Areas where you'd respectfully disagree with Chuck

[clearspira]

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.

More feminist minded women got us STD. Just saying.

[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.

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.

His case about the writer/producer isn't particularly shotty or anything. But it does seem like they would go out of their way to write the Enterprise to balance the command oppositioning, which imo isn't necessarily necessary lest you reformat the episode more broadly.

[Yukaphile]

And "more Feminist-minded women" also called a whole generation of innocent, unarmed civilians who were mass gang raped "criminals" based on something a movie with a clear political agenda said which they were not responsible for and which misrepresented them anyway. I don't doubt they can be bad. But at the same time, I do believe in the ideals of Feminism, and this kind of shit Moore did with "Redemption" and then later with Sisko being a rape baby can send unspoken implications that shape our general perception as a people. It needs to stop.

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

Point taken, but Star Trek fans don't seem like the first type of people to adopt this into their mindset outside of the media. Then again you do have The Big Bang Theory.

[Yukaphile]

There's Primeval, which is an obnoxiously sexist show simply meant to cash in on Doctor Who's return in 2005.

[bronnt]

And "more Feminist-minded women" also called a whole generation of innocent, unarmed civilians who were mass gang raped "criminals" based on something a movie with a clear political agenda said which they were not responsible for and which misrepresented them anyway. I don't doubt they can be bad. But at the same time, I do believe in the ideals of Feminism, and this kind of shit Moore did with "Redemption" and then later with Sisko being a rape baby can send unspoken implications that shape our general perception as a people. It needs to stop.

Well the Prophet taking over a woman and using her body to gestate Sisko was a big deal, yeah. I really don't know whose idea that was. It turned the gods that we're supposed to root for into something despicable, and then continued to write them as though we should root for them. Then again, the Prophets were written to be horrible assholes multiple times and that didn't stop the writers from telling us they had to be supported. I see that as drastically different than showing one story where the females are in charge of the villains.

Those female characters in Redemption aren't evil by any means, especially Sela-she's a commander in the Romulan military who is exploiting a political situation to gain power for her own government. It's immoral, sure, but it's not evil, and it wouldn't be any different if Tomalak had been the architect for it instead.

It's also not as if saying there's no good women authority figures-the admiral who authorizes Picard's plan is a woman, even if she's a minor part of the story.

[Yukaphile]

I do believe it was Moore. Others commented Moore REALLY wanted to push the "Prophets as religious" idea and got ingrained in it. Moore strikes me as... well, a polite version of the nerd stereotype. And that sadly includes the misogyny.

Well, again, my friend's recent first viewing led him to conclude the Duras sisters had legit reasons to wanna seize power because they couldn't do so lawfully because of that bullshit rule, and they look more the warriors Toral is. They could have probably beaten Gowron. And the Klingons, such as Gowron, are not presented as necessarily "nice" given Gowron murders a fellow Klingon when restrained, so that's hardly an honorable victory. Still, though... given the simplistic morality that Trek writers often sometimes employ, which isn't always a bad thing, but nevertheless they do, this paints a clear picture as the Duras are known to ally with Romulans, known for treachery and lies, and thus behave like Romulans themselves, which is dishonorable given the Klingon-centric point of view. And even when Gowron murders a man, it's still presented as nothing bad, just an alien culture at work. Sela also somehow thinks her father was great, even though he coerced her mother into a life of sexual slavery and shows no sympathy to the reasons she'd wanna escape, even though... she's a woman and part human herself. I've heard of women like that before, as their comrade men would descend upon a helpless woman who had personally never hurt them with unspeakable depravities and when begged for help by the innocent victim, she'd just laugh in her face. Sela strikes me as from the same mold, though less extreme obviously.

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

Not sure why Picard had Crusher take command instead of one of the other officers prior, but if I was staging a strategic blockade of other ships, then I would probably pool from people other than sheer rank. There's no reason technically that Picard didn't send her instead of Riker, but he probably sent Riker to the grandest ship anyway. Forget about sending her in Data's place given the incompetency motives plot that the lt. Commander was running for a woman instead of an android.

[clearspira]

I do believe it was Moore. Others commented Moore REALLY wanted to push the "Prophets as religious" idea and got ingrained in it. Moore strikes me as... well, a polite version of the nerd stereotype. And that sadly includes the misogyny.

Well, again, my friend's recent first viewing led him to conclude the Duras sisters had legit reasons to wanna seize power because they couldn't do so lawfully because of that bullshit rule.

No offence to your friend, but just because you may be part of an oppressed class doesn't make you in the right. And seeing as these two would later go on to be complicit in the deaths of millions of innocent people at Veridian if it wasn't for timey-wimey nonsense, and Toral would go on to try and kill Worf over Kahless's bat'leth and thus proving himself to be a backstabbing unappreciative prick, I find no reason why I would back these three over Gowron who was a decent leader until he got jealous of Martok.

[clearspira]

There's Primeval, which is an obnoxiously sexist show simply meant to cash in on Doctor Who's return in 2005.

Many shows were made to cash in on another's popularity. But the fact is that Primeval had a legitimately different story to tell and told it well. And 'obviously sexist?' I do not agree. It certainly is not obvious to me anyway.