From: cortese@hepxvt.ps.uci.edu (Janis Maria Cortese)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.startrek.current
Subject: Re: the outcast from a queer perspective
Date: 7 Apr 92 00:29:00 GMT
Article-I.D.: noiro.29E0ECCC.4027
Organization: University of California, Irvine

In article <167C110613.ROSGARA@YaleVM.YCC.Yale.Edu> ROSGARA@YaleVM.YCC.Yale.Edu writes:
> 
>I waited for this episode for years and i have really mixed emotions. first of
>all gender was essentialized -- people felt "female" or "male" -- as if, what,
>they felt like they wanted to wear make up, nurture, or talk about sports and b
>beer? And worse, of course, gender was defined as heterosexual,if one felt male
>than they were heterosexual. What the hell? Also when riker was talking about w
>what men like when sorren asked him he said some like this kind of woman, some
>liked that kind of woman, but never maybe some liked guys? What the hell? Also
>it was way assimilationist -- "were the same as you, we love,etc".
>why cant we get a queer character on? rikers rabid heterosexuality is thrust in
> our faces and we cant get a queer (i think tasha was bi but that was never
>explicit.) i dunno, i was sort of disappointed.

Same here.  They waffled.  Where they got the idea that this would be
the "gay story" just because it dealt with sexual taboos in some mythic
society still stumps me.

Why can't we just see some gay people holding hands in the corridor or
something?  Or even better -- when Data said that there were some N
couples engaged in sex stuff during "Cause and Effect," couldn't he have
said, "Thirty-one crewmen were engaged in sex" or some quite literally
odd number?

They waffled on this BIG TIME, and I entertain no interest in this
episode at all.  So far, their attempts at "alternate cultures" have
been pathetic.  Cultures that are run for the most part by straight
white men (with a usual token black or woman thrown in) fill the whole
spectrum from good to bad, with plenty of variation in between.
Cultures that differ widely or have no white straight men in power are
always fucked up.  The women on Angel One are some sort of Penthouse
magazine fantasy, and of COURSE they can't be reasonable and logical.
And of COURSE Riker gets to get his dick wet.  The people in "Code of
Honor" are naturally barbaric and fight to the death; how else would a
*gasp* BLACK society be but something straight out of the Arabian
Nights?  And any culture so very different from us SEXUALLY would
naturally be barbaric and unjust, and the people living there with whom
we are supposed to sympathize would NATURALLY envy our "enlightened"
ways.  Right?  

ST:TNG has been pathetically Euro-centric and bigoted when you really
think about it.  Remember "Justice" and that wonderful planet?  All
those innocent people with no crime at all and in wonderful shape?
A-MAZ-ing how they all had to be nice northern European blonds, isn't
it?  I'm not saying that there haven't been screwed-up cultures run by
straight white guys, but cultures NOT run by them are never what we
would call admirable.  The SWG (straight-white-guy) cultures are
permitted the full spectrum of nobility and corruptness while the others
are always barbaric and stereotyped.

The show waffles.  I don't expect things to get better in the future.

Regards,
Janis C.