Matt Smith and Sue Perkins

[MissScarletInTheBallroom]

Has this been done yet?

Matt Smith has gone right down in my estimation. Sanctimonious twat.

Poor Sue Perkins being forced to apologise for not "theying" someone in order to avoid the wrath of the baying mob.

Sue Perkins is a lesbian who was working as a comedian (that very male dominated world) back in the 90s. She will have faced a lot of aggro I would imagine. She’s funny and she has moved into the mainstream with ease, I like her.

I know it’s not the point of the thread but she deserves some credit for her achievements.

Fully agree. I enjoyed her work with Mel back in the day and she's wicked funny

All of them. Smith for the correction. D’Arcy for pretending she isn’t a woman. Perkins for apologising.

it literally says “the lot of them” in my post.

yes, tbh regardless of how anyone else thinks about he/they/she/xe/whatever, given MS is happy to use his friend/colleague's preferred pronouns there is no way he could have possibly responded other than the way he did.

e.g. if SP got the name wrong instead,
'Emily does a great job in this season,'
It would be ridiculous for him to say 'Yep Emily is great' just to not embarrass Sue! Instead anyone would just say 'Yep Emma is great,' and carry on.

Which is what he did, it's not like he kicked off and said 'I have to stop you there, Sue, it's they not her and to refer to them otherwise is completely disrespectful....'

The only ones at fault here are the media/twiteratti for exaggerating it into something completely OTT, forcing SP to make abject apologies when none of the actual people concerned (Matt Smith/Emma Darcy) have indicated they took any offence at all...

I think “non binary” is about the silliest concept of all to be honest. What on earth does this really mean?
Swathes of today’s youth are far too indulged and too much credence is given to their hormonal wittering of look at meeee I’m so different. Just be a punk or a goth or whatever until you grow up and leave the rest of us in peace to laugh indulgently at your antics.

No. It’s not “polite”. It’s obeying the rules of a creed. Fine if you believe in that creed, but it’s compelled speech if you don’t.

This is chilling. Because she had to apologise. This whole situation has gone beyond weird. It makes me wonder what happens in science classes or history classes when someone doesn’t like what they learn.

history is being re written and our language clipped and limited by these fanatics.

the authoritarian left is terrifying, I can’t think of another time in British history where the left was able to police our language like this.

Perkins apologised though, and is referred to as an ' ally' so she does believe in the creed ( although more likely she is protecting herself and her career from the bullies of the tra movement and x/twitterari) but still, she used ' her' to refer to Emma D'Arcy, and MS used ' them' because he works very closely with Emma and by all accounts they are very good friends, so is possibly more used to it than Sue. He did not berate Perkins or correct her. He simply used Emma's preferred pronouns.

Can you imagine how hard Sue Perkins would be cancelled by the be kind brigade if she hadn't apologised profusely enough for calling a female person named Emma "she"?

That's not Matt Smith fault though. It's the fault of the Twitter mob, and possibly Emma for putting people in that position .

He was he one who drew attention to it through his performative virtue signalling so yes it is his fault as well.

how is it performative virtue signalling?
I do a job (completely boring admin type) where I have to interview people and then write it up - I've interviewed people who use 'they' pronouns and therefore that's the way I refer to them, because that's my organisation's policy.
I'm not performative virtue signalling, I just don't want to lose my job!

but MS clearly does believe so are you saying he was right to use they pronouns?

Being devil's advocate, isn't you saying MS shouldn't use the pronouns he wants to use to refer to his colleague just because you disagree with them, more compelled speech than what he did? Because he didn't actually tell SP what pronouns she should use....

Just a few of the many! Thought this might cheer you up.

Emma D'Arcy is a really good actress and I really enjoyed her in House of Dragons.

Gender stereotypes and norms / not 'fitting in' / feeling out of step. They are pervasive buggers aren't they? That even someone as intelligent and together as her are affected by them to the extent of claiming a non-binary identity is interesting to me.

I can really understand why non-binary is attractive to so many but it really comes from a place of internalised mysogyny. If you felt proud of being a woman, you'd own it. Women aren't made to feel proud, we're made to feel lacking in whatever department.

Reported

Women aren't made to feel proud, we're made to feel lacking in whatever department

Don't try and sound like you're speaking for all women.
You're not.

You don't feel proud of being a woman.
I do.
Others do too.
Others don't feel like one at all.
Can't you at least try and understand that we're all different?
We're not all one mass?

My huge problem with all of this is that feelings are being treated as if they change facts. They don't. I might have a great aversion to gravity, but there's nothing I can do to change the fact that if I lean out of the window and let a glass fall from my hand it will fall to earth and break. Biological sex is a fact. Nobody can identify out of it, any more than they can identify out of their date of birth.

Society gives women that message. Feminine things are seen as lesser. See all the “cool girls” who “don’t like stupid female interests, and prefer hanging out with men because women are so boring/stupid/giggly”.

Society gives women messages about our bodies - too fat, too weak, too lascivious, too yucky. Men’s bodies are neutral. I’m not a particular fan of the Always “gush” adverts, but they would have been unthinkable even five years ago, whereas haemorrhoid cream adverts are totally normal.

Obviously not everyone internalises those messages (I’d hope anyone who identifies as a feminist hasn’t internalised them), but those messages certainly exist.

How disappointing from Matt Smith. Gallifrey feels very let down. ps House of the Dragon is a ridiculously expensive boring pile of crap trying, and failing, to live up to its GoT predecessor. So two fails for Matt.

To be fair on Matt Smith I don't think its his fault. He has to work with the woman pretty closely ( i understand, not watched HoD) so has to get on with her.

Its Emma D'Arcys fault for going down this daft pronoun route and down to social media polarising and exagerrating every minor issue.

Ok, so you're proud of being a woman, great. But what about those who 'don't feel like a woman' as you put it?

Why don't they feel like a woman?

If you dissect that, rather than just casually shrug it off then I think some of those answers will point towards internalised mysogyny.

Whether a person ‘feels like’ a woman is neither here nor there because they either are one or they aren’t. The word refers to one of the two types of human body; that’s all.

If I say I don’t feel like a human or I don’t feel like I’m 5ft 3, or 46 years old, what difference does that make to anyone else or to material reality?

Our feminist foremothers made some great progress in dismantling gender stereotypes only for newer generations to tighten up those stereotypes and make them more rigid and restrictive than ever 😔