CHEKOV: I didn’t think Mister Scott would go for the brainy type. SULU: I don’t think he’s even noticed she has a brain. Star Trek, “The Lights of Zetar”
The 50th anniversary has me rewatching ST:TOS episodes I haven’t watched in their entirety for decades. It’s really hitting me more than ever what a strange middle ground women occupied in the series. They’re present, they have important jobs, but they’re routinely portrayed as unreliable, weak, and childish – not to mention, sexual distractions. Sure, Mira Romaine mentally resists the Zetarians, but only with a whole lot of condescending pep talks from men – and the reason the aliens target her in the first place is that she’s mentally “pliant” (i.e. weak and easily controlled).
In other words, women are not actually the people you’d want in these important jobs, so there’s this weird cognitive dissonance in the message regarding women. They belong here, but they’re a liability. How can both be true? Without having really articulated it, this contradiction plagued me as a young fan. There were female characters, but they weren’t who I wanted be like at all. I did not want to be the liability.
It probably explains a lot about me, actually. Today, it matters so much to me to always be seen as strong, capable, and as good as, because I was raised in a culture that consistently cast me as not those things. I see slippery slopes everywhere. One wrong step toward othering and objectification, and we’ll end up right back in that terrible, marginalized place. Maybe it’s paranoia, but of course, I don’t think so. I just think it’s a lesson of history.
