I came across this piece earlier today, which reminded me a lot of how I felt about a lot of the portrayals of gender in TOS (which my fellow Trek Tarts will recall, from the frak parties…). Anyways I think it’s a really interesting way to lay out a bit of the history of TOS while at the same time noting that it is perhaps not as gender-progressive as it has been made out to be.
Arguably, it’s even more gender-progressive than “modern” Trek.
After all, Uhura never crashed the ship or got lost on the other side of the galaxy. :rolleyes:
It was a product of its time (as everything is.) And yeah, it’s telling that I Spy did more with race, and earlier, than even Trek did with gender (although they did some subtly subversive stuff with the sheer number of female lawyers/historians/etc.)
And, of course, we have to consider that it was constrained by the male-dominated network, making subtle subversion about as much as they could manage. The original pilot had a female first officer — that was only changed at the behest of the network. Roddenberry had to pick his battles, or else the show never would have taken off in the first place.
Oh yeah. Gene said he wanted to add more color to the bridge, which the execs went for since they were pushing color TV at the time. Then he added a black girl to the crew. <grin>
And in TAS she took command of the ship and saved the men!
All i have to say , unless I mis-read the article, this guy is kinda an idiot. In Turnabout Intruder, Lester is a crazy person. SHE says women are kept from being capatains, it’s not stated as a fact by a credible character. Absence of a female captain on a starship doesn’t mean they aren’t allowed… it just means that Starfleet doesn’t have affirmitive action.
I served with female combat troops ( infantry) of the Isreali defense force and in Bosnia with German, French and Canadian special forces. These women could shoot, run long distances, do push ups and pull ups ( based on their own body weight), and the skills of leadership and tactics were there as well. Now these were the cream of the crop. THese were the Tasha Yar’s so to speak. Based on my time serveing with them in combat, I was asked to participate in a study by the US Spec Force Command on the feasability of open recruitment of females. This study was done not to open the idea up for fairness, or social engineering… but to see if it was the most efficiant way to to run an army.
We looked at the German’s, New Zealander’s, Isreali’s, and Sweedish, recruitment, training, and and performance of their infantry and Special Opperations forces. They were the only armys that gave the women the same qualifications as men. Other army’s that allowed female combat troops ( France, Denmark, Canada) allowed women to graduate with lower scores. ( such as doing less push ups than men, given more time to run distances, being required to swim with less gear, and so on)Here is the jist of what we found:
Foor every 1 woman that graduated advanced infantry training there were 8 that failed to meet the standard. So 1/8 pass rate.
For every 40 men there were 10 failures. That’s 4/1
The studies show that the pure physical activity wears down their bodies. It wasn’t their mental inability to handle the stress… it was the physics of a average of 5 ft 5 135lb female ( around 119 by trainigs end) just couldn’t hold up to the body mass and strength required. Only REALLY butch women made it thru. There were NO Tasha Yar’s or Jadzia Dax’s in those units.
The next asppect of the study was: How did the Soldiers perform in their units. ( based on measuable skills testing and PT evaluations)
They performed their duty on par to a little more than the average man. ( after all the average man in their unit was in the top 45% of his gender during training. THe average woman was in the top 23%. High attrition is good for producing a unit with productive members. There was no questioning these women’s skill, dedication, or ability to keep up!
Then the next question was: How did they react when under fire? ( aka did they loose their shit? Cry like babies? ) the answer is yes. but in a much lower percentile than the men in their situations. ( remeber many of the men in their units were the average male from their training… these were the “super women”) So once again a passing score for the women.
Next: How did they do when it got physical? This is where the study takes a turn for the worse. When the missions went right, as expected… the women could shoot, kill and evade along with the average male… but there were no standouts. The cream of the crop female could lift less than the average male soldier. She could carry less weght for less distance and the real world fatigue was crippling to their bodies before their male team mates. The female casualties sustained more trama than their male counterparts for the same injuries( not for wussy reasons… but jsut because their bodies are built differently). Female’s suffering gun shot wounds were almost 3 times the fatality of men.
In our own study we took female candidates who were told that they were in competition to be the first US army female infantry. These soldiers were already in the army and had Ace’d the female PT test with 280 or more. ( 120 is required score. Out Co was a female officer and so were several of the APFT instructers ( standard army pt trainign that all these soldiers
We held them to the male 18 year old standard ( APFT ) and put the ladies thru a three week conditioning.
A mile away we put men thru the same training.
After the thre week training, we intergrated the platoons. We made sure there was no funny biussiness as best we could and trained together. We trainied them in Mixed martial arts and had them fighting in the ring. no eye gougeing or nut chunching… other than that… go at it. Females against females … males against males.
Then we took them to the pit. No audiance other than trainers, officers and observers. We picked the toughest female in the platoon and lowest scoreing male in her weight class. Our female was 5’8 135 black female who had previous boxing xp. our male was 5’7 129 pound philipino guy who grew up working in a comic shop Santa Cruz, Ca.
This was nothing like the episode of BSG. He beat the crap out of her.
We stopped the fight 2.5 mins in. We kept the results secret from the other soldiers and we fought three more fights. Each set with a highly ranked female against a much weaker male opponent. No females won a fight against a man.
We created the soldier rateing. We rated success in hand to hand, rifle range, standardized testing, 3 mile run time, num of pushups, pull ups, 12 mile ruck, and victory challange time ( woodland obstacle course) . We call the standard the “Total Soldier” rateing/
in the end our study showed that the top 5% scoreing women were in the lower 25% of all soldiers.
So with the drop out rates of women in combat training… you can pay to train 10 guys and you end up with 8 soldiers. 4 are average Totals Soldiers, three above average, and 1 Well above average.
or we can pay to train 10 females and you get 1 or 2 below average “total soldiers”.
There is a point to all this.
All of our studies showed that physicaly the best female combat soldier was on par with the acceptable, but lower than average male soldier. And mental evaluations showed them to be in the above average catagory. In the end a soldier needs to be smart. But better to be a little less than the best and be a frakin Rambo than be a geniuss and have the body less than average.
In TOS all perspective captains are smart. But how many can get beat to death… then turn the fight around and win. Woman haven’t dimonstrated that ability in modern warefare or training. In Starfleet a captain has to be able to be punched in the face and have their shirts ripped off 
in order to survive. The female body ( at least anybody who looks like the women from trek) couldn’t really fight anything other than a drunk Klingons in hand to hand combat. Watch Tasha and Dax… their fighting style is dancing ( no more than the men… but still). If somone built like a Jem Hadar really punched Terry Farell or Denise Crosby in the jaw… it’s over. Every Ranger i served with could beat tasha yar’s ass easiy. ( but they wouldn’t cause she is pretty cool in person!)
There is a good case to be made that in the lower ranks Kirk or Pike were beating ass on landing parties. Women in TOS don’t look like bruisers. Now… Number 1 probably was… but she is a fluke not the norm. Becomeing a captain might have a lot to do with haveing paid your dues by beating some ass. TOS era was frakin dangerous. They didnt fight theta rays. They fought monsters, gangsters, slavers, and Cohms… often without phasers.
So Janice Lester gripeing about there not being captains in Starfleet is really just stupid. Do you think we ever saw a human woman character in Star Trek that could have survived Kirk’s ass beating that Spock gave him when he was under the influece of those spores. Number One would have taken a beat down.
Brains alone don’t do it… a Starship captain has to have the total package.
( BTW… Jamie Bamber would beat the T-total shit out of Katee Sackoff in a boxing match that wasn’t governed by the writers. )
That’s not sexist… that just science… have you ever looked at that dude. He is like the stoutest lepprecahn ever!
That is once you get him out of that fat suit.
Great posts, roosterpfunk69. Thanks for your perspective!
Trek is most often given recognition for depicting racial equality. I think everyone then and now is well familiar with the chauvinist stereotypes infusing all of the recurring female characters and weekly guest stars.
Anecdotally, I remember playing Trek as kids in the 70’s. Every girl had a wood block phaser and got a fair turn at being Captain. On occasion, some demanded wearing miniskirts and boots as Mom’s purloined wardrobe afforded. Now that was totally their prepubescent bag, I got the impression it was empowering to them. Overall I’d have to say Trek was an enormously positive progressive influence, no less so for girls and probably a great deal more. In the context of the 70’s, they perceived Trek women as being strong women, ten years after the show was in syndication. Lost in Space, Scooby Doo and The Brady Bunch were less popular because the girl characters were considered far more girly and passive, by girls. That was a fairly all white bunch, we weren’t even aware that divisions of race existed in a personal way. The realization that Sulu and Uhura on the bridge was considered a big deal by others didn’t come until later.
I’m sorry to hear post modern feminists are now offended by forty year old television so much so they must take it out of cultural context.
I’m in much more agreement with Kessler’s previous article about sci-fi. Those charges will find more purchase with the later Berman/Piller/Taylor/Braga Trek machine. Silver suits and high heels.
though males characters in the modern trek also crashed ships/got lost on the other side of the galaxy…
Ok, this is my take on “captains”.
These are Star Ships with at least 100 hands on board. Realistically the captain of such Star Ship doesn’t need to be someone who can take a beating fighting a bi-pedal lizard.
I think the captain is put in so many dangerous situations just because it is much more fun story wise. In real life situations, I doubt a captain will lead any strike teams off the ship, when there are obviously trained combat personnels on board.
Also these star ships functions less like a modern military vessel, and more like a 16th century explorer. Combat is not the priority concern when it comes to gathering up people.
Maybe in case of Firefly, where there are only a handful of crew on board, the captain will need to be quick witted, a good leader, and hold his own facing the physical stuff. But in the Trek world, even in TOS’s time, I think female captains will do just fine.
Thanks for your insights, roosterpfunk69. I don’t have any military experience, so I’m just thinking in text here. It seems to me not too suprising that when the qualities we look for in a soldier are based on mostly physical strength and endurance, that men do outpace women. Not all, but most, men tend to be physically more powerful in most ways than most women.
That said, I’m interested to know which military positions in the various branches require that kind of physical ability. Obviously it’s important in combat. But I wonder if people who meet a more basic standard (not Commando style, but basic fitness) and who are really good engineers, medics, mechanics, navigators, pilots - even snipers? - could be considered just as valuable to the military in these different ways. I suspect a lot of military personnel are most valuable depending on the various skills their position requires.
Also, I can’t help but think of the eighteenth-century American writer Judith Sargent Murray, who wrote in her 1790 essay"On the Equality of the Sexes":
“I know there are [those] who assert, that as the animal powers of the one sex are superiour, of course their mental faculties also must be stronger; thus attributing strength of mind to the transient organization of this earth born tenement. But if this reasoning is just, man must be content to yield the palm to many of the brute creation, since by not a few of his brethren of the field, he is far surpassed in bodily strength.”
In other words, if brute strength supposes superior mental abilities as well, then men may be smarter than women, but then we must also cede that hippos and baboons are smarter than men.
Like hansioux mentioned, in the Star Trek universe it’s an even more dramatic difference. Starfleet officers rarely engage in hand-to-hand combat. When they do, it’s kind of cheeseball. 
Why fight a green monster when you’ve got a phaser? And how strong do you have to be to operate advanced weapons? If you’re strong enough to move your own body around nimbly and protect yourself reasonably well, I don’t think gender should make much of a difference in that world where almost all of the fighting is done with remote weapons (phaser fire, torpedoes, ship warfare, phaser rifles, etc.). Really it seems you only have to be strong enough to hold yourself up to the console and alert enough to push the right buttons. Come to think of it, a head in a jar could probably do the job if it could use its nose to jab the command keys.
Audra, great quote!
ThPrime, I have to disagree with you about “post modern feminists are now offended by forty year old television so much so they must take it out of cultural context.” That piece was particularly careful to talk about aspects of production of TOS in the context of other shows of its era, as well, and while sure it’s more progressive than any number of other shows, it wasn’t the paragon of gender and race equality that one might wish it were. I found it very interesting to learn that female test audiences responded badly to Number One (I thought she was great…). Because hey! we all internalize the -isms endemic to our cultures, and it’s a constant struggle to overcome them.
I’m now into the 3rd season of Enterprise, and maybe because it’s new to me this stands out, but wow, Archer does a lot of stuff that he really should leave to his crew. Sure, he gets into fun dramatic situations - but it’s not really ideal for the Captain to be the guy constantly getting into difficult situations!
True, but I think it’s a fair point that women in TOS, on the (admittedly rare) occasions that they wielded some level of control over the ship, did so just as well as any man would. OTOH, in TNG, Troi crashed the ship at least three times, and Beverly was only in charge on an imaginary Enterprise. Janeway famously got her crew stranded and gave up opportunity after opportunity to get them home. The Captain of the Enterprise C died valiantly, yes, but ultimately she didn’t even survive to fight the battle that gave her sacrifice meaning.
Women may have had more a more active role in recent Trek, but in almost all cases, their commands ended in disaster. Hardly progressive, compared to the '60s. 
I’m willing to concede that point. 
In wimpy TNG this is true… but not in TOS. In TOS the Captain beams right down into the thick of things. He is the senior person on board and get’s his hands dirty. Archer did the same thing and other captains kirk encounters were equally hand’s on. Well the article refered to a TOS episode where a crazy person claimed that there was a predjudice against women in Starfleet serving in command of a starship.
My point was this: I don’t believe it would ever be a rule in Starfleet that a woman coulnd’t serve as captain. I think that in the ultra physical era of TOS where starship Captains almost ALWAYS beamed down on missions on the frontier and got therir hands dirty… women just might not have cut it. That’s not their skill set. A human women couldn’t have been Kirk, … but she could be Picard or Janeway 80 years later. I don’t think Starfleet wold have said " no women"… I just think that they didn’t promote any just for the sake of afirmitive action… and the tough young kirk guy is going to get a better evaluation. But also… maybe there weren’t women trying to get the job. Absense of women doesn’t mean predjudice… it just means there wasn’t one as good as the guys.
In the Era of TOS Picard, or Janeway might not have made it either. It’s a different era. My grandpa was a Bird Col in WW2. He never would have made it during the peaceful hippy Army of the 90’s . Different skills for different era’s