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Comment by firecall | Hacker News Reader

Even if you are not a fan, the PDF is a very enlightening read!

"...blonde with a shape even a uniform could not hide"

It's shockingly misogynistic!

Remember who the audience of the document is: powerful studio executives steeped heavily in the sexism that was the social norm for the era. They may not understand the philosophy of the series (and probably wouldn't have cared for it if they had) but they do understand that having pretty faces can improve viewer counts (not so different from today really) and they want to be certain that there's going to be ROI before doling out funds.

What you should be marveling at is that, for the 1960s, Star Trek TOS had highly progressive aspects, such as having women about a warship at all, let alone as officers and even the first officer. For comparison, in the United States Navy, women were not allowed to serve on combatant ships until 1994[1] and having the first woman to be assigned to command a combatant ship didn't happen until 1998[2]. Even I'm a bit surprised to discover that it was that recent.

[1] https://www.history.navy.mil/content/history/nhhc/browse-by-...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_the_United_States_Nav...

> in the United States Navy, women were not allowed to serve on combatant ships until 1994

Meanwhile, the audience had pleasure of dealing with a Starfleet fleet admiral Nechayev in 1992, and then rear admiral Rollman in 1993.

> having the first woman to be assigned to command a combatant ship didn't happen until 1998

By that time, captain Janeway was in the middle of the delta quadrant, stirring up trouble.

I wonder if the shows had any influence on the US Navy letting in women earlier.

In fact, many of the plots were used as a way to “sneak” progressive ideas past the network execs. Gene would have had to make them think he was a certain kind of person pushing a certain kind of narrative instead of who he was, pushing those progressive ideas.

Chauvinistic? Misogynistic traditionally meant hatred, and the way it has been redefined is genuinely bad for communication.

As others have said, while this looks exploitative to modern eyes it was in the context where having a women serve in the quasi-military context of Trek was almost absurdly progressive. At the time, NASA refused to contemplate putting women in space, despite the efforts of a shadow training programme (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercury_13) - far more misogynistic.

Trek also featured an interracial kiss (not quite the first, but nearly) at a time when interracial marriage was still illegal in several states. It was very much the SJW show of its time.

Eh, the bigger issue was Roddenberry was a Weinstein-type producer who hired women who he was sleeping with. "Free Love" guy who signed the checks. He's describing a particular actress who has been open with the star trek community about her issues. He is almost bragging that he could put her into a major role. (Even back in 1960s, this point in the proposal was creepy and barely appeared in the tv show.)

I think the end of that paragraph is more interesting.

> She is not dumb; she is very female, disturbingly so.

It is interesting how things change over time. The undercurrent in the character description for both of the women has big "she's real competent for a woman" vibes. I'm sure they were trying to be progressive and just stumbled over the attitudes of the era. Hey, we'll all be there some day, right?

Sexist maybe, not misogynistic.

Give some credit for the female Executive Officer.

Young Kirk was pretty buff.

Is it misogynistic to revel in the female form?

If it exists for males to revel in?

Yes, the male gaze is misogynist. I don't think that still requires explaining, it has been written about a lot.

I'm guessing the word "misogyny" doesn't mean "woman-hating" any more?

I'm which case, why is it still considered a bad thing?

Why is it considered by others to be a bad thing, to see women as lesser and to keep them down, just because they're women?

Let me give you an easy out here, and tell you my assumptions. I am assuming it also only took you a minute to look up the definition. And after reading it, then couldn't come up for a reason for others to judge that kind of behavior.

I am kind of stumped of how to actually reply to this, to me it is just pretty obvious that any kind of prejudice or bias like that is strongly unwanted.

> Why is it considered by others to be a bad thing, to see women as lesser and to keep them down, just because they're women?

Eh? I thought you were using some obscure definition? What does any of that have to do with appreciating and making note of the female form?

Btw: this is kinda interesting: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/yCWPkLi8wJvewPbEp/the-noncen...

As stated, the male gaze is a form of misogyny.

Since you keep asking the same, here's some reading for you as well. It's not worth my energy to reply if your just going to ignore that and repeat your question. Best of luck.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misogyny

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Male_gaze

A useful link for yourself: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equivocation

And a more complete list: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/FaJaCgqBKphrDzDSj/37-ways-th...

How is pitching a sexy women a women-hating thing to do?

The unaired pilot episode features characters very close to those described here. There's a "secretary has crush on her superior, he doesn't notice or doesn't care" cliche going on which would have been a feature over the whole series. Obviously making her physically attractive helps that plot point.

Of course that got axed after the unaired pilot episode, but in return the gender ratio took a hot with both the yeoman and Number One gone.

Heh, if you are a fan then you’ll realize women being sexy is integral to a good portion of the original Star Trek’s plots…of of course, Kirk being Kirk.

Then you actually watch TOS and start to wonder where did people get the idea wrt. Kirk from. He wasn't anywhere near the womanizer people accuse him of being - this seems to be one of those commonly widespread misconceptions about the show, up there with "beam me up, Scotty" (never actually said on the show), or "redshirts" being the ones to always die (someone did the math of casualties by uniform color, and red wasn't first).

If you want to find a womanizer in Star Trek, try commander Riker from TNG.

Kirk wasn't a womanizer - it's just that all of the women liked him.

Some of it does seem odd to a modern audience though, such as the episode where he gets flirty with a girl hitting puberty in "Miri." The odd part was he was taken aback when the others told him that she liked him.

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