[Pauln6]

Originally Posted by chator

I'm glad you're willing to admit ST'09 is largely sexist, and far more sexist than TOS, while it should be the opposite. How was TNG sexist? Tasha Yar was the chief of security in the first season, Beverly Crusher was chief medical officer. I wouldn't call NuBSG non-sexist, I would call it pro-feminist. There's a difference. Sexism limits women to traditional female roles, Non-sexist humanism says women can be/do anything that a man can do, Feminism tries to turn females into men with vaginas and still call them females.

The TNG characters each had a gimmick and Tasha's was that she was a security officer who was a woman, totally underscoring that as her defining trait, which limited what they had to explore. She seemed to spend much of her time worrying about her femininity as she did security; apart from the episode where she got to duel, albeit with another woman, she was barely used as a security officer, more often simply opening hailing frequencies, and she was the only female security officer that we saw (until season 4). Beverly and Troi were cool but they were in the caring professions, a more traditional female role.

DS9 pushed the boundaries but even there, Dax had previously been a man, and there were only two women in the main cast. Kai Winn was pretty impressive but Lyta the Dabo girl and Keiko were in stereotypical female professions and tended only to be used in plots linked to their men and/or family life. Kassidy was ok but again, her role as a captain wasn't often used as a principle plot point. There were roughly twice as many men as women.

Voyager broke the mold by appointing women in the two most traditionally male roles of captain and chief engineer but even there, Belanna is the only female member of Janeway's senior crew and she was appointed due to Chakotay's intervention. While Seska, Seven, and some other women featured were very interesting, once again, there were twice as many men as women.

In a truly equal future setting, the differences between the sexes will come from the actor's performance, and the writers will gradually, instinctively, start to write the character with that actor in mind. I think requiring (predominantly) male writers to write female characters as distinctively female is precisely why we have a problem. Their default setting is to male and they only write women in if the character has a reason to be a woman. Seven of Nine was originally conceived as male and only became female when they decided to replace Kes instead of Kim. It seems that replacing Kim with a woman was not considered.

The characters in BSG, just like real people, were multifaceted. Roslin could have been played by a man and could have been given the same lines but the performance of the actor would have been a male performance by a man. By the same token, Baltar could have been played by a woman. NuStarbuck was complex, talented, and screwed up by a traumatic childhood. She was a fascinating character and would have been so if she had been played by a man or a woman. Preconceptions about characters' sex are the problem. Remove that, start determining the sex of characters with the flip of a coin and bingo you have equal representation of the sexes.

FYI - Australia has just removed all restrictions on women serving in the armed forces. I don't think women serving on the front line will want to be treated as women first and soldiers second. Nor do I think that such a distinction will be necessary (beyond acknowledging that women have limitations on the upper levels of strength and endurance compared to men).

[horatio]

Originally Posted by chator

I'm glad you're willing to admit ST'09 is largely sexist, and far more sexist than TOS, while it should be the opposite. How was TNG sexist? Tasha Yar was the chief of security in the first season, Beverly Crusher was chief medical officer. I wouldn't call NuBSG non-sexist, I would call it pro-feminist. There's a difference. Sexism limits women to traditional female roles, Non-sexist humanism says women can be/do anything that a man can do, Feminism tries to turn females into men with vaginas and still call them females.

That's the best definition of feminism I have ever heard.
Nothing against Paul, he has the best intentions. But from his perspective Thatcher would be a modern woman because she had the guns and even lead one war.



Doesn't it trouble feminists that women in power have to behave like men to get into these very positions?
Doesn't it trouble progressives that Obama makes neon-white politics?

[Captain Tom Coughlin]

What are neon white politics?

You lost me on that one

[Pauln6]

Originally Posted by horatio

That's the best definition of feminism I have ever heard.
Nothing against Paul, he has the best intentions. But from his perspective Thatcher would be a modern woman because she had the guns and even lead one war.

Doesn't it trouble feminists that women in power have to behave like men to get into these very positions?
Doesn't it trouble progressives that Obama makes neon-white politics?

Thatcher did not behave like a man. She delivered speeches just as any man could have delivered speeches but that proves my point. She behaved very much as a woman in her day-to-day dealings and used that brilliantly to influence the men around her. In fact, she didn't appoint any women to senior positions under her premiership. She was a good leader (whether you agree with her politics or not) because she could do the job but she was no feminist. I think you might be projecting your own assumptions that she had to behave like a man to succeed. The opposite was true.

The issue for me really is that if women can perform in any role and are treated as equal in all (employment) ways then that should be portrayed on screen. Terry Farrell played a character who had actually been a man but she didn't play it like she was a man. Give them the lines and let the actresses act.

[horatio]

Originally Posted by Captain Tom Coughlin

What are neon white politics?

You lost me on that one

With this I meant that Obama behaves like a white guy. Just mentally switch the roles of Obama and Martin Luther King and it becomes clear that Obama is a chameleon. Same over here with our female chancellor, just like Obama she totally lacks substance.
I am not sure whether this is caused by a female in power having to behave like a man respectively a black in power having to behave like a white guy, whether these leaders are just coincidentally gutless or whether the real cause is the general decline of politics, that we live in a post-political era and so on.

But one thing I am totally sure about, that I object to this stupid representation game that many of my fellow-lefties always play. If you really care about sexual equality you rather want a man in power with an equality agenda than Thatcher or Merkel.

And to get back to the actual discussion, Paul's suggestion of making all female officers testosterone-filled killing machines (sorry for the exaggeration, Paul) is just like the above examples not related to equality. Women should be whoever the hell they want and not have to be more phallic than men.
Janeway is the best example in Trek for a female role conflict. She was often captured in between extremes, caring mother and trigger-crazy rambo. As Paul has pointed out, Dax was just Dax and thus the best female character.

[Pauln6]

Originally Posted by horatio

And to get back to the actual discussion, Paul's suggestion of making all female officers testosterone-filled killing machines (sorry for the exaggeration, Paul) is just like the above examples not related to equality. Women should be whoever the hell they want and not have to be more phallic than men.

Janeway is the best example in Trek for a female role conflict. She was often captured in between extremes, caring mother and trigger-crazy rambo. As Paul has pointed out, Dax was just Dax and thus the best female character.

But why can't Janeway's inconsistency just be part of her character? I know plenty of inconsistent men and women. I think the mistake is latching her personality defect onto her gender.

Jadzia Dax was cool.

The problem is not that the female characters need to be 'testosterone-filled killing machines' but that too many of the male characters are portrayed that way so if the women are not allowed to keep up, a gender imbalance becomes obvious. For example, TOS Spock, is a pacifist science officer but he is still allowed to get in and fight sometimes, as is Chekov, or Scotty etc while Uhura Chapel or Rand are next to useless in a fight. McCoy is pretty useless in a fight too - because he's a doctor. Some women will be more trained in combat than some men and vice versa. However, as officers, they should all have some training, and we should see just as many men trained in advanced combat as we see women.

[Captain Tom Coughlin]

I don't think Obama acts like a white guy, I think he just is who he is.

[Pauln6]

Originally Posted by Captain Tom Coughlin

I don't think Obama acts like a white guy, I think he just is who he is.

Cool. See my above post about Janeway saying the same thing.

[Captain Tom Coughlin]

I always actually kind of like that tiny little Janeway was always willing to step up into someone's face. I liked that about her

[horatio]

Originally Posted by Captain Tom Coughlin

I don't think Obama acts like a white guy, I think he just is who he is.

But didn't he get into the White House via pretending to be the guy outside of the establishment who brings fresh air into Washington and then he ended up with bringing many folks from the Clinton administration back?
My reaction was, well, why buy the actor when you can have the real thing? I think that Clinton would have been the far better choice because she is far less of an actor than Obama.

I can easily picture Obama pretending to be one of the folks around MLK and I can also easily picture him as business executive.

But then again you are far closer to the issue than me so you naturally know more about it. I mainly follow the economic stuff and my impression was that Obama is a pure pragmatist who does not have any convictions. First a bit of stimulus, then austerity and now that elections are nearing again a bit of stimulus. Seems like the very opposite of your favourite politician who is far more consistent.