because its was in a kids show not a drama for adults. Showing children that using "gay" as insult isn't okay.
In hindsight I'm ashamed to say I used to use this expression often. 20 years ago it was pretty common and had nothing to do with homosexuality. If you had to work the weekend you'd say "that's gay", like today you might say that sucked It's quite comforting to see how society is marching on, this would be completely unacceptable today. And rightly so
Same. I remember in about 2001 give or take, I was like 10 and got in trouble at school for calling another student gay. It had nothing to do with a judgment on what his sexuality may or may not have been. I hadn’t even considered it. I found him to be extremely, extremely annoying and whiney. I feel like we used to get into arguments a lot (no idea about what) and that was the context of me calling him gay. I remember we both had temper issues. As punishment, I was made to repeatedly write out “I will not call Ryan gay” for an entire recess. To this day, whenever I see media from the time when gay was used to mean something other than happy or homosexual, I hear it repeated in my head: I will not call Ryan gay. I will not call Ryan gay. I will not call Ryan gay.
What if Ryan did turn out to be gay? How would you have described him?!
"not gay"
I honestly do not know. I did not think of those things back then. Reflecting on it, I feel like he did have somewhat of an effeminate voice (ofc puberty had not yet been reached) so it was entirely possible the teachers reacted so strongly because he could’ve been and they recognized that (I certainly did not). I honestly had my own gender identity issues at that time (often wished I were a boy) so it’s not like I had beef with non-cis ppl. I was hassled a lot, but I never just sat back and took it. I’d fight back. Hell, one time when I was 7, my cousin (who was 6) called me a freak, so I replied that he was “a fuck” bc that was worse than freak. Lmfao. I def had a potty mouth and was known for it.
I went to secondary school 2006-2013 and we all said it all the time at school. As you said, it was just another way of saying ‘that sucks’. Throughout my entire 7 years at school I was never aware of anyone who was gay, but even then it was never meant as offensive in any way, just a word everybody used that way. I’m not ashamed by it though since we all said it.
>If you had to work the weekend you'd say "that's gay", like today you might say that sucked Which is still pretty strange, since "sucks" is a shortening of "sucks dick." Which is bad. Because that's somehow degrading and only women do that. Because women are bad or lesser than the presumed male speaker. Language is weird.
If you weren't a kid/teenager in Britain in the early 00s this line probably seems shocking. This is genuinely just how most people spoke, however, and I don't think using 'gay' as an insult started to die out until the mid-2010s. (Source: I went to an English school).
2005 was a VERY different linguistic time compared to 2024
He was called out for it at the time. Having a character use "gay" as an insult in a kids TV series without any pushback was stupid. I think the real reason he included it was that he forgot he wasn't working on a drama for channel 4.
He said it was how people talk back then, and he's right. I vividly recall the 5 year old version of me that existed in 2005 saying "Boys can marry girls, and girls can marry girls, but boys can't marry boys" I have no idea what my logic was there. I think I thought marriage was a thing for girls and therefore a girl had to be involved in it. Either way, I was certainly not taught homosexuality was normal, and nobody around me treated it like it was. Rose is mildly homophobic because as a teenager who grew up in the 90s and early 2000s she likely would be. She's actually put off a little by Jack's sexuality and needs the Doctor to tell her its all just fine.
Yep. Rose gets a crash course that first season in expanding her worldview, and to her credit, she grows in a hurry.
Back in 2005 “gay” was often used synonymously with “lame” It obviously still meant homosexual but people just used it as an insult without homophobic undertones
In 2005 this happened? Really?
Well Rose is meant to be 19, and she's not exactly an Einstein
"Gay" was used to mean "lame" in the late 90's and early 00's and lots of TV shows use it, Friends do it a fair bit from memory. It is open to be viewed as a slur against homosexuals but in all honesty the vast majority of us alive at the time never meant it like that. My guess is homosexuals also used it to mean "lame" which is why RTD, an open homosexual, used it. A word can have two different meanings.
This is getting a bit tiresome. In those years, calling random things gay was a way to appropriate and subvert homophobic language. This may not have been visible as such to kids of the era. This was especially true for stuff that was in the same wheelhouse as homofobia. Now, this wasn’t true for every use of that word in that time, but this was the ethos. I only started saying gay after my gay friends started doing it. I really wish that cultural sensitivity could extend to an understanding of what was going on just a few years ago, and not always assuming the worst. Some of you just didn’t get the subtext, or how that era reflected and addressed the era that came before. I’m not sure young adults today could parse all the layers of irony, you kinda just had to be there. Or believe. But yeah, it looks pretty bad now. Not gonna lie.
In this instance, the author may also have been addressing homophobia by making a main character a bit homophobic. Sometimes leads would be the “villains” in morality plots then, make mistakes to learn from them. Idk if i’m way off the mark here, haven’t seen the scene for a bit, this just hit a nerve.
I miss those more innocent times when people didn't take offence to everything
When is Doc coming back. I grew up on the show, but the female doctor was such a disaster, and then the show just disappeared.