Discussing Star Trek's Lack of LGBT Representation

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Madner Kami
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Re: Discussing Star Trek's Lack of LGBT Representation

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hammerofglass wrote: Wed Jun 05, 2024 6:02 amSingle sex would be. All the ones we know of are all female, anyway.
No. Well, kinda... Oof, that's a complicated issue. There's actually one single known species which is functionally all-male. 98% of all individuals of the species Hypseleotris are, in fact, male and their species is healthy despite the female genotype being on it's way to extinction. So far, that is the only known species that works that way. What they're doing is called "sexual parasitism". The individuals of the species reproduce through sexual intercourse with a closely related species, just like you would expect from any sexually reproducing species. The resulting zygote however, only carries the chromosomes of the parasitic parent species, making the offspring functionally clones of the parasitic parent. Practically all sexually parasitic species are female, which is owed to the fact, that only the egg has the ability and facilities to actually develop into a multicellular individual, an ability that the sperm lacks entirely, so the likelyhood of this ability developing is heavily tilted to the female specimens of a given species. Nonetheless, there's the possibility of an all-male species reproducing sexually. But, if you paid attention, sexual parasites still need a host counterpart, even the all-female ones.

Now let's talk about bees. Did you know, that you could argue that bees are actually a male species, despite practically all bees you're gonna meet in your daily life being females? See, bees and some other insects are kinda funny. They can reproduce without the involvement of sperm, but the result of the gestation of such an unfertilized haploid egg is always a male individual. Only fertilized, diploid eggs develop into females (both for queens and workers). And this is really wierd, since the vast majority of sexually dimorphic species that can reproduce through parthenogenisis produce female offspring when they do that, for obvious reasons.

Nature's kinda wild and defies easy answers and that's even before we consider species that reproduce sexually, but need more than two individuals to reproduce or species that reproduce sexually but through hermaphrodism and self-insemination or hermaphrodism without self-insemination. Or, even wilder, species that have both exclusively male and female specimens, which are specifically not hermaphrodites, but whose individuals can relatively freely switch between which sex they are even in their adult stages.

And as for species that reproduce asexually, well, the definition of male and female hinges on sexual reproduction, so calling a species that reproduces through, for example, parthenogenisis exclusively, defies such categorization outright.
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hammerofglass
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Re: Discussing Star Trek's Lack of LGBT Representation

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Ooh, the more you know! Thanks.

I had New Mexico Whiptails in mind specifically.
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Re: Discussing Star Trek's Lack of LGBT Representation

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Madner Kami wrote: Tue Jun 04, 2024 4:06 pm
Nobody700 wrote: Tue Jun 04, 2024 4:02 pm
Madner Kami wrote: Tue Jun 04, 2024 3:56 pm
Nobody700 wrote: Tue Jun 04, 2024 3:53 pmand it was why she was homeless.
She was?
I mean I say she was homeless but she did have that pretty nice area of land she pretended was bullshit but like... all this land is yours in a Sci Fi utopia with no resource shortage? Sure it's not Picard's place, but damn this is way better than what I have. Much of this comes from me mocking how Raffi ACTS homeless... but lives quite well. Than again, that sums up Raffi in my head of a jerk who ACTS like she's a victim when she totally is the reason her life sucks. Even ignoring what Starfleet did to her.
Yeah. And goddamnit, I just realized she's got a guest-bedroom and bath... Geezus fucking christ. How can anyone consider that "living on the fringe" or "poor" or "ostracized"? Is this what affluenza looks like? Fits the character...
Winter wrote: Tue Jun 04, 2024 4:04 pm Again, the most inclusive show in Trek right now that has more then 2 LGBT characters is Discovery and even then the treatment of those characters is kinda iffy.
I really feel, that criticizing pre-2009 (argueably pre-Enterprise) Star Trek for a lack of LGBTQ-representation is misguided at best. It completely ignores the social and economic environment those shows were made in. Yes, you could get away with some shit on TV, but there were limits, especially if you wanted to syndicalize that show and a good part of your audience were children and teens.
I agree. I remember it being a big deal to have openly gay characters (and their own internal dialogue) in the Star Trek Titan books.

I remember the shoulder shrug the Fandom had to do why there was no openly gay characters in Trek was that in the 23rd or 24th century was that it would be no big deal. You wouldn't have to announce you are gay.
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