So, lemme get this right…

*(Major spoilers for Doctor Who ahead. Also, animated gifs.)*

…this is totally okay:

And so is this:

And this:

Oh and this:

and let’s not forget this!

oh, and this:

and these:

But we have this, and somehow it’s “inappropriate for a children’s show”?

Either all of these kisses are inappropriate, or none of them are. I mean, for fuck’s sake, Jenny and Vastra didn’t even get a good shot! They got an awful close up. It was an incredibly small bone to throw our way.

Not only that, but some of those kisses that are apparently just dandy for a kids’ show are very hazy on issues of consent. The first Rose and Ten kiss, f’ex, is actually Cassandra in Rose’s body. Ten doesn’t ask Martha if he can kiss her, he just does, and then treats her like shit during the rest of the season. Oh, and let’s not forget where Eleven forcibly kisses Jenny — a queer woman — against her will. She slaps him after, and he doesn’t even apologize, or admit that he was wrong. Hell, the scene was quite clearly a staging of this picture — which has recently had the romance debunked right out of it to show it’s a picture of someone’s consent being violated. No, see, those are all just fine for kids to watch. But have two married women lock lips briefly to save each other’s lives and suddenly it’s “pushing preferences” and “brainwashing the kiddies” and the show has a “blatant gay agenda”. (Yes, blatant gay agenda, because look at ALL those examples of gay relationships! SO MANY OF THEM THE GAY IS LITERALLY FALLING OUT OF THE SHOW AND CRUSHING US)

If you want something in Doctor Who to get upset about, take your pick: casual sexism, hazy issues of consent throughout that are often played for laughs, fatphobia…. These are all problems in our mainstream culture that get replicated in our fiction and media.

You know what another problem is? Invisibility of queer people. At least Doctor Who (and its spinoff, Torchwood) have taken steps to remedying that.

And yet that’s what people flip out about. Because ~*~think of the children~*~.

I am thinking of the children: the queer children who have little to zero representation on television. For them, Jenny and Vastra’s kiss is a victory. An incredibly small one in the face of the figurative flood of heterosexual representation, but a victory nonetheless.

If you have a problem with that, I suggest you reexamine if you’re really concerned for children (ALL children, not just heterosexual ones), or if you’re just using “think of the children!” as a convenient excuse for your bigotry. If it’s the latter, I recommend a bigotryectomy.*

-Katje

*I considered the word bigotectomy, as it sounds better, but bigotryectomy is more accurate: I’m suggesting a removal of bigotry from people, changing them from bigots into decent human beings; not the removal of bigots from people, which sounds like a fancy new word for fungus or tumours or something.

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