I assume we aren’t counting hermaphroditic species (the hutts) or other non-binary-gender-conforming characters like droids. Good on the LGBT humans! Though it will be much more meaningful if an LGBT character makes it into the next film trilogy.
It’s 2015. Why did this take so long?
There were LGB characters in various Star Wars books and games which are now considered not to be canon. There have been no trans characters as far as I know.
On the other hand, the second film did challenge societial norms about incest…
While I haven’t read much of the Extended Universe, the sexuality of the Characters mattered very little in the movies. I would say there is a small amount of romance in the film, and very little sexuality at all. Half of Red Squadron could have been gay but it wouldn’t matter because it had nothing to do with the story.
I am betting that is a fan fic story somewhere.
Owen and Beru Lars relationship was just as irrelevent to the story. Why did we need to know about their heteronormative relationship? What was so special about it?
An even better question is why Star Trek hasn’t had any prominent LGBT characters yet* considering that it’s been creating spinoffs and tie-ins almost continuously since the 1960s. You’d think if any franchise was progressive enough to handle that it would be the one which featured TV’s first interracial kiss.
(*Yeah yeah, Dax kissed a girl once on Deep Space Nine. But that hardly even counts since they were opposite genders when they first hooked up.)
Did we know anything about it? Other than they were together?
Just a thought - what if Jango Fett was gay? Then all the clone troopers could be gay (unless they edited it out).
Again I am betting there is already fan fiction covering this idea. If not, there you go, kids. Have at it.
My shriveled little Star Wars fan heart is very excited about this, especially the fact that it’s prominent and has institutional/editorial support. The prior examples, in books/comics at least, were sneaked in under the radar and therefore restricted to the most minor of characters.
Anyone else remember the No Gays In Star Wars controversy surrounding LucasArts/BioWare and LGB characters in The Old Republic MMO when it was still in development?
Interesting to note how LGBT headway into a new media space always begins with a lesbian, never a gay man, because lesbians are easier for the casual bigot to stomach. when Bioware started introducing swathes of romance options in Dragon Age/Mass Effect, at first there were only gay romance options for female PCs. IIRC, it took a couple of games and much requesting before they introduced gay male romance options.
I’ll give you Mass Effect, but Dragon Age had a bisexual male character you could romance with a male PC from the beginning. Of course then they proceeded to toot their own horn about a “fully gay” male romance in Dragon Age: Inquisition, forgetting that Mass Effect 3 did that two years earlier…
Star Trek has Ranul Keru, who was a member of the bridge crew on the USS Titan and USS Enterprise in many books since 2001, as well as incidental characters since at least the late 90’s, so Star Wars is certainly behind the curve in this.
From the article title i thought for a second that the one character was all 4 at once.
Wouldn’t Dax be considered trans at least? I mean, we are talking about a character who has switched genders repeatedly.
First one? But… but… I always thought C3PO was gay…
Beru Lars was not an important character to the film. She asked Luke that he remind Owen to buy a droid that could communicate with the farm machinery, which luke could have done directly. Later she points out that Owen is being unreasonable in expecting Luke to stay on the farm.
Beru’s did nothing in the film that a male character couldn’t have done, and that character did not need to be in a relationship with Owen. Beru’s sole purpose in the film is to define Owen Lars either heterosexual or wanting to appear heteronormative. This is not a bad thing, but if we have heteronormative characters in canonical stories then why can’t we have non-heterormative ones too? I’d rather have that than a universe of asexual people (which I have always assumed that most of the clones were, as sexuality would be redundant and undesirable in the perfect test tube soldiers of the Star Wars universe.)
Boba Fett, at the very least, had a kid in the EU. But I’m not sure if he was a standard issue clone, or if Jango had any extra mods made.
In other news - they’re still making EU books? I was under the impression that they had held off on that since Disney took over.
I still think it’s a cop-out if a character is only LGBT for sci-fi reasons (like “alien symbiote” or that [planet of genderless people][1] from ST:TNG) instead of just being LGBT because some people happen to be LGBT (like [Felix Gaeta][2] from Battlestar Galactica).
Star Trek wouldn’t get credit for showing TV’s first interracial kiss if William Shatner had just kissed a white actress in green alien makeup. It gets that credit because it showed him kissing Nichelle Nichols.
[1]: The Outcast (Star Trek: The Next Generation) - Wikipedia
[2]: List of Battlestar Galactica (2004 TV series) characters - Wikipedia
You know, we just watched that episode, and you’re totally right. There was that one episode of TNG where they are at a planet of people who are gender neutral, and one of their representatives falls for Riker, but I think that’s the only episode where such issues are even obliquely addressed… oh, there was that time that Crusher fell for a Trill, who died, and was joined with a new host, who was a woman, and she just couldn’t deal. so yeah, Star Trek is pretty shit on this issue, too.
Doctor Who now, has done much better since the reboot, thanks to Russell T. Davies…
