Kate Mulgrew calls Gene Roddenberry a misogynist

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

Well there's also the mini-skirts too.

[CmdrKing]

The reason he fought for Number One was not because he wanted a woman on the bridge, its because he was banging Majel Barret. This is not proof at all of his equality credentials.

He found another role for her anyway, but still sought for her to be first officer. If he wasn’t personally invested in showing a woman in a command role, then he was very accommodating to Barret in the matter.
But certainly the fact this specific woman was his pick (because he was banging her) casts a shadow over the whole thing.
Noble actions marred and diminished by selfish reasons.

[Makeshift Python]

Roddenberry also spread that lie that NBC rejected Barrett as Number One because of sexism, when the truth was that that they didn't like her as a leading actress, and that there was great concern over the fact that Roddenberry was sleeping with her and continued to be an issue up to him trying to sneak her onto the set as Miss Chapel via blonde wig.

In their book Inside Star Trek: The Real Story, Herb Solow and Robert Justman claimed that the account of NBC rejecting the female first officer was a myth created by Roddenberry. In their version, NBC was proud of gender and race diversity in its shows, and even insisted on having a strong female leading character, but they felt that Barrett was not a leading-type actress with strong screen presence, suitable for playing such a role. Apparently not wanting to hurt his mistress' pride, Roddenberry purportedly came up with this story in the 1970s-1980s Star Trek convention circuit, which he toured extensively with his by-then wife.

Although her character was dropped from the second pilot, "Where No Man Has Gone Before", after Star Trek was picked up as a series, Barrett, now disguised as a blonde, was given the role of Nurse Christine Chapel in the episode " The Naked Time" by Roddenberry, albeit surreptitiously according to Justman and Solow. Because the network did not like her role in "The Cage", Barrett donned a blond wig for her role and went by the name "Majel Barrett" rather than "M. Leigh Hudec," as she had done for "The Menagerie." In effect, the surreptitious act of sneaking Barrett back into the Star Trek production against the express wishes of NBC, turned out to be one of the reasons for Lucille Ball after she was informed of this, to ordain the firing of the pair of them on the spot, as a moral propriety valuing Ball could not abide with nepotism. Concurrently, she had become aware that a married Roddenberry conducted an illicit affair with Barrett, which was an even stronger reason for her wanting them to be gone from her studio; Ball's own marriage with Desi Arnaz had fallen apart in no small part due to his philandering. It was Herb Solow who, through an intermediary, managed to convince Ball otherwise, though he had the toughest of times doing so. (Inside Star Trek: The Real Story, 1997, p. 223; These Are the Voyages: TOS Season One, 1st ed, pp. 25-27)

[Durandal_1707]

Poor Gene, he outlive the era of free love in the 60's and never could have predicted the rise of sex negative feminists.

[Makeshift Python]

Gene would be so flabbergasted if accused of sexism in 2019.

"Huh? What's this talk about me hating on women? The couldn't be further from the truth. I love women! That's why I dress them up in mini-skirts and cast sexy models in parts."

[Yukaphile]

Would he, though? My grandfather was arguably old-school sexist, where he held women in high regard as objects of pure beauty and joy and life and whatever. An old-school romantic, sure, but it is objectification in a way and he couldn't understand the Feminist movement because he thought it was a "step down" for women. I never got that same impression from Gene. He would be the asshole who'd grab a woman's boobs and insist, "I'm a man, I can't help it.

[Makeshift Python]

Well, that's clearly your impression.

[Yukaphile]

Look at the company of men Roddenberry kept. And I don't care what you guys say, I think he was the one to assault Whitney. It would perfectly explain why she didn't feel safe enough to name who, even though he was dead - because the "power" of the work is so ingrained into people's minds as well as the myths surrounding to what extent the show's creator was responsible that it would have severely hurt it, and it's not like today when we have the Me Too movement to sort of normalize that thing. To name the man who hurt her would ensure she got hate mail possibly of the kind of colorful expressions such as "You deserve to get raped" or "I hope somebody does it again!" The true degenerates of humanity.

[Makeshift Python]

You're free to believe that, even if it isn't true.

[CmdrKing]

Certainly it's true that if someone were to say Roddenberry sexually assaulted them they would, indeed, receive death threats and other nastiness. That pattern is pretty predictable.

Backing up a bit, the trouble with understanding the nature of Roddenberry's sexism is not really getting the internal conflict of feminism at that time.

Gene basically looked at the main divide, realized one of the two sides benefited him personally more, made sure to take steps that outwardly fit in with that ideology, then rode the good will to profit. Perhaps he didn't do that on purpose, maybe Barret was a more dedicated feminist and Gene just rolled with it, I dunno. But that's the best way to describe why he can be a sexist but still have had a net-positive impact.

See, the earliest beginnings of second-wave feminism, as most social movements are, were founded by the most marginalized finding community and collectively discussing and identifying the ways society is against them or has harmed them. So queer women and women of color. And so in the beginning sex positivity was sort of assumed: sexuality is a positive, inseparable aspect of human life and needs to exists in a context where how women express and control that sexuality serves their own needs, not being twisted to service men and only men.
As more academic white women entered, and ultimately usurped, the movement, the idea that feminine sexuality was inseparable from the male gaze took root and became the "face" of the movement in historical terms. Not that it every fully drown out the sex-positive side of the movement, but history remembers the sex-negative aspects (largely though a combination of "the academics were much more strongly on the sex-negative side" and "conservative backlash").

It's not too much of an exaggeration to say later "waves" of feminism exist in part to get back to those roots, which is why sex-positive feminism is a lot more visible than once it was.

Anyway, faced with that divide, Gene pandered to the sex-positive feminists because... duh. He was a perv who liked sex. Considering that even by '63 it was becoming the less visible form of feminism though? It's easy to assign more nobility to that than it deserves. And keeping that in the consciousness a little bit longer is an overall good in spite of everything.