I'm kinda half-and-half on this.
Like, I get you insofar as how sometimes it feels like "identity" is a card pulled only when its convenient, and then conveniently shoved aside if its an identity they don't like.
But speaking as a nitpicky nerd.... well, the 1970s already had The Master regenerating into Doctor Doom, and that weird string of alternate forms Romana took at the beginning of "Destiny of the Daleks" (though IIRC all those forms were implied female). This is before even getting into the expanded universe and the idea of Time Lords being born from looms.
Also I think the time to complain about gender-switch regenerations would have been when The Master regenerated into Missy.
To me this is all academic as I regard everything after 1989 as glorified fanfiction (I might be willing to accept the 1996 movie, which I recall actually rather liking, but I should watch it again).
See, I don't particularly care that much, but I feel like if I have to land on one side of the issue, I'm going to say that gender and race swaps are just the dullest version of edgy that fanfic writers can devise.
There are plenty of identity-based instances in life where you'd probably never hear one whit of complaining if something hadn't been an option in the first place.
For instance: if Disney hadn't opted for Halle Bailey to play Ariel and the casting had always been a white girl with red hair, the thought wouldn't have crossed the minds of anyone that casting a black girl would have been an option. NPC thinking declares that something is only an option when it's presented; they don't care about how much sense it makes as long as it activates the narcissistic lizard part of their brains.
So if a Time Lord can slip his skin, so to speak, then isn't there something more fundamental about who the Doctor and other Time Lords are that there should be a thread from one identity to the next?
And if all it is is magic borne out of some desire by The Doctor for some identity, then why hasn't he been ginger yet?
On the subject of the show's content: The Doctor regenerating into Rose is probably the dumbest cop-out yet, but the writers can't seem to help themselves anymore - and this is probably true of lots of pop-culture entertainment. There's just this vast wasteland of meta that almost feels like the degeneration of a bloodline when there's too much incest going on. Ncuti Gatwa was in virtually all respects an absolute failure for the series, and as is the wont of studios, it will never be their fault, but will silently capitulate in a Rise-of-Skywalker-esque plot twist that comes across like all the worst kinds of key-jangling: "You like this, don't you? Well, we'll just give you more of what you liked...goo goo ga ga."
And speaking of incest, there's a part of me that thinks part of the idea behind the Rose regeneration is so that she can get together with the Tennant bigeneration to please all the shipper fans out there. I can't imagine I'm the first to think that. I just hit my head on a dull surface a few times and came up with that logic.
