User:SOTO/Forum Archive/The Panopticon/@comment-2162194-20130713192557/@comment-5918438-20160117001144

It is? Sure, with the Master, you can pinpoint one gender as covering the majority (but still not all, so it would be incorrect), but with the Corsair, for example, what else would you propose? And what about any future Time Lords that follow this trend?

I don't think my proposition is political at its roots. It's quite simply not correct to say, "The Master displayed cunning ability in the art of deception in all his incarnations". Because they weren't a he for all their incarnations. If you're thinking of the Master as a he, you'll probably referring back to a specific incarnation in your head. And hey, I don't make the rules of grammar. If the Master never had a female incarnation, using "he" all the time would absolutely still be correct. For the most part, anyway, we're not referring to the Master in general, but saying something which related to a specific, often male incarnation.

I just find it absurd to say something about the Master, with a number of sources including Death in Heaven or The Magician's Apprentice, and to say "he" as if that encompasses all the sources used, or indeed all the incarnations under examination.

He would often casually murder for no particular reason at all, showing a general disregard for the lives of others. (TV: Terror of the Autons, The Keeper of Traken, AUDIO: The Light at the End, TV: Logopolis, Castrovalva, Survival, Doctor Who, Death in Heaven, The Magician's Apprentice)

Now tell me that doesn't sound like a ridiculous statement once you're visualising Missy in Death in Heaven and The Magician's Apprentice. Look at those two sources, then reread the sentence, and then tell me it doesn't seem very, very off indeed.

They would often casually murder for no particular reason at all, showing a general disregard for the lives of others. (TV: Terror of the Autons, The Keeper of Traken, AUDIO: The Light at the End, TV: Logopolis, Castrovalva, Survival, Doctor Who) Death in Heaven, The Magician's Apprentice) Missy compared her imminent murder of Osgood, despite her not being important, to "bop[ping] a balloon". (TV: Death in Heaven) He held that life was "wasted on the living", (TV: Doctor Who) telling Osgood that "human beings are born dying" due to their short lifespans. The Master seemed to take joy from the act of killing, (TV: The Keeper of Traken, The Sound of Drums, Last of the Time Lords, Death in Heaven) saying that destroying the Doctor's favourite species would be "reward in itself". (TV: The Sea Devils) She once killed a UNIT soldier just to prove to Clara Oswald she hadn't "turned good", even noting that the man was married and had a family right after doing so. (TV: The Magician's Apprentice)

Now that's the kind of approach I suggest we take. It's just simple grammar, really. Whenever a statement is about all incarnations, or multiple incarnations about Missy, we use "they" as that is most correct, and all other times we use more specific pronouns, sometimes even jumping between grammatical genders within the same sentence. And that's fine. That's the nature of cross-gender regeneration. I just don't think we're about to start going "himself or himself" every time we mention the Master as a whole. "They" is simply a more correct substitute to constant he/she, him/her use. If at least one source involves a female incarnation and at least one other involves a male one, "he" just ain't right.

Characters themselves, by the way, seem to consistently use whatever current pronouns apply to a Time Lord, often even to refer to previous, opposite-sex incarnations. The Corsair was male when the Doctor last saw them, as well as when they died, so:

Eleventh Doctor: The mark of the Corsair. Fantastic bloke. He had that snake as a tattoo in every regeneration. Didn't feel like himself unless he had the tattoo. Or herself, a couple of times. Ooo, she was a bad girl.

In this instance, the Doctor introduces the character as male, as this is their latest incarnation, but also makes sure to point out when saying "himself" that "herself" was sometimes applicable, too.

Right after she has it confirmed who Missy is, Osgood starts referring to the even the Simm Master (Harold Saxon) as "she":

Osgood: 'Cos I thought she might be the Master, regenerated into female form? Your childhood friend, responsible for a number of previous incursions. [...] We do have files on all our ex-prime ministers. She wasn't even the worst.

Once the General regenerates, the Doctor starts using "If she says so."

So it seems, in-universe, from the moment a Time Lord changes gender, everyone else switches over from then on, sometimes even when referring to the past. There are no cases in-universe of "he" or "she" being used to represent the Time Lord in their entirety from the point where they've been two genders, on.

Considering that we obviously...

1. ...can't (and shouldn't because it would break T:IU and would hardly be future-proof) change all mentions of the Master to retroactively fit her current gender, as DWU characters do for her and for the General...
2. ...nor can we say "he, or sometimes she", "him or her", "the Master found himself or herself..." every time we make a general statement, as the Doctor does for the Corsair...

...the obvious, and I think only, feasible solution to the dilemma of the multi-gendered Time Lord is to use "they" whenever making a statement that includes both "he" and "she" incarnations.

• The only real-world comparison I can think of for this sort of case would be statements like:

"Every British Prime Minister makes Downing Street his residence, and is free to redecorate as he sees fit."

Obvious, the use of "he" and "his" here is incorrect, as not all British Prime Ministers have been male, even if it has been a ridiculous majority. But it's still not correct to make that generalisation when referring to all British prime ministers, because it is simply not accurate.

• Instead, the following language is used (actually took an example from Wikipedia this time, because my last one was shit :P)

"The Prime Minister guides the law-making process with the goal of enacting the legislative agenda of their political party." (not a letter changed in this quote from WP: Prime Minister of the UK)

• A more direct example, though not as common a case, of course is the bigender individual who alternates between different pronouns. If you read any interviews for people like that, you'll notice a lot of switching between pronouns depending on which personality the person feels more like at the time being recounted, and indeed the time of the interview. Let's say those two identities are Jeff and Jenna. When discussing things about Jenna, or things Jenna has done, you'd use she pronouns, and when discussing Jeff, you'd use he. Let's say they were never heard from again, and you're writing a newspaper article on Jeff/Jenna. You'll probably try your best to stay away from gendering when making general statements, but when you really have to, and you don't want to make convoluted statements to avoid all personal pronouns, you kinda have no choice but "they".

In short, what I mean to bring up with these final points is that they/them pronouns are neutral and, in effect, default when nothing more specific is altogether true. It's the only option English gives us. And it's the pronoun used by pretty much everyone when we either don't know a specific gender, or it's simply not relevant. "They" is by no means radical. Instead, singular they lies in between he and she as a (respectful) personal pronoun, and should always be the starting off point in cases where anything other than one gender in the gender binary is meant.

We shouldn't be doing double backflips to avoid neutral grammatical tense for a multi-gendered being simply because that entails using neutral pronouns for a character who, for almost 44 years, had exclusively male incarnations. And that's because that may have been true for 44 years, but as of the last the last 14 months or so, the notion of the Master as an exclusively male character is simply outdated. Just as it would be weird and wrong to start calling Delgado's Master "she" because of a later incarnation, or to include him in a citation with Missy episodes, on a sentence with that starts with "she", it's just as weird, and just as wrong, to apply male pronouns in any capacity to a female Time Lord incarnation, or indeed, to a Time Lord with a female incarnation when discussing them in a general capacity, in a way which at least suggests inclusion of that female incarnation. It's just as weird as using specifically female pronouns when discussing companions in general, while there have been male companions, or male pronouns when discussing Time Lords in general.