Klingons are amazing. Another example:
this post was submitted on 12 Sep 2024
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I also really appreciated Worf and Martok's take on Garak's struggles with claustrophobia
Martok: There is no greater enemy than one's own fears.
Worf: It takes a brave man to face them.
Can we just give a hand to the who ST team who whiplashed Klingons from a poorly defined eternal enemy into one of the greatest examples of non-toxic masculinity representation on tv.
Honestly I really think this show is the reason I turned out more compassionate than my parents.
Our gods are dead. Ancient Klingon warriors slew them a millennia ago. They were... more trouble than they were worth.
Maybe just one of the many reasons Klingon's often seem ridiculously awesome. When you reject ancient gods because they were "troublesome" you're choosing to build a world where the world having no meaning becomes liberating instead of suffocating.
No wonder things like this are so easy for them to understand. No religious baggage!
I like to think of that stance as “positive nihilism” if that makes sense. It is liberating to really feel in your bones that it’s OK to focus on one things that really matter to you rather than the things you’ve been taught should matter to you.
Was it ever made canon that the old Klingon "gods" were a spacefaring race that conquered the still plabet-bound Klingons with superior technology and were eventually overthrown? I feel like that might have been beta canon, or maybe just a very compelling fan theory.
NOOO BUT SHE ISN'T TRANS SHE'S A TRILL WHICH IS DIFFERENT BECAUSE IT'S STILL DAX JUST FROM.....
- Real people who don't understand symbolism.
I don't think the writers intended the Trill to be a an allegory for being trans. It was probably just supposed to be a cool sci fi stand in for being different. You can only show current, real life discrimination being non existent in the Federation in so many ways before you have to make up new things.
But it also doesn't change anything. Trans allegory or not, it's yet another instance showing how Star Fleet and the Federation value everybody, no matter if they're different or how they're different. Fuck the transphobes.
There's that DS9 episode where Jadzia risks exile from Trill society to revisit an old relationship, and, if not necessarily trans, it reads pretty obviously as a queer allegory.
I still wouldn't say that one reads as a trans allegory. The conflict arises from failing to meet social expectations, not from changes in gender.
But yeah, it definitely reads as a queer allegory.
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That’s how I feel, but I don’t think it takes away from people who see the situation as similar to being trans.
And also, just in general, it’s so easy to treat trans people with respect. It’s very easy, and if you do make a mistake on their pronouns or accidentally deadname someone, I’ve never ever had them take it offensively, just apologize and we move on.
That’s how I feel, but I don’t think it takes away from people who see the situation as similar to being trans.
I was speaking more about the intention of the writers at the time they made the character. Seeing it as an allegory for being trans is still 100% valid despite it probably not being the intentions of the writers.
I edited my comment to make that more clear.
And also, just in general, it’s so easy to treat trans people with respect. It’s very easy, and if you do make a mistake on their pronouns or accidentally deadname someone, I’ve never ever had them take it offensively, just apologize and we move on.
Agreed
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I don't even think it's symbolism from the Klingon's perspective. It's a bit different with the Trill extra personality there, but the objection is the actual point. That's still Dax in there, even though they look different now.
Sisko still calls her Old Man though. Somewhat ironically, but consistently.
Yeah, but less in a pronoun sense and more in a nickname. She never asked him to stop, if she did I'm guessing he would have stopped immediately
A term of endearment they share, not seen as an insult, and all the more silly that the Dax symbiote is now hosted by a body younger than Sisko. It works well.
It’s an honor to be given a nickname by The Sisko.
He calls Mirror O’Brian “Smiley”, and that’s also considered a term of endearment even though it was used as an insult by Mirror Sisko.
And he calls Picard “Wife-killer”, which Picard has never verbally objected to. :)
Its not symbolism.
The reason people view Dax as a trans is that they were at times male and at times female. That is not symbolic of being trans, it is just being trans.
However, despite exploring what it means to be a trill passing through generations of hosts, the changing gender aspect of it never comes up. If Kurzon was a women, I doubt we would be talking about Dax as a trans stand-in, but I can't think of a single plot point or character development that would meaningfully change.
Normally I'm a believer in death of the author, so I won't be offended if anyone wants to completly ignore thus section, but in the DS9 documentary, they have a section on LGBT representation, and their big example for it was Jadzia. However, that was not for being trans, it was for being in a gay relationship.
Dax is the "soul", Jadzia or Curzon are the bodies. Thus it seems that the gender of Jadzia Dax / Curzon Dax is entirely defined (or perhaps not defined at all?) by the body Dax is residing in. Whereas trans people in real world believe in a gendered soul that is independent of the body they are in.... right?
But it's not like I oppose some other interpretation of it.
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Because their masculinity and confidence in themselves is so impeccable that nothing that anyone any where can say or state about any other sexuality will ever effect them.
They are so comfortable and sure in who they are that nothing they ever see, no matter how different, will ever affect them.
To me, someone who accepts everyone else while maintaining their own surety on themselves is the height of masculinity.
“Waste no more time arguing what a good man should be. Be one.” – Marcus Aurelius
Edit: extrapolated for modernity, rephrase as "good person"
To me, someone who accepts everyone else while maintaining their own surety on themselves is the height of masculinity.
I'm sorry, but are you saying feminine people cannot also do this? Or that it would make them masculine?
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Honestly, I’ve gained a whole new level of appreciation for Jadzia’s character in recent years, largely in light of how absurdly politicized gender identity and trans rights have become.
I've spent too much time on computers.
I don't see people as their age, gender, color, name, whatever. To me, a person is a construct, that construct is immutable. You, as a person, exist, only your variables change. Your name, age, gender, sex, personality, political views, culture, race, skin color, etc, are all properties of the immutable object that represents you.
In this way, your name, gender, age, political views, etc, can all change, and the human object that is you, never changes.
Technology does this already. A good example is with user accounts for something like active directory (the windows domain login thing). Your user object isn't assigned by name, or login ID or whatever. You have, what is referred to as a UUID inside of the system. To that UUID, you have parameters like your name, email, phone number, etc, attached to it. When permissions are given, they're given to your UUID, not to your name.
Because of this, the administrators like me, can update your name, phone number, login, email, etc, without changing what you have access to. Your email account is tied to your UUID as well, so your user object has permission to access that mailbox, and it's listed in the parameters as your primary mailbox (for stuff like auto configure).
It's all very basic object oriented stuff.
wait, you literally objectify people
OOP does an outstanding job of illustrating the nature of the universe, and people are part of that universe.
Fair enough.
Wait wait wait... immutable means unchangeable! In your analogy this would mean if someone changes anything about them, like a name due to marriage or gender due to affirming care, they become a new object. And you can, but shouldn't assign that new object the same UUID.
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wait, so if someone tells you to refer to them in a different way, you can just go "ok" and move on without the smallest hitch in your life? without losing your shit and foaming at the mouth?
nah... no way.
are we sure this particular Klingon didn't start a podcast later to cry about this for months?
If not a podcast, then at least a video shot in portrait mode, alone in the cockpit of a shuttle craft because the rest of their house can't stand listening to their crap.
It's easy for us but those that hold bigotry as part of their identity will have problems.
What you identify as does not matter, as long as you die in battle with honor!
Wow, I saw that episode, for the first time, like an hour ago.
Oh wow. You have so much more wonderful DS9 ahead of you still!
I hope so!
Though unlike 99.99% of the rest of you, pretty sure when I hit the dominion and changeling stuff I'm going to nope out. I have some vague recollection of bits and pieces I caught and people I've talked to about this stuff. I'm guessing that's what you're talking about?
I like the moral wrangling and optimism; with characters I can admire. Not the "darker, grittier" and action-y stuff. But I'll give it a try!
The beauty of old trek is in its episodic nature. Don’t like that episode? Skip it. There’s plenty of great episodes on DS9 that completely sidestep the dominion war. Though I have to say the one with Quark teaching the Vulcan about the price of peace is fantastic.
I just saw that one!
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Honor to you and your house!
Kaplah!
Now I feel bad that perhaps her best friend kept calling her "old man".
Don't, Jadzia clearly appreciated it.
Trill's relationships to their past hosts is complicated and never fully explored, but it is clearly established that the distance they create between their current host's life and that of their past host is something that is enforced apon them by broader trill society.
Both Kurzon and Jadzia were, at least at times, clearly unhappy at the extent to which they had to distance themselves from their past life.
https://youtu.be/Qu-bP5367Yo?si=YNBFC_IUo7o7FpCd
The thing is, Trill are not trans. Dax didn't go from being a man to a woman. Kurzon was always a man and Jadzia was always a women. And DS9 actually took this concept seriously on its own terms.
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