At the least, you can’t be an actress in a role that circles around the adult Kirk. That leaves…um…wait a minute…hmmm…
You have awakened the demon of technicality! You will probably not like or agree with what I’m about to say, despite the fact that it is… factual.
Female characters in Star Trek and Star Trek Into Darkenss with names and speaking roles that are not Uhura, Gaila, or Carol Marcus:
Star Trek:
Winona Kirk
Amanda Grayson
Hannity Brackett
Officer Madeline (Not seen speaking or properly named until Into Darkness)
Star Trek Into Darkness:
Officer Darwin
(I’ll let you figure who is who on your own, sources include Google, IMDB, and Memory Alpha)
I actually didn’t realize how few females are even featured in these movies in total… but that only reinforces my point. Making the number of speaking and named characters that pose in their underwear fewer than the character that don’t.
Does Majel Barret count? Well, since you missed the point of my post, yes, she counts too. She says your autopilot is out, guess you’ll have to go down with the ship. salutes
Well, that’s what I get for not watching all the deleted scenes. Somehow I forgot that one but remember the scenes alluding to Kirk’s stepdad being an abusive shit.
It is not a technicality because names are generally seen as pretty important to people and usually indicate how important a character is in a film.
[Disclaimer: I have not seen either movie.] Are we talking about both movies or just the second one? In your list, you have one named female with a speaking role for “Into Darkness”. Do you know Officer Darwin’s name because it was mentioned in the movie or because you read it in the credits?
I think you miss the point of both the Bechdel Test and the criticism of the film for having its female characters strip down for no reason.
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You really shouldn’t be. It struck me that what I saw of the new Star Trek is that they turned it into Star Wars…
Well, sort of. I think the idea that there is a race of aliens that lives in multiple bodies - existing as different sexes at different times - is sort of transgressive to begin with.
The Bechdel test is not an actual test for sexism, it is a thought experiment. It is the result of off-the-cuff musing, not rigourous scientific study. The main point of the Bechdel test is when you consider the inverse Bechdel test. You have to stretch your brain to even think of a movie that fails it.
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In the late 60s a lot of people were banging a lot of people. That is not sexist.
As bovisrex said, he was trying not to be sexist and to work against the sexist environment. He was not entirely successful, but people who campaigned against slavery were mostly pretty racist. I don’t think it’s fair to judge progressive people from history by today’s standards.
[quote=“Humbabella, post:69, topic:4711”]
In the late 60s a lot of people were banging a lot of people. That is not sexist.
[/quote]It’s not inherently sexist to have multiple partners, but it’s hardly “working to end the sexist environment in Hollywood” if those partners happen to be actresses auditioning for parts on a TV show you’re putting together. However I do give Roddenberry his due for his original (though ultimately retooled) vision of a future where women could wear pants and be high-ranking officers on a starship.
Cory didn’t create the image, he just shared it.
The image really clearly says “NAMED female characters”.
“Female” is an adjective, not a noun, and it’s a bit insulting to use it as such. “Female characters”, not “females”. Thanks.
Female is both a noun and an adjective. You can use it as a noun when talking about non-humans (e.g., if I were referring to a group of lizards, I might speak of the “males” and the “females”) or when trying to incorporate people of many ages (e.g., doctors refer to “females” rather than “women” because they might be talking about young children who are not women - this, arguably, could be medical jargon but it has spilled out into common usage because of the popularity of medical dramas). As star trek characters are mixed humans and non-humans.
Pedantry aside, classified adds famousles say, “SWF” rather than “SWW”. Again, could be seen as jargon, but is also how women referred to themselves. There is no reason to think that a person using “female” as a noun to talk about human women has any intent to offend.
English evolves very fast and no one gets to say what’s right and what’s wrong authoritatively. Message boards are colloquial, so grammar corrections add very little to the argument except as a put down to people with less education. Besides, there is always someone waiting to out-snob you.
I know how language works, thanks. 
That’s why I added that it’s insulting. It is. Insulting.
Here, I’ll clarify: it is considered by many people I know to be an insulting use of the word.
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Since you have made me aware that some people find this insulting, I am personally going to try not to use it that way because I don’t like to insult people.
I still don’t like that you claimed authority:
And I’d still stand by anyone who said that when talking about science fiction with aliens there may be no collective noun that female can be applied to. It’s all well and good to speak of “female characters” when you are talking about the story as a story (so that probably could have been done here) but when you are speaking fictionally about the humans and aliens in the story, you can’t say “women” and there no noun that lends itself to that use. Just like if I was talking about a group of female lizards, sheep and flowers, I might refer to them as “females” (presumably with a lot of context).
Now I understand that in this particular case the person you were responding to was being an ass and giving a charitable reading to his words might not have been the first thing on your mind. I’ll admit that seeing people talk about which English words can be used as adjectives and which as nouns makes me see red.
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I’m not a fan of prescriptive linguistics either. I am a fan of people not speaking about other in an insulting manner. (See also: “Blacks”, “Jews”, “Muslims”, etc.) It’s a way of dehumanizing the people you’re talking about.
I meant it as a footnote to my original point, though, which is that the person who made the statement was being rude to Cory about something that Cory didn’t author, and also in a way that shows they didn’t actually read the thing they were criticizing.
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Whenever I hear somebody uses ‘females’ as a noun, oddly enough, I either think of them as Vulcans (overly detached and attempting to speak in a scientific tone of voice, sometimes from an outsider perspective, like “Human females typically possess an X and a Y chromosome”) or Ferengi (“Feeeemales! Wearing clothes! How offensives!”)
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Sorry, but I think you lost me there. Multiple major news outlets and five muslim groups that I just found on the web all refer to people of Muslim faith as “Muslims.” The Toronto Jewish Film Festival ran ads a few years ago saying, “You don’t have to be a Jew…” to enjoy the movies. The Holocaust Memorial’s full title is “The Memorial to Murdered Jews in Europe.” A non-scientific poll of Jewish people I know (all two of them who were online to ask) revealed that they and their families use the term “Jews” to refer to themselves and other Jewish people. Christians call themselves “Christians” all the time and we even call people non-Muslims, non-Jews and non-Christians. We all say “Canadians” and “Americans.”
I strongly disagree that using adjectives as nouns for humans is tied to dehumanizing them. Just because a phrase doesn’t specify that someone is a human, it doesn’t mean it doesn’t recognize them as a human. In the case of religions and nationalities, all of my experience tells me that using adjectives as nouns is something people do to refer to themselves and that it is only offensive when you use the kind of tone of voice that would make anything offensive.
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I immediately though of Ferengis as well, since they undoubtedly are using the word “female” derisively.
Actually, that’s just a list of adjectives. It’s not „single, white female” but “single, white, female”.
“SWF seeks man aged xx for…”
Nope, “female” is a noun there unless they are using a list of adjectives to modify a verb.
Edit: Unless it is a list of adjectives with the noun excluded for brevity because we know from context what the noun is. This, however would be what they like to call a distinction without a difference.
Yeah, this is the sort of “analysis” that helps downgrade Tumblr’s reputation. It would be enough to simply say that Abrams has missed the chance to improve the gender ratio and leave it at that, without getting into a derail about what happened with Gaila (the Orion).
