The Seldom Female in a World of Males

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Title:	The Seldom Female in a World of Males
Creator:	Debbie Lee
Date(s):	December 1992
Medium:	print
Fandom:	Star Trek
Topic:
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The Seldom Female in a World of Males is an essay by Debbie Lee in IDIC #25.

It opens with:

I have recently read a most interesting article by Tom Lalli, in The Best of the Best of' Trek, entitled Same Sexism, Different Generation, written about 1990, and I cheered most of the way through. Why? I thought it was me being sensitive, maybe allowing my ideas about everybody being equal get in the way of my enjoyment of Trek. Tom Lalli writes a marvellous article, well worth reading if you have the opportunity. He approaches the subject with a knowledge of Classic Trek and the first series of TNG that I could not possibly hope to emulate, but I hope Mr. Lalli will not mind my borrowing an extended quote to get the ball rolling, as it were: "Few in history have communicated their personal world-view as effectively to as many people as Gene Roddenberry. His vision is of a united, future Earth free of war, poverty and injustice, whose inhabitants live well into their hundreds. The original Star Trek was so far ahead of its time that it (with The Next Generation) is STILL the only memorable television series to portray a positive future for humanity. And it is because Gene Roddenberry is such a remarkably forward-thinking man that Star Trek's sexism is so jarring. "I have long considered sexism to be Star Trek's one great flaw. I was therefore very disappointed when Star Trek: The Next Generation, instead of correcting this fault, proved to be nearly as sexisf as the original show."

Some Excerpts

Well, as Tom Lalli's view of ST:TNG seems to end somewhere in the second series, it would be interesting to see what he makes of the final direction of the series of the past three. Having cast my eyes in a retrospective over the four STTNG series we have enjoyed so far, my final verdict has to lie with an increasing thirty something obsession with male relationships. We have father/son, brother/brother and mother /son... the father/son one appearing to form a particularly fascinating subject for those people responsible for deciding what finally becomes real within the ST:TNG universe. And so we see it repeated again and again, Picard/Wesley, Picard/Jono, Worf/Alexander, Worf/Astor, Soong/Data, Riker/father in The Icarus Factor... and need I say more than Deep Space 9 to anyone who knows or major character developments with respect to that particular Star Trek production.

The women in the 24th century of ST:TNG would appear to do an Athena to get to adulthood, like the Greek goddess who popped out of Zeus' head; ST:TNG women are never successful daughters, sisters, or in some cases do not even manage to make 'friends' of the same sex. When you do see a mother/daughter, sister/sister relationship, it is often portrayed in an almost destructive light. Deanna Troi/Lwaxana Troi would not appear to be the most successful of relationships aboard the Enterprise, Tasha Yar's sister Ishara was also not a particularly successful relative. Ironically enough, the only character seen in the context of a relationship with a younger, female character is Data (Lal in The Offspring, Sarjenka in Penpals) Of course this may all change in the fifth and sixth series I have yet to see; ) sincerely hope so. It says something about the show itself that maybe someone, somewhere is happier viewing female relationships through the eyes of an inquisitive android than throughout the viewpoint of the strong male characters that ST:TNG abounds with.

So now, on to the subject of strong female characters… or increasing lack of them. Beverly Crusher and Deanna Troi seem to be becoming more and more like the 'glorified extras' that herald the demise of Denise Crosby's character, the excellent Tasha Yar [many other examples snipped]… Oh dear, how many times will 'assertiveness' be confused with 'aggressiveness'? This is the ST: TNG example of an 'assertive' woman, isolated, unpopular.

The wonderful Gene Roddenberry was a product of his upbringing, his time, his generation. He put a black female officer on the bridge of a 23rd century ship and sprinkled the universe with erudite, feminine Starfleet officers as women were starting to question their expected traditional role. Hopefully we have come a long way; is it fair to expect Star Trek to have done the same? The contributors to ST:TNG, I assume, are of a similar generation to myself, similarly inspired by the TV myths of those future adventures as created by Gene Roddenberry. They were moved into the field of TV craft, I was moved to go into the fields of computers and engineering. I spend my long working day surrounded by great work colleagues, in a ratio of approximately 50:1 male to female. Then to go home and be presented with a view of the 24th century that presents it still being… well, very male orientated, is a little deflating.