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Gene Roddenberry's Star Trek was misogynist, according to Kate Mulgrew, female lead in Star Trek Voyager


Kate Mulgrew, main character in Star Trek Voyager, said that the original Star Trek series from Gene Roddenberry was extremely mysogynist. And so it was Roddenberry.

She's willing to appear in the Picard series too. (hey, you don't think she's trashing Roddenberry for free, don't you? she wants her 30 denarius!)

https://www.radiotimes.com/news/tv/2019-07-21/star-trek-misogynist-kate-mulgrew-picard/
'Did you watch the original series? It was extremely misogynist. That’s what it was for years and Picard [the character] followed that to a certain extent. Roddenberry himself was that way.'

Ah, Roddenberry, you old dirty sexist racist nazi white male...

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The original Star Trek series bore the imprint of its time (i.e. the Mad Men era). It was very male dominated, female subordinate. TNG wasn't like that though. Women weren't swooning over the captain, he didn't love 'em and leave 'em. To be fair there were still a lot more men than women in command positions. But the character of Jean-Luc Picard was nothing like James T. Kirk.

Didn't know Gene Roddenberry. Can't speak to his sexism, or lack thereof.

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[1] Roddenberry was a classic liberal. And classic liberals were heavily meritocratic.

In his universe, command was based on merit, not racial or gender affiliation. Women weren't limited, but they weren't pushed through quotas. It's the old liberal concept of freedom (the very name 'liberal' means that: 'liber' means 'free' in Latin), women or men weren't pushed, they were free to choose their vocation or what they wanted to do with their life.

That meant that you had less women or non-white in command, that's true, but the ones that were there, they were there because of merit, not because of quotas. Uhura wasn't there because she was a black woman, but because she was damn good in her job.

[2] Not to say that portraying it as 'male dominated, female subordinated' is ludicrous, considering that 99% of male crew were in subordinated positions.

[3] In the original series, if somebody would tell you about some character 'there's a character that is (male|woman), whose skin color is (black|asian|white|native american), and the hair is (blond|dark|redhair)', you would know NOTHING.

In Star Trek Discovery, and probably in Picard, you can make a good guess about his personality and behaviour... and probably you will be right. That's true hate.

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KUKU--Those are very perceptive and accurate comments, about both classic liberalism and original "Star Trek".

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Thanks!

I actually quite like classic liberalism, identify myself with it. Nowadays, that's labeled as far-right. Paradoxes of politics.

Anyway, the modern Left habit of claiming the achievements of that classic Liberalism while at the same time dismissing it is something that infuriates me.

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Both the original Star Trek and TNG were products of their respective decades, and carry the imprint of the times. As does ST: Picard. How can it be otherwise? I have no idea what Gene Roddenberry was like as a man. I haven't heard that a long list of women have accused him of harassing behavior or sexual assault (like half the politicians in Washington). Could be wrong. Haven't really checked into it. But people too are a product of their times, and I think he could be forgiven for holding antiquated views at a time when they were the norm.

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The original Star Trek series bore the imprint of its time (i.e. the Mad Men era).


No, not really. The sexualization was strictly Roddenberry. If you look at the pilot (later made into "The Cage"), #1 was a female (Majel Barrett) and the women were dressed like the men. So the show started out as this super egalitarian program but from what I remember reading, Roddenberry didn't like this and demanded that the women be more sexual and the show have tons of sex (in the form of scantily clad babes, lust, etc.) in it.

Years later, people who worked with Roddenberry said that he often ranted about women, and even would call them the C-word.

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Nope. #1 was demoted by the network, who thought it was too butch to have a woman that high in the command structure. It was a battle Roddenberry couldn't win and get the series picked up.

Hell, the guy put a black woman on the bridge of his starship when there were households across the country who wouldn't turn to a show that had a black character, period.

Let's get over the revisionist bullshit concerning things that happened more than 50 years ago, especially when most people discussing it (you for example) don't have a f'ing clue what they're talking about.

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Did she mention the miniskirts? Not sexist! Roddenberry was born 99 years ago, what does she expect?

https://comparativegeeks.wordpress.com/2016/05/07/star-trek-miniskirts-feminist-or-nah/

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You are taking a lot of what she said a bit out of context. She did give Roddenberry his due. But sorry she is right. Also Roddenberry was a bit of a womanizer. He cheated on his wife with Nicelle Nicoles and majej Barret. At the same time. He wanted a relationship with both woman but Nicelle wouldn't have it. He had several affairs during his first marriage.

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I don’t know if this is true but I remember someone telling me that whenever Roddenberry cheated on Majel Barret she would go shopping and run up his bills.

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So what. Women cheat on their spouses all the time.

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Check what TrekMovie wrote about his early film Pretty Maids All In A Row.

https://moviechat.org/nm0734472/Gene-Roddenberry/59670cc12b135700113f372c/Forgotten-Roddenberry-Pretty-Maids-All-In-A-Row

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Good find!

'Pretty Maids in a Row' looks like any sexual comedy in the 60s. I didn't know that movie, so thank you for referencing it, gonna watch it :-)

The article is just some standard modern politically correct view. With a couple of references to God, it would make good material for some Christian Cult Magazine like 'The Watchtower'. It already has the references to the amount of skin showed ('The film itself was dubiously marketed as having more skin in it than any mainstream production up to that point and its starlets promoted it with their own Playboy spreads'), and the length of the skirts ('Ponce has never been taught that women are fully formed human beings, so we mostly see the world as a long parade of cleavage and upskirts that can never be embraced and furiously dry-humped'), and the promiscuity of characters ('He exudes a kind of old-fashioned, John Wayne-style manliness, but preaches new age ideas about a liberal future lead by wise and promiscuous young people').

You just need to include a few sentences reminding people to praise God and go to Church, and the article would be ready to be published in 'The Watchtower' LOL

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"Pretty Maids" wasn't an 'early film'. It was two years post Star Trek, and it takes about 5 seconds to find that out. (1971)

And no, "Pretty Maids" wasn't like any "sexual comedy in the 60s". It was a very black comedy that had Rock Hudson murdering a string of High School girls he had sex with when they threatened to tell others for various reasons. And he got away with it, which was a big no-no in those days.

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I love Star Trek but everything she said is 100% correct.

In the original pilot, #1 was a female and both sexes wore the exact same uniform (pants, boots, shirt). But IIRC, Roddenberry hated that. He wanted the women sexualized, so the female #1 was dropped, the uniforms for the women changed and the entire series filled with big-boobed bimbos in skimpy outfits.

In later series, female characters were always put in slinky bodysuits for no real reason. For example, Kes of Voyager used to wear cute little dresses but then was made to wear a catsuit in her last season and sexed up with a new hairstyle, and Seven of Nine wore that stupid body hugging outfit when she could've easily been put in a uniform.

Also, there are sources who said that he'd often go on these tirades against women, calling them the C-word, etc., etc.

BTW, I feel sorry for Kate Mulgrew. It seems like she's burning from what they did to her on Voyager, and frankly, I don't blame her.

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Except none of the female crew members or officers were bimbos. They were highly qualified, professional and skilled, and some happened to be quite attractive. So who's really being misogynistic?

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Except none of the female crew members or officers were bimbos.


You didn't watch TOS, clearly. Because if you had, you'd know that when I was talking about "the entire series filled with big-boobed bimbos in skimpy outfits," I was clearly talking about the Alien Space Babe of the Week who Kirk always wound up seducing.

Or, are we going to pretend that women like this...

https://i.pinimg.com/564x/8d/68/d5/8d68d558c005206d4689b62df991e721.jpg
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/39/89/8d/39898de54b4d50d2f3595b1162217e31.jpg
http://tos.trekcore.com/gallery/albums/2x25/Bread_and_Circuses_217.JPG

...weren't a staple of the series?

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As above, you don't have the foggiest notion what you're writing about. Yes, wardrobe was often exotic. No, there were no "bimbos" in the scripts whatsoever. And while there were several "alien babes", that is by far a minority of the scripts. Most of the shows don't have a female guest star at all. Many of the shows which do, didn't have revealing costuming for them (Lee Meriwether in "That Which Survives", for example.

By the way, Roddenberry had been dead four years before Voyager made it to the screen. So blaming him for Voyager costuming is a monumental blunder.

What they DID to Kate Mulgrew on Voyager? ROFLMAO Of all the stupid things you've posted, that's the dumbest. They made her rich, and a popular star for the rest of her life. Poor, poor Kate.

You seem to be someone who read one uninformed rant somewhere, and that's what you know about Star Trek. While you are entitled to hang on to your own ignorance with any degree of stubborness you wish, you are not entitled to spread it around.

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Didn't read the past sentence, so thanks for playing. I'll argue with people who want to debate honestly, not people who like to play obtuse, as in, "What do you mean it's racist to call people monkeys; my uncle used to call me a monkey all the time."

Another thing you have to understand is that you're not talking to a "peer." There's this problem among young people on the internet. They think everyone is 20 or 30-something and therefore talk down to everyone as such. Not everyone is your age. The point is that as old as I am, I'm not going to be condescended to by you, so I'm not going to respond to you any further.

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I'm not "debating" you. I'm correcting your nonsense. (And the first paragraph of your latest inane rant could not possibly have been more nonsensical). Sheesh.

By the way, I watched Star Trek starting with the "Sneak Preview" of "The Man Trap" ... in 1966.

Just another case of your clueless BS staining your keyboard.

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Stopped reading at "didn't"

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Just as a note sometime later, #1 from the TOS pilot was not changed by Roddenberry. It was a mandate by the network. Roddenberry wanted a strong female character in a command role. He wound up with Nichelle Nichols on the bridge, at least.

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The question is: who's the misogynist?

Back in the 60s you had the conservatives asking for women in the screen to put on more clothes. Back then, the bikini and the miniskirt were milestones in women's freedom. However, conservatives asked for women to be less sexualized, and liberals told them that they hated women.

Now you have modern left telling 60's left that women should be less sexualized and should put on more clothes... which is what the religious right used to say back in the day!!! And now modern left tells 60s left that they hated women. Now mini-skirt and bikini have gone from being a symbol of women's freedom to be a symbol of hating women.

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Bingo. Ignorance and hypocrisy are rife.

Here's the real deal. There are a minority of vocal asses on both sides that want to tell other people how to act.

Mostly, people ignore that.

Many women choose, all by themselves, to dress and otherwise present themselves in a highly sexualized fashion. That's their choice. They WANT to be attractive to men. And politics has absolutely nothing to do with it. It's people living their lives.

Media seldom drives social mores. 99.9% of the time it copies them, and is generally somewhat behind them -- as it takes them a while to make up their mind that something is popular and they can cash in on it.

Star Trek had mini-skirts because women in the 60s were wearing mini-skirts. Sexual politics had no role in this. Current fashion made it the choice.

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KUKU--every time I run across a particularly intelligent comment here, it's by you.

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Not misogynist, rather a regretful sign of the times.

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It's a shame that some fans seem to bend themselves into pretzels to 'justify' CLEAR evidence of sexism in TOS. That is almost like saying there was and is no sexism in the entire human experience. One person said Uhuru was in TOS because she was 'good at her job' when there is ZERO evidence of that. Miniskirts were a fashion statement, even though it was not so in the original pilot! A person does NOT have to be right wing, white, male or a Nazi to see when women are relegated to subservient roles. Yes, Picard was not as chauvinistic as Kirk but I think Mulgrew's comment was directed at Roddenberry's ST not Roddenberry himself. Yes, it was a sign of the times BUT the times were really crappy for women and minorities.

It is amazing that these fans now attack ANY attempt to show a different side of humanity as SJW or 'political correctness'. The world is majority female and majority none white. The vast majority of tv and movies have had white male protagonists heroes for the LONGEST time with no complaints. Yet, any attempt to show women or minorities in the SAME heroic roles is greeted with hysteria! Someone is trying to shove something down their collective throats! Michelle Yeoh looks 'too old', yet we can accept a positively geriatric looking Picard and Data!, Sonequa's Burnham is too accomplished ( a Mary Sue) yet we can accept a pot bellied Roger Moore as super-spy James Bond! We simply MUST have a Pike/Spock spin off but DSC is not in the right time; too futuristic; defeats canon but please , please give us Pike and Spock!

In truth ST has changed. The series has attempted to show a greater variety of the human experience. The producers realize that as mankind advances our notions of our place in the world; our relationship with each other, our planet, and the species we share it with IS ALSO CHANGING. By the time depicted in ST our notions of human sexuality, will have changed too. Sadly, some ST fans will never GET THIS!

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The world is majority female and majority none white. The vast majority of tv and movies have had white male protagonists heroes for the LONGEST time with no complaints.

Of course the majority of movies had white males protagonists!! Cinema was developed by white males!! If it would have been developed in Ethiopia, the majority of protagonists would be black. But it wasn't.

This is going beyond ridiculous. White males built modern cinema, and now they must say 'thanks' because others don't complain about it?

Jews won like 20% or 30% or scientific Nobel Prizes. Damn!! They should apologize for contributing to scientific progress!! After all, if they hadn't made such contributions, history of science would be more ethnically balanced!!

How the hell the western world have reached such level of non-sense?

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Again, Kuku, you have surpassed in intelligence those who differ with you.

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You really ought to read more about the comprehensive history of 'white males and the globe' before you make such presumptuous statements. For the sake of today argument, I'll assume you are correct. Are you then saying therefore ALL starring roles HAVE to be given to white males? If the cinema had been developed in Egypt then Egyptians should have all the starring roles? See how ridiculous that sounds?

Thankfully technology is now democratizing the world. Vast populations of the globe no longer have to be subjugated to ONE narrow point of view. Indeed, the world in now seeing itself more clearly. Unfortunately for you, the model of production which Hollywood has chosen relies heavily on those consuming the product, not their ancestors. These consumers are now the entire world!

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You ought to read more world history from varying sources, not just the sexist propaganda fed to you in women's studies. Where is your righteous anger that Chinese cinema is predominately Chinese? Bollywood is predominately Indian? You have been told it is the job of white men to put women and other cultures ahead of themselves or they are sexist or racist, that's absurd.

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McQualude,

Clearly YOU are the one that needs the history lesson. The Indians, Chinese and Nigerians never left their homelands to abduct and/or conquer other lands and people and create new societies in which they now pretend that ONLY Indians, Chinese and Nigerians are the ones capable of HEROISM. Those are the FACTS!

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Europeans weren't the only people to conquer other people. Peoples have migrated and conquered other peoples thought-out history. And even England is made of various ethnicities that conquered, or tried to conquer the island. You have no argument. And you probably haven't thought about it but if Europeans hadn't come to America, others would have, and the result would have been the same, the natives would have died from disease. So get off your high horse.

But that's not the discussion. How about you give me a serious answer.

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Stating historical facts is NOT A serious answer? because YOU say so?. So your defense against a murder charge is that someone else would have murdered your victim? Or that murders occur all the time? Or that someone else had murdered your Uncle?I don't think so! Don't be stupid! You wanted to know why YOU couldn't act like others whose cinema is more homogenous. You assumed were talking to someone like yourself who is ignorant about the globe.

THAT is your answer. You can't eat your cake and have it! You have to live with the consequences of your adventurism!!!

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You're trying to change the subject because you have no argument about cinema, just admit you were wrong, I would respect you for that. And you are making the same bad analogies as another account that was recently deleted, hmmm.

As for indigenous Americans, the overwhelming majority died from old world diseases and that would have happened no matter who came here, that's a fact. But what happened in America has already happened multiple times in China, Europe, and the Mediterranean. If you come away with the lesson, "white people bad" then you've learned nothing.

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This is the stupid notion YOU put on the table here:

"Where is your righteous anger that Chinese cinema is predominately Chinese? Bollywood is predominately Indian? You have been told it is the job of white men to put women and other cultures ahead of themselves or they are sexist or racist, that's absurd."

My answer to you is that these people have a qualitatively different history to the 'white man' which accounts for their more homogeneous cinema. Your have tried to defend the behavior of 'white men' in history with weaker and weaker DISHONEST arguments, your latest being that the 'overwhelming majority' of native Americans would have died from 'old world diseases'. Really? Is this what you need to tell yourself to avoid admitting to historical FACTS!?!?

Talk about being wrong, talk about bad analogies. You want to pretend that cinema doesn't have a cultural and historical context therefore American cinema should equal Chinese or Indian cinema. Your "they did it too" argument falls flat because, they DIDN'T DO IT TOO! You should find some other INTELLIGENT argument why American cinema should feature ONLY ONE segment of the population but the fact is you can't because there isn't one, aside from the obvious.

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I'm not defending anything because there is nothing to defend. Have you watched television or cinema lately? Women are large and in charge in Hollywood. A lot of women in starring roles, many taking over male characters. But look at the women power brokers in Hollywood: They exploit beautiful young actresses, having them act out lesbian sex scenes to get roles. They pose models naked or nearly so, telling them they are taking the power away from men. Feminists like to spin this fairy tale where women are down trodden and oppressed by evil white men but society has come a long way in a very short time and women have equality, they have the vote, and have the majority -- and what have they done with it? How much has changed? Has it changed for the better? Trump is president with more women supporting him than feminists would like to admit. The environment is still getting jacked. Anti-intellectualism is on the rise. Global warming is still a pretend controversy. Vaccinations are on the decline, in no small part due to female celebrities.

But some, like my wife, are running with it. She has worked in a male dominated industry for decades. You can count the number of women doing her job on one hand vs thousands of men. She doesn't whine about inequality. She doesn't run to HR when men tell dirty jokes, she asks them to not do it in front of her. And she has worked her ass off to earn her promotions and the respect of everyone around her. She would tell you that she doesn't talk about being equal someday, she goes out and proves it every day. That's feminism in action. That Hollywood BS isn't feminism.

You want more women and minorities on the big screen, go put them there and stop whining it's someone else's job.

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Whew! you have some serious issues dude! Clearly you don't understand what oppression is; what feminism is; what equality is; what intellectualism means; how Trump got elected; or what it might be like to be discriminated against or degraded at work ( ask your wife she might be able to clue you in).

From the ridiculous assertions in your earlier posts, I could tell you did not read widely or get your information from a variety of useful sources. It's a shame for your sake that the Right has abandoned thoughtful writers the likes of William F Buckley and George Will, erudite people who were able to argue the conservative case intelligently based on reason and facts.

Now all you have to listen to and learn from are a series of blowhards on the right for whom facts can be "alternative"; for whom there is no more any DECENCY or MORALITY; and who worship one man with slavish fidelity that is sickening. This is why you can come to the following ridiculous conclusion: "You want more women and minorities on the big screen, go put them there and stop whining it's someone else's job."

I don't know ANYBODY asking anyone else to put 'more women and minorities' anywhere. NEWSFLASH, there are thousands of people (like your wife) striving against ALL THE ODDS to get where they want. I am simply asking YOU GUYS to stop criticizing them where you would not criticize anyone else. You start doing that by acknowledging the sexism and racism that was a feature of the past for what it is. You would accept that, for all it's greatness, Star Trek in MOST of it's previous incarnations has presented a world where women and minorities (racial and sexual orientation wise) were not given the profile that they got for the first time in DSC.

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All McQ has done is discuss facts. I really never saw one from you. All you've got is some misguided SJW view of a history you've twisted beyond recognition.

Evidently you're unaware that Mongols made it to Eastern Europe. LOL Pathetic. Japan conquered large areas of SE Asia. India filled an entire subcontinent with bloody wars for centuries. Aboriginals in the Americas fought war after war after war.

In the end, technology made the difference, not psychology.

I could go on and on and on. But people with your bizarre level of dedication to ignorance generally refuse to either accept facts OR educate themselves.

Pretty sad, really.

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Are you then saying therefore ALL starring roles HAVE to be given to white males? If the cinema had been developed in Egypt then Egyptians should have all the starring roles? See how ridiculous that sounds?

It sounds ridiculous because it's ridiculous. It's a completely ridiculous statement that nobody here suggested. You just made it up*. That's called strawman fallacy. Very popular with lobsters, by the way.

I feel genuinely curious about whether you've made that fallacy on purpose or not. People who use straw-man fallacies reimagine what other people said, sometimes in a very fantasized way, like you just did. I keep wondering if they rationalize it to the point of imagining having read it, or they are aware of it, at least in some conscious level. Unfortunately, a question that never gets some honest answer.

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*I imagine you based yourself in the paragraph "Of course the majority of movies had white males protagonists!! Cinema was developed by white males!! If it would have been developed in Ethiopia, the majority of protagonists would be black". But that paragraph didn't include any 'should' or 'must' as your made-up fallacy did, it didn't state any moral mandate, but a pragmatical situation: people use to work with their own, as simple as that.

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Don't imagine what I base my conclusions on....you could have asked me...but I will tell you anyway!

"White males built modern cinema, and now they must say 'thanks' because others don't complain about it?"

That statement is dripping with conceit and misplaced indignation. You are saying " How dare anyone else complain about WM dominating all starring roles! They created cinema!" Talk about fallacy, I simply stated the FACT that WM domination in Western Cinema has NEVER been met with ANY complaint, even when white actors play none white historical figures. Conversely, however, now that some other none traditional western characters" are getting A SHARE of the limelight, all hell has broken loose. Suddenly the concept of Mary Sue is created; Burnham is all powerful; fights everyone; too capable to be realistic!

Notice that I used the term 'none traditional western' characters because the history of mankind is such that Europe or Western societies never maintained the homogeneous character that some other regions of the globe have. That too is a direct result of WM actions.

In other words, if you were so concerned about sharing 'starring roles' in the cinema that you say YOU created, perhaps you should have stayed in Europe! That way you could now follow the example of Bollywood or Nollywood or Chinese Cinema...without a peep from anyone!

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I think you're very, very confused. No one holds a gun to the head of people in China and India and makes them watch movies like the Star Wars franchise, or any of the other myriad movies people in those countries, and others, flock to even though they might have "WM" actors in leading roles. They have plenty of "local" product, yet they crave more variety. And it is MUCH more common for Western cinema to make films with others than "WMs" in starring roles than it is for (again let's use as examples) China and India to use anyone outside their country's primary race for leads in homegrown product.

Once again, you're ranting about a situation that literally exists NOWHERE but in you own small mind.

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TOS was a big part of the change, not the problem. Kate Mulgrew chose not to be a sex symbol, good for her, she got the job anyway. Myth busted. Kirk had his shirt off, or ripped, so often RSK became part of pop culture. People who look good, like to show off. Maybe it's time for this victim fetish to be put to bed, women are not victims by birth, they are not inferior and need men to promote or protect them. It's time to grow up and start treating everyone like they are equal and capable of making and living with their own choices.

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"What If" called a man misogynist for posing with 2 girls.
I was called a misogynist for using the world "congresswoman."
It doesn't mean anything anymore and the way it's used makes light of women who suffer real abuse.

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Oh Janeway!!

This is surprising. I’m sure I’ve heard her express admiration for Roddenberry in other interviews and I’m not sure she’s 100% on track with her thoughts on the Picard character.

Then again I was also surprised to hear what a mega-godzilla bitch she was to Jeri Ryan after she joined Voyager too, for no other reason than she opposed the focus on her character. Mulgrew admitted she acted badly, but still..

You’re still my favourite Captain but you’re testing the friendship.

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