Areas where you'd respectfully disagree with Chuck

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

@BridgeConsoleMasher How is it empowering when literally the entirety of your enemy leaders is female, and literally the entirety of your good leaders are male? That's serving an agenda, even if it wasn't written with that in mind.

I'm not seeing how that's even a problem. That the bad guys are all female and the good guys are all male. How is that problematic? What do you mean by agenda?

Empowering just means that a character has the power to influence the outcome. That's a crude listing of the criteria, but it's an essential aspect.

[Jonathan101]

@BridgeConsoleMasher How is it empowering when literally the entirety of your enemy leaders is female, and literally the entirety of your good leaders are male? That's serving an agenda, even if it wasn't written with that in mind.

I'm not seeing how that's even a problem. That the bad guys are all female and the good guys are all male. How is that problematic? What do you mean by agenda?

Empowering just means that a character has the power to influence the outcome. That's a crude listing of the criteria, but it's an essential aspect.

That's not what empowering means.

"Empowering" in fiction means something like inspiring. If a female character is said to "empower women" then it inspires the female audience in a certain way to do certain things.

The problem with all-female villains and all male heroes is that it can come across as dissuading women from being heroes (or, possibly, "empowering" them to be villains?).

Of course, in practice the term is a bit more nebulous and subjective, but that's another matter...

[Karha of Honor]

@Slash Gallagher Are you blind? Chuck has covered Trek's past history of misogyny way better than I have. Go watch his videos. If you seriously think Trek isn't misogynistic, then you're just trolling for the sake of trolling. Hate nihilists, defend dicks. No wonder. Because you're acting like one.

I am strongly pro dick tolerance. Not only nhilists defend dicks, just look at the US Constitution.

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

@BridgeConsoleMasher How is it empowering when literally the entirety of your enemy leaders is female, and literally the entirety of your good leaders are male? That's serving an agenda, even if it wasn't written with that in mind.

I'm not seeing how that's even a problem. That the bad guys are all female and the good guys are all male. How is that problematic? What do you mean by agenda?

Empowering just means that a character has the power to influence the outcome. That's a crude listing of the criteria, but it's an essential aspect.

That's not what empowering means.

"Empowering" in fiction means something like inspiring. If a female character is said to "empower women" then it inspires the female audience in a certain way to do certain things.

The problem with all-female villains and all male heroes is that it can come across as dissuading women from being heroes (or, possibly, "empowering" them to be villains?).

Of course, in practice the term is a bit more nebulous and subjective, but that's another matter...

Yeah I thought I might be missing on empowerment a bit, but as far as it dissuading women to be villains, that kind of thing is a problematic when it's an actual trend and not a one off example.

[Jonathan101]

@BridgeConsoleMasher How is it empowering when literally the entirety of your enemy leaders is female, and literally the entirety of your good leaders are male? That's serving an agenda, even if it wasn't written with that in mind.

I'm not seeing how that's even a problem. That the bad guys are all female and the good guys are all male. How is that problematic? What do you mean by agenda?

Empowering just means that a character has the power to influence the outcome. That's a crude listing of the criteria, but it's an essential aspect.

That's not what empowering means.

"Empowering" in fiction means something like inspiring. If a female character is said to "empower women" then it inspires the female audience in a certain way to do certain things.

The problem with all-female villains and all male heroes is that it can come across as dissuading women from being heroes (or, possibly, "empowering" them to be villains?).

Of course, in practice the term is a bit more nebulous and subjective, but that's another matter...

Yeah I thought I might be missing on empowerment a bit, but as far as it dissuading women to be villains, that kind of thing is a problematic when it's an actual trend and not a one off example.

Yes, but in this case, the issue was whether having all-male heroes and all-female villains was empowering to women or not, and it probably isn't, not whether it was dissuading women to be heroes (I assume you meant to write "heroes").

Usually if someone says it dis-empowers women, they mean that women do not currently have equal power with men on a collective scale, and so we should be making movies etc. that inspire women or provide opportunities, so making such a story as you are suggesting would be neutral at best and harmful negative stereotyping at worst, in theory at least.

It generally won't empower women other than encouraging them to be evil...though, you know, maybe women are underrepresented in that area too... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c3CqSMw ... gs=pl%2Cwn

[Admiral X]

You think a show having women as antagonists encourages women to be evil?

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

@BridgeConsoleMasher How is it empowering when literally the entirety of your enemy leaders is female, and literally the entirety of your good leaders are male? That's serving an agenda, even if it wasn't written with that in mind.

I'm not seeing how that's even a problem. That the bad guys are all female and the good guys are all male. How is that problematic? What do you mean by agenda?

Empowering just means that a character has the power to influence the outcome. That's a crude listing of the criteria, but it's an essential aspect.

That's not what empowering means.

"Empowering" in fiction means something like inspiring. If a female character is said to "empower women" then it inspires the female audience in a certain way to do certain things.

The problem with all-female villains and all male heroes is that it can come across as dissuading women from being heroes (or, possibly, "empowering" them to be villains?).

Of course, in practice the term is a bit more nebulous and subjective, but that's another matter...

Yeah I thought I might be missing on empowerment a bit, but as far as it dissuading women to be villains, that kind of thing is a problematic when it's an actual trend and not a one off example.

Yes, but in this case, the issue was whether having all-male heroes and all-female villains was empowering to women or not, and it probably isn't, not whether it was dissuading women to be heroes (I assume you meant to write "heroes").

Usually if someone says it dis-empowers women, they mean that women do not currently have equal power with men on a collective scale, and so we should be making movies etc. that inspire women or provide opportunities, so making such a story as you are suggesting would be neutral at best and harmful negative stereotyping at worst, in theory at least.

It generally won't empower women other than encouraging them to be evil...though, you know, maybe women are underrepresented in that area too... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c3CqSMw ... gs=pl%2Cwn

When you're talking about narrative yes, but there's also the aspect of casting women in certain roles. Again, you're right that empowering was a misnomer on my part, though on problematic depictions, you don't really point to isolated examples except to describe the trend. And this isn't a trend of sorts. I also wouldn't call it a prevalent issue in western society, only so far as I've heard, which get exacerbated through media depiction.

But back at empowering, playing the villain can be fun. There's also the aspect that the villain makes the hero in a movie. I don't think the needle really drops to the tune of, "we don't want people to get the wrong idea about women," here in favor of letting them be villains, even if all of them are and all the good are male.

[Yukaphile]

Crusher wasn't given a ship to command, please note, even though she has bridge experience and did so in "Descent." The villains are all female, and the good guy leaders are male. That is very dis-empowering for women. I don't really count Toral because he's a puppet. Again, the one pulling the strings are the sisters and Sela, and the sisters are only doing this because of that bullshit "women can't lead the Council" rule. The linchpin leaders on the side of the Klingons and the Federation, past the token rubber-stamp admiral, is Picard, Data, Worf, Kurn, and Gowron. All male, or with something resembling male anatomy in Data's case. Also please note this is the same episode that revealed Tasha Yar was turned into a sex slave for protection and to spare the lives of the C's crew, then tried to bring her rape baby with her to safety (a position I find dubious given how often it's presented within the media that women should just naturally WANT to keep their rape babies, since it ties into the "women nurture" vibe and any woman who strays outside that is seen as bad), and got killed for it. I think this was mostly Ron Moore, right? He's also the guy who, I believe, gave us the "Sisko is a rape baby" plot in Season 7 DS9. Man, this is really why the Trek writing team needed more women to balance out the men - or at least more Feminist-minded women.

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

Why would Crusher command the ship when Picard and Data are there?

And I guess you could talk about sexist Klingon writing with regard to their high council, but the Duras sisters and Sela being the prominent command doesn't seem so much a carried on perversion.

[clearspira]

Why would Crusher command the ship when Picard and Data are there?

And I guess you could talk about sexist Klingon writing with regard to their high council, but the Duras sisters and Sela being the prominent command doesn't seem so much a carried on perversion.

And if I remember correctly, Crusher only volunteered for bridge duty for a bit of variety. Her first love is medicine not command. The only time I remember her seemingly wanting a command is in All Good Things which A) is a future that no longer exists and B) presents to us a much older Crusher than we had. Maybe one for the Picard series.