MemoryAlpha editor refuses to change Adira's Gender to "Non-Binary"

[mdtauk]

Joined Trill have always gone by the gender identity of the current host in canon.

Dax always said things like "I used to be a man"

 

[Court_Vince]

One of the problems with the changes in Memory Alpha, was one of Gender erasure. The decision to remove the Gender section on these pages, is denying Adira's character the gender identity she feels she has.
The problem will always be an unwillingness to accept differences, or trying to ignore it, and choose to pretend it doesn't exist

They*

 

[Renegade54]

And MA has been fine with those guesses so far, but are now going so far as to discard official sources explicitly stating someone's gender as not being sufficient proof. Does that seem fair to you?

Did I say that? Did you read *all* of my other posts, because I think I've made that clear *multiple* times.

To put it bluntly, your policy so far seems to have been tiddies = female, no tiddies = male. And to be fair, it worked because Star Trek hasn't exactly been at the forefront of gender and sexual diversity, but you gotta realize this is not the way to go about these things these days. So maybe instead of trying to somehow extend that and demanding those outside those two groups need to submit a certificate on screen to be acknowledged, maybe rethink it altogether?

Bluntly or not, there's some truth to that, although when I say "secondary sexual characteristics", "tiddies" are only one element of that... "For females, secondary sex characteristics include relative lack of body hair, thicker hair on the head (in some cases), rounded hips/figure, a decreased ability to generate muscle mass at a fast rate, decreased upper body strength, breasts, ability to nurse children, a menstrual cycle, and increased body fat composition." Not all of those are observable in a Trek episode, of course. Voice and pronoun usage also plays into that.

And you're absolutely correct, Star Trek *hasn't* been at the forefront of gender and/or sexual diversity (until, perhaps, now). And the current policies and guidelines *have* sufficed for many years. But, where you seem to get off track, is that we *do* realize things have changed, both in the real world and in Star Trek. And we also realize that our policies need to change to adapt to those changes. And they are changing. I'm here, talking to all of you about it, risking having my ass chewed off. I don't need to do this. I don't get *paid* to do this. I could just say "fuck it" and "fuck you"... but I'm not doing that.

And again... I think we realized that in most cases, we have no on-screen confirmation of the genders assigned to most of the various characters, and that entered into the decision to remove gender from the sidebars.

And please drop the hyperbole... nobody is demanding certification from anyone. All we're looking for is information that meets our current acceptable resource policy rules. Those rules *may* need to be changed, but that doesn't happen overnight. It doesn't mean it won't happen, though.

 

[mdtauk]

They*

corrected

 

[Sci]

Shouldn't all (joined) Trill be a they?

A Joined Trill certainly could be addressed with they/them pronouns if that is how that person wants to be addressed. But both DS9 and DIS have made it pretty clear that Joined Trill can and do adopt gender identities other than non-binary. Jadzia Dax and Ezri Dax both used she/her pronouns (presumably they were cisgender women); Gray Tal was a trans man who used he/him pronouns; and Adira Tal is a nonbinary Joined Human who uses they/them pronouns. So Joined Trill seem to have the same range of gender identities as Humans.

 

[Awesome Possum]

That they don't consider themselves to be a singular entity, which given she has a trill symbiot with another active consciousnesses is an actual, if unlikely given BTS, possibility.

It's still pedantic of the memory alpha people however given we do have BTS info.

So that just shows an extremely poor understanding of Trills and humans. Hardly the people who should be deciding what is and isn’t canon. It’s utterly insane nonsense.

 

[Spike730]

Those rules *may* need to be changed, but that doesn't happen overnight.

But you could employ the same leniency shown in other articles right now.

 

[Guy Gardener]

Uh... No? since the past hosts are usually dead.

If you were a joined host, you have memories of standing up and peeing with a penis and sitting down making a mess with with lady parts.

You'd have sexy memories of penetrating and being penetrated, although anyone in the the real world with an adventurous side can say that these days.

The lives of the previous hosts can be a little confusing bumping around against the new normal.

I imagine Ezri and Jadzia tried to pee standing up every now and then and ruined a bathroom or two.

(Women can pee standing up, but there's a trick to it. It's not something you should try lackadaisically without forethought.)

 

[Awesome Possum]

OK, I understand... it may have not been clear, but Adira's page, when it was originally created, read "Adira Tal was a female Human who...". In fact, iirc, we didn't even know that Adira was bound to a Trill symbiont, so the page was at "Adira" and the first sentence read "Adira was a female Human who..." and all the pronouns were she/her. This was based purely on observation, although we knew from publicity that Adira was non-binary. We figured the writers would reveal the correct gender (non-binary) at some point, but our spoiler policy doesn't let us reveal stuff until it's shown in an episode on-screen. That's the same reason that even if we know ahead of time that, say, a character is going to die, we don't change their status until the episode in which they actually die. Not exactly the same, but close enough.

Along the way, the first sentence was modified to say "Adira Tal was a Human who...", removing female from the text. I'm not sure who did it or when, but keep in mind MA is a wiki, and that page got lots of attention from its inception. I'd have to go back to the page history to see. The sidebar, though, remained as "Gender: Female" for whatever reason; the gender *probably* should have been removed from the sidebar as well at that point, but I don't think it was. Eventually, when Sanctuary aired, we changed the sidebar to read "Gender: Non-binary". That was based purely on the background info and was a bending of our rules so we could both be accurate and meet the desires/wishes/needs/demands of the LGBTQ community, of which we were both aware and sensitive.

"Non-binary" never made it into the first sentence, though, for whatever reason, and we decided to hold off on adding it until an acceptable canon resource confirmed it, leaving it in the sidebar as a compromise. Please understand that when I say "acceptable canon resource" I'm referring to our resource policy, not "what's acceptable to the LGBTQ community" or "what's acceptable to Renegade54" or "what's acceptable to the MA admins" or "what's acceptable to trans/enby/homophobes" (ok, so we'd probably opt instead for "what's unacceptable to trans/enby/homophobes" instead).

Clear? tl;dr?

Someone referring to themselves as they/them means that they are non-binary. Saying that it hasn’t been confirmed in canon is like saying a character who refers to themselves as he/him isn’t a man because they never said they were a man. This is something that has a clear understanding now, it doesn’t need to be spelled out.

 

[Renegade54]

The way they talked about themself when coming out to Stamets.

And once that occurred... for probably the fifth time now... the sidebar data was changed to "Non-binary" and all pronouns were changed to they/them/their.

Again, if you were previously fine guessing without anything on screen and no publicity stuff, why are you so against acknowledging stuff that is explicitly officially confirmed by production staff and actors themselves?

OK, what don't you understand about this? Actors saying stuff is *not* an acceptable resource. Publicity releases from CBS or other production sources are *not* acceptable resources. Certain information from production staff like writers *are* valid, but we have yet to get that. We're doing the best we can with what we have. And before you say something like "your policies are stupid and they suck" or "change your damn policies" or anything like that, all of these policies were crafted and debated and argued over and revised and added to and deleted and whatever by a constantly changing community of VOLUNTEERS over the years. You get that last bit, right? We are all VOLUNTEERS. I spend, just me, probably 30-40 hours a week just on MA, and I have a full time job, and a family, and I love to hike, and watch a bit of Star Trek (and Mandalorian, and The Expanse, and other stuff) here and there, and I love to hike, and, oh, yeah, there's sleeping in there somewhere. MA is a community of VOLUNTEERS that work hard to bring all of you Trekkies a quality encyclopedia... for NO PAY... and there are over 50,000 pages that we have to monitor and keep updated. I'm not whining, I'm not making excuses... I just want you to understand what's what. I *do* understand that this subject is important to not just you, but many others. But you need to understand that I'm a cisgendered heterosexual white male, and for better or worse, that's the lens I'm viewing the world from (I can't speak for the other editors, obviously). That doesn't mean I can't learn, that doesn't mean I don't care, that doesn't mean I don't support you or get angry when someone marginalizes you... it just means that's the basis I'm starting with. I can never understand completely what it is to be trans, or gay, or black, or French, or female... 'cause I'm not any of those things. But I'm willing to listen and learn... and that's all I can do.

 

[Renegade54]

If I understand the talk page before correctly, having the gender in the side bar for any character is something that happened fairly recently in M-A and hadn't existed before.

Close... gender (and a bunch of other variables) we're only added to the sidebar relatively recently, I think a couple of years ago, iirc.

 

[Awesome Possum]

A Joined Trill certainly could be addressed with they/them pronouns if that is how that person wants to be addressed. But both DS9 and DIS have made it pretty clear that Joined Trill can and do adopt gender identities other than non-binary. Jadzia Dax and Ezri Dax both used she/her pronouns (presumably they were cisgender women); Gray Tal was a transman who used he/him pronouns; and Adira Tal is a nonbinary Joined Human who uses they/them pronouns. So Joined Trill seem to have the same range of gender identities as Humans.

Minor nitpick, use trans man instead of transman. It shows that he is man who happens to be trans and not something separate from other men.

 

[Renegade54]

DS9 aired from 1993-1999. Memory Alpha was founded in 2003. ;-)

OK... I'm an idiot, that's my story, and I'm sticking to it!

Like I said, someone made that call early on, and I'd have to dig to find out why. I was before I came on board (in 2005). I can ask if you really want to know and aren't just trying to prove me wrong (like that's so hard to do... just ask my wife).

 

[Sci]

Minor nitpick, use trans man instead of transman. It shows that he is man who happens to be trans and not something separate from other men.

Edit made, and thank you for the correction.

 

[Renegade54]

I remember the '12 Great Houses' of the Klingon Empire being mentioned on the wiki despite there being no canon source for that, long before (I think it was as old as the page itself) it was made canon on Discovery (I brought it up in the talk page and it was removed a few months before DSC aired)

I don't know if Discovery took that info from Memory-Alpha not knowing it was wrong, or if both got it from the same non-canon source.

I don't think there was ever anything about 12 Great House... at least not on the Great House page. Until DIS aired, there wasn't a finite number, just a listing of the know Houses. Since DIS, it's listed as being 24 Great Houses total.

 

[Angry Fanboy]

Fucking hell how is this even a thing!?

If the sidebar has Picard listed as 'male' and Janeway as 'female' just stick Adira down as 'non-binary' if that's how they want to be known! What harm is it doing? Will society as we know it come crashing down because we acknowledge that a secondary character in Star Trek Discovery doesn't fit into the categories we've used up to now?

Things change. Just gotta roll with it sometimes!

 

[Renegade54]

So... can't we make exceptions? esp in cases like these where there's alot BTS material that backs it up?

I can't make that call... it'd have to be a consensus on MA. You're certainly most welcome to posit that on the talk page, though, and it could be brought up for a discussion and vote.

 

[Renegade54]

If the sidebar has Picard listed as 'male' and Janeway as 'female' just stick Adira down as 'non-binary' if that's how they want to be known! What harm is it doing? Will society as we know it come crashing down because we acknowledge that a secondary character in Star Trek Discovery doesn't fit into the categories we've used up to now?

OMFG... that's exactly what it was. <smh>

 

[Renegade54]

So that just shows an extremely poor understanding of Trills and humans. Hardly the people who should be deciding what is and isn’t canon. It’s utterly insane nonsense.

Huh??

 

[Tuskin38]

Since DIS, it's listed as being 24 Great Houses total.

Whoops that's what I meant, 24 Great Houses.
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Talk:Great_House#twenty-four_great_houses.3F