Queer Questions

Star Trek: The Next Generation episode Galaxy's Child follows Geordi through a rough meeting with Dr Brahms, a woman whose likeness he utilized in a holodeck program to bounce ideas off of to solve problems. Geordi developed strong feelings for the holodeck version and was caught off guard when the real woman did not meet his imagined version. Among the characteristics which the computer failed to accurately replicate was her marital status: married. However, when she begins to tell Geordi that his knowledge of her is blind in some areas, I assumed she was going to say that she was into women.

And I was kind of put off, to be honest, to discover that her big secret was a totally hetero, totally normal marriage. Actually, lately I've been thinking a lot about homosexuality as portrayed by Hollywood. One day, will society look back on all the heterosexual actors playing queer parts with the same disdain we view blackface? Probably not. But there must be plenty of gay actors who aren't landing parts while straight actors play take those roles. Then again, I don't actually know anything about the sexual proclivities of Ms Portman or Ms Kunis.

Now, Star Trek isn't as into hetero-normative monogamous sexuality as most tv shows. Sci-Fi in general is pretty cool when it comes to things like sexual mores. Star Trek just likes to take things to places where society is not always mature enough to handle. So interracial kisses, couples, marriage and copulating? Check. Heck, there were inter-species offspring in the first episode. Polyamorous relationships and marriages? Check. But Star Trek has been pathetic when it comes to queer relationships. Nimoy was cheering Roddenberry on when he wanted to include LBGT crew members. His exact quote was that such characters should "appear unobtrusively aboard the Enterprise — neither objects of pity nor melodramatic attention." Of course, the cast is full of queer heroes but no characters. Which is something I have to keep remembering when I watch the show. Yeah, Takei and Goldberg played important characters but the actors were the queer ones, not the characters.

There is some flirtation with homosexuality. Dr Crusher falls in love with an alien that lives inside of a host body. Initially, the body is that of a male but that body dies and is replaced by a female. Crusher says she cannot continue the relationship not because of the female body but because of the never ending change of host bodies. I actually thought it was the parasite/host relationship that bugged her but since she does not say that, I have nothing but my own feelings to attribute this to. Of course, there is also the great episode The Outcast.

So why no really gay characters? Stupidity, fear and intimidation I guess. I often wonder if someone can actually be into science fiction and also be homophobic but I am afraid I might be a victim of No True Scotsmanism.

Star Trek: The Next Generation: The Child

Women's Rights in the 24th Century


In this episode, Counselor Troi becomes impregnated by an unknown being. The fetus develops rapidly, completing full gestation in two days. The rate of growth seems to increase since the child ages 4 years in the following day. The child later is revealed to be a problem because he emits a radiation that causes a plague virus to grow (the virus is needed to make a cure).

When the captain becomes aware of her pregnancy, he calls a meeting of the heads of staff, Warf, Data, Dr Polaski (Dr Crusher is not on board), Geordi etc to determine what is to be done. About her pregnancy, her pregnancy. A conversation begins about the danger the potential fetus may threaten, if terminating the pregnancy would harm Troi, when they should terminate, what loss to science an abortion would be. Troi, meanwhile, has been forgotten. No one asks her what she wants for her body, her child. Even in a world of acceptable abortion, she is not given a choice. But she takes the choice for herself and decides to carry the fetus to term and raise the child. That is the right to choose, not only to choose abortion but also to choose to carry a fetus to term.

Gender Neutrality in the 24th Century

To Boldly Go*

I have embarked on epic marathon of Star Trek: The Next Generation. It seems that our Tivo has recorded 42 episodes of Star Trek over the weekend which is beginning to threaten our ability to record other shows. I actually have only 38 episodes to watch since I saw a few of them recently during my New Years marathon. For every episode, I like to watch the title sequence, even if I already heard it 8 times that day. One of my favorite things about The Next Generation is the subtle change in the sequence, from "no man" to "no one."

I often wonder if people who make fun of trekkies ever know what they are making fun of. Is it the cheesiness or some of the plots or the magic of warp drive? Well, probably not the latter. But I love that science fiction has pressed progress in gender, race, and sex equality. It is a small change but now the opening title, the journey to go boldly into the unknown, includes women. I am sure people will say that "man" is used in the sense of "mankind" but there is no ambiguity in "no one". Star Trek lore also claims that the change was not only for the sake of gender neutrality but also species neutrality.

*Yeah, the split infinitive ("to boldly go" instead of "to go boldly" or "boldly to go") bugs me and my grammar loving, Latin-studying background. Part of me also thinks that he rule against split infinitives is rather an archaic one that is no longer problematic in English.

Prop 8 and Inescapable Gender

I meant to post this the day Prop 8 got the smack down. This is from an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation called The Outcast. It features a species of beings, the J'naii, that have no sex or gender, everyone is one sex. However, some people feel as if they belong to one gender. Soren asks Riker and Dr. Crusher about the sexual and social differences between males and females and which one has power over the other. Crusher states that both sexes/genders are equal but Worf contradicts her in the next scene. He labels a card game as a woman's game because too many cards are wild, the strength of his hand is never certain. However, Worf seems to overcome some of his prejudices (if not all) when he volunteers to help Riker rescue Soren. Maybe I am wrong and he is just willing to rescue Soren because she is a woman and that part makes sense to him. I wonder if the annihilation of sex was in part an attempt to make all equal without having the nagging problems of gender and sexism.



Jonathon Frakes stated that the episode needed to go further, since all the actors who played the J'naii were female. He wanted Soren played by a male so that their kiss could push boundaries the way the original series did when Uhura and Kirk kissed. Others have commented that having an all female caste to play the androgynous species made them look like fascist lesbians and man-haters. Not at all what I thought. I must have misread some of the actors, though, since there was on J'naii who I assumed was played by an actor with male reproductive organs.

While the episode did fail to make up for the lack of positive queer characters, I think it did hit some important parts. This episode was obviously about queer rights. Soren mentioned how she snuck around, meeting others who felt gendered as male, having relationships with them but always keeping it a secret. If her speech were taken out of context, it would make a very beautiful speech against homophobia. My one real criticism is that Soren is "fixed" by the psychotherapy. I could not be fixed by psychological manipulation into being a lesbian, asexual, or transgendered. Well, if someone gave me a penis and removed my mammary glans, I probably would be transgendered. I simply am hetero and female and a woman.

In any event, this post is for Eric and for Tawny and for anyone else who was ever told that their love was wrong or who had their love denied them.

Science Fiction and Sex: Incest

Since I began this primer on sex in science fiction, I keep going back to a conversation I had with a friend of mine. It happened unexpectedly when I was walking home from work late at night. The conversation lasted less than 5 minutes and it was among the most bizarre conversations I have had. Life always seems to happen when we are preoccupied, doesn't it? I find it a little irritating that so many important conversations take place outside, in the cold, underneath a street light. We talked about the taboo of incest, why we feel so immediately disturbed by it, if it is just a culturally built thing. You may have noticed in one of my other posts that, to me, the taboo of incest is just an evolutionary trait that keeps the gene pool sufficiently mixed and viable. Here was his premise:

Suppose a brother and sister, both adults, have a very close relationship. They decide they would like to have sex to deepen their relationship. They use contraceptives so that she will not become pregnant. No one else knows about it. No one is hurt by it. And there is no offspring. Is it wrong?

If you are like me, your mind screams that of course it is wrong. But why? I have stated my claim of evolution and yet I know it is wrong. Incest happens all the time, in many species. Definitions of incest vary from culture to culture, with some societies considering taboo what other societies accept as normative. Levi-Strauss suggested that the discouragement of incest was a social force. Marriage and offspring form strong bonds and social networks. Forming such alliances strengthens communities by linking up several members of families. A marriage is not just between two people but also their families, the in-laws they join.

Think of times when incest was common. European and Egyptian royalty come to my mind. Marriage between close relatives, even half-siblings was common. Such close marriages keep material wealth and power concentrated. A pharaoh and his half sister need not worry about an interloper or concubine staking her claim since the half sister is the first wife, through whom inheritance is determined. In a situation where one person has multiple spouses, the sibling-spouse may be merely a figure of power and not a source of reproduction.

For reasons beyond my comprehension, many sci-fi books set in the future involve the political intrigue of feudal lords and ruling classes. With such concern over power and wealth, marriage is often a dangerous game. It threatens the stability of the family as well as the government. In other cases, alien species may reproduce in a manner different from our which renders concepts such as siblings, family and incest null. While the narrator or a character may seek to justify this, do not be misled - the author includes this element to make you uncomfortable, to make you distrust and dislike certain characters, and to make you put a wall between yourself and the incestuous persons.

Science Fiction and Sex: Dimorphism

Males are taller, more muscular and hairier. Women are smaller, have a higher percent body fat and less hairy. Peacocks are bright and flashy; peahens are dull and brown. Female angler fish are large with a funny lantern projecting for their heads; male angler fish are teeny tiny. These sex-based differences are call dimorphisms. The most common cause of dimorphism is sexual selection.

When mates are determined by members of the same sex (usually males) competing for a mate, ornamentation distinguishes the sexes. For example, larger antlers become more attractive. The antlers are not really for fighting, at least not fighting to the death. If species really had death-matches, there would be very few viable mates next season. Aside from drawing attention to oneself, ornaments, especially those that are detrimental to their bearer, are signs that the possible mate can survive with such handicaps. These ornaments also take extra energy to grow and support. The greater the ornament, the more fit its possessor must be to survive.

The Sexy Son Hypothesis (I'm not making this up!) is based on the idea that a female will seek in her mate the best genes for her own son. If her son is well endowed, he will be more likely to reproduce and pass along his genes. Essentially, sex appeal becomes its own reason to exist. This is essentially the much-abused "selfish gene."

There is some relationship between the amount of dimorphism and the number of sexual partners in species. However, while these are fun to consider and wonder about, there is not enough to say that one causes the other, or that they are even positively correlated. However, if you are an evolutionary biologist focuses in dimorphism, please get back to the lab and get me some answers!

When thinking about evolution, most people remember natural selection, but sexual selection is just as important, especially when an animal looks weird, like the hairless ape.

Science Fiction and Sex: Sexual Mores

All societies have standards and expectations the govern sexual behaviours. These standards include consent, sex as it relates to marriage, fidelity, number of partners, identity and status of partners, diseases, incest, rape. Some of these we feel are innate laws that create better, healthier, stronger, fitter offspring. For example, incest is a taboo in society but it is also dangerous for a species as inbreeding increases the likelihood of passing on bad genes. However, sex as related to marriage, fidelity, number of partners, etc, are considerations for the society in which one lives.

It is safe to assume that any science fiction novel that mentions sex (and there are a lot of them!) will challenge their society's expectation of sexual mores. The heyday of pulp science fiction occurred at a time when pre-marital sex and promiscuity were becoming more widely practiced, if not socially acceptable. Oral contraceptives reduced the risk of unwanted pregnancy leading to unwanted prolonged attachments (ie shotgun weddings). Control over fertility offered women the opportunity to engage in sex without the risk of becoming pregnant which allowed women the same sexual freedom that men enjoyed. Cars provided young lovers a place to experiment outside of the public eye. The hippy generation brought its ideals of free lover and experimentation.

Sex is taboo. Sex is everywhere. Sex sells. Sex kills. It is appropriate that English lacks a neutral term for it. Sex, intercourse, coitus - these are all clinical terms. Making love is positive. Screwing is negative. There is just no word for it that would not cause someone else to blush or blanch. We joke about it. We use words for reproductive organs as insults. We can't get enough of it and we a terrified of the consequences. Anything that a society obsesses about is rich fodder for science fiction.

Science Fiction and Sex: Reproduction

Reproduction can be either sexual or asexual. Sexual reproduction produces offspring that are similar but not identical to their parents. Asexual reproduction creates either identical or very similar offspring. Slight variation and mutations are possible from both types of reproduction. There are two common methods of reproducing. One in which few offspring are created, usually nurtured for a time. The other method involves producing many offspring, most of whom die shortly after death.

Humans, generally, reproduce by the hot and sweaty method that leads to a live birth. Sterile procedures, like in vetro fertilization, take some of the hot and sweaty work out of the beginning but the giving birth to a tiny human being is always messy. Some people may question my use of "live birth" but I only want to distinguish this from laying an egg, which is birth to a live thing (sorta) but generally has less blood and cursing. Giving birth is a dangerous thing. For a really, really long time, we're talking thousands of years, most women died in child birth. And most children died, too. Not a pretty picture but it is the harsh reality. Our method takes a lot of energy and years of nurturing.

Some species give birth or lay a clutch of eggs and are basically done. The basic relationship is the more intelligent and the less instinct equals fewer babies and vice versa. Going small is a great way for certain species, but it is not for everyone. When we imagine aliens, we tend to imagine ourselves but hairless and slimy or with lots of arms or with an enormous sloping forehead, one eyed, and laying a small clutch of eggs (or is that just me?). Occasionally, you get what corporate think tanks like to call "thinking outside of the box", or womb in this case. District 9 features aliens which lay/create pods/eggs from which their young are born. Actually, the details are not mentioned but they do not give birth. However, they do have small numbers of children, perhaps due to the humans aborting the fetuses. But they do nurture their young for several years.

Ender's Game features a species of sentient insects who share a collective mind that is controlled by the queen. Like in bees, queens lay numerous eggs over her lifetime. Because the hive thinks as one, nurturing is unnecessary. However, the queens are said to nurture their successors and collaborate with them. In essence the hive is the extended body of the queen's mind which is nurtured by her mother.

Science Fiction and Sex: Gender

Gender is culturally based, socially constructed in humans. Gender determines, to a large extent, the societal role of a person. In most societies, the gender is assigned according to the sex of a the person: Male->Men->Masculinity and Female->Woman->Femininity. Gender has made into social role binaries, in which one gender is defined by opposing the other. Gender is fluid, changing from culture to culture and over time.

But that is all pretend, or only barely true. Many works of science fiction challenge our modern understanding and acceptance of gender. Ursula Le Guinn, hero of gender and sex challenges, explores gender in The Dispossessed. On one planet, Anarres, sex still exists in that there are male and female, but gender is not stereotyped. The protagonist views females as equals and partners. He does not ignore their sex but he does not judge by it. When he travels to Urras, he finds it difficult to accept the limited power women accept and the way men look down upon the women. The people of Urras often challenge his assertions of equality as they cannot believe it is possible for women to be valued as equal to men.

In The Handmaid's Tale, the society is taken to the opposite extreme of Anarres. In response to supposed Muslim attacks on women, theocratic men take control of the government, creating a society based on literal understanding of the Bible, especially the Hebrew Bible. Women are forbidden from owning money and property and from reading. Abortions are illegal. They are expected to be subservient housewives who defer to their husbands and bear them children. Due to ecological collapse and nuclear waste, many people have become sterile. However, absence of children are blamed on the women and never on men. Women are forced to be segregated in society. Sex/Gender can be identified by the color and design of clothing. Homosexuals are called "gender traitors." Sterile women (not wives) are either: sent to colonies to die a slow death; Aunts, who control and train handmaids; Marthas who do domestic work; Jezebels, sex workers; or Econowives, who are expected to fulfill all the roles of a woman. Women who are sterile, widows, divorcees, feminists, lesbians, etc are called "Unwomen."

The stakes are always high when it comes to gender. When gender is considered the same as sex, it is difficult for anyone to step outside of their assumed role. Science fiction explores gender either by presenting a society which is free from modern gender issues or by presenting a society which has pushed those issues to the breaking point of humanity.

Science Fiction and Sex: Sex

In species which reproduce sexually, sex describes the characteristics that distinguishes reproductive roles. For example, humans have two sexes, male and female. Some species are all hermaphroditic, possessing gametes, which in other species have become two sexes.

Some species have three sexes. Take ants for example. There is a queen, a female capable of producing offspring. There are males, who live short lives; their sole duty is to inseminate non-related queens. And then there are all the other ants, worker ants and soldier ants, cemetery ants and nurse ants. These are almost female, would be females, but their reproductive organs do not mature. They remain preadolescences, tweens.

Or consider wrasses. There are many varieties and species of the wrasse and some of them are quite special. Imagine a fish harem, one male and many females, but all the offspring are females. What to do when the male dies? The most dominant of the female fishes changes sex and becomes the new harem leader. You may remember this as a plot element regarding the DNA of some frogs from Jurassic Park.

Finally, lets consider slugs. Slimy, slick, covered in mucus, terribly elegant slugs! Most, not all, are hermaphrodites, possessing both sex organs, able to sire and birth offspring.

These are just some of the possibilities. I am sure the sexual and asexual world have produced many lovely varieties. Ursula Le Guin, the first lady of ambiguity and duality, has imagined another possibility. In The Left Hand of Darkness, the Gethians spend most of their life sexually neutral except for two or three days a month called kemmer. During kemmer, a person goes into heat and must find another person who is entering kemmer, although some avoid others if they have mated for life after their partner dies. Any person can become either sex. Like the slugs, they are capable of both siring and birthing children. There are some who, like us, are trapped in a permanent state of kemmer, living their entire life as a single sex. They are called perverts but are an integral part of a religious rite of insight.

Being between two genders, trapped in a sex, being of one sex and the none-correlated gender, is often considered freakish when it is non-normative. However, these in-between people are often considered to have special religious insight because of the ambiguity of the identity.

Science Fiction and Sex: Sexual Behaviour

Since humans are intelligent, very social animals, they engage in sexual behaviours for social, non-productive reasons. Sex, for humans and other social species, can be divided into reproductive, recreational and relational.

In most western societies, sex play is repressed in children and adolescents. Knowledge of sex is considered improper for children. In the United States, most people lose their virginity (have their first act of coitus or intercourse) at the age of 16 or 17. The age varies somewhat by country since different countries and states have different age of consent and expectations. While some humans have sex with only one person throughout their lives, most engage in sexual activity with multiple partners. Ever since President Clinton asked for a definition of "the", what constitutes sex has been greatly debated. Let's be adults about this. Sex includes a variety of activities that stimulate and give physical pleasure to one or more persons.

In science fiction, the type and frequency of sexual behaviours often vary from out own society. In Brave New World and The Dispossessed children freely engage in sexual play, not necessarily intercourse, as part of their socializing education. Sex with multiple partners at one time (an orgy) is common in science fiction novels. In Brave New World and Strange From A Strange Land, orgies are part of religious communion and rites.

Homosexuality may be more common, maybe even normal (shock and awe, right?). The Dispossessed features homosexual and heterosexual persons engaging in both types of relationships. While a person may seek partners of their preferred sex(es), they may have partners of either sex, especially when younger. And, of course, one can just as easily be bisexual, I would assume/hope.

In some futuristic plots, sex is outlawed due to the spread of sexually transmitted diseases and /or control of the population. In Demolition Man, sex is preformed through simulators. Since it has been removed from physical engagement and the possibility of pregnancy, sex is exchanged more freely and with less sentiment than it is presently. The society in Brave New World separates sex from reproduction as well since all women either take contraceptives or are sterile. Sex becomes recreational and each citizen is expected to have sex with many partners.

I am sure there is some sci-fi, maybe Catholic Sci-Fi, in which the recreational element has been removed and sex is purely for reproductive purposes, but I've yet to read any of that.
The Handmaid's Tale features sex which is for reproductive purposes only. The Handmaid is the surrogate for the wife and copulates with the husband only to conceive. Sex is considered unpleasant and distateful for women. I can think of a few reasons why I would agree if I lived in that society.

There is a description of such sex which some may find offensive. If you would like to read it, highlight the blank white space below.

"My red skirt is hitched up to my waist, though no higher. Below it the Commander is fucking. What he is fucking is the lower part of my body. I do not say making love, because this is not what he's doing. Copulating too would be inaccurate, because it would imply two people and only one is involved. Nor does rape cover it: nothing is going on here that I haven't signed up for."

Science Fiction and Sex: Dismbiguation

Sex and science fiction are strange but frequent bedfellows. Science fiction has been compared to pornography, in that it is difficult to define both but you know it when you see it. Kurt Vonnegut once said that what pornography and science fiction had in common wasn't sex but fantasies of an impossibly hospitable world. Actually, he was referring to his surrogate Kilgore Trout, in God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater. And he was wrong, about science fiction at least. Which I suppose means that I am wrong since I always remember the quote incorrectly.*

Sex is inescapable in science fiction . . . rather like reality, I suppose. It is complicated, consuming, distressing, satisfying; it can bring people together and tear them apart. Nothing new. But just about everything is up for debate and change. Before we begin exploring anything, I want to set up some terms. I will probably slip back into using regular connotations, but I will try my best to keep these terms true for this exploration.

Sci-Fi Sex Ed
Sexual Intercourse and Behaviours
I will try to use the proper terms for sexual acts, reproductive or otherwise.

Sex
In species which reproduce sexually, sex describes the characteristics that distinguishes reproductive roles.

Gender
Sex and gender are not the same and do not have a 1:1 correlation.

Reproduction
Reproduction is the process in which offspring is created.

Sexual Mores
All societies have standards and expectations the govern sexual behaviours. These standards include consent, sex as it relates to marraige, fidelity, number of partners, identity and status of partners, diseases, incest, rape.

Dimorphism
Sexual dimorphism is the difference between sexes. It includes both physical (size, color, pattern, etc) and behavioural (aggression, investment in parenting).

*I sometimes wonder if this is true, even if I got the quote wrong. A universe that includes numerous sentient species, capable of reaching each other, communicating, etc, seems impossibly hospitable to me.