I should probably preface this with two small caveats. Firstly, I’ve never really Kinja’d before, so I probably will have tagged this wrong, and I’m going to be the only person who sees it. Secondly, between my personal and professional lives plus current events, this has been a REALLY lousy week, and I find myself both a lot more angry about this than I probably should be.

So, perhaps you heard that Mr. Sulu has a husband and a daughter now. Perhaps you also heard that George Takei had a snit, Simon Pegg had a (fairly respectful) counter-snit, and Zachary Quinto (our only other out actor) backed Pegg. Perhaps you’ve also been on the Internet before and have an idea what happens when a well-loved character from a popular franchise undergoes race- or sexualitybending.

I love George. He is everybody’s wonderful gay Internet uncle, and the world is a brighter place because he’s in it. I hate that I disagree with him, but he’s goddamn wrong here.

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Star Trek’s approach to sexual orientation has ranged from middling to poor to borderline offensive, but mostly involves pretending that LGBT is not a thing that exists. Going through the list of exactly what we’ve seen in 50 years would turn into a wall of text, so perhaps some bullet points.

  • Turnabout Intruder - gets counted as an episode about gender identity, but is more about feminism. An evil lady switches bodies with Kirk.
  • Gene Roddenberry Alan Dean Foster’s TMP novelization - Kirk address the reader, breaks the hearts of slashfic authors, but makes sure we know there isn’t anything wrong with it.
  • “Blood and Fire” - David Gerrold tries very hard to get an AIDS allegory episode made for TNG. The story is watered down and finally pulled. Several people behind the scenes say that Gerrold’s characterizations are pretty stereotypical. Eventually adapted for fan series Star Trek: New Voyages.
  • “The Outcast” - TNG can’t decide if it’s trying to tackle homosexuality or gender identity, and fails spectacularly at both.
  • Garak - Andy Robinson delightfully plays our favorite over-the-top tailor/ex-spy who is clearly infatuated with Dr. Bashir. He gets told to tone it down and eventual gets into a completely unrealistic not-quite-relationship with a woman.
  • “Rejoined” - DS9 bravely takes a story about a male partner of a former Dax host and reimagines it with a woman. Terry Farrell and Susannah Thompson lock lips, and the entire thing is handled about as well as Trek can. Not perfect, but still groundbreaking for 1995.
  • Lieutenant Hawk - We come so close in First Contact, but skittish people mean that the most we get is Neal McDonough’s perfectly sculpted eyebrows. More on this in a bit.
  • “Stigma” - ENT finally does that AIDS allegory about twenty-five years too late, and still doesn’t want to come near the actual subject matter. I’d like to give them an A for effort, but they were such wusses, I can’t.
  • Section 31: Rogue - Posthumously, we are introduced to Hawk’s male partner. Between this, and Andy Robinson’s Garak biography A Stitch in Time, which fully embraces Garak’s bisexuality, the floodgates are opened in the Expanded Universe, and numerous LGBT characters are introduced, usually phenomenally. But this is still lesser, because non-canon, and also because the vast majority of Trekkies aren’t reading them. But seriously, go pick up Star Trek: Vanguard.

And until this week, that was it.

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I can’t even tell you how many posts I’ve read online that begin “I don’t have a problem with LGBT characters, but...” which is always followed by some variation on“just make a new character.” And then I want to put my fist through the screen. I know this shouldn’t make me so angry, but it does. I’m just sick of people (by in large, straight) decreeing what types of stories about my experiences are acceptable, and who then proceed to pat themselves on the back for being so open-minded. To me that’s quite possibly even worse than people tossing around “politically correct” or the au courant “Social Justice Warrior,” because at least those people aren’t hiding their bigotry.

I hate, hate, hate throwing around the word Privilege, but perhaps because Star Trek has been such a big part of my life, especially at times when I really needed it, this is one of the clearest examples I’ve ever experienced.

So, where are we now? I am way more excited for Star Trek Beyond than I had been previously, and I’m only sad that I’m several hundred miles from my husband (who I met on a Star Trek message board) so for the first time since Insurrection, we’re not seeing it together. I’m excited for what Bryan Fuller is going to bring us. A small part of me that’s still the thirteen-year-old gay boy whose mind was blown by Star Trek during the 25th Anniversary is over the moon that he finally, FINALLY gets to see people like himself running around in the 23rd Century.