“Finally, we get to play the doctor”: feminist female fans’ reactions to the first female Doctor Who

ABSTRACT

This paper offers an exploration into feminist female fans’ reactions to the first female Doctor (Doctor Who’s protagonist). After 55 years of male actors, the 13th Doctor became a woman in 2017. The announcement was met with a backlash, especially from male fans. Unlike previous studies on controversial casting, which focused on the negative commentators, this study sheds light on the supporters who defend the casting while being personally attacked. This research is based on 22 semi-structured in-depth interviews with self-identified feminist female fans of Doctor Who, a minority in a fandom that is perceived as male-dominated. Interviews were conducted after the announcement and before the airing of the new series. This timing provided the opportunity for participants to project their expectations onto the new Doctor. The findings reveal ambivalent reactions: interviewees avidly defended the casting and considered it an important step towards gender equality, both in popular culture and outside of it. However, they also wished the female Doctor would maintain masculine characteristics. This article offers first-hand accounts of feminist female fans who feel excluded from their fan community and the object of their fandom, and the tactics they employ to defend themselves and the new female leading character.

KEYWORDS:

• Burden of representation
• Doctor Who
• female fans
• feminism
• toxic fandom

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. The participants in this study will be termed as “female fans” (and not women fans, for instance) because “female fans” is used more frequently in fandom studies (see: Henry Jenkins 1992; Larsen and Zubernis 2011; Stephanie Orme 2016; CarrieLynn D. Reinhard 2018).

2. Creating costumes and dressing up as characters from the content of their fandom.

3. This Master’s gender-shift have also raised antagonism among male fans (Jowett 2017)

4. However, as stated earlier, some were still upset with the series’ new “politically correct” storylines (Chris Hastings 2018; Lucy Jones 2018).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Neta Yodovich

Dr. Neta Yodovich is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Haifa, studying cultural policy in a research project funded by Horizon 2020. She completed her PhD in Sociology from the University of Manchester in 2020 after studying women’s reconciliation of science fiction fandom and feminism. Her previous papers about female fans and representations of singlehood in popular culture are published in Sociology, Women’s Studies in Communication and European Journal of Women’s Studies. Her academic interests include fandom studies, identity, feminism, and popular culture. E-mail: [email protected]