At 23:03 03-01-01 -0500, "John D. Giorgis" [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
Ronn's amusing response aside, John, I would say that premarital sex is about
as accepted as can be . . . even many Catholics I know have only mixed feelings
about it, mostly related to responsibility and disease and unwanted pregnancy;
all of those same Catholics I know are in favour of birth control. *grin*
You're probably confused about how I mean "conservative", though, and
understandably (though it's sad that the word seems not to be usable outside or
a partisan context anymore).
>I don't buy this at all........ there is an awful lot of sleeping around
>on Star Trek.
Um, John. There is an awful lot of sleeping around in our world. :) *shrug*
>Premarital sex is virtually accepted.
Whereas in our world, if you do that you end up wandering the village with a
red "S" on your blouse or get hanged, right? Again, I'd say premarital sex is
not seen as abnormal in our culture.
>Abortion is completely accepted.
This is being discussed elsewhere. The only note I want to add is that the
justification of abortion as a defense against unprovoked attack is one of the
weaker but still sometimes used standard arguments in defense of abortion
justified by context. I read a few essays that used the metaphor of unprooked
attack directly. But I didn't see the episode and it seems to be disputed how
much the procedure is "completely accepted". I would say one instance in one
program isn't evidence of this. I also think if they actually used abortion
regularly it would be a colossally badly imagined future -- as if we will
figure out warp drives and FTL but not figure out more effective means of birth
control -- gimme a break.
>Sleeping with co-workers is completely accepted.
I have a lot to say about this below.
>All of these represent significant changes.
Changes from *what*? This really looks a lot like the world we're living in, no
matter how your or my behaviours or values differ from them (except maybe the
coworkers thing, see below). BTW: how often have abortions happened on ST
programs? I can't imagine them happening THAT much.
One thing I should clear up . . . when I said "conservative", Joshua correctly
noted that ST characters seem to have little or no problem with premarital sex.
I should clarify what I meant by conservative: I didn't really mean
conservative like I would call John conservative, I just meant not all that far
from what's accepted by the median of Westerners these days. ie. somewhere in
between the far left and the far right of what I guess we could call "sexual
politics", somewhere between chastity-belts/no-sex-ed and leather-'n'-
bondage/orgies, there's an average contemporary point of view about sex and
sexuality which I think has not a lot of problems with something like
premartial sex, birth control, and *maybe* sleeping with co-workers (ahem,
especially when you're on a spaceship and EVERYONE is a co-worker). The fact
that I've seen people inquiring about whether to pursue a relationship at work
in advice columns [1] several times says that our society does not have any
universal, hard-and-fast guidelines about it (though most columnists I've read
advise against it, usually for the same reasons -- but see below for why I
think this is a special case in the ST universe as we've seen it).
In those terms, when I say "conservative" I just mean, not all that far off
imaginatively, not all that innovative or different, from the generally
accepted mainstream point of view in Western culture today -- except, perhaps,
in its ambivalence about homosexuality which is expressed in its repeated
failure to approach the issue overtly. A conservative extrapolation of
transportation would be peopl driving cars in 2030, as opposed to one in which
people are driving heavily armed hovercars running off fission. The depiction
of sexual politics that persistently omits homosexuality in Star Trek arguably
does or doesn't reflect a parallel lack of enlightenment in the mainstream
point of view that I think ST tries to adhere to. (I don't think my circle of
friends, which includes some homosexuals and a lot of people who are very
supportive of those friends and the issues they face generally, is a good
sample group by which I can attempt to judge the mainstream point of view,
which probably varies from region to region. But optimistically the best I can
say is I think while things are improving, I think the bulk of people I know
are unfortunately happier and more comfortable not thinking about the issues
even if they are not overtly anti-homosexual. And that's me being perhaps
overly optimistic. But I am far from expert on the subject in any case, and I
don't want to deign to try speak for anyone else who might have more informed
points to make than mine.)
By the way, there is one exceptional issue I'd raise: sleeping with co-workers.
*evil grin* I'd like to see Starfleet command actually try to outlaw sex with
co-workers on ships that go on long exploring missions. Wasn't that the basis
of 3 of 4 major Star Trek programs? I know that on ST:TNG they weren't as cut
off from their society, but in all, there was an intensely isolated sense of
things as I recall. Hahaha. You can't even completely stop self-described
heterosexuals from having sex by segregating males from females (such as, say,
in jail, though of course that's kinda different... kinda). In fact, it's
conceviable that Federation conceives of relationships in the ranks the way the
Spartans did, and use it to more tightly weave the crew together and give them
a reason to really struggle for the good of the group. And maybe with less
hangups and individual neuroses, and better mental health generally throughout
the society, the fact that most of those relationships would eventually
dissolve might cause the crew to be saturated with powerful bonds of affection
and closeness rather than fractured by division. *shrug* Now that might be
interesting. But it's hard to say... That's more pure speculation on my part.
Less spectulatively, one could declare it a law of human nature: People are
very likely to have sex, generally. (Well, except the people I meet, *grumble*)
So when you stick them on a spaceship, and isolate them on it, it takes very
little imagination to figure out with whom they will be having this sex.
*shrug* It's as good a reason as any.
[1] For some reason I like reading advice columns... Does anyone else have this
strange curiosity about what issues worry people so much that they're willing
to ask a stranger for advice?
