Yukaphile wrote: ↑Sun Oct 28, 2018 7:45 pm
Could you see Ferengi drunkenly stumbling through blasted streets slurring the words, "Come here, woman? Come here, woman?" Or when they finally find their prey to put glass shards, iron rods, or tree branches up their... you know? To knowingly mate over and over in droves with intent to conceive life in pain, to pollute a conquered woman's body with your seed so she'd give birth to a foreign rape baby? Out of sheer vindictive pleasure and sadomasochistic arousal? To take women and girls as young as ten or even younger as simple raw booty and the spoils of conquest in organized trains? I can't. Don't get me wrong. They are an excessively patriarchal and very backward, very primitive society on women's rights. But I agree with Chuck. I don't think they've ever sunk as low as humans have, even with regards to mistreating women. Hell, in their society, I see it more as state-enforced gender roles, to the Nth degree. Women belong in the home, they shouldn't leave the home, and if you want a wife, you bargain with the father or otherwise other male head of a household, but that's it. Men have their place in the business world, and women don't. All of which is wrong and needs serious reform. But again, the point I must stress is that it still feels like at their worst, they are better than us at our worst.
Honestly, yes, I see Ferengi doing these things.
Rape in Star Trek is rarely handled correctly. It’s dismissed or treated as a joke. The Ferengi are also often treated as a joke...so the show just isn’t going to get into what Ferengi society really means for the women. The clues on the surface are there though. Quark’s sexual harassment of women, basically getting away with what he can. Ishka was threatened with indentured servitude if she didn’t confess to making money. Ferengi reacting to clothed women or being spoken to by women. Marriage is decided between the groom and the father of the bride. We even have Nog tricking a nurse into performing oomox for him in Little Green Men. Quark as a women deals with harassment, then convinces a man of “her” value through sex.
This is all without really delving into what the women are really treated like. Ishka had a husband who loved her, and sons who love her. What about the women who don’t have that, who never did? What about the women who are forced into “indentured servitude?” We don’t see their stories, and I wouldn’t really way to either.
Yukaphile wrote: ↑Sun Oct 28, 2018 7:45 pm
Could you see Ferengi drunkenly stumbling through blasted streets slurring the words, "Come here, woman? Come here, woman?" Or when they finally find their prey to put glass shards, iron rods, or tree branches up their... you know? To knowingly mate over and over in droves with intent to conceive life in pain, to pollute a conquered woman's body with your seed so she'd give birth to a foreign rape baby? Out of sheer vindictive pleasure and sadomasochistic arousal? To take women and girls as young as ten or even younger as simple raw booty and the spoils of conquest in organized trains? I can't. Don't get me wrong. They are an excessively patriarchal and very backward, very primitive society on women's rights. But I agree with Chuck. I don't think they've ever sunk as low as humans have, even with regards to mistreating women. Hell, in their society, I see it more as state-enforced gender roles, to the Nth degree. Women belong in the home, they shouldn't leave the home, and if you want a wife, you bargain with the father or otherwise other male head of a household, but that's it. Men have their place in the business world, and women don't. All of which is wrong and needs serious reform. But again, the point I must stress is that it still feels like at their worst, they are better than us at our worst.
Honestly, yes, I see Ferengi doing these things.
Rape in Star Trek is rarely handled correctly. It’s dismissed or treated as a joke. The Ferengi are also often treated as a joke...so the show just isn’t going to get into what Ferengi society really means for the women. The clues on the surface are there though. Quark’s sexual harassment of women, basically getting away with what he can. Ishka was threatened with indentured servitude if she didn’t confess to making money. Ferengi reacting to clothed women or being spoken to by women. Marriage is decided between the groom and the father of the bride. We even have Nog tricking a nurse into performing oomox for him in Little Green Men. Quark as a women deals with harassment, then convinces a man of “her” value through sex.
This is all without really delving into what the women are really treated like. Ishka had a husband who loved her, and sons who love her. What about the women who don’t have that, who never did? What about the women who are forced into “indentured servitude?” We don’t see their stories, and I wouldn’t really way to either.
I'm inclined to agree. Maybe not as they are by the time of DS9, but even as early as The Last Outpost the Ferengi are portrayed as much more primitive in terms of behaviour and mentality, and couple that with the systematic treatment of Ferengi women as demonstrated in the show...
Ferengi women are initially banned from ever leaving the house or even wearing clothes. They're treated, as I remember it, like property. If we're going to get into topics as serious as this, are we going to ignore things such as spousal rape? Are we going to say that's never happened in Ferengi culture? It's possible that it hasn't, but I'm not at all confident saying for sure that, if the Ferengi were real, it would never have been a thing.
Again, I'm not saying the Ferengi at the time of the show would be doing that, but let's turn it around here; could you see the human Federation characters doing any of this? I have a fairly hard time, but this all happened in the history of humanity.
Mind you, the only time we meet Ferengi women, they are actually the ones handling the contracts for their marriages and both times they are the ones who end up ruling their households. A thing the Federation often ran into on Deep Space Nine was the fact the Federation's "enlightenment" often was called out as condescending and imperialist. They claimed the Prime Directive when conveinant but clearly viewed the Bajorans as primitive and in need of Federation guidance.
On the "would the Ferengi do that?" line, well, they're frequently portrayed as being willing to do quite a lot to get what they want, quite honestly I find Quark's claim that they've never done things as bad as humans have rather implausible.
Well, let's look at what Chuck says from another review. At their hearts, they don't have the killing instinct. They're businessmen. Perhaps even corrupt, evil businessmen - you know, like Fox News? - but businessmen nevertheless. And businessmen are about acquiring profit and expanding their pleasure. They don't just give in to sadistic urges just because they can the way it seems like human beings have. Why doubt Quark's word? He flat-out says they haven't waged war, enslaved, or murdered huge populations. So I can't see them doing that, regardless.
"A culture's teachings - and more importantly, the nature of its people - achieve definition in conflict. They find themselves, or find themselves lacking."
— Kreia, Knights of the Old Republic 2: The Sith Lords
Surely there's some Rule of Acquisition that says history textbooks sell better if they make the target readership's country look awesome.
Plus, we've seen Ferengi plot murder. "The Magnificent Ferengi" had a Ferengi assassin, and there was that episode where Brunt tried to blackmail Quark into committing suicide (and when Rom thinks Quark is going to hire Garak to assassinate Brunt, he compliments him on a bold but brilliant strategy).
True, but that's more akin to mafia thing. Again, that's a long way from waging war. From getting your own hands dirty with the blood of others, and seizing spoils of war, whether trinkets, resources, or women. I get the feeling the Ferengi wouldn't mind associating with those who do, and buying up at extreme prices, but doing the deed personally? No.
"A culture's teachings - and more importantly, the nature of its people - achieve definition in conflict. They find themselves, or find themselves lacking."
— Kreia, Knights of the Old Republic 2: The Sith Lords
Yukaphile wrote: ↑Sun Oct 28, 2018 11:40 pm
True, but that's more akin to mafia thing. Again, that's a long way from waging war. From getting your own hands dirty with the blood of others, and seizing spoils of war, whether trinkets, resources, or women. I get the feeling the Ferengi wouldn't mind associating with those who do, and buying up at extreme prices, but doing the deed personally? No.
If they are not willing to get their own hands dirty, then why do they have a government run space navy that we have seen is used to attack other ships? Why did they gas the NX-01 and made a pile of women to sell into sexual slavery? Why was there that Ferengi willing to shoot Picard and Vash in cold blood on Risa?
clearspira wrote: ↑Mon Oct 29, 2018 8:35 am
You are being rather generous I have to say.
Indeed. I think we're given every indication that the Ferengi are largely meant to be quite ruthless, and the only reason we don't see more of it is because that would conflict with the comedy surrounding their appearances.
Regarding the different priority distress signals.
To put it to a modern understanding:
It would be the difference between calling a tow truck and calling an ambulance.
Both are called to gets you help, but one is clearly more serious than the other.
The latter has highly trained professional ignoring traffic laws to get to you at full speed.
The former involves bubba driving out to you in about an hour if you are lucky.
Same difference in space, the former not arriving in a timely manner gets someone late for an appointment, the latter gets someone dead.
For priority one, it might get a medical ship to head towards you at near salamander sex warp speeds. For lower priority it might get a transport divert its course slightly on a dead leg.
