Do you think LGBT characters will feature more prominently?

[eyeresist]

Yes. Having two amazingly hot straight women play-act with a few smooches is actually regressive.

The sexuality of the actors is irrelevant. The better actor should get the job. Plenty of queer actors play straight, and more recently a number of straight actors have played queer. So this is not a matter of unfair discrimination or lack of representation. Straight actors are not taking queer actors' jobs ("Build the wall!" ).

Anyway, I agree that "relationships" have generally been done pretty badly in Trek, but I'd say Julian in DS9 was an exception. His modest attempts at womanising and his pining for Jadzia were part of his character.

 

[borgboy]

Has anybody done a bigender character?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bigender

Burgoyne is one of the main characters in New Frontier novels and is a bigendered alien, and uses non binary pronouns. S/he is a really great character who is funny, highly competent and sexy, with both male and female love interests. S/he is something of a rebel in hir culture because of hir interest in both male and females, while in Hermat culture they generally only accept relationships with other bigendered people.

On another note, I generally find using the word partner to be increasingly old fashioned to describe a same sex relationship. It should either be boyfriend/girlfriend or husband/wife. Partner, as well as other terms like lover, are holdovers from the day when legal marriage wasn't possible. I find it unlikely same sex couples will still be using vague terms like partner in Trek's utopian future.

I personally don't care for the term husband or wife in any relationship. I prefer to think of my husband as my partner. I think by the 26th century those words will be out of date. However I see your point but I would think by that time people would be free to describe their relationship in any terms they wish.

If Trek always used partner instead of husband and wife, that would be kind of neat. But since it's been used extensively over the decades for heterosexuals, it would be pretty bad if they used partner for gays. It implies their relationship is less than a heterosexual marriage since partner doesn't necessarily mean married people.

 

[Mr J]

Do I think LGBT characters will feature more prominently?

Yes. Its 2015. Star Trek needs to catch-up. This isn't innovation, this is just reality.

Even better, nuStar Trek needs to be a pioneer on something as innovative as having Uhura on the bridge in the sixties. Having LGBT characters isn't pioneering any more - its standard.

 

[borgboy]

We need gay characters absolutely.
At this point though, a main character being Muslim would be more controversial, and would very much be in the spirit of TOS showing people descended from former enemy nation working together in peace and friendship.
Not that the Muslim couldn't also be gay.

 

[Jedi_Master]

Yes. Having two amazingly hot straight women play-act with a few smooches is actually regressive.

The sexuality of the actors is irrelevant. The better actor should get the job. Plenty of queer actors play straight, and more recently a number of straight actors have played queer. So this is not a matter of unfair discrimination or lack of representation. Straight actors are not taking queer actors' jobs ("Build the wall!" ).

That wasn't the point. I would not be able to speak to the assertion that "queer actors are not losing jobs to straight actors", but my point was that having two hot straight women love on each other (usually before/after/during sexual relations with a man) has been a staple in pornography and other sexually explicit forms of entertainment for ages and is in no way a "progressive" representation of homosexual relationships.

 

[borgboy]

Yes. Having two amazingly hot straight women play-act with a few smooches is actually regressive.

The sexuality of the actors is irrelevant. The better actor should get the job. Plenty of queer actors play straight, and more recently a number of straight actors have played queer. So this is not a matter of unfair discrimination or lack of representation. Straight actors are not taking queer actors' jobs ("Build the wall!" ).

That wasn't the point. I would not be able to speak to the assertion that "queer actors are not losing jobs to straight actors", but my point was that having two hot straight women love on each other (usually before/after/during sexual relations with a man) has been a staple in pornography and other sexually explicit forms of entertainment for ages and is in no way a "progressive" representation of homosexual relationships.

It's a complicates issue, but I completely agree.
There are of course all types of gay people, but the pairing of two heteronormative looking feminine attractive women is far over represented in sci fi. To pretend that over represented type of pairing isn't done in order to avoid offending their target hetero male audience would be insulting. Society has a bias that two attractive women together are attractive but two men together is treated as repulsive.

 

[Jedi_Master]

Society has a bias that two attractive women together are attractive but two men together is treated as repulsive.

In my opinion, that comes from many decades of using two attractive women as part of a fantasy scenario designed to appeal to a straight man - a straight man who hopes to join in on 'the fun.'

 

[T'Girl]

Yes. Having two amazingly hot straight women play-act with a few smooches is actually regressive.

It's not as clear as you might think, exactly what you mean or are trying to say. When you say "straight women" do you mean the characters or the actresses? Personally I'm not sure what you mean by "play-act" either.

... my point was that having two hot straight women love on each other [snip] has been a staple in pornography and other sexually explicit forms of entertainment for ages and is in no way a "progressive" representation of homosexual relationships.

There would certainly not be anything inapproprate about two women (characters in a story) who are attracted to each other forming a relationship (or some sort) embracing, kissing, or engaging in sexual activity. Since a show is a presentation, this would be seen on screen, or at least suggested to have taken place. Subtly is a option.

Let's face it, if you don't tell the audience about it, it effectively didn't happen.

Now I'm not a "progressive" person, so I can't speak to this being a part of the progressive agenda's representation of homosexual relationships or not. But this is how things happen in real life, pornography isn't the only place we see sexuality. If there is going to be LGBT characters who have romantic or sexual relations, in some way the productions is going to have to say to the audience ...

"Hey look, this is a LGBT character."

 

[JoeZhang]

If there is going to be LGBT characters who have romantic or sexual relations, in some way the productions is going to have to say to the audience ...

"Hey look, this is a LGBT character."

Why is everything so hard for you?

 

[T'Girl]

Society has a bias that two attractive women together are attractive but two men together is treated as repulsive.

Yet a show like Empire (on Fox) is top rated and features a sexually active gay male main character.

Given the percentage of gays in the general population, gays are incapable of making a show top rated all by themselves. General society obviously isn't "repulsed."

.

 

[borgboy]

Society has a bias that two attractive women together are attractive but two men together is treated as repulsive.

Yet a show like Empire (on Fox) is top rated and features a sexually active gay male main character.

True. More diversity is happening, which is great, but sci fi lags behind in LGBT representation, especially when it's not attractive feminine bi/lesbians.

 

[borgboy]

If there is going to be LGBT characters who have romantic or sexual relations, in some way the productions is going to have to say to the audience ...

"Hey look, this is a LGBT character."

Why is everything so hard for you?

I don't see how establishing that a character is gay is any harder than establishing that characters are straight. Within the first two or three episodes TNG pretty clearly established everyone as being straight, by mentioning Beverly's late husband, Troi and Riker's past relationship and everyone managed to show some interest in the opposite sex. Just treat the gay characters the same way. No Pride Parade thru the bridge will be necessary if the writers are even halfway competent.

 

[Jedi_Master]

It's amazingly simple - use the word "wife" or "husband" to describe someone's same-sex partner. "Ensign Manly Manliness' husband was injured recently and he is taking time off to be by his side."

 

[T'Girl]

sci fi lags behind

Might be more accurate to say Star Trek lags behind.

 

[borgboy]

sci fi lags behind

Might be more accurate to say Star Trek lags behind.

I think it's a trend in sci fi in general, which doesn't deny that Trek is still lagging in that aspect.

 

[Awesome Possum]

It's amazingly simple - use the word "wife" or "husband" to describe someone's same-sex partner. "Ensign Manly Manliness' husband was injured recently and he is taking time off to be by his side."

Exactly, even make it a point that the characters don't react to as if it were unusual. The performance itself can say more that actual dialogue that spells it out.

 

[borgboy]

The novels did that in the TNG Section 31 novel Rogue. When Riker is introduced to Hawk's partner (I believe that's the way they were introduced, because I know it was a few years later when Rogue's authors Martin and Mangles introduced the first gay married couple in Trek lit in their Enterprise novels, I had discussed that online with Mangles years ago). When they met Riker had a completely friendly reaction to meeting Keru (who continues to be a supporting character in the Titan novels) and it was obvious that gay couples were a completely normal part of the Trek world.
If the novels could do it over a decade ago I don't see any reason why a tv show now couldn't do it just as well.

 

[T'Girl]

It's amazingly simple - use the word "wife" or "husband" to describe someone's same-sex partner. "Ensign Manly Manliness' husband was injured recently and he is taking time off to be by his side."

Or somewhere like TenForward and one person casually says "Oh that Ensign Manliness's new boyfriend."

All I'm asking is that it isn't so incredible subtle that it's unclear or in doubt.

*************

I was under the impression (I don't follow the novels) that Lt. Hawk wasn't in the Titan novels, having been killed by Worf in First Contact.

.

 

[USS Triumphant]

Personally, I would like it for their to be characters that have relationships with whomever those characters would want to, without defining them as straight or LGBT or whatever - and for nudity or actual sex to not be any larger part of the show than they already have been unless it is honestly essential to the story they are trying to tell.

And I would just love it if one of those stories involved the ship's doctor and/or counselor getting to refer to how people on Earth in the not-too-distant past used to actually identify themselves by their sexual biochemistry like the primitives on some planet they're dealing with, and engage in violence sometimes because of their fear of the different....

But it isn't... because it didn't. It rested on it's laurels. They were still congratulating themselves in the 90's for the first (American) interracial kiss (the one where Kirk was forced against his will to do so).

McCoy and Spock shared an intimacy that went well beyond what any contemporary gay couple could have - although admittedly it wasn't addressed in those terms. TNG had a gender-fluid guest character, and DS9 followed that up with a gender-fluid regular character. Enterprise had a polygamist character. I don't think you're being fair. Could they have done more? Undoubtedly. Could they have done more and managed to get it shown during the time they were filming in? I'm going to give them the credit for knowing where that line was better than we do, looking back and second-guessing from a time after marriage equality has been (more-or-less) achieved in the US and several other first world countries.

 

[T'Girl]

Could they have done more and managed to get it shown during the time they were filming in?

I give TOS a pass on not having a obvious gay character, given the times and all. But with each successive series the absence of such a character become less justifiable.

.