GateFail 2009

Spoiler Warning

This article may contain spoilers. If this bothers you, proceed with caution.

Event:

GateFail 2009

Name:

Date(s):

August 2009 -

Type:

fan-reactive meta

Fandom:

Stargate, SGU, SGA, SG-1

URL:

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1 Notes

GateFail 2009 is the name given by some fans to a controversy which erupted around a casting call for the forthcoming series Stargate: Universe, and the script for a specific episode of that series.

In the episode in question, the character of a disabled woman is introduced in a way which negates her worth (until she is magically cured of her disability.) Adding insult to injury (in the eyes of many fans) was the revelation that her character will participate in a bodyswap with a lesbian woman and will thereafter engage in heterosexual sex. The plotline suggests simultaneously that the disabled woman has never experienced intimacy (until she is bodyswapped and suddenly is able to experience heterosexual intercourse) and that the lesbian whose body is being used for the encounter wouldn't mind the insertion of a penis (since, as some fans argued, she wouldn't "be there" when it happened and would therefore not feel violated by the encounter.) Furious rhetoric erupted; hijinks ensued.

In an article at HardCoreNerdity, Cate wrote:

Contrary to the belief of the producers' defenders, there is little, as critics have pointed out, new or 'edgy' about the proposed Sabotage storyline. While body-swap technology may not be an everyday occurrence in the real world, creating situations in which women are sexually vulnerable, making Asian and Asian-descended women the locus of male sexual fantasy, and treating people with disabilities as though they are less than fully-realized human beings is all too repetitive and ordinary. Making a white, male character sexually vulnerable to another man would be new (and avoiding homophobic hysteria while doing so would be vital and refreshing); writing a female genius with a disability who saves the day without needing to be healed in order to do so would be entirely unexpected; writing a lesbian character whose sexual choices are absolutely respected by her co-workers would be practically revolutionary. Note that, in contradiction to the arguments made by some defenders of the show, none of these alternatives require the characters to be likeable in order to break out of racist, homophobic, sexist, and ableist tropes – the only requirement is to think of women as something other than victims of their physicality, men as something other than individuals owed sexual congress as a matter of existence, and non-white persons something other than vehicles for white folk to learn something about themselves.^[1]

Angry fans reached out to the wider media/SF world, and posts followed from AfterEllen ("Now if you'll excuse me, I need to go find a Stargate that will take me to a galaxy where lesbian characters are actually gay.")^[2], Shakesville^[3] and John Scalzi ^[4], among others.