Happy Friday but get bent, Tennant
My time here has been an interesting ride so far. When I first started I had barely any readership, and then I wound up stuck at my dad’s place with no good internet access at home and I had to write ahead of time and then upload at the library or my friend Carrie’s house. I certainly couldn’t use the Substack app, and it’s more for readers than writers anyway. And then I ended up in California, and then I decided to tackle Judith Butler, and then my Facebook friend Stuart shared my first essay in that series to his friends list. That was the beginning of readership picking up. Then I started using the Notes feature more and it just got silly. In a good way.
Heard from a person who presumably knew of me back in Ohio and sent a nice message of support. Apparently they saw me in a local Facebook group years ago but we’ve never corresponded and never met. I can guess which local group it was — I was only really vocal in one — and I emailed to verify and haven’t heard back. But hearing from them was like a nice letter from home.
I can’t trust that I will ever be able to go back. But it’s definitely on the bucket list. I miss my buckeyes. Sometimes even the big-B ones.
Not on the day of the Big Game, though.
(If you know, you know.)
How about that debate last night, huh? No, really, how about it? Because I didn’t bother trying to watch it. Confession time: I did vote for Biden in 2020. I was absolutely furious with Trump’s handling of the pandemic (and I do not mean what Dr. Fauci said or did), and I already thought he was a shit president with the one exception of barring permanent medical patients from the military. (How come a diabetic can’t serve but a mentally ill man with induced crotch rot can? And also use the women’s open showers, with naked women present, in the training environment?) I didn’t think Biden would be our savior or anything, but I thought at least he might introduce some sanity and dignity back into the Oval Office. Well… jury’s still out on that for me after the shit Biden’s been pulling with Title IX. I just know I won’t be voting for the man again. But I don’t want Trump back either. So the whole thing’s a wash for me and I’m kind of just done.
But I will never understand why Republicans support that walking abortion instead of writing in a better candidate to vote for instead. I guess that’s their new party motto: We Shall Overcomb.
(Please do not actually try to explain your support of him to me, because I still won’t understand and then I will have to mock you mercilessly, and I don’t want to be put into that position with my paid subscribers. Thanks in advance.)
And speaking of gender bullshit. How about that David Tennant, huh?
If you haven’t already heard, the former Tenth Doctor went on record recently as wishing that a certain black female UK politician didn’t exist because oh my god, she spoke up for the rights of women and girls. That there’s a hanging offense these days, I guess. Depressingly enough, I suspect Sunak and Starmer speaking out against him was prompted more by the race of his victim than by any disagreement they had with what he said or how he said it. And I am robustly for opposing racism, but if your goal is to fight oppression, you can’t pick and choose. The white women like Rosie Duffield saying the same things Kemi Badenoch is saying don’t deserve to be hounded, attacked, or threatened either and let’s be clear: they’re being persecuted because they are women, same reason Badenoch was. (I can’t see Tennant trying that shit with a man who could break his nose for it.) Aside from cowardice, the targeting and silencing of women is the main point, really. If you hope to corner the market with your cheap Coach bag knockoffs, you have to burn all the real Coach bags first.
Someone in someone else’s Facebook comments said that she had always thought Tennant was a creep. I said I hadn’t thought so and that effective creeps are not obvious about it. Then I reflected for a bit and remarked that actually, there had been signs. I will enumerate those here, and let’s see what you think.
Back in the first Russell T Davies era of Doctor Who, Tennant did an episode where the Doctor meets Madame de Pompadour. That character was played by actress Sophia Myles. Apparently, they dated for a time. That relationship abruptly ended when Tennant broke it off long-distance. By all accounts, Myles was heartbroken.
Around the same time, Tennant was telling the press that he really wanted to settle down and have lots of kids.
Couple seasons later, Tennant was in a couple episodes with Georgia Moffett, the daughter of Peter Davison (stage name; Moffett is his real surname) who, it turns out, just happens to have portrayed Tennant’s favorite Doctor (Five). There must have been some real behind-the-scenes sparks flying, because next thing we all knew, they were getting married. They wasted no time with the babymaking, either. Moffett, by the way, was born in ‘84. Tennant was born in ‘71. Thirteen-year age gap.
(One time, at a con, a fan asked Peter Davison what was the weirdest gift a fan had ever given him. Someone else piped up with, “A grandchild!”)
You’re probably looking at all that and going Wait, isn’t this totally normal behavior for a man who wants to start a family? And that age gap? That’s pretty tame for an actor.
Yes, you’re right.
But “normal” just means a lot of people do the “normal” thing. It doesn’t mean this man didn’t go shopping for just the right brood mare to produce his fucking litter of kids, or that he didn’t “buy” a special one as a collector’s item because she was basically manufactured by his favorite Doctor Who actor.
How is that not creepy? I ask you.
And, given that he already seems to have sort of a transactional, objectifying mindset about relationships and family-building, who on earth is surprised he’s buying into the “trans kid” thing now? I’m not. Disappointed, but not surprised. For him to have resisted the temptation, he’d have had to see his own kids as human beings.
But he doesn’t see women as human beings so, why kids? It’s so terribly painful to venture outside your own comfort zone. He hardly has the moral caliber to manage it. Expect the situation to escalate from here. I will be very surprised if he ever walks it back or sincerely apologizes.
I will tell you what, I am so tired of the people I like letting me down. Do I just have a magnet for shitty people or what?
Oh well. Happy Friday anyway. Except you, Tennant: Happy irrelevance. There is no justice, so that’s probably the worst that’ll ever happen to your Dr.-Mengele-simping bony ass.