Why were the Ferengi misogynistic?

[someguy1231]

It's always come across as odd to me that the Ferengi, of all species, would be misogynistic. Their culture is about devotion to profit, capitalism, making money, etc. So why in the Hell would they forbid half of their entire species from making money? We've even seen Ferengi lecture humans on occasion about how racism has never been a problem for them, and yet they treat their own women like they accuse humans of treating other races.

So for a species that believes in money and profit above all else, why would they essentially halve the potential of their species to achieve that end? It just doesn't make sense.

 

[RyuRoots]

And since when do cultural aspects occur logically? Things have just been that way for a long time, and nobody questioned the status quo on a large enough scale before the tail end of DS9 with Ishka and the Nagus.

 

[happydave]

The oddest thing is that Ferengi women were seen as useless, yet Quark didn't really seem to look down upon Dax and the women of other species.

 

[Deranged Nasat]

The oddest thing is that Ferengi women were seen as useless, yet Quark didn't really seem to look down upon Dax and the women of other species.

In the books, Ishka actually points this out to demonstrate how Ferengi society is crushing itself under the weight of its sexism. She points out that Ferengi males like her two sons are turning to non-Ferengi mates and companions because female Ferengi aren't interesting enough (because, of course, they're not allowed to be interesting). She implies that the Ferengi actually understand how they're harming themselves with their refusal to see females as equally capable, but are simply too locked into "the way things are" to do anything about it. They're a society in denial.

As for why they're so sexist a society...well, the Ferengi do seem to take things to extreme. Their devotion to capitalism and profit in all aspects of their lives- they seem to have a habit of taking it to eleven. I assume that, like most races, they started off with women as caregivers and men as provider/protectors, so men would be the ones earning money for the family. They began valuing business so much, however, turning it into a religion, that it became all that was important, and the purpose- providing for family- was replaced by a new purpose of becoming more holy. And the gender roles were still in place, so females weren't allowed to leave the home and family, weren't allowed to work and participate in the religion of capitalism, and therefore lost their place in the Ferengi system of worth. They becanme viewed as "useless" and "incapable".

The OP is right that this doesn't make sense; keeping females out of the profit-making simply loses Ferengi society a great deal of talent and the ability to earn more overall (relations with other species are harmed, too, as Rom points out in the novels). However, societies don't always make sense, because they lose track of why they do things or why they should do things and instead become locked into "this is our way, this is tradition, this is what we'll keep on doing" mode. Until enough people try to change it.

 

[AdmiralGarak]

^Novels or not, it seems to fit with everything we've seen on the show. Later Ferengi episodes, crappy though they may be, had Ishka making pretty similar challenges in not so many words.

 

[happydave]

I disagree with the premise that 'having half the species not able to make money hurts your own chances for profit.' To put it in incredible simple terms in our own society, the less competitors you have lowers the amount of profit you make. Having a monopoly (is generally illegal) and basically means you're in control of an entire industry. To continue your control (and profit), you start to place barriers of entry and growth to small/new companies, and try use your current influence to ensure less competition as in business. Look at the current news/print industry and their fight against the internet (as it's now much easier for news to travel without paying for a paper).

Competition is not good for profit. Competition is good for the consumer.

The female Ferengi still have to purchase goods and services, which means they're still able to spend so turnover wouldn't increase, but the amount of companies would.

Plus the Ferengi's misogynism is basically a reflection on a pre-WWII society. Their feminist revolution is supposed to be a 1960's parallel which doesn't really work that well as it's rushed and hinged on one character rather than a groundswell movement. (Though to do it properly would have taken a lot more tv time)

 

[Deranged Nasat]

Plus the Ferengi's misogynism is basically a reflection on a pre-WWII society. Their feminist revolution is supposed to be a 1960's parallel which doesn't really work that well as it's rushed and hinged on one character rather than a groundswell movement. (Though to do it properly would have taken a lot more tv time)

Yes, if it was intended as a reflection, it's a pretty one-dimensional and incomplete, and thus ignorant one, and doesn't actually convey anything realistic about real societies. The post-World War II developments in regards to gender were NOT exclusively about perceptions of females. Society's perceptions of and means of relating to males had been shaken by the wars and the aftermath. You can't change your way of relating to just one sex, because the two are intimately intwined. It has never been, despite what many feminists like to claim, about the changing role of women only and defeating ignorance in regards to perceptions of women only, it's been about changing the role of, and defeating ignorance in regards to both sexes and gender constructions as a whole.

The Ferengi were always caricatures, though, and Trek has never been very good at confronting the complexities of gender. Look at "Angel One"....

 

[JustKate]

Neither misogynism nor racism nor a whole lot of those exclusionist -isms make sense for any socieity from a "Use the resources available to you" standpoint. Yet they exist or have existed in the not-too-distant past, in one form or another, almost universally on our own dear planet Earth. Why should the Ferengi or anybody else be immune from that which has plagued humanity since forever?

 

[Timo]

Indeed, what I find surprising here is that the Ferengi don't arbitrarily create more groups that are forbidden from sharing in the acquisition of wealth. Say, ban profit-making from all those with red rather than black ear hair, all those with five rather than six nose wrinkles, etc., and only allow those to serve as poorly paid labor.

Yet we learn in "The Search" rather explicitly that the Ferengi don't segregate like that; they don't do slavery of the sort that humans were and are famous of. I guess we can trust Quark on that, even if he's blind to the aspect of enslaving the females of the species.

As for the Ferengi taking alien mates, I wouldn't think of that as a problem for the species or the society. The actual breeding of new Ferengi would probably still happen just fine, through utilitarian marriage contracts that would coexist with the keeping of alien playmates. After all, a Ferengi would be prepared for the investments and profits involved in the classic Ferengi-Ferengi marriage contract, whereas a marriage with an alien would usually come virtually free of charge or profit and wouldn't thus compete much with the regular business.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[someguy1231]

Of course, a society's cultural beliefs and traditions don't always have to make sense, but in the case of the Ferengi, the contradiction seems so blatant and obvious it's incomprehensible to me that it could have stayed around for so long.

 

[JustKate]

Well, in the U.S. we talked about "all men are created equal" for a long time, during which all men (or people) weren't treated equally. That's far more blatant than what the writers had the Ferengi do, I think.

 

[Deranged Nasat]

Of course, a society's cultural beliefs and traditions don't always have to make sense, but in the case of the Ferengi, the contradiction seems so blatant and obvious it's incomprehensible to me that it could have stayed around for so long.

Never underestimate a people's ability to delude themselves. Cultures create masks for themselves and then- often deliberately- forget they're wearing them. Much of any culture's time is spent avoiding or refusing to think about the manipulations they're engaged in to keep their society from acknowledging itself.

A culture always has one hand gripped tight around something, the other working desperately to open it and see inside or acknowledge what the other's holding while the first fights to stop it. Meanwhile the head is refusing to look at either hand and the mouth is saying "thing in my hand? I don't know what you're talking about". Societies are very frustrating like that.

 

[Navaros]

Why were the Ferengi misogynistic?

My guess would be it's a dumb gag meant to get a few laughs that they didn't think through all the way.

They should have went all-out with this idea instead of implementing it in a half-baked way like they did. Ie: Quark can't stand his own race's females wearing clothes yet he has no problem at all with females from other races wearing clothes and also he always lets them turn him on and give him oomax? They should have made Quark be highly misogynistic against all females.

Inicidentally, it was also a dumb cliche and OOC how Quark, an extremely savvy businessman, would let any female scam him, time and time again, if she only gives him oomax for 5 seconds first. I chalk that up to another gag they didn't think through all the way, and also copping out to lame, easy plot contrivances instead of putting in the effort to be creative in that regard.

 

[Tallis Rhul]

Why were the Ferengi misogynistic?

My guess would be it's a dumb gag meant to get a few laughs that they didn't think through all the way.

They should have went all-out with this idea instead of implementing it in a half-baked way like they did. Ie: Quark can't stand his own race's females wearing clothes yet he has no problem at all with females from other races wearing clothes and also he always lets them turn him on and give him oomax? They should have made Quark be highly misogynistic against all females.

Inicidentally, it was also a dumb cliche and OOC how Quark, an extremely savvy businessman, would let any female scam him, time and time again, if she only gives him oomax for 5 seconds first. I chalk that up to another gag they didn't think through all the way, and also copping out to lame, easy plot contrivances instead of putting in the effort to be creative in that regard.

Actually I rather think they DID think it out. The idiosyncrasies of the Ferengi race are used, much as many other aspects of the show, to reflect aspects of the real world and issues therein. Sure, it happens less often than Roddenberry's TOS, but it's still there.

The whole idea that Ferengi eliminated racism etc. etc. but somehow miraculously overlook mysogenism is clever irony. IIRC Quark was lecturing someone at the time, a pursuit he often engaged in from slightly shaky moral ground.

Quark's attitude to Dax is one of fascination. Here is a female who wears clothes, is treated with respect by the people of her culture, and is successful for it. He doesn't quite get his head around how, and therefore she ends up on a pedestal, in much the same way as did Natima Lang. There's also the fact that by the time we get towards seasons 5 and 6 it has been made abundantly clear that if he tried anything on she could hand his butt to him on a plate!

As for the final point, check out Emisarry again and look at what Quark does to Kira. I'll agree he's easily manipulated by oo-mox, but he's not bad at manipulating people into giving them to him. ^^

 

[PSGarak]

I don't understand why people get caught up on Quark not treating alien females the same way he treats Ferengi ones. Even here on earth, people from cultures that are traditionally repressive of women don't treat women who are outside their own culture the same way they do women in their culture, particularly when they are not living at home, but abroad. It's the whole "outsider" vs. "one of us". Outsiders aren't part of the cultural paradigm and thus aren't treated as personally as those within. I've seen so many examples of this IRL it doesn't boggle my brain at all.

 

[JustKate]

I don't understand why people get caught up on Quark not treating alien females the same way he treats Ferengi ones. Even here on earth, people from cultures that are traditionally repressive of women don't treat women who are outside their own culture the same way they do women in their culture, particularly when they are not living at home, but abroad. It's the whole "outsider" vs. "one of us". Outsiders aren't part of the cultural paradigm and thus aren't treated as personally as those within. I've seen so many examples of this IRL it doesn't boggle my brain at all.

Exactly. When the vice president of the organization I work for went to Kazakhstan, she said she would be seated at the table with all the men, and the other women would wait on her. The same thing happened when another woman went to Turkey and when a third went to Uzbekistan. (We had a lot of contact with those countries when the Soviet Union first broke up.) They all told me that it was as though they were honorary men. It's completely and absolutely normal here on Earth, so why not elsewhere?

 

[happydave]

Well, in the U.S. we talked about "all men are created equal" for a long time, during which all men (or people) weren't treated equally. That's far more blatant than what the writers had the Ferengi do, I think.

Yet the USA still doesn't treat everyone equally in today's world with non-Americans treated by the American government as sub-human.

(Sorry to get all serious for a bit there)

 

[Danoz]

TNG Ferengi were ridiculously annoying and one of the worst inventions in Trek. They demonization of capitalism was so transparent that it makes you cringe-- making it a relatively shallow critique of modern society. Deep Space Nine, in many ways, saved the entire Ferengi culture and gave them some depth. Federation citizens live in a free riding bubble where people "pretend" there is no intergalactic economy. Ferengi choose not to live in that fantasy.

 

[Tuvok]

It's always come across as odd to me that the Ferengi, of all species, would be misogynistic. Their culture is about devotion to profit, capitalism, making money, etc. So why in the Hell would they forbid half of their entire species from making money? We've even seen Ferengi lecture humans on occasion about how racism has never been a problem for them, and yet they treat their own women like they accuse humans of treating other races.

So for a species that believes in money and profit above all else, why would they essentially halve the potential of their species to achieve that end? It just doesn't make sense.

Why are Andorian's blue, and mildly racist? ( Pinkskins)

Why do Vulcans have mating relations every seven years?

How do Klingon's ever develop space flight when they spent a majority of their history kicking each other's asse?

How much wood, would a Romulan wood chuck chuck, if he could and the Federation wasn't watching?

One of the many wonders and mysteries of Alien life.

 

[Tallis Rhul]

TNG Ferengi were ridiculously annoying and one of the worst inventions in Trek. They demonization of capitalism was so transparent that it makes you cringe-- making it a relatively shallow critique of modern society. Deep Space Nine, in many ways, saved the entire Ferengi culture and gave them some depth. Federation citizens live in a free riding bubble where people "pretend" there is no intergalactic economy. Ferengi choose not to live in that fantasy.

Nailed it in one, and they did it largely with just Quark in season 1. He was believable from the moment he stepped on screen.