That isn't the issue here. Trip and Malcolm would have trouble getting laid in a brothel.

At least, that was my initial reaction, but then I remembered that Trip did manage to get himself pregnant once, but I don't remember that being the result of any sexual action.

Sorry about my spelling....

Starfox- Welcome to the forum, but you would do very well to read the site FAQ, especially the one about not signing your posts. I don't think Keckler would kill you where you stand ( that is Glark's department.) However, if you don't sign posts , you won't have to find out.

I think how men are treated/regarded/called versus how women are treated/regarded/called is very much the issue when talking about sexism.

I finally got around to seeing "Nemesis" and will someone please tell me what it is with Bermaga and these #$@!! rape fantasies? I'm referring to the excruciating and ultimately pointless scene where Mr. and Mrs. Troi are getting it on, and Picardlite uses his batfriend's batpowers to "invade" her mind, taking hubby's place. I know that later on, Troi is able to find them by reactivating the batlink, but really - was that whole scene necessary?

Pippin- are there other rape fantasies you can point to? I guess a point would be how Troi gets her revenge. I believe the point was going to be more strongly made, but they cut scenes.

I did not watch Voyager, so I can't comment on that, and Bermaga never touched DS9. But on Enterprise, how many times has T'Pol been violated in some fashion? I mean, there's the whole B'Stiller thing (which IIRC, Bermaga described as "sexy") and then this season, the whole Rajiin thing as Keckler pointed this out in her recap:



Once is too often, twice is disgusting and three times is simply unacceptable when it comes to these kind of scenarios.

Of course, that's just my opinion. YMMV.

ETA: And if Hellena Hand Job had tried any of that crap with either Kira or Dax, she would have had her ass kicked into the middle of next week without Daniels' help.

Unfortunately, yes. "Violations" from TNG (oddly enough it was written primarly by women), and "Retrospect" from VOY. "Retrospect" isn't necessarily rape, but it's very similar in that it's a highly personal violation. I can't remember any ep of either TNG or VOY were something similar happened to one of the male characters.

"Violations". Though it's possible you consider Riker and Crusher's "mind-rapes" to be less explicit than Troi's, because Troi's actually had to do with sex. There's some merit to that.

Well, Riker was one of the victims in "Violations." Or did you mean besides that? I don't think there's anything that qualifies in the rest of the Trek-verse.

I understand what people are saying about the rape fantasies, but I don't think Violations should be in the same category as ENT's fantasies. In Violations, I thought the characters went out of their way to state that mind rape was wrong. Compare that to ENT, where the fantasies seem to be a passing whim, i.e. T'Pol is violated somehow and everyone moves on. The negative repurcussions of rape are either dismissed or minimized.

God, SERIOUSLY! One of my biggest issues with this show is how little they've allowed T'Pol to bring it with the WVF.

It's sad/ironic that DS9, the only modern Trek show with an all-male writing staff, treated its female characters better than the others.

Well it's amazing how (male, at least) humans seem to be stronger than T'Pol these days.

It does seem like T'Pol's become quite the damsel these days. Sigh. Vulcans are my favorite characters; it's a shame what Bermaga are doing to them.

I will give Bermaga an ounce of credit for improving Trek's portrayal of women - though just a tad. In TOS, female crewmembers pretty much seemed to wait for men to do the rescuing/fighting/strategizing - unless it was against another woman. In TNG...well, you know. Vase Club. At least ENT has that female MACO who seems to take pretty good care of herself.

Now I'm imagining Counselor Troi, in full accent and all gentle-voiced, saying "The first rule of Vase Club is: Do not talk about Vase Club."

But TNG had Tasha at the outset.

The girl MACO in "North Star" and "Chosen Realm" was about to bite it before pregnant alien gal shot Digimon's flunky. Malcolm did okay. I'm okay with all of that. That MACO is a sharpshooter, or I like to think so. She doesn't have to go one-up and win, she just has to be fit enough to tackle a baddie and have a shot at putting the baddie down. She could go 0 for 10 and still be a MACO you'd want with you.

I'd prefer to have the woman MACO with me, but that's me. I'm picky like that.

Heh! That did piss me off a bit. Didn't she at least try to beat the crap out of that guy in Violations?

I just have to "Ugh" a TOS (surprise, surprise) moment.

I just watched the "Scotty gets accused of murder, but it's really Jack-the-Ripper amorphous energy" episode on SciFi.

They determine that the entity feeds on fear and that's why it's always taken the form of a serial killer of women because, as Spock says, "women are more easily frightened and deeply terrified than the male of the species." Just ugh.

If the thing feeds on fear, it should know, as anyone who's seen Monsters, Inc. does, that children are the fruitful source of terror than the adult of the species. But, you know, if Spock says it, it must be 100% logical for the thing to feed on women's fear, right?

from the "Azati Prime" thread....

I noticed this, too. Really once Archer started being interrogated and all his interrogators were male, (male) Degra was brought in, and then the other Xindi started talking to Archer. They were all male. The Insectoids are genderless, and we don't know about the Aquatics yet, but so far we have seen no recognizably female Xindi, I don't think. Certainly none on the council.

So then I started thinking about all the other species the crew has encountered over the last three years, and I can't remember one with a female leader. There have been females, like two different Andorian females, but both were in subordinate positions to Shran who is a subordinate to a male general. If I recall correctly, we've only seen male Vulcans at the highest levels on earth, outranking T'Pol. All the humans Archer has reported to, primarily (evil) Admiral Forrest, are men. The Suliban leaders have all been male. The encountered Klingons were all male (but we already know about their society from TNG and DS9). The leader of the sphere-worshipping zealots was male. And if memory serves, the polictical leaders in the episode "Dear Doctor" were all male, the aliens from the planet where Porthos peed on the sacred tree were male, and Osama bin Dribblin's planet's leaders were male. Those last are just off-the-top-of-my-head examples.

Have there been any primary female leaders, or even an equal sharing of planet/species leadership positions between females and males? If not, I think the bigger question to the writers is "why not?" And if so, I still ask, "why not more?"

Nitpick: In "Sleeping Dogs", the crew primarily interacted with a female Klingon. Between my memory and my scan of the recap, I couldn't figure out her position on the ship. I'm pretty sure she wasn't the captain, but she was there.

Anyway, you pose a good question, Gilmel. Why not?

The vulcan ambassador that stayed in Hoshi's quarters was female, and she seemed to have a very high position in the vulcan high command.

I do agree, though that the writers need to give us some more female alien leaders.

Re: Sleeping Dogs.

She definitely wasn't the captain because they came across the captain -- either in recording or elsewhere -- at some later point.

For some reason, I have the vague impression that the woman in Sleeping Dogs was the cook. However, I don't remember whether this was stated or whether I just concluded it because we first saw her in the walk-in freezer.

I dunno if we really want to see many more high-ranking women... we had one of those in "Precious Cargo" and look what a barrel of laughs that was.

Wait, so because the one in-command female character who's been on the show was a horrible character who was horribly acted we shouldn't have more?


I thought she was an engineer of some sort. I did remember her, but counted her along the same lines as the two female Andorians, i.e. not in charge.

She wasn't really so much high-ranking as she was high-born. There's a difference, one takes intelligence and discipline, the other just takes in-breeding. So, I don't really think that's an arguement against having "high-ranking" women at all.

Furthermore, there's plenty of high-ranking men who have consistently acted like incompetant asses and I don't think it's ever been said that we need to stop having high-ranking men in the series.

It seems people (writers, producers, and/or fans) are able to look beyond the gender of the unpopular male characters.

I should point out that I was being sarcastic. Apologies if that wasn't clear.

The "high-born" vs. "high-ranking" distinction is an important point; obviously I didn't consider it.

I'd settle for either.

(And I had honestly forgotten Princess Cargo. It seems I was successful in repressing.)

Gilmel, are you sure people don't look past the gender of female characters with issues? When I see T'Pol getting emotional, I think of her character, perhaps her species (which does, after all, make a big deal out of emotion), but not her gender, at least until it's brought up here. Maybe I'm really liberated (nah), or maybe as a man I'm not sensitive to the stereotype as acutely.

As to leadership roles in general, taking a shot in the dark here, perhaps they mean to give us an "old fashioned" feel. That is, TNG era stuff is full of high-ranking women; they may, in going for a "retro" feel, end up being even less advanced than we are now (or perhaps slightly ahead of us).

I think that gives too much credit to TPTB. I doubt they sat down and came up with such a specific idea for the "retro" fell.

Even if they did, this is absolutely the wrong way to approach it. In the series premiere Trip tell T'Pol how humanity has eliminated hunger, disease, and poverty in two generations. (I only remember this b/c I just finished reading the recap.) I certainly hope that sexism was either already eliminated or eliminated with the other social problems.

There is a bad tendency on Trek in general, that if the gender of the character doesn't seem to be a specific issue in terms of the story, or if the archetype doesn't demand a specfic gender-- they'll make it male. A lot of times they don't show women in charge unless That's The Point (TNG's "Angel One" or Voyager's "Fortunate Son" both come to mind.)

It's also telling that several times there is a large gap from when we first meet a major species to when we first meet a female of the species. Or, if gender is irrelevent, it's all male. (The Jem'Hadar and Hirogen, for example.)

I'm not going to make a sweeping assessment about women or men here because that would be, well, sexist, but I will say that I always notice it and my female Trekkie friends always notice it.


And even if they did, why would they choose to stick to that retro feel of TOS when they've thrown out so many others? For instance, non-bumpy Klingons. If they did make a conscious decision to exclude female characters as much as possible for a retro feel, I think that's blatantly sexist.


That's my conclusion, too. Characters are only female when their femaleness is the point. Neutral characters are male. Norm = male. Troublesome.

I always notice it as well.

I think it is due to being a part of the affected party. It happens with other -isms too. I have a good friend whose parents are from India, and she always notices the three that relate to her -- sexism, racism, and theologism (religionism?) -- because she is a non-white, non-Christian female.

Hee. I've been using the word "theism" for many years to fill that particular vocabulary gap. Glad I'm not the only one who's done so.

And I agree.

As to the "retro" feel, especially regarding top brass: The military today (and NASA leadership, I would imagine- perhaps much of the top brass in any organization, military, government, or private) is still very male-heavy. So they may be reflecting that.

Or, in all fairness, we've seen two admirals, and one of those in only one episode.

But the rest of the points are well-taken, especially as concerns species supposedly more advanced than Earth. I think the Vulcan leadership has been all male, except for that one ambassador.

How does that make a lack of female leadership in show set 150 years in the future less sexist?

Star Trek has always made a big deal about being this idealistic vision of the future. No war, no hunger, no inequality, blah blah blah. But they keep feeding us the same old sexist shit. It's like they still haven't escaped from the 60's space bunny image. The problem doesn't so much seem to be that our own culture hasn't advanced (as much as TPTB like to pretend that's the case), as that Star Trek's culture hasn't advanced any. Enterprise has 2 female leads--one of whom barely gets screen time and one of whom a) wears a catsuit, and b) regularly encounters plot contrivances to make her hysterical.

ITA, Gilmel, and also with the later point that the default position for characters appears to be male unless their femaleness is the point of an episode. But why should a male/female gender breakdown be the norm for alien societies? The Xindi Insectoids could easily reflect a drone/worker/queen swarm society or any other creative extrapolation.

Along with current Trek’s Wizard of Oz approach to alien characters (e.g, Vulcans are humans without emotions, Klingons humans without impulse control -- but well-balanced Earthers will set them straight), this dreary unimaginative treatment of gender is standard operating procedure.



As others have noted, it’s hard to give TPTB any credit here, nelamm. If one of the original points of Enterprise was to do something new and exciting, there is no particular reason to show alien societies, especially those in the region of space in which Enterprise is now voyaging as either more “advanced” or more “primitive” than us. There's no real point to "retro" here.

According to the latest Communicator magazine, there are female Aquatics. And, just as they get my hopes up that maybe they aren't as benighted as we thought, they go on to tell us that the female may be identified by her "hot bod."

Yuck. And then there's this gem: "Even though they're not mammals...we assume [their reproduction] is similar."

Seriously, nelamm? That's just disgusting. I'm at a lost for words.

Is that magazine written by official Trek people or is it an officially licensed fan publication?

Excuse me? "Hot bod"? Shut the hell up, Communicator.

We need an Aeryn type, who can save her damn self thankyouverymuch.

But even Voyager didn't get it totally right. Sure they had Janeway as a captain, but they pretty much made her a man with dinners.

The magazine is officially licensed, but that particular quote was from an official Trek person, whom I hesitate to name.

And to that, may I point out that in most species, it's the male who's got the most...I don't know what exact word to use, but stuff to attract the opposite gender.

I'm guessing that name starts with a "B", though. <sigh>

nelamm, pheremones? display?

And here I was about to posit that B&B had deliberately put fewer women on board not just for that retro feel, but because by Kirk's TOS time, Starfleet is super-sexist, so they have to show the societal pendulum swinging back that way in the prequel era.

But I can see that I am, again, giving the Enterprise creative team (such as it is) way too much credit.

nelamm, you mean like the peacock has the huge elaborate tail and the peahen doesn't? That sort of thing? That's an interesting point. Maybe the Aquatic Xindi are like seahorses or something.

edited for grammar