Huge thanks! Pledge drive wrapup

My circumstances make me unable to donate, but this blog saved my soul back when I discovered it. Necessities of work were leaving me drowning in a misogynistic stew (not mine, I just had to deal with it), and the mockery here was a lifeline that got me through it (as well as being educational).

So, you know, thanks.

My experience of wading through this bilious nonsense only lasted a month or so, but it was enough to give me a sense of what you must endure as you delve into it, and my hat is off to your endurance.

I now declare this an Official David Appreciation GIF Thread. Anyone got some good applauding cats?

Not a gif but…

http://www.incuboom.com/global/images/article/XTABKMb.png

Question: is there any way to donate completely anonymously? I’ve been wanting to donate, but I’m also paranoidvery private.

@Red. Ask David for my email.

OT, but I felt like sounding off on it. I’ve mentioned I’ve been playing Star Trek Online, and as part of the immersion, been revisiting the old Star Trek series I’ve watched and I watched one episode of Voyager last night that I completely forgot about, but has not exactly aged well.

(TW: Obvious rape allegories ahead)

The gist of the fourth season episode “Retrospect” is that a weapons trader is on board Voyager and immediately comes into conflict with Seven of Nine. She then starts having anxiety attacks in Sick Bay and the Doctor thinks she’s been assaulted by somebody. Using tech-tech, he dredges up memories that the weapons trader forcibly extracted nanoprobes from her. The Doctor becomes her biggest advocate, demanding accountability. Janeway orders an investigation, which is apparently enough for weapons trader guy to be ruined. Evidence piles up, but it’s quickly determined there’s innocent explanations for it all, but WTG makes a run for it. His stupid attempt at escape ends up blowing him up, and so everybody feels bad at making a false allegation and killing the poor menz, I mean guy. Doc feels responsible, the end.

Watching it in 2018, I was like “Okay, this doesn’t exactly play well in the #MeToo moment.” But as a very well written blog pointed out, in the 90s, the McMartin Preschool incident and the satanic panic of the 80s was still fresh in people’s minds. If the episode had been better crafted, it could have worked well for that purpose (much like the TNG episode “The Drumhead”), but this one has such a ridiculous conceit that stacks the deck against WTG and the allegory to rape is far too obvious that its conclusion comes off as hideously reactionary.

Michelle Erica Green summarizes it as:

Seven experiences a brutal assault, then is told that she’s confused, she can’t be trusted, she’s made Janeway and the Doctor bring false charges, she’s responsible for destroying a man’s life. For weeks we’ve been listening to Janeway and the Doctor tell Seven that, if she wishes to be accepted by humans, she must become more compliant, more ingratiating, more accepting of what other people tell her, and here we see exactly what happens when a woman is told to shut up and become what someone else wants her to be. We share directly as viewers in her experience, for we witness her flashbacks. The episode succeeds solely in one way, which is why it should come with a trigger warning: it forces an audience to share the anguish and horror of the victim of an assault as she is first forced to recall the details and face her abuser, then told that she’s wrong and the abuser’s life is more important than her own.

And as that blog points out, a lot of Voyager was hideously reactionary. A lot more than I thought when I watched it originally. I was just in it for the fun space adventure, but there’s some troubling subtext in several episodes.

I recommend those reviews if you’re into Star Trek, because whoever writes it brings all the cultural context and behind-the-scenes stuff to the fore. Possibly some of the best reviews I’ve seen since SFDebris.

@Katamount, @Moon_custafer

Patriarchy loves it some false dichotomies, because they’re very effective propaganda tools.

My fave example is “Welcome to the Monkey House” by Kurt Vonnegut, where he sets in opposition to an authoritarian sex-hating society… a serial rapist, who “liberates” women by raping them (and in the story this actually works because Vonnegut). It’s a bunch of 60s Harlan Ellison style edgelord crap, but it’s also IMO just reversing the old trope where tyranny and control are the only answer to depravity.

The real answer to both is consent culture and treating women as human beings, but good luck getting most men to internalize that, right? 🙁

@Who?

For me, Voyager was a very hit-or-miss experience, even when I was watching it in the 90s. Some of the goofier pulpier fare was fun popcorn stuff, but when it was at its full retrograde self (I’m sure Jeri Ryan looooved the costume department), it was eye-rollingly out of touch and patronizing.

I’m thinking of that other episode “Displaced” which is almost a literal telling of that stupid “Great Replacement” fantasy, where Voyager crewmembers are systematically replaced by members of an alien race, which is at first thought to be an anomaly by both groups, but once the aliens outnumber the crew, the aliens reveal it’s their way of hijacking starships. When I first saw that episode as a kid, the subtext washed over me, but watching it as an adult in 2018… yeah, not having my space adventure show go all tiki-torch on me, even for 45 minutes of television.

@ Who?

I remember a DS9episode that had a simillar masage as the asumed mesage of the Voyep (no about rape).
It was about an asumed warcriminal, who in the end was found inocent (he lied because he still feeled guilt), but was killed nevertheless.
I don’t remember the title of the episode but that was a better version of the intended mesage.

It’s called “Duet“, and it’s a depressing but powerful episode, with an excellent performance by Harris Yulin as the Cardassian who makes himself the scapegoat for his entire planet.

@Jane Done:

At least two major characters on the 60’s live-action Batman (both–regrettably but unsurprisingly–villains) were played by actors of color: Cesar Romero’s Joker and Eartha Kitt’s Catwoman. Both had the advantage of portraying characters who–unlike a distressing number of genre villains–had not originated as racial stereotypes.

@Full Metal Ox:

I’ve been wondering if Kitt was slyly playing Catwoman as a Black Panther – I googled the movement and it was founded the same year as the Batman TV show and a couple of years before she took on the role; and her first episode begins with her attacking the (as far as I can tell) all-white Gotham Fashion Association with a chemical bomb that does them no harm, but turns their hair frizzy.

@Full Metal Ox: Oh that’s cool, yeah it’s a show that’s aged surprisingly well.