The administrator of the original petition organisers (who are now in the process of rebooting) contacted me after I posted
my long spiel on why using a the Kirk/Spock pairing as a "springboard" for LGBTQI representation in Trek, and ostensibly in Sci-Fi more generally, was, well, problematic to put it lightly.

I'm pretty sure he contacted me because of my strong suggestion not to support this homophobic campaign, though I can't say for sure as he hasn't contacted me again after I asked him why he contacted this random angry queer grrl.

He asked me very nicely if I had any advice for him, as the bruhaha of the last week made the entitlement and appropriation issues pretty evident. Not to mention that this brought about a very scary symptom of prejudice regarding LGBT people in fandom.

Seriously people, do we not remember Race!Fail!

I cross posted my entry at starbase_idic and I was happy to get approval from those who commented, though I quickly became irritated with a few who decided to derail the argument into the veracity of the Kirk/Spock pairing.

Something that happened in my LJ as well, I might add.

The point is really not whether there is evidence to support this purely fannish slash pairing, which for the record before anyone decided to come here and shove it down my throat, I agree there is, if you believe that production notes and author commentary have any bearing on canon(1).
The point I'd like to get at is what I explained to the administrator who contacted me:

[...]I think the focus and use of K/S and it's fan history as a vessel is counter productive in the extreme for a few reasons. Namely that [queer] visibility shouldn't be about fan service, which K/S certainly is.

Another reason is that focusing on K/S goes against established canon which is pretty progressive in it's own right, as I mention in my post - woman of colour professional gets together with non-main character hero. I think breaking up a canon pairing in the name of "suddenly we are gay" is counter productive, counter intuitive to the characters and isn't positive queer representation, if anything it looks like the age old trope of "Turning"/"Recruiting".

Aren't we sick of that?
I know I am.
[...]
I use "homophobia" because of the reasons I mention above, of the old tropes that appear to be what this little part of fandom is focusing on.
[...]
I don't think a ship should be used as a spring board for action regarding social change. As a discussion regarding aspects of media, fandom and society, yes, I often discuss meta using ships and fictional characters.

The use of K/S to promote queer visibility in the Trek franchise is counter productive and counter intuitive and changing canon and what is established relationships for the sake of fan service is not good story telling and/or world building, it's a shallow interest in eye candy which isn't equal rights, its fetishization.
[...]

It's been stated before and I'll state it again. Queer people are real. Our problems are real. Media representation has only now begun to evolve beyond Shock! Horror! and/or Accessory for the Straight character. The co-optation of something that really is serious for the purpose of pushing a 'ship and changing the canon for fan service is really quite upsetting.

The idea that Star Trek is the vehicle through which queer representation is going to happen in Sci-Fi is seriously missing the boat. There are queer action heroes in Sci-Fi/Fantasy. They are quite awesome.
Willow and Tara from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Xena and Gabriel from Xena: Warrior Princess and of course, Captain Jack and Ianto from Torchwood.

Damn, I'm derailing myself.

I'd like to remind the people who organise these kind of campaigns to remember the history of LGBT people in the media and media representation.
GLAAD, my friends.
They are not there for nothing.
The wheel has been around for a while.
Like one of commentator's at my post at starbase_idic said in a very nicely worded PM to me, that they were willing to do their part to promote LGBT representation in sci-fi, in any petition, in spite of their relatively small knowledge of LGBT issues.
That they're willing to be an ally.
If you want to be a good ally I suggest you start by educating yourself. There are huge amounts of information out there and it's really not our job to educate you and/or comfort you in your ignorance.
I suggest you read these as a start: this brilliant entry by rm, What do we want from our allies and think about reading the stuff at various LGBTQI organisations.
Just as a starting point, there is a whole lot more than that.

I'm not in the entertainment business. I am not an insider. I am merely a concerned consumer. My advice to the administrator was as follows:

I think it would be a good idea to distance yourself from the brouhaha that started the negative criticism I and others feel it deserves. I think you really need to change the language and truly make the campaign about representation in sci-fi/fantasy media (of which some exists and you really need to remember that - don't forget that just this month was a very well publicised epic featuring a same-sex relationship between the main and third billed character - Torchwood:Children of Earth - Brokeback Mountain is really not what we should be striving to when it comes to media representation) and not just be about pushing a certain show/franchise/'ship as a vessel for an issue that is so much more than that.

Fandom, like real life, is full of prejudice of many kinds. Using it as a springboard, while useful for creating pressure of numbers, if done "qualitatively" can lead to appropriation and entitlement like that seen in some of the discussion over the past week.

When speaking about this to my brother, who is a fellow Trek fan, he wondered if most people weren't basically opposed to Kirk/Spock in general for reasons of a)Them both being men and b)The chain of command.
Well, the latter was pretty much addressed in the new movie as "fraternisation is an issue, but so long as it's dealt with, in any which way, it's okay".

The former reminds me that fandom, like real life, is not actually a safe space.
Us fans have a certain kind of crazy and it makes us forget that we interact with real people, some of them so different from us we cannot imagine that their lives are not fiction.

Just to conclude this post with some petty fannish rambling.

Nearly every attempt the various Star Trek series tried to do concerning sexuality and gender issues in the show were big, big failures.
The Mirror!Universe? Really, really bad.
That TNG episode with the genderless aliens? Did not come across well at all!
The only episode I can think of that showed some kind of positive same-sex desire in Trek is "Rejoined" and there's a reason everyone mentions that episode.
See the aforementioned "only episode".

That's just my own pet peeve.

We are all real. And who we see on screen should be who we are as well, not a Trope.

Don't fucking forget it.

Footnotes:
(1) Personally, I feel that what JKR did regarding Dumbledore and his post-mortem coming out showed very little respect to the fans and little integrity as an author. If that was pertinent information that had to be canonised... why not put it in the bloody books?! As it stands, it didn't retcon anything in the books and pretty much showed old gay men to be manipulative bastards (perhaps paedophiles) who are unable to find love.
Yeah, I'm bitter that she did that. And I really, really dislike Dumbledore.

Via constintina:

The origins of Spock as the "Other", the "Outsider" and the Vulcan salute:


As an agnosto-atheist, the whole idea of the essence of god thing doesn't really do it for me.
However, I come from a family of Kohanim (the Priest tribe of the Jewish people) and the one time a year I do attend shul (synagogue) it's to hear and sing "Kol Nidrei" and to see my father and brother bless the congregation.
The shul my family attends isn't Orthodox, it's very egalitarian(1) - women wear kippah and tallitot, etc.

Everything Leonard Nimoy said there, I find it rings so true to the way I perceive Judaism, though not the kind that I ever experienced, nor do I think will I ever, considering where I am from and the fact that one must believe.
Which, as I've mentioned, I do not.
Like Roddenberry, I'd consider myself a Humanist, despite the problematic history of that word, but I'm a bit too Jewish for that so I like this(2) more than anything else.

(1)Though not enough for daughters of Kohanim to be able to go up to the Bimah and bless the congregation.
(2)Humanistic Judaism

My brother sent me an email last night asking me where my review of Star Trek was.
My reply to him was thus:

"I am still squeeing

I need to articulate my thoughts beyond;
OMG Spock!
OMG Kirk!
( Tiny Spoiler )

so... yeah..."

However, I feel that I must first write about my Trek background seeing as it's a huge part of why I so thoroughly enjoyed the movie. In this post I'll give you a quick history - behind a cut so as not to bore you to death - of how Star Trek changed my life no less than Buffy.

Once I have this written down, I'll be able to give you a much better review.

Enjoy the Geekery!

( 'Tis Long! )
And that's that.

It's been two days since the viewing (and now planning on seeing it again) and I think I'm capable of writing the spoilerific review you all deserve to read, including on what was awesome and what really, really wasn't.
Stay tuned!

*Plugging starbase_idic for that reason!

I just watched the Doctor Who 2008 Christmas special titled "The Next Doctor".

That means there will be spoilers! Beware!

It was... eh.

The villainess, Miss Ms. Mercy Hardigan, was boring and an Angry Woman who is Angry! At Men!
Lots of Men.
Has most brilliant mind there ever was!
Mwahahahahahahahahahaha!
Defeated by massive guilt trip.
Not so brilliant.

The Cybermen were uninteresting, like they usually are when there aren't any Daleks around.

Seriously, the Cyberman-Dalek exchange in "Doomsday" series two finale was one of the best ever! So hilarious.

( For your enjoyment: the entire brilliant scene of Dalek and Cyberman Extermination and Deletion! )

Aaaaaaanyway!

The Doctor - Tennant - was cute and dashing as always.
The "Next" Doctor - Morrisey - should... really keep to singing as he's truly a horrendous actor.
Rosita - yes, that was the name *gag* - was the pretty, cockney, token woman of colour... she of course had to rescued from danger and from prostitution... I'm feeling the forward sci-fi thinking here.

Oh Russel T. Davies why do you wound me thus!

Aargh!

As I was watching the episode on Ursula-the-laptop, my mother asked me why I was looking so glum and why was I cringing.

Dude.
It could have been so-so-soooooooooooooo much better!

The next Doctor Who special is called "Planet of the Dead".
It's either Zombies or Vampires.
Either of those options has to be better than this special.
I really hope Auntie Beeb doesn't SNAFU Tennant's final year as the Doctor.
It would leave me with a really sour taste in my mouth... I don't know anything about this new guy... Matt Smith... except that Steven Moffat (he who will be replacing current Executive Producer and main writer Russel T. Davies) has a crush on his coiffure.

Man... I mean, compared to "A Christmas Invasion", "Voyage of the Damned" and "A Runaway Bride", "The Next Doctor" was just unoriginal, predictable and just plain... eh.
I'm tempted to say Pareveh - which means neither Milk nor Meat as related to Kosher laws and is colloquial in Israeli Hebrew as bland, boring and neither here nor there.
So yeah.
Pareveh.

Edited To Add: Via hemlock_sholes and violachic.
The Alternative Doctor Who Christmas Special:
( Trek Through Time )

Star Trek:TOS fans will get a kick out of this:

*Flail*

Not that I didn't know, but pics!

It's nice to have a young one *grin*

Robbie was the one to introduce me into sci-fi and fantasy, via the best avenues; Robbie would watch Star Trek:TNG and I'd wait for it to end so I could watch my cartoons (Transformers, Smurfs, Thunder Cats, Silver Hawks, Batman, Spiderman & friends etc). One day I noticed Robbie was watching a different kind of Star Trek, one with much brighter colours, short skirts and a tall man with pointy ears.

I was hooked.

Star Trek:TOS is much more suitable for the seven year old brain since it is much, much less complicated than TNG and of course a whole lot more simplistic that DS9, I was fascinated (laugh it up) with Spock, there was something about him, other than his real alien-ness and not just in his appearance (I thought he looked like an Elf... plus the green blood and all), but in the way he behaved, his actions always spoke louder than his words. I always felt a connection with Spock, his Otherness attracted me as a little girl and became actual sex appeal as a teenager... imagine my surprise to find out I wasn't alone in my admiration.

Nowadays Star Trek:TOS is ridiculed and parodied and much to my distress seen, even in the sci-fi community, as something to be hidden, because for some reason people view it as bad, when all it is, is dated.
All the James Dean movies are dated, does that not make them bad, merely old fashioned.

But Star Trek:TOS was ahead of it's time, I mean it was showed long before people landed on the moon, and it pushed the envelope when it came to social issues, I mean it had the first inter-racial kiss on network television, it showed a progressive ideal about different cultures (not all the time granted, but for the most part they did their best to obey the Prime Directive) and it showed relations between Mainstream and Other (Kirk and Spock... strangely enough Shatner and Nimoy are both Jewish), it showed that two people from extremely different walks of life could be best friends.
Not to mention Sulu, Chekov, Uhura, I mean talk about pushing it when it came to political reality at the time.

Gene Roddenberry had a vision (I think he's rolling around in his grave with everything that's happened since he passed away) and it's a vision of a utopia, a future that is possible, I don't think we'll ever really achieve.
So TOS is considered the worst by many in the sci-fi comm (IMO Enterprise is an abomination, but that's just personal opinion) when in fact it is probably the only proper sci-fi in the Star Trek continuum.

There was no actual meaning to this post, just looking forward to iCon :)
Just click "English" or any other relevant language if you are unable to read Hebrew.