this post was submitted on 03 Sep 2024
20 points (100.0% liked)

Daystrom Institute

125 readers
1 users here now

Welcome to Daystrom Institute!

Serious, in-depth discussion about Star Trek from both in-universe and real world perspectives.

Read more about how to comment at Daystrom.

Rules

1. Explain your reasoning

All threads and comments submitted to the Daystrom Institute must contain an explanation of the reasoning put forth.

2. No whinging, jokes, memes, and other shallow content.

This entire community has a “serious tag” on it. Shitposts are encouraged in Risa.

3. Be diplomatic.

Participate in a courteous, objective, and open-minded fashion. Be nice to other posters and the people who make Star Trek. Disagree respectfully and don’t gatekeep.

4. Assume good faith.

Assume good faith. Give other posters the benefit of the doubt, but report them if you genuinely believe they are trolling. Don’t whine about “politics.”

5. Tag spoilers.

Historically Daystrom has not had a spoiler policy, so you may encounter untagged spoilers here. Ultimately, avoiding online discussion until you are caught up is the only certain way to avoid spoilers.

6. Stay on-topic.

Threads must discuss Star Trek. Comments must discuss the topic raised in the original post.

Episode Guides

The /r/DaystromInstitute wiki held a number of popular Star Trek watch guides. We have rehosted them here:

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

I've often pondered about how Vulcans view gender and sexuality.

I think pre-Surak/logic, they may have demonstrated homophobia and transphobia, but modern Vulcan Society would probably be chill with it under the reasoning that discrimination would reduce a person's efficacy as a functional member of Vulcan Society. For instance, given a choice between allowing a person to contribute verses driving them to the brink of suicide, Vulcans would probably tend to lean towards the first option.

There could very well still be stigma (Vulcans are far from a perfect society; some may have views that it is illogical to have a romantic relationship without a child), but it's dampened by the logic from the previous paragraph.

There's also the Pon Farr to keep in mind. Not only would it be hard to fight a person in the Ponn Farr, but also you'd literally be killing them by trying to prevent expression of their orientation.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] rah@feddit.uk 5 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

There's a gay Vulcan character in the New Frontier book series (U.S.S. Excalibur). From what I recall, there were no social issues but the guy's father disapproved due to "a waste of good genetic material" :-)

[–] plasmoidal@startrek.website 2 points 2 months ago

a waste of good genetic material

It's worth comparing this perspective to Spock's view in TWoK that Kirk not fulfilling his "first, best destiny" as a starship captain is also a "waste of material". In other words, Vulcans place value on a person expressing their truest and best self. That would jibe with the idea that Vulcan society would not place artificial barriers to people expressing their gender and sexual identity, since doing so would be viewed as a similar "waste of material".