Was Bashir guilty of sexual harassment in season 1 with Dax?
- Thread starter Jayson1
- Start date
Well, the thread's taking a nice turn... Stupid clichés continue because they're usually maybe 5% right. Every group has jerks, including feminism.
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First, terms for seriously bad behavior get established... and then the way people use the term drifts over time. It gets used for smaller and smaller examples, watering the terms down. Sexual Harassment was supposed to be blatantly wrong stuff, actually involving force or pressure (threats of firing) from employers for sex. Now we're talking about a nice co-worker asking someone out a bit too often. Bashir, obviously innocent. Quark, guilty.
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As for why Bajor doesn't arrest Quark, historically we only just started making such stuff illegal, so why expect other planets in other centuries to have our laws?
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First, terms for seriously bad behavior get established... and then the way people use the term drifts over time. It gets used for smaller and smaller examples, watering the terms down. Sexual Harassment was supposed to be blatantly wrong stuff, actually involving force or pressure (threats of firing) from employers for sex. Now we're talking about a nice co-worker asking someone out a bit too often. Bashir, obviously innocent. Quark, guilty.
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As for why Bajor doesn't arrest Quark, historically we only just started making such stuff illegal, so why expect other planets in other centuries to have our laws?
I noticed a lot of debate about feminism spring up from this debate and this is my theory on why it sometimes gets a bad reputation at least when it comes to dating.
I think a lot of guys who sort of embrace old school values in how to treat women proably feel like they are getting mixed messages. On one hand rude behavior and treating women like crap is frowned upon but then you turn around and often seen this behvior be rewarded for guys who do these things.
Everyone knows that their are women who tend to go for the "bad boy" type. Guys treat women like crap yet they still somehow always end up getting a women to fall in love with them or just hook up if they are just looking for sex. I know this from personal experience because my step dad was a abusive asshole who would hit my mom and frankly the day he killed himself I was happy. My sisters have also fallen for guys like this.
Granted I do think a lot of these views come more from what they see on tv as oposed to personal experience but that idea does exsit and until it changes their will always be guys who embrace that old line of thinking. It doesn't help to see such a guy like Donald Trump act this way and still he ends up with the hot trophy wife and get to become president. How is any women would ever have anything to do with someone like Trump if life was just about accepting ethical behavior?
Also for DS9 example I see a difference also in how Bashir is a hot young doctor and Quark is the slimy not so attractive Troll yet Bashir is presented as charming and Quark is seen as a awful with his behavior. To me though this go back to question of how much is this idea coming from what we see on tv as oposed to what people experience in their own lives.
Jason
I think a lot of guys who sort of embrace old school values in how to treat women proably feel like they are getting mixed messages. On one hand rude behavior and treating women like crap is frowned upon but then you turn around and often seen this behvior be rewarded for guys who do these things.
Everyone knows that their are women who tend to go for the "bad boy" type. Guys treat women like crap yet they still somehow always end up getting a women to fall in love with them or just hook up if they are just looking for sex. I know this from personal experience because my step dad was a abusive asshole who would hit my mom and frankly the day he killed himself I was happy. My sisters have also fallen for guys like this.
Granted I do think a lot of these views come more from what they see on tv as oposed to personal experience but that idea does exsit and until it changes their will always be guys who embrace that old line of thinking. It doesn't help to see such a guy like Donald Trump act this way and still he ends up with the hot trophy wife and get to become president. How is any women would ever have anything to do with someone like Trump if life was just about accepting ethical behavior?
Also for DS9 example I see a difference also in how Bashir is a hot young doctor and Quark is the slimy not so attractive Troll yet Bashir is presented as charming and Quark is seen as a awful with his behavior. To me though this go back to question of how much is this idea coming from what we see on tv as oposed to what people experience in their own lives.
Jason
I think I heard it summed up somewhere as "the difference between romance and stalking is if they find you attractive"...
*retweets are not endorsements...
Bashir had no power over Dax. Dax had no interest in Bashir but enjoyed the game of being pursued, and he never crossed the line into any sort of harassment or abuse.
I think it's a little bit overly PC to assume that all it takes is trying to get a girl to go out with you to be sexual harassment, when there's no violation of personal space and there's no emotional abuse or anything like that.
I think it's a little bit overly PC to assume that all it takes is trying to get a girl to go out with you to be sexual harassment, when there's no violation of personal space and there's no emotional abuse or anything like that.
"Emmett Louis Till (July 25, 1941 – August 28, 1955) was an African-American teenager who was lynched in Mississippi at the age of 14 in 1955 after being falsely accused of flirting with a white woman. The brutality of his murder and the fact that his killers were acquitted drew attention to the long history of violent persecution of African Americans in the United States. Till posthumously became an icon of the Civil Rights Movement."
Even if the young boy did smile or flirt at a white woman, read this story and welcome to the world of the black male in the 20th century...
It's a question not just of severity but frequency. Asking a coworker out once and getting turned down: not harassment. Asking over and over after it's been made clear the other party isn't interested: harassment.
Now, Dax never complained and she later said she enjoyed being pursued, and nobody tried to punish Bashir on her behalf, so no harm no foul as far as I'm concerned. But Dax would've been within her rights to tell Bashir to knock it off, and if he persisted, it would've become a disciplinary issue.
(Obviously agreed that Quark is much more guilty of this.)
The series stated repeatedly that Bajor is a highly advanced society--or at least, they were before the occupation. I just find it interesting that Odo was always up Quark's ass about smuggling contraband but never seemed to care about his very blatant exploitation of his employees (not just the dabo girls, either). Sisko stated more than once that the Federation held the lease on Quark's Bar, and he did use that as leverage against Quark on a few occasions, but you'd think it could've also been used to bring working conditions up to a minimum standard not far from, say, early 21st century Earth.
There are always IVF and turkey basters
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Right, but this was a totally unrelated problem of course.
Not really what Timo was hinting at for today.
And yet you read the messages....
Which is exactly what Ezri did. So he did.
No, Star Trek is a decent sci-fi adventure show that gets WAYYYYYY too much credit for being things it is not.
It's a question not just of severity but frequency. Asking a coworker out once and getting turned down: not harassment. Asking over and over after it's been made clear the other party isn't interested: harassment.
Now, Dax never complained and she later said she enjoyed being pursued, and nobody tried to punish Bashir on her behalf, so no harm no foul as far as I'm concerned. But Dax would've been within her rights to tell Bashir to knock it off, and if he persisted, it would've become a disciplinary issue.
(Obviously agreed that Quark is much more guilty of this.)
The series stated repeatedly that Bajor is a highly advanced society--or at least, they were before the occupation. I just find it interesting that Odo was always up Quark's ass about smuggling contraband but never seemed to care about his very blatant exploitation of his employees (not just the dabo girls, either). Sisko stated more than once that the Federation held the lease on Quark's Bar, and he did use that as leverage against Quark on a few occasions, but you'd think it could've also been used to bring working conditions up to a minimum standard not far from, say, early 21st century Earth.
"Advanced" is in the eye of the beholder. They don't separate church and state either.
Nobody is saying that. It's just that his behavior can be seen in a different light than it was during 1993. If the wrote the show today It makes you wonder if they would use the same aproach and hell I wonder if they would have played it differently if Jadzia was written then more like she was in the later seasons. Remember back during season 1 they were still trying to make her more like Spock.Yes. Bashir was a twisted, perverse sexual predator. Just like Geordi.
Jason
Yes. Bashir was a twisted, perverse sexual predator. Just like Geordi.
No one said that, but have fun beating on your strawman.
Infraction for trolling. Comments to PM.
This is a good way to ensure you receive a one way ticket out of the Trek BBS.
Against a woman? I doubt it.
Fatty.
This is not helping. Please knock it off.
Everyone else, let's please try to maintain level heads and discuss the issue in a civilized manner. I see we are already getting back on track (thanks Jayson) so let's try and keep it that way.
Arbitrarily applying a framework does not validate that framework. Moreover, it may end up saying more about who you are than what it is you are trying to describe.
This points to something that is always difficult with regard to understanding the social and cultural changes portrayed in Trek. The writers want things to be different, indeed better, than how they are today. However, they also want to have dramas that the viewers can related to. The TNG era is supposed to be more open about sexuality, but the writers still want to portray the exigencies of human relationships. Bashir may seem creepy to us, but in a society that is more open about sexual matters, his behavior may not stand out that much. I think that the same problems show up in which their are "violations of the mind," if you would, where characters react differently when various aliens look into the thoughts of the characters, invade their dreams, or even take over their bodies.
I think what really happened was Bashir The Sexusl Harrasser was actually an alternate universe. Yep. That's my theory.
What really happened was Bashir and Jadzia hooked up, and lived each other, got married, had kids and moved to Bajor, to a small town. they home schooled their kids because they didn't want the exposed to the Bajoran religion taught in school.
Anyway their oldest and youngest children both became medical doctors, the middle one joined the Orian Syndicate ( they think)
He may have become an Orian slave Trader, (that may be in an alternate universe)
Anyway since Jadzia liked Bashir pursuing her and etc.
this thread is mute.
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