Out characters in the novelverse?

[rfmcdpei]

Hi!

Partly inspired by the news about Sally Ride, I thought I'd start up a new post talking about out characters in the novelverse.

Certainly the biggest new addition is the RSE's new Praetor, Gell Kamemor, a woman who survived both her son and her wife. Serpents Among the Ruins did establish in passing that her spouse was a wife, but in recent novels the matter-of-fact way in which the gender of her spouse--and her raising a child with the woman--was dealt with by Romulans suggests strongly that at least homophobia isn't one of the bigotries that Romulan civilization has to cope with. If it was, could she ever have filled all of the high-ranking positions that she did fill, culminating in her civilization's top job?

(I'm quietly amused that her record in office has been almost the inverse of Arthur C. Clarke's famous crack that gays should be kept out of positions of power since many of the famous and most successful warmongers of history--Alexander, Frederick the Great, Richard the Lionheart---were themselves gay.)

What other threads talking about gay characters are there? Are there any new or recently-highlighted characters I've forgotten?

 

[Sho]

Your thread title and the reference to Sally Ride actually made me think you were going to talk about outing canon characters in the novels, since AFAIR, Ride had to come out long after her NASA career because homosexuals would not have been given the necessary security clearances to become astronauts at the time (the official reasoning being that the societal circumstances would make them prone to blackmail).

I'm not sure we can discuss that though, since "making xyz come out would be interesting" would be a story idea I guess.

That said, I bet there is already some example of a canon character that has been outed in a TrekLit story.

 

[rfmcdpei]

Your thread title and the reference to Sally Ride actually made me think you were going to talk about outing canon characters in the novels, since AFAIR, Ride had to come out long after her NASA career because homosexuals would not have been given the necessary security clearances to become astronauts at the time (the official reasoning being that the societal circumstances would make them prone to blackmail).

I'm not sure we can discuss that though, since "making xyz come out would be interesting" would be a story idea I guess.

The current assumption seems to be that there weren't any gay protagonists in the various series not because homophobia was normative and the characters were in the closet, but rather because of the chance occurrence that none of the protagonists of the five different series happened not to be heterosexual in an environment where homophobia was as outdated as any other prejudice.

A friend of mine does joke that Harry Kim must have been gay and closeted, on account of the trope of the very-long-distance girlfriend.

Oh, and Garak. But we all knew that, anyway.

(It may be OK to note that some canon characters were shown in the Mirror Universe as having same-sex relationships. To what extent this was evidence of such a character's home-universe counterpart having tendencies unexplored on screen or in text, as opposed to such a character having been forced by circumtance to do something a home-universe counterpart would never have done, remains entirely open. Is this OK speculation?)

 

[shanejayell]

Well, there's this thread:
http://www.trekbbs.com/showthread.php?t=87663

 

[Christopher]

(I'm quietly amused that her record in office has been almost the inverse of Arthur C. Clarke's famous crack that gays should be kept out of positions of power since many of the famous and most successful warmongers of history--Alexander, Frederick the Great, Richard the Lionheart---were themselves gay.)

As was Arthur C. Clarke himself.


As for canon characters who could be LGBT, obviously there's Dax. And yes, I do think that if Mirror characters are bi, it logically follows that their Prime counterparts have the same potential, even if they haven't chosen to act on it. Kira's attitude in "Rejoined" implied that she, and perhaps Bajorans in general, considered sexual orientation a non-issue.

When DS9 was on the air, I often thought it would be excellent if they had Jake discover he was gay. That process of discovery would've been worth exploring, and it could've complicated his friendship with Nog, who might've reacted badly. Then again, though, given how misogynist Ferengi society is, what if they were like the Ancient Greeks, who promoted same-sex male relationships as the only true love that could exist (because they considered women little more than draft animals)?

(Should we merge this with the LGBT Characters thread, or is it distinct enough to stand on its own?)

 

[starri]

Kira's attitude in "Rejoined" implied that she, and perhaps Bajorans in general, considered sexual orientation a non-issue.

Christopher, thank you for being the one other person I've ever seen raise that point.

 

[Sho]

I must say, I really like that Jake idea. DS9 would arguably have been the best Trek show to explore the issue, since due to its setting it had enough conflict to its stories to go much deeper than just showing "in the future, everybody is OK with it". At the same time, having the son of the show's star be homosexual would still have been a profound statement all of its own.

 

[rfmcdpei]

(I'm quietly amused that her record in office has been almost the inverse of Arthur C. Clarke's famous crack that gays should be kept out of positions of power since many of the famous and most successful warmongers of history--Alexander, Frederick the Great, Richard the Lionheart---were themselves gay.)

As was Arthur C. Clarke himself.

Indeed.

As for canon characters who could be LGBT, obviously there's Dax. And yes, I do think that if Mirror characters are bi, it logically follows that their Prime counterparts have the same potential, even if they haven't chosen to act on it. Kira's attitude in "Rejoined" implied that she, and perhaps Bajorans in general, considered sexual orientation a non-issue.

How was Etana Kol's sexual orientation developed in the comics? I never read the original texts where she was introduced.

When DS9 was on the air, I often thought it would be excellent if they had Jake discover he was gay. That process of discovery would've been worth exploring, and it could've complicated his friendship with Nog, who might've reacted badly. Then again, though, given how misogynist Ferengi society is, what if they were like the Ancient Greeks, who promoted same-sex male relationships as the only true love that could exist (because they considered women little more than draft animals)?

I can easily imagine situational homosexuality being fairly common among the Ferengi, if only because of the difficulty of forming relationships with sequestered women. If the tensions are enough to get Ferengi men to act like lechs around non-Ferengi women ...

(Should we merge this with the LGBT Characters thread, or is it distinct enough to stand on its own?)

I've no problems with a merger.

 

[Sho]

Not that big a fan of mergers of two threads that are concurrently active, can make for some confusion. But not really opposed either.

 

[Christopher]

How was Etana Kol's sexual orientation developed in the comics? I never read the original texts where she was introduced.

It wasn't. The series was cancelled before they had time to go into it. I think I read once that there was one panel showing Etana and Richter holding hands, but it was covered by a speech balloon. But I can't find any such panel. As far as I can tell, Richter only appeared on like 1-2 pages of the final issue.

 

[DonIago]

I'm kind of amused that Christopher brings up the notion of Jake being gay and how it might have impacted his relations with Nog, because especially while reading the DS9 novels I felt like there were some hints of more-than-friendship in the Nog-Shar interactions. I was admittedly a bit disappointed when things drifted towards the Prynn-Shar dynamic, though not surprised. That Shar's relationship complications involved a more "female" member of his quad was also a bit of a let-down, though again not entirely surprising.

Given how the Ferengi have tended to be characterized though, I think it might have been more been interesting if it was Nog who wasn't heterosexual and Jake who had some concerns as far as how that impacted their friendship.

 

[Sho]

^ You mean Jake would have objected to demands that he disrobe according to Ferengi traditions?

SCNR ...

 

[starri]

I'm kind of amused that Christopher brings up the notion of Jake being gay and how it might have impacted his relations with Nog, because especially while reading the DS9 novels I felt like there were some hints of more-than-friendship in the Nog-Shar interactions. I was admittedly a bit disappointed when things drifted towards the Prynn-Shar dynamic, though not surprised. That Shar's relationship complications involved a more "female" member of his quad was also a bit of a let-down, though again not entirely surprising.

I honestly wonder if that might not have been changed by some editorial edict at some point after the books had first been pitched. As I recall, there was some discussion from one of the editors (Would it still have been Ordover at that point?) about the relationship between Nog and Shar being "interesting." I might have read the intention wrong. Wouldn't be the first time.

 

[DonIago]

^^I assume that Ben instilled in Jake a proper respect for IDIC. It would be quite rude of Jake not to show tolerance for Ferengi cultural...

....eh, whatever.

^I don't recall hearing such a thing, though that would also fit into the category of "disappointing, but unfortunately not surprising". The way things shifted from Nog-Shar to Prynn-Shar (in my reading, anyhow) did seem a little abrupt...I'd be curious to know whether anyone else felt that way.

 

[Sho]

I think the reaction to Nog-Shar might have been pretty negative, in the sense "oh so you're doing homosexuality among featured characters, except it's a cop-out again because really, it's a weird alien gender" - i.e. what Trek has done in the past, arguably to its shame and missed opportunity. Sort of what the first Mass Effect game did by allowing a "homosexual" relationship with a technically genderless alien that just happens to look like an attractive blue female.

It's not technically a wrong thing to do in context of the universe, but in context of the real world, it'd probably be Trek doing that as opposed to a clearer cut statement one too many times.

 

[starri]

I could swear I remember reading something about that on the old PsiPhi boards. I'll dig around in the WayBack Machine and see if I find something that jogs my memory.

 

[DonIago]

I think the reaction to Nog-Shar might have been pretty negative, in the sense "oh so you're doing homosexuality among featured characters, except it's a cop-out again because really, it's a weird alien gender" - i.e. what Trek has done in the past, arguably to its shame and missed opportunity. Sort of what the first Mass Effect game did by allowing a "homosexual" relationship with a technically genderless alien that just happens to look like an attractive blue female.

It's not technically a wrong thing to do in context of the universe, but in context of the real world, it'd probably be Trek doing that as opposed to a clearer cut statement one too many times.

I see what you're getting at, but in this case I think I might have given it a pass, at least on Nog's part.

 

[starri]

Ah, found it. When the books were first announced, either Marco or KRaD had commented that Nog and Shar would have an interesting relationship. Some months later, once we past Demons of Air and Darkness, KRaD backpedaled (or clarified) saying that he only meant to imply the "working" relationship between two young officers. I hate that I don't want to take him at his word, but given the impressions I came away with in the early DS9-R books, and the fact that Trek has had--rather generously, especially at that point--a somewhat lackadaisical approach to homosexuality, I just read that as being less than 100% truthful.

I know that's probably my own preconceptions coloring it, but they are what they are.

 

[DGCatAniSiri]

I could see Shar lightly flirting with Nog in the early days of his time on DS9. Not necessarily with intent to go any further, but just kind of testing the waters, seeing if there was anything that might happen. How Nog would take it, I'm personally undecided about, though. But then, with Shar developing feelings for Prynn, feelings that he was interested in developing, he stopped whatever flirtations he was making with Nog

 

[DS9Continuing]

No, I don't really see any flirtation there. If anything, Shar was extremely reserved and even thinking in those terms would have never occurred to him. He was culturally conditioned to an enormous degree to think only about the bond, the bond was everything, especially the slightly-tabo-extra-bond he had with Thriss. His entire emotional life was based around Thriss, Anichent and Dizhei. I can't imagine him flirting with Nog, even unintentionally, and it was Prynn who came onto him first, not the other way around. And when she did, he was completely thrown by it.

Jake being gay would have been an interesting twist, not just for having a gay character but for having a black gay character, especially given Avery Brooks' renowned concern for how the characters of the Sisko family reflected on present-day racial issues. I don't think it would have been an issue in-show, since one has to assume all Federation members would be good with that, or else they shouldn't be members - but to see a Ferengi perspective on that would have been illuminating. And it would have been verging on revolutionary out-of-show.

.