sclfmastery:

// ._____.  Gracie’s death seemed very unnecessary to me. That was what bothered me so much.  I feel like women of color already die way too much in Western media…. 

Agh okay this is all sensitive material, and it’s kind of why I didn’t want to talk about this here, ahhh. Okay.  I haven’t articulated myself very thoroughly or well.   

@timeviolence I’m gonna be frank with you.  I feel the same way about Gracie’s identity as a woman in a caretaking profession whose first impulse is to put herself in danger for others (I do the same thing on an emotional and sometimes physical level in my line of work as a professor and counselor to disabled students–which may be why I was so upset when Gracie died, because I could identify with her personally).  I noticed the compelling similarities between her personality type and the Doctor’s.  One of my friends even mentioned on Skype the other night how “The Woman Who Fell To Earth” was in fact a double-entendre for the Doctor AND Gracie, both in the literal sense, but also in the metaphorical sense of champions of healing and hope, with the Doctor even absorbing some of Gracie’s personality to “carry with her” in her newest face.  I don’t deny any of that. It’s awesome.

  We’ve seen it with black women in the past on Doctor Who, in fact:  Martha Jones was a medical student, and then a doctor, whose humanitarian impulse I would argue was far greater than the Doctor’s. 

But.

 Similarly, Martha Jones was treated like shit by the narrative for being in the line of fire helping people (everything from being the  Doctor’s rebound girl to being the Master’s target for the psychological abuse of her entire family).  The fact that they, and Bill Potts–who was as good as fridged (again, by the Master, tbh)  no matter how “happy” her ending was (running off with a water zombie girlfriend she barely knew for eternity)–are all black women who suffer the most egregious fate in Whovian canon. Over and over again.  And seeing Gracie die for Graham’s manpain in 11X 01 when Series Eleven was promoted as progressive and fresh and new was kind of a shock of “oh no, this again….” 

 I guess what I’m trying to say is no matter how many sociology and cultural history classes I may have taken in graduate school,  I still don’t have enough LIVED experience of non-white racial identity to comment in a positive way on Gracie’s death.  I feel like doing so would make me sound way too much like a devil’s advocate for something that I take for granted as the result of my privilege as a white cis woman (which is NOT to say that if you identify with any of these labels, you are guilty of this: I am only speaking for myself here, and what I’m comfortable claiming).  

On the other hand, at least one friend of mine in the DW artistic community who voiced this opinion first is a person of color, and was truly disturbed by Gracie’s death.  I feel like I ought to basically say “I don’t know definitively one way or the other,” and hand people like them the microphone on this.  I’m not sure of your racial or ethnic background, so you being okay with it could very well be a counterpoint from within the camp of directly lived experience ❤ *thumbs up* And certainly, not everyone who is a poc or specifically black is going to have the same opinion of media representation just because they share skin tone with the character in question.  What I’m saying, in a nutshell, is that I am not qualified. So I err on the side of “maybe that wasn’t so cool.”  

I hope that makes sense.  

Don’t get me wrong anyone reading this, this season has been magnificent and I love it. Still not happy about Gracie.