Things that don’t exist, but should:
Tag Archives | Feminism
Disjunction Dysfunction
Here are two facts that you’ll already know if you’re a Star Trek fan. But have you put the two together before?
1. “The Cage,” Gene Roddenberry’s original Star Trek pilot episode, featured a female first officer on the Enterprise, known only as Number One. The network, skittish about having both such a prominent female character and that demonic-looking alien named Spock, told Roddenberry he had to lose one or the other. Roddenberry chose to keep Spock and dump Number One.
2. In “Lethe,” the sixth episode of the current series Star Trek: Discovery, Sarek learns that although both his half-human son Spock and his adopted human daughter Michael Burnham (who will later be first officer on the Shenzou) have qualified for the Vulcan Expeditionary Force, the leaders of the VEF are leery of Sarek’s “experiments” rearing “not-quite-Vulcans,” and so have decided that they will accept only one, not both. They leave the choice up to Sarek, who decides to let Spock rather than Michael get the post.
I just now put these two facts together for the first time. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that twice someone is forced to choose between Spock and a female first officer, and chooses Spock. I feel pretty certain that the fictional choice in Discovery was a reference to Roddenberry’s real-life choice. I haven’t see anyone else comment on this.
Unmoored
One of our majors, Katie Kirk, has an op-ed on Roy Moore in the New York Times today. (Or the New York Times, if you really prefer.) Congratulations, Katie!
Alt-White Charlottesville
This piece is useful for noting a) the success of private boycotts, direct action, etc., against the Charlottesville racists, as well as b) the shocking revelation that racists are also sexists.
Note also white nationalists’ fondness for the slogan “Blood and Soil.” Who knew?
We Can Only Hope
13th Doctor announcement, part 1:
13th Doctor announcement, part 2:
One fan’s reaction to watching part 2:
My daughter watching the #DoctorWho announcement. #doctor13 #DoctorWho13 pic.twitter.com/eX0w1rW4E9
— 🏳️🌈Jenny Trout (@Jenny_Trout) July 16, 2017
Farewell to St. Paul’s
For a long time, one of my most idyllic memories has been of the summer of 1980, which I spent in the St. Paul’s School Advanced Studies Program in Concord NH.
Now it turns out that St. Paul’s has been a hotbed of sexual abuse against students for decades, with at least 23 faculty members (and possibly as many as 34 – at a school where the total number of faculty is only slightly over 100) being guilty of everything from “clear boundary crossings to repeated sexual relationships to rape” – and with the administration having been despicably (though, alas, not atypically) recalcitrant and blame-the-victim-ish in addressing the problem for many years. Some of the named perpetrators are faculty I’d remembered with fondness from my time there.
Well, there’s that memory tainted. Ugh.
I always thought that someday when I could afford to, I’d donate money to St. Paul’s. Well, I still can’t afford to, but if I could – sorry guys, nope.