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   Kate Morley (kate@fosstodon.org)'s status on Sunday, 01-Dec-2024 22:42:48 JST Kate Morley

   So I thought I’d finally watch Star Trek: The Original Series. I expected it to be dated, but I didn’t expect the horrific levels of sexual harassment depicted. In one episode, Yeoman Rand is sexually assaulted by an evil version of Kirk, is then interrogated about the incident by Kirk and Spock, and apologises for getting Kirk in trouble (at this point no-one knows there’s a separate evil Kirk). The episode ends with Spock remarking to her that evil Kirk had some “interesting qualities”.

   • Embed this notice
     Rich Felker (dalias@hachyderm.io)'s status on Sunday, 01-Dec-2024 22:42:47 JST Rich Felker

     in reply to

     @kate The level of casual sexism even in TNG is so cringe, and does far more to make it dated than the technology depicted. Watching TOS or TNG requires a curated list of episodes IMO. Starting with DS9 it got non-stupid in that regard.

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     Kate Morley (kate@fosstodon.org)'s status on Sunday, 01-Dec-2024 23:05:10 JST Kate Morley

     in reply to

     Unsurprisingly, behaviour on set was just as problematic as that depicted in the show:

     “Grace Lee Whitney once recounted that, while shooting the scene when a distraught, tearful Janice Rand accuses Captain Kirk of trying to rape her, William Shatner slapped her across the face to get her to register the proper emotion.”

     Rich Felker repeated this.
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     Kate Morley (kate@fosstodon.org)'s status on Sunday, 01-Dec-2024 23:05:11 JST Kate Morley

     in reply to

     People tend to defend things like this as products of their time, so I’d also like to highlight that someone much more recently writing the Memory Alpha article on the episode chose the belittling phrasing that Rand “walks away in a huff” in response to Spock’s remark.

     Rich Felker repeated this.
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     Kate Morley (kate@fosstodon.org)'s status on Sunday, 01-Dec-2024 23:05:42 JST Kate Morley

     in reply to

     It gets worse:

     “In her autobiography, The Longest Trek: My Tour of the Galaxy, Whitney describes an incident in which she was sexually assaulted by an executive of the Star Trek production team, whom she never identified by name, and she drew a link between this incident and her dismissal a few days later”