One of the Star Trek reruns last week was the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode “The Outcast,” in which the crew of the Enterprise come across a species of humanoids with only one gender. When the episode first aired on March 16, 1992, it was seen as an allegory for homophobia. But it got me to thinking that, at least on the topic of gender, Star Trek has been behind the times.
The franchise has come a long way from Captain Kirk declaring male and female to be universal constants in a 1967 Star Trek episode. More recently, a Star Trek: Discovery from 2020 has a resurrected transgender character who transitioned before his resurrection and entered into a romantic relationship with a character who reads as a woman but considers themselves “non-binary.”
Even if we believe that there are only two natural genders for humans, it does seem odd that almost all other humanoid species in Star trek also have only two genders accepted by their respective societies.
The Vissians in the 2003 Star Trek: Enterprise episode “Cogenitor” were a rarity in Star Trek with their three acknowledged natural genders: male, female and cogenitor. The cogenitors make up 3% of Vissian society, males and females are probably evenly divided among the remaining 97%.
Vissian society must acknowledge cogenitors because they’re necessary for reproduction (hence the term). But aside from that, they’re essentially non-persons, given no education, profession or even names.
I quote a post from Brin’s “Brin Convenience” blog for a summary of this episode:
So … premise/synopsis: Enterprise encounters a vessel of exploration from a new (forehead alien) species, the Vissians, technologically more advanced than Earth/StarFleet. Basic first contact dinner/mingling etc. [Starfleet Commander] Trip [Tucker, played by Connor Trinneer] meets the [Vissian ship’s] Chief Engineer, his wife the Gravity Engineer (or something) and another person at their table, introduced as their “cogenitor” - a member of their species’ third sex/gender (treated identically throughout the episode because of course they are). ... Members of this [third] gender are given no name and no education, their pronouns translate as “it,” (because they/them is plural dontchakno) and they are basically treated like a tool/object/non-person. In fact, they are chattel, assigned to family units who are ready for conception for the duration of the conception process and then moved to the next family. They are breeding stock. They have no rights to the children they help create and are not consulted in their own treatment. Trip finds the non-personhood of the cogenitor disturbing, so he inquires more about … it … how about … more about them. He seeks them out and befriends them, providing materials to teach them to read, media to consume and games of skill to play. He confirms that they are just as intelligent and capable as members of the other two genders … miraculously so, but the show only has 42 minutes, so … Anyway, the cogenitor quickly realizes that their sentience entitles them to humane treatment. This causes disruption, a call for asylum, refusal of asylum and the eventual suicide of the cogenitor, who had chosen the name “Charles” to honor Trip.
As a bigender person, Brin has a lot of problems with this episode, such as not even being sure whether the trans narrative was intentional on the part of the writers of if they just stumbled into it by chance. For another,
There are some problems with Trip’s perspective (especially as the viewpoint character), though. He almost immediately genders them [the cogenitor] as “she/her/hers” because “she looks more like a woman than a man.” He has a hard time stepping outside of a binary gender/sex framework. So … in the future, either all trans people transition to one of two binary genders or trans people simply don’t exist anymore. ... The problem is, in the year 2003, when this episode was written, produce and aired, trans people who did not transition to a binary gender already existed. We were already here, so were we forced to live in the closet, were we assimilated into the gender binary or were we exterminated? OK, maybe trans people don’t enter StarFleet. Maybe we’re still banned from the serving in the military. Maybe Trip just doesn’t know any trans people, or about any trans people or of the existence of trans people. Doesn’t speak well for our presence in media, government and society, does it?
Maybe that explains why Adira will worry about how Stamets will react to their preferred pronouns. Okay, I gotta stop here for the usual disclaimer about spoilers: Star Trek series that have ended production (like Enterprise) are fair game, I have seen almost every one of those episodes. It is unreasonable to demand no one give me spoilers for something I have had decades to watch.
But with this particular topic, it is necessary to discuss newer Star Trek series that are still in production. Don’t worry about me or anyone else getting spoilers for a recent episode we haven’t seen yet, but also don’t go out of your way to spoil things that are not really relevant to this topic.
So if you absolutely don’t want any spoilers about Discovery or any of the currently running Star Trek shows, stop reading here.
With the serialized nature of a streaming show like Discovery, the writers have more than 42 minutes to work in a more sensitive narrative about the transgender while also trying to keep a breakneck pace that hopefully makes viewers want to binge a whole season in one day.
When Adira Tal (Blu del Barrio) is introduced, she’s a she as far as anyone on the Discovery NCC-1031 knows, or on Earth for that matter. It makes sense in the story, given how they come aboard Discovery, that they would not want to reveal too much about themselves at first.
It’s not until a couple of episodes later that Adira tells Commander Stamets (Anthony Rapp) about their preferred pronouns, corresponding roughly to Blu del Barrio coming out to their family in real life.
And you can see Adira getting ready to deal with a bad reaction from Stamets, made a little worse by Stamets taking a while to respond. In the story, Stamets is to Adira from a past almost as long ago as Tucker from the Enterprise NX-01.
When this episode first aired, pronouns were brewing as a battlefield in the cultural wars. Free speech crybaby Elon Musk declared his pronouns to be “prosecute/Fauci.” Gee, that really owns the libs, huh?
Del Barrio explained that their character’s pronouns are unrelated to their being a rare human with a Trill symbiont (no need to retcon the Next Generation episode “The Host,” because Discovery doesn’t have much access to historical records from Kirk’s era to the 31st Century as of Discovery Season 3).
Lt. Jadzia Dax (Terry Farrell, left) and Dr. Julian Bashir aboard Deep Space Nine in an episode of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.
On Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, joined Trills are referred to by the gender of the current host. Lt. Jadzia Dax is a Trill woman. Curzon Dax was a Trill man, and Ezri Tigan who will later be Ezri Dax is a Trill woman. So even before Adira got the Tal symbiont, they are a human non-binary person.
“I never felt like a she,” Adira explains. And really, isn’t that enough? People tells us their pronouns and we respect them by not going out of our way to interrogate and investigate their bodies. Unlike Republicans, we don’t need to inspect anyone’s genitals for conformance to our expectations for their preferred pronouns.
I remember an anti-abortion nutcase at work one day joyously saying to me: “If he wants to become a she, he should cut it off!” This was the same guy who puts two men having consensual sex in the same category as someone who randomly punches someone else on the street.
Supposedly we need Jesus to tell us what is morally right and what is morally wrong, because without Jesus, we have no idea whatsoever!
That coworker is also the same one who lied to me about having told his girlfriend to get an abortion when he was younger, just to win an argument about how supposedly easy it is for a woman to come to the decision to have an abortion. The Ten Commandments don’t apply in the fight against abortion, and props if you can run roughshod all ten of them to get abortion outlawed.
That guy’s statement about “cutting it off” was so crass and dumb that I just didn’t respond. The inventory concordance I was supposed to be working on suddenly seemed like an easier task, at least compared to unpacking the layers of dumb in that guy’s statement about the transgender.
I’m not the most woke person, but even I know that gender identity is a matter separate from sexual orientation. Adira’s boyfriend, Gray Tal (Ian Alexander) is a young Trill transgender man, who, as I understand, transitioned prior to getting the Tal symbiont.
It doesn’t matter if Adira dates a born man, a born woman, etc., if they don’t feel like a she they’re not a she. Gray died in a shuttle crash, and that’s how Adira got the Tal symbiont. I think his resurrection occurs in Season 4...
In real life, Ian Alexander’s pronouns are they/he, and I admit I’m a little confused as to how that differs from he/they. If we’re occasionally confused by someone’s pronouns, hopefully the person gently explains our mistake, instead of having to defend their right to exist in the manner that feels right to them.
The open thread question: what are the lessons we can glean from Star Trek in regards to gender?
P.S. You can watch “classic” Star Trek (original series to Enterprise) reruns on Heroes & Icons. All Star Trek episodes of all Star Trek series are available on Paramount+. Not sure about Pluto TV.