I’m making my way through DS9 for the first time (almost finished with season two). For reference, I’ve seen TOG, TNG, all the new movies, Discovery, Lower Decks, and SNW. DS9 season one was a little slow to pick up, but my husband and I are loving season two. As always, Star Trek addresses a lot of hard hitting issues in very nuanced ways. It’s also great continuously seeing fantastic representation in even older episodes (mainly women and people of colour in prominent and varied positions).
But when we get to more women specific issues, things are seriously lacking. Basically, almost any scene with the Ferengis interacting with women are problematic. I understand that they are a highly misogynistic race, but my discomfort and annoyance is with how others react to them. The Grand Nagus sexually assaulting women, especially Kira, is never actually fully addressed. It’s just seen as an annoyance to be put up with. Quark is often seen as aggressively pursuing women, often with unwanted touches and other advances. Even if it’s at first the women in question is disinterested, they relent in some way, either completely or they tell him something flattering/of chances in the future. Thankfully, so far, none of the main women characters have given into his advances, but it’s common for one off and guest characters to somehow be “charmed” by him, even those from more egalitarian civilizations (eg: Vulcan).
I know DS9 was made prior to #MeToo, but it’s still worth pointing out where Star Trek can and have improved (thankfully newer Trek has less of these issues), and when some of the portrayals in the past are rather inconsistent with the philosophies of the Federation. Of course, the Federation operates with a level of cultural relativism, but it still doesn’t make sense to me how the Grand Nagus (and Ferengis in general) were allowed to assault and harass those outside of their culture/species on an interstellar, multi-cutural, Federation run space station. Star Trek in the 90s was trying to a lot of good, but watching it now, there’s definitely quite a few aspects that are unsatisfying.
The insane thing is that even with all that they were exceptionally progressive… in comparison to what else was out at the same time. The issue of doing this sort of social comparison is that you really need to keep it in context with history. Weird example. The Honeymooners regularly had a punchline of threatening violence against one of the wives (The infamous “One of these days Alice! BANG! ZOOM!”), 10 years after the last episode Star Trek The Original Series started which (unless I’m remembering wrong) didn’t use violence as a joke.
Sometimes it takes a while for things to change… Other times it gallops along.
I for certain see the context. It’s just frustrating watching from a contemporary lens, especially as a woman. Many of us, including me, have experienced unwanted advances that escalated into harassment, verbal abuse, assault (an entire range of physical contact). As much as I’m enjoying the show, but this aspect makes me feel uncomfortable and somewhat angry.
On the one hand, watching pieces of History like this can be frustrating on such issues (it is a media History artifact at this point, just as much as a Shakespeare play). On the other hand, I like to think about how much things have changed, even since Next Gen and DS9 aired. It is more common and possible to talk about a lot of social issues now than it was then. FAR fewer young women I know now would put up with the same levels of sexual harassment than older women I know from the Boomer generation saw as a thing they just had to put up with as a fact of life. It is heartening to see the positive changes overall.