Michael Burnham and Pon Farr...

[TrickyDickie]

After reading posts in this thread, I decided to read this about the human menstrual cycle:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Menstrual_cycle

The thing that stands out there is an omission:

What about the women who basically ignore pheromones and all of that and who are attracted to someone by personality alone? And men who also ignore biological cues and do the same?

It would seem that group was entirely left out of those studies that are discussed, because they are not even mentioned.

'Mind over body' is always part of the mix and if it is completely left out of a study, the results of the study are going to be skewed and not of particular value.

 

[Marynator]

How would that work with Pon Farr? Michael spend less than twenty years with Vulcans, that's hardly enough time to adopt a behavior pattern that covers a seven year period.

And like anyway, behavior patterns aren't the same thing as physiological needs, like even I've said she might have some regard for like cultural and ceremonial parts, but she won't have her biological effect that's driving it all, right? She's still an outsider to them, like a man who thinks menstruation is purely behavioral about "mood swings" and doesn't understand what's going on inside, you know what I mean?

 

[Timo]

Oh but in Star Trek it can! We know Vulcans and Romulans are really very different, like remember Beverly couldn't tread her Romulan patient using Vulcans, because they're too different? He was more compatible with a Klingon!

That's just it - the difference between Vulcans and Romulans didn't count for zip. It was a case of there being something specific to this individual Romulan, such as a blood group in humans, but nothing specific to the Romulan species. Many Romulans would have been incompatible donors, too, and all the Vulcans aboard the E-D happened to be, even though many Vulcans elsewhere might have been compatible (or else why would Crusher have tested "her" Vulcans in the first place?).

"The Enemy" is not a good case for or against Vulcans and Romulans being identical or different, because the whole issue is hidden beneath the overall similarity of all humanoids, regardless of species.

Which in turn is explained in "The Chase" as a deliberate genetic trick, an apparent effort by those ancient humanoids to promote humanoid existence everywhere in the Milky Way not just by creating further humanoids, but by making sure they could have happy sex together.

No, you can't, unless you'e going to grow some ovaries and a uterus.

Bullshit - any actor can play a role.

We're just talking about apples and oranges here. Or appleseed and apples. You don't need the former to paint a still life featuring the latter.

Menstruation isn't a behavior pattern

It manifests as one. Just like pon farr manifests as lots of ballistic plomeek soup. And this is the only thing that would matter, were Michael Burnham suddenly to suffer from pon farr. We'd see the plomeek soup fly, and no matter how much Dr. Culber's ghost would wave his tricorder and show Burnham she isn't a Vulcan inside and doesn't actually have any blood fever, the "symptoms" would be there.

Beyond this, it's a matter of degrees. Might be Burnham gets extensive physical pon farr the way a woman can get a false pregnancy, with many of the physical symptoms utterly without the underlying physical cause. Might be it's all in her mind. But there can be a lot of stuff in a human's mind, such as the stern conviction that one is in love, or being loved, or of a gender different from the one the mirror would suggest, etc.

You might be thinking of like "male menopause"

...Which is what an unfortunate woman might catch if stranded among lots of men exhibiting that behavior pattern.

and your first comment about "irrational irritability" really shows that as much as everything else you've said.

You may be in denial about it, but trust me, I'm not being rude for rudeness' sake. It is an observable behavior pattern, even if the victim may be blind to it - trying to deny it is only playing to the stereotype.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Timo]

And like anyway, behavior patterns aren't the same thing as physiological needs, like even I've said she might have some regard for like cultural and ceremonial parts, but she won't have her biological effect that's driving it all, right? She's still an outsider to them, like a man who thinks menstruation is purely behavioral about "mood swings" and doesn't understand what's going on inside, you know what I mean?

Hmm, now we're on the same page. So what if she's an outsider? That won't affect what happens to her, not from her point of view, nor from the point of view of an impartial observer. What gets observed is the behavior pattern, which one may call whatever one wishes, as long as one recognizes it will exist.

There's no requirement for being an insider, is all. Not for the outcome desired here.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Marynator]

Oh dear, pretty much everything you just said is completely wrong.

What on earth are you talking about from the Enemy? Beverly's issue with him was as a Romulan, she says Romulan's aren't like Vulcans, she was surprised he wasn't the same, and she can't replicate Romulan blood like she could Vulcan. You sound like you're just making things up?

Menstruation is not a behavior pattern, it's a physiological condition, not a "role" you play, it's something your body goes through. A man can "act" like he's going through ovulation, but that totally doesn't mean anything, he doesn't know what a woman's feeling or how it affects her body, and it's not psychological at all, you really need to stop talking about this, you are completely and unequivocally wrong in almost every way. We're talking about if Michael will actually experience pon farr, not if she's going to act like she's experiencing it, those two are totally not at all the same thing. If you go around pretending you're ovulating, you are NOT experiencing the same thing as me when I actually do, you know what I'm saying?

I don't believe you're being rude for rudeness sake, I believe you're being rude out of sheer ignorance.

 

[Noname Given]

I don't see how just living with Vulcans for a long time would change your biology?

But Spock says it's the price the Vulcan (male)s have to pay for their logic-religion, which isn't biology. And the logic-religion could certainly affect aliens living among Vulcans - through telepathy if not otherwise.

Timo Saloniemi

Um, Spock never said that, McCoy did:
http://www.chakoteya.net/StarTrek/34.htm

MCCOY: He called it Koon-ut what?

KIRK: He described it to me as meaning marriage or challenge. In the distant past, Vulcans killed to win their mates.

MCCOY: They still go mad at this time. Perhaps it's the price they pay for having no emotions the rest of the time.

 

[Jinn]

Um, Spock never said that, McCoy did:
http://www.chakoteya.net/StarTrek/34.htm

Oh, is that noted Vulcan expert Leonard "assuming you call that green stuff in your veins blood" McCoy?

 

[cultcross]

Could we perhaps stop mansplaining menstruation and return to Discovery?

Regards,
Everybody who is going

 

[Jinn]

Okay, so there is no reason to assume that Burnham gets Pon Farr and I doubt the writers will write a Pon Farr episode or something like that.

 

[TrickyDickie]

*snip*

In a nutshell, so much of that post and others that you have made strongly suggest that you believe that your personal experiences in life, and your interpretation of them and also your interpretation of virtually everything else, represent some sort of 'universal truth'. That is both highly ridiculous and highly arrogant.

Trust you, because you know?!?

I think Burnham's response to you would be "Bitch, please."

 

[Spot261]

"Millennia" shouldn't count yet - you and me aren't different from Julius Caesar biologically, after all. But onscreen, the Romulans kidnapped an Andorian for their (admittedly somewhat specific) telepathic needs. And never interrogated anybody with a mind meld if innovative torture devices with blinking lights could get the job done.



Hard to tell - we don't know exactly what is involved. Some humans are telepaths in TOS, perhaps for the same reason many Vulcans are stronger telepaths. Might be just a matter of degrees. There's certainly "training" involved, as per "Is There In Truth".



It's a behavior pattern (among other things). You can assuredly catch behavior patterns. Such as menstruation, regardless of what underlies that behavior pattern. Trust me, I know what I am talking about (although you may be blind to it, looking from the inside).



Which sort of rules out the seven-year cycle already - for most salmon, it's not mate or die, it's mate and die.

How inexact the analogy was, we may only guess. The salmon could mate anywhere, but they choose to mate in their home river. It's an adaptation that may help them or doom them. Conforming to logic, likewise...



Yup, this always made at least some sense.

Timo Saloniemi

That's just it - the difference between Vulcans and Romulans didn't count for zip. It was a case of there being something specific to this individual Romulan, such as a blood group in humans, but nothing specific to the Romulan species. Many Romulans would have been incompatible donors, too, and all the Vulcans aboard the E-D happened to be, even though many Vulcans elsewhere might have been compatible (or else why would Crusher have tested "her" Vulcans in the first place?).

"The Enemy" is not a good case for or against Vulcans and Romulans being identical or different, because the whole issue is hidden beneath the overall similarity of all humanoids, regardless of species.

Which in turn is explained in "The Chase" as a deliberate genetic trick, an apparent effort by those ancient humanoids to promote humanoid existence everywhere in the Milky Way not just by creating further humanoids, but by making sure they could have happy sex together.



Bullshit - any actor can play a role.

We're just talking about apples and oranges here. Or appleseed and apples. You don't need the former to paint a still life featuring the latter.



It manifests as one. Just like pon farr manifests as lots of ballistic plomeek soup. And this is the only thing that would matter, were Michael Burnham suddenly to suffer from pon farr. We'd see the plomeek soup fly, and no matter how much Dr. Culber's ghost would wave his tricorder and show Burnham she isn't a Vulcan inside and doesn't actually have any blood fever, the "symptoms" would be there.

Beyond this, it's a matter of degrees. Might be Burnham gets extensive physical pon farr the way a woman can get a false pregnancy, with many of the physical symptoms utterly without the underlying physical cause. Might be it's all in her mind. But there can be a lot of stuff in a human's mind, such as the stern conviction that one is in love, or being loved, or of a gender different from the one the mirror would suggest, etc.



...Which is what an unfortunate woman might catch if stranded among lots of men exhibiting that behavior pattern.



You may be in denial about it, but trust me, I'm not being rude for rudeness' sake. It is an observable behavior pattern, even if the victim may be blind to it - trying to deny it is only playing to the stereotype.

Timo Saloniemi

My oh my, it's almost like you met a woman once....

 

[Kibbin]

The mating urge may well be. But McCoy also mentions that the madness is the price they pay for repressing their emotions the rest of the time. Burnham has grown through adolescence with a telepathic race that has it as both a cultural and physical imperative. I wouldn't be surprised to see some of it rub off on her.

That's a good point. Would Amanda be impacted by living among Vulcans as well?

I think the reason Mich might be affected where as Amanda isn't would be the age. Amanda grew up on "Earth"? around "humans"?. Now I don't know what age she was when the Klingons attacked but she seemed fairly young and thus impressionably. Yes we know Amanda tried to balance things out for her but she would still grow up in a mostly Vulcan home on a mostly Vulcan planet. If Pon Far is a mental thing and not a biological one as some have suggested via McCoy and the emotional Vulcans in Ent then she could pick up some notions of it. Now I don't think she's going to go full on captain killing crazy (well no more than usual) but I would say that might be due to the biological aspect of Vulcan brain. There is no bonding and no psychic powers but maybe a seven yearly case of blue balls.

Do we have any idea if it was ever the original intent that Vulcans have sex only once every seven years? It would seem odd for T'Pring to be so on about Stonn if there wasn't a sexual component to it.

Maybe I'm reading it wrong.

I know Peter David in the novels also went with the idea that they have to have sex every seven years not only will have sex every seven years.

Weren't the Vulcans without logic in Enterprise free of Pon Farr?
How would that work with Pon Farr? Michael spend less than twenty years with Vulcans, that's hardly enough time to adopt a behaviour pattern that covers a seven year period.

But if Pon Farr is psychological and not biological could she not pick some of the tendencies as they relate to other behavioural patterns. I'm not sure what these would be but it's possible.

Also some people are calling out McCoy for not being a Vulcan expert and thus his opinion is invalid. I would say that he's more of an expert than me or you. Now if we had an episode or book where say M'benga (he was a Vulcan expert right? Am I making that up?) called him out on some procedure or something then we would have weight behind our anti-McCoy stance.

 

[Spot261]

I think the reason Mich might be affected where as Amanda isn't would be the age. Amanda grew up on "Earth"? around "humans"?. Now I don't know what age she was when the Klingons attacked but she seemed fairly young and thus impressionably. Yes we know Amanda tried to balance things out for her but she would still grow up in a mostly Vulcan home on a mostly Vulcan planet. If Pon Far is a mental thing and not a biological one as some have suggested via McCoy and the emotional Vulcans in Ent then she could pick up some notions of it. Now I don't think she's going to go full on captain killing crazy (well no more than usual) but I would say that might be due to the biological aspect of Vulcan brain. There is no bonding and no psychic powers but maybe a seven yearly case of blue balls.


I know Peter David in the novels also went with the idea that they have to have sex every seven years not only will have sex every seven years.


But if Pon Farr is psychological and not biological could she not pick some of the tendencies as they relate to other behavioural patterns. I'm not sure what these would be but it's possible.

Also some people are calling out McCoy for not being a Vulcan expert and thus his opinion is invalid. I would say that he's more of an expert than me or you. Now if we had an episode or book where say M'benga (he was a Vulcan expert right? Am I making that up?) called him out on some procedure or something then we would have weight behind our anti-McCoy stance.

McCoy who didn't know the guy who was his friend, first officer and patient had an extra eyelid?

 

[Kemaiku]

Okay, so there is no reason to assume that Burnham gets Pon Farr and I doubt the writers will write a Pon Farr episode or something like that.

Especially since it's been pointed out that this is 2257, Spock won't go through it until 2260, in a potential 5th season. And since 2267 is the first time he has apparently gone through it aboard ship, he'll be on leave for the '60 one.

No one in Starfleet other than Mbenga knows about it in 2267, so it's safe to assume no Vulcan, Vulcanian, Vulcanoid or adjacent has got their rage-on on a SF ship prior to that.

 

[Kibbin]

McCoy who didn't know the guy who was his friend, first officer and patient had an extra eyelid?

Neither did I till I saw the episode . I'm gonna gues the writers didn't either . I'm not saying he's the best in Starfleet I'm just saying that his voice has more weight than anyone in this thread. If we had a more knowledgeable voice offering a different opinion then I'd defect to that one but it does seem to correlate with the unemotional vulcans from ent

 

[BillJ]

McCoy who didn't know the guy who was his friend, first officer and patient had an extra eyelid?

The times he treated him had nothing to do with his eyes up to that point. McCoy was learning on the fly.

No one in Starfleet other than Mbenga knows about it in 2267, so it's safe to assume no Vulcan, Vulcanian, Vulcanoid or adjacent has got their rage-on on a SF ship prior to that.

They had 400 Vulcans on the Intrepid, I never bought the idea that Starfleet knew nothing about them. At the same time, McCoy had to have access to information from somewhere in order to compare Spock's examinination to and make a prognosis.

Especially since it's been pointed out that this is 2257, Spock won't go through it until 2260, in a potential 5th season. And since 2267 is the first time he has apparently gone through it aboard ship, he'll be on leave for the '60 one.

Not sure what Spock has to do with it?

 

[Kemaiku]

I mean, Discovery's scanners didn't notice a horrifically mangled Klingon with a brain twice the size it should be shoved into a skinsuit like Edgar from MIB, so obviously they can't scan tiny, intricate, intimate details of Vulcans for shit.

So yes, Spock getting the very homicidal hardon of the century without a single Starfleet medical practitioner knowing they could do that for over 200 years is not a surprise.

And since no non-Vulcan can have it without a mental violation of some sort as mentioned, a Vulcan suffering it in proximity is the only way a human can feel it, if at all. Maybe Belana's Klingon DNA meant she suffered it, and only Klingons can...

Oh wow, get a super horny Vulcan around, only the Klingons will respond. New security protocol!

 

[Jinn]

But if Pon Farr is psychological and not biological could she not pick some of the tendencies as they relate to other behavioural patterns. I'm not sure what these would be but it's possible.

Well, I don't think that there are some many behavioural patterns involved, other than having sex every seven years. So, Michael is probably only close to Sarek, Spock, Amanda and maybe some Vulcan kids (probably not, though) and the only one of those who experiences Pon Farr at her time on Vulcan would be Sarek. If he behavous differently on three occasions out of 21 years I don't think that's enough for Michael to pick up on it, especially since Sarek will probably be meditating a lot and not interact with his children.

I would say that he's more of an expert than me or you.

Says you

 

[Kibbin]

Well, I don't think that there are some many behavioural patterns involved, other than having sex every seven years. So, Michael is probably only close to Sarek, Spock, Amanda and maybe some Vulcan kids (probably not, though) and the only one of those who experiences Pon Farr at her time on Vulcan would be Sarek. If he behavous differently on three occasions out of 21 years I don't think that's enough for Michael to pick up on it, especially since Sarek will probably be meditating a lot and not interact with his children.

I just think it would have an effect on their culture, art, politics and society in ways that we haven't seen due to not being on Vulcan all that much considering. She might not pick up on the exact Pon Farr thing bt there would be other factors that would influence here due to her young age on the planet. (Again don't know what age she went to Vulcan so just guessing). Heck could we not argue that her awkward nature around boys she fancies is one aspect of this?

Says you

Says him, he says it a lot, I'm surprised you didn't know. He's not a bricklayer, moon shuttle conductor, Coal Miner or magician. All you say is "Look at the cuuuute kitten!"



In the case of a fair and balanced discussion I should point out however that McCoy is also, by his own admission, not a psychiatrist so

 

[BillJ]

Well, I don't think that there are some many behavioural patterns involved, other than having sex every seven years. So, Michael is probably only close to Sarek, Spock, Amanda and maybe some Vulcan kids (probably not, though) and the only one of those who experiences Pon Farr at her time on Vulcan would be Sarek. If he behavous differently on three occasions out of 21 years I don't think that's enough for Michael to pick up on it, especially since Sarek will probably be meditating a lot and not interact with his children.

Unless they isolated her, she would be around people going through Pon Farr quite a bit, probably.