This brings up a question I have pondered for few days after this thread
first came out.
The question is if a character in ST:NG decided to have relations with an
alien, where that alien would be considered closer to a dog or cat (or even
a dolphin), than to a human, would it be considered bestiality if they had
sex with a human? Is the definition of bestiality "to have relations with
another that is not of the same species"? Is it bestiality if the 'beast'
was sentient? Taken from the sentient beast's (Dolphin or NeoChimp) view,
would the human be considered the "beast"?
This scenario appears in _Startide Rising_ (man/woman/dolphin threesome). I
realized that if we do some "uplifting" these questions will become an
issue. I believe that this question changes the definition of Sentience, as
it related to humans.
Any other observations?
Chadster
> -----Original Message-----
> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
> Sent: Monday, January 08, 2001 4:15 PM
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: Re: Star Trek Sexuality
>
>
> Jim writes:
>
> << On Wed, 03 Jan 2001 23:03:35 -0500, JDG wrote:
>
> >I don't buy this at all........ there is an awful lot of sleeping
> >around on Star Trek. Premarital sex is virtually accepted.
> >Abortion is completely accepted. Sleeping with co-workers is
> >completely accepted.
> >
> >All of these represent significant changes.
>
> That's very true. What my original point was that despite, or rather
> *because* of these changes, certain things become interesting by their
> omission, particularly how Star Trek is held up by its fans
> to be, for lack
> of a better expression, the social conscience of the future.
>
> In light of that, I thought it was ironic that in a future
> where romantic
> liasons with aliens (which even today might be called
> miscegenation by some)
> is not uncommon, we've never seen even a peripheral character
> in what is
> these days still often considered an unacceptable relationship.
> >>
>
> I think ST has done what it classically does with touchy
> issues of it's day
> -- that is, hide the real social issue behind the facade of
> alien to human
> and human to alien relationships.
>
> In the 60's the touchy issues were race relationships and
> gender-power. We
> still had mostly caucasians and men in the structure of power in the
> Federation in the old Star Trek, but where ST was progressive
> was it's
> depiction of gender-power and race relationships within alien
> societies.
> Some examples that come to my mind are the episodes where
> Kirk steals the
> Romulan cloaking device and the one where 4 of the crew are
> transplanted to
> the "evil" parallel universe. In the first, we see the
> high-ranking and
> powerful Romulan Commander as an uncaucasian-like woman and
> in the second, we
> see that the captain's mistress and fellow cabalist is an
> un-caucasian-like
> woman.
>
> The idea is to be socially conservative appearing and very
> very progressive
> in substance when you depict aliens, because, after all, we
> lack real aliens
> in our society and it is natural to at once distance the
> touchy issue from
> ourselves by using theatrical alien species and to comment on
> it by implying
> that those touchy issues can be applied to "human" society.
>
> In the Romulan cloaking episode, the Romulan commander
> questions how Spock
> can remain a subordinate to captain Kirk who isn't of the same blood
> relationship as he is to the Romulan commander. Or something
> like that. It
> is the issue of race placed in the realm of the fantastic --
> and placing
> touchy issues into the realm of the fantastic is a theatrical
> trick that has
> been done all the way back to Shakespeare (_The Tempest_) and
> before that to
> writers like Chaucer and whichever angst-ridden person came
> up with Beowulf.
>
> So in the later versions of Trek that came out in the 80's
> and 90's we get
> progressive views on homosexuality and sex in general in
> alien societies, but
> a rather conservative depiction in Federation society. "If a
> 'freak' like
> Neelix can do it, then why not me?" or "I associate more
> with "Spock" and
> "7of9" (one gets it on every 7 years only and the other
> never) anyway, than
> with Kirk or Wesley Crusher!"
>
