Steven Moffat: time lords are the most civilised civilisation in the galaxy, they’re billions of years beyond humanity’s petty obsession with gender and it’s associated stereotypes.
Steven Moffat: *turns the master into a misogynistic arsehole, who fixates and obsesses over gender for the entirety of THE VERY SAME STORY*
Steven Moffat: I am Progressive Person™
The Master has always been sexist. In Classic Who. In RTD Who. Missy’s basically the first time the character isn’t.
In Davies’ first Master story, for example, the Master laments that he was “Killed by an insect. A girl. How inappropriate.” Because getting killed by a woman is more shameful, somehow, in the sexist PoV.
Personally, I’m all for using a historically misogynistic character as an embodiment of the sexist/transphobic side of the fandom opposed to gender change in the show, particularly in a story that’s otherwise all for gender change and femininity as the future.
Wait, I’m sorry, is OP attempting to read the Master as an authorial mouthpiece who expresses the moral and political views of the show in contrast with the Doctor?
No, they’re saying it doesn’t make sense for a person from a background without gender roles to discriminate based on gender.
Sure, but it’s still 1) predicated on the assumption that the Master reflects Time Lord values and 2) ignores Bill undercutting the Doctor’s nice speech about the Time Lords by pointing out that they still call themselves lords.
Why would the Master even need to believe in gender to be misogynistic?
He uses misogyny to hurt people, the same way he used racist imagery to hurt Martha’s family. Of course the idea that he thinks a different colour or gender of hairless ape is inferior to another is absurd – they’re all laughably pathetic. But he knows that these prejudices can effectively and enjoyably inflict pain and express power – for the Master (as for many bigots, whether they admit it or not), that’s the entire point.
So the Master’s basically the Time Lord equivalent of a Reddit troll?