Feminism and motherhood in Star Trek
I think that Trek may be the new Disney. As in, the only good mother is a dead one.
I've been reading the st_xi_kink meme more than a bit obsessively in the past few weeks. Tropes of poor male attitude/action galore, but the overwhelmingly negative attitude and even wanky viciousness I've seen expressed toward females, especially Winona Kirk, strikes me again and again, especially in comparison to poor!sainted!Amanda who apparently gets a pass 'cause she died.
Prompts/fills range from the relatively benign: Winona Kirk had to take long-term space missions to sustain her family...
to this: Winona sighed. "Jimmy, I know you’re upset that I’m leaving so soon, but my job is important to me." "And I'm not?" Jim challenged as he raised his head to look at her.
this: It was the first and only time in Jim's life that she felt anything for the boy outside of cold affection and sadness.
this: "Please, Jimmy, try to keep yourself safe," Winona said from behind him. "I love you."
"Bullshit," Jim muttered under his breath, pushing the screen door open a little harder than he should have.
this: Frank was a jerky step-father who drove his step-son to near suicide, Winona was always depressed over her first husband's death and in space to run away from it and Sam blames Jim...
this: "Jimmy, you're never going to be as good as you're father, so just...be careful...The last thing I need is to lose someone else to space."
this: "You joined Starfleet? Honey, that's..." Over the screen, her smile faltered. She applied a fake one with ease. "Don't do anything stupid and they might let you on a ship some day." It was a joke laced with something a lot harder.
this: How could a mother be so callous? How could a woman who'd shown such love and said such beautiful things about her long gone husband hurt the children he'd left behind? How had she been able to ignore the ingenuity and raw wonder that was Jim Kirk?
this: Jim scanned the crowd, hiding his hurt and heartbreak behind a clenched jaw and a tight smile. It was his graduation day. He'd just saved the fucking planet. He was being made Captain of the fucking Enterprise. And his mother was no where to be seen. Even now, she didn't love him enough to be here.
And finally, the totally cracktastic response to this seemingly innocuous prompt:
5 times Winona showed that she was a BAMF mommy and the 1 time she showed she was just as loving
Prompter wrote: Frankly, I am a little sick of all the "she was negligent! She didn't care about her kids!" thing that seems to be stuck to Winona. I've never seen her as that. I see her as a tough broad (probably where Jim inherited his need to pick fights with everybody) and maybe even behaving a little like the mother from Malcolm in the Middle as she DOES have to raise Jim of all kids by herself. Temperamental, confrontational, maybe a little tomboyish, and fiercely devoted to her family. So c'mon, let's show her as the BAMF mother she is.
Wank!Anon who clearly has ISSUES, responded with the following (siccing madly here):
Bitch, please. Why is what YOU view Winona as more important than what others do? In the novel, she allows her husband to abuse her children. George says "You can't talk to Mom about Frank." One son runs away, the other tries to kill himself.
Sorry, that makes her a fucking shitty mother. The kink meme is not the place to spew your fake "all women must be awesome or it hurts my vagina" type of feminism. People like YOU and your LET'S PROTECT THE SHITTY MOM are exactly why children do not feel comfortable bringing forth allegations of child abuse. So again, fuck you.
In the movie, all she does is pop out a kid. Anyone can do that. That doesn't make her a BAMF. In other words, bitch, no one gives a flying fuck whether it's HOW YOU SEE HER AS OR NOT.
Go cry MOAR somewhere else, particularly somewhere where someone actually gives a damn.
As if the above were not wanky enough, anon then went on to “fill” the prompt with the following:
Prompt Filled! All about Winona Being a Mommy
"Mom, there's something I have to tell you."
"Not now, Jim. I'm busy. Go play with your brother."
"But mom, it's really important -"
Winona closes her eyes and tries not to smack the child. Some days it is really tempting. Wasn't it bad enough that he looked so much like her ex? Wasn't it bad enough that his birthday is a day they must celebrate, regardless of what she lost on that day?
"Jim. I've been gone a long time. I want to spend some time relaxing with my husband. Go play with your brother. I'll come and get you in a little bit."
"He hits him when you aren't here!" Jim tells her, and no, it isn't the first allegation.
But Winona has chosen not to believe it. She does to Jim what she did to her first born when the allegations started. She picks him up, turns him over her knee and gives him a proper spanking.
Maybe she doesn't spank him hard enough. Maybe if she spanked them the way George would have, they'd stop spewing such lies about Frank.
-------------------
OR!! If you don't like that one, try this:
"Shh, Jimmy. It'll be okay." Winona places a lip to her youngest's mouth. Frank has fallen asleep, drunk again. But Winona needs relief. Space is a big, vast place.
Getting relief from her youngest son should make her feel awful, and if she looked too long into her son's eyes, it might.
But she doesn't look at his face as she pushes his mouth into place.
"That's a good boy, Jimmy. You want to make Mommy happy, don't you?"
--------
Maybe next time you could be a little less rude and disrespectful of the other prompts and writings that have come before. But since you seem like an entitled asshole who thinks fandom should give you a virtual blow job, that isn't very likely.
as she DOES have to raise Jim of all kids by herself.
If she was a better Mother, Jim wouldn't have turned out like he did, so she has no one to blame but herself. At best she was neglient. At worse, she was abusive. Deal with it and quit trying to make women of Trek little Mary Sues who can't do any wrong. The Kink Meme aint' the place for that shit.
Now, in defense of the kink meme, everyone who responded chastised the anon above for being totally out of line, but more than one seems to agree with the general sentiment of Winona=bad!mom, as you can see from this response:
Re: 5 times Winona showed that she was a BAMF mommy and the 1 time she showed she was just as lovin
While I agree about her being a bad mom, no one cares about that here. This is a kink meme =/= not place for serious discussion.
Ok, I'll admit, I've seen the movie a few more times than is probably healthy, but the above is just so over-the-top that I finally had to say something, even though the meme is closed now (bless the poor mod--she finally had enough, I think).
Here's what the movie/novelization shows us: Kirk's dad died moments after he was born. Winona is a loving (if sad) mom in the ONE scene with her physically present. Next, we see young Kirk speeding down the dusty Iowa road in a vintage Corvette and hear a not-particularly-threatening man's voice over the car-phone saying, "Hey, are you out of your mind? That car's an antique."
(Angrier now but not yelling.) "You think you can get away with this just because your mother's off-planet? You get your ass back home now. You live in my house, Buddy. You live in my house and that's my car. You get one scratch on that car and I'm gonna whip your a...." (Kirk switches off call.)
That's IT. Movie canon. Complete. We don't know why Winona is off-planet and we don't know for how long. We don't even know that the car isn't Frank's.
In the deleted scene, we hear Frank yelling at George (Jim's older brother) from inside a very dilapidated farmhouse:
"You know what, get the hell out of the house. When your mom comes back, she can deal with you. Go ahead, go. Run away. You think I give a damn?"
Jim: (to George as he exits the house) "Where are you going?"
George: "As far as I can get."
Frank: (following George) "Which won't be far enough. This is my house. Not yours, not your mother's." (turning away from George toward Jim) "What do you *want,* Jimmy?"
Jim: "I just don't want my brother to go."
Frank: "Well, what you want doesn't matter. You're no one and I asked you to wash the car." (stepping back and looming over Jim as Jim winces back from him) "How many damn times to I need to repeat myself." (to George with a look of disgust) "Go." (Frank heads back into the house)
Jim: (to George) "Please stay."
George: "I can't take Uncle Frank any more. Mom has no idea what he's like when she's not around. Did you hear him talking like he's our dad? And that's not even his car you're washing. That's Dad's car. You're gonna be ok, you always are. Always doing everything right; good grades; obeying every stupid order. I can't be a Kirk in this house. Show me how to do that and I'll stay. I'll see ya."
Scene ends with Jim washing the car.
Now, I'm not arguing that Frank is a good stepfather--really, I'm not. Although both boys look healthy, well-fed, well-clothed and unbruised, Frank is certainly verbally abusive in this scene. But this is about Winona's characterization...not Frank's. She's NOT there in this scene, and there's NO indication that she's gone for long periods of time or even that she's going to be away for long *this* time. Frank's comment that their mom can deal with George when she gets back sounds just like my mother telling me that my dad would deal with me "when he got home" and the implicit immediacy of said dealing.
Similarly, in the novelization, Alan Dean Foster characterizes Frank as not a particularly benign dictator. More evidence of this arrived in the form of the loud disposition that was currently emanating from the nearby farmhouse. The irritated voice of his stepfather soared to a peak of exasperation.
"Big man, huh? Go, then! Have a nice life out there! Run away! You know I could give a damn!"
Frank doesn't actually exit the house in the novelization, just yells, but George tells Jim why he's leaving: "I can't take it anymore. Frank, I mean....Gives me orders like he knows who the hell I am! That's not even his car you're washing. That was *Dad's* car. And you know why you're washing it? Because he's gonna sell it! Without even telling Mom!"
Jim responds: "We can talk to Mom about it."
George: "You can't talk to Mom about Frank! I can't take another five minutes! Look, you'll be okay. You always are. Frank--he pretty much ignores you. You're not like me, Jim. Always doing everything right, good grades, teachers' pet, doing everything you're told....It's Frank. Mom has no idea what he's like when she's not here. D'you hear him talking like he's our *dad*?" "You can't be a *Kirk* in this house."
So at the "peak" of exasperation, all this guy does is yell mean stuff. There is no smacking of children. There is no physical abuse at all. So what, precisely, is Winona supposed to see???
As my teenage daughter observed, this is written from a teenage boy's POV, resenting his stepdad, sad and angry that his real dad is dead, and lashing out at everything and everyone. There's no indication that George is leaving Jim behind to face physical abuse--he specifically says that Jim is always ok. George's biggest beef with Frank is that he's "talking like he's our dad" and giving him "orders." And the worst thing that the non-benign dictator does is yell mean stuff. There is NO evidence of physical abuse in the novel.
So where exactly do we get evil!Winona? The fact that George ran away (momentarily, at least) and Jim is a fucked-up, flirty playboy who gets in bar fights and drinks too much? One angry teenager and one rebellious punk do not equal bad mothering. Why must we make excuses for Kirk's behavior by blaming his mother? Why does it have to be her fault that he's turned out the way he is? And why do so many writers cop out on real character development by using this tired cliche instead of delving into more interesting possibilities? It's lazy. And it's insulting to mothers everywhere.
And let's just for a moment assume that Winona did leave her two sons home with her husband and actually, gasp, took a long-term position on a starship because, um, that's her job and she needs to pay the bills? Why does that make *her* evil when the sainted Dr. McCoy leaves his daughter with his ex-wife for FIVE years and that's totally ok??? Why are we still beating up working mothers in the future? Good grief, people, we slashers/readers are supposed to be the intelligent ones.
I'm not even going to start on Uhura (regardless of how little I like her characterization or actions in the movie). The wankiest wanking in the meme revolved around her and the poor anons who prompted for stories involving her. Can't we be slashers without vilifying the female characters who are canonically paired with our favorite shipmates? It's as bad as evil!Narcissa and woobie!Lucius/Severus or demonic!Ginny and Harry/male-of-your-choice.
I'm not justifying verbal abuse. I'm not advocating neglect. I'm not saying that all moms are perfect or that female characters must always be perfect little Sues--please don't think I am. What I *am* saying is that automatically trashing them in order to justify your bad characterizations makes for fic that's, frankly, not worth reading. Especially if you can't spell.
Here endeth the rant.
I've been reading the st_xi_kink meme more than a bit obsessively in the past few weeks. Tropes of poor male attitude/action galore, but the overwhelmingly negative attitude and even wanky viciousness I've seen expressed toward females, especially Winona Kirk, strikes me again and again, especially in comparison to poor!sainted!Amanda who apparently gets a pass 'cause she died.
Prompts/fills range from the relatively benign: Winona Kirk had to take long-term space missions to sustain her family...
to this: Winona sighed. "Jimmy, I know you’re upset that I’m leaving so soon, but my job is important to me." "And I'm not?" Jim challenged as he raised his head to look at her.
this: It was the first and only time in Jim's life that she felt anything for the boy outside of cold affection and sadness.
this: "Please, Jimmy, try to keep yourself safe," Winona said from behind him. "I love you."
"Bullshit," Jim muttered under his breath, pushing the screen door open a little harder than he should have.
this: Frank was a jerky step-father who drove his step-son to near suicide, Winona was always depressed over her first husband's death and in space to run away from it and Sam blames Jim...
this: "Jimmy, you're never going to be as good as you're father, so just...be careful...The last thing I need is to lose someone else to space."
this: "You joined Starfleet? Honey, that's..." Over the screen, her smile faltered. She applied a fake one with ease. "Don't do anything stupid and they might let you on a ship some day." It was a joke laced with something a lot harder.
this: How could a mother be so callous? How could a woman who'd shown such love and said such beautiful things about her long gone husband hurt the children he'd left behind? How had she been able to ignore the ingenuity and raw wonder that was Jim Kirk?
this: Jim scanned the crowd, hiding his hurt and heartbreak behind a clenched jaw and a tight smile. It was his graduation day. He'd just saved the fucking planet. He was being made Captain of the fucking Enterprise. And his mother was no where to be seen. Even now, she didn't love him enough to be here.
And finally, the totally cracktastic response to this seemingly innocuous prompt:
5 times Winona showed that she was a BAMF mommy and the 1 time she showed she was just as loving
Prompter wrote: Frankly, I am a little sick of all the "she was negligent! She didn't care about her kids!" thing that seems to be stuck to Winona. I've never seen her as that. I see her as a tough broad (probably where Jim inherited his need to pick fights with everybody) and maybe even behaving a little like the mother from Malcolm in the Middle as she DOES have to raise Jim of all kids by herself. Temperamental, confrontational, maybe a little tomboyish, and fiercely devoted to her family. So c'mon, let's show her as the BAMF mother she is.
Wank!Anon who clearly has ISSUES, responded with the following (siccing madly here):
Bitch, please. Why is what YOU view Winona as more important than what others do? In the novel, she allows her husband to abuse her children. George says "You can't talk to Mom about Frank." One son runs away, the other tries to kill himself.
Sorry, that makes her a fucking shitty mother. The kink meme is not the place to spew your fake "all women must be awesome or it hurts my vagina" type of feminism. People like YOU and your LET'S PROTECT THE SHITTY MOM are exactly why children do not feel comfortable bringing forth allegations of child abuse. So again, fuck you.
In the movie, all she does is pop out a kid. Anyone can do that. That doesn't make her a BAMF. In other words, bitch, no one gives a flying fuck whether it's HOW YOU SEE HER AS OR NOT.
Go cry MOAR somewhere else, particularly somewhere where someone actually gives a damn.
As if the above were not wanky enough, anon then went on to “fill” the prompt with the following:
Prompt Filled! All about Winona Being a Mommy
"Mom, there's something I have to tell you."
"Not now, Jim. I'm busy. Go play with your brother."
"But mom, it's really important -"
Winona closes her eyes and tries not to smack the child. Some days it is really tempting. Wasn't it bad enough that he looked so much like her ex? Wasn't it bad enough that his birthday is a day they must celebrate, regardless of what she lost on that day?
"Jim. I've been gone a long time. I want to spend some time relaxing with my husband. Go play with your brother. I'll come and get you in a little bit."
"He hits him when you aren't here!" Jim tells her, and no, it isn't the first allegation.
But Winona has chosen not to believe it. She does to Jim what she did to her first born when the allegations started. She picks him up, turns him over her knee and gives him a proper spanking.
Maybe she doesn't spank him hard enough. Maybe if she spanked them the way George would have, they'd stop spewing such lies about Frank.
-------------------
OR!! If you don't like that one, try this:
"Shh, Jimmy. It'll be okay." Winona places a lip to her youngest's mouth. Frank has fallen asleep, drunk again. But Winona needs relief. Space is a big, vast place.
Getting relief from her youngest son should make her feel awful, and if she looked too long into her son's eyes, it might.
But she doesn't look at his face as she pushes his mouth into place.
"That's a good boy, Jimmy. You want to make Mommy happy, don't you?"
--------
Maybe next time you could be a little less rude and disrespectful of the other prompts and writings that have come before. But since you seem like an entitled asshole who thinks fandom should give you a virtual blow job, that isn't very likely.
as she DOES have to raise Jim of all kids by herself.
If she was a better Mother, Jim wouldn't have turned out like he did, so she has no one to blame but herself. At best she was neglient. At worse, she was abusive. Deal with it and quit trying to make women of Trek little Mary Sues who can't do any wrong. The Kink Meme aint' the place for that shit.
Now, in defense of the kink meme, everyone who responded chastised the anon above for being totally out of line, but more than one seems to agree with the general sentiment of Winona=bad!mom, as you can see from this response:
Re: 5 times Winona showed that she was a BAMF mommy and the 1 time she showed she was just as lovin
While I agree about her being a bad mom, no one cares about that here. This is a kink meme =/= not place for serious discussion.
Ok, I'll admit, I've seen the movie a few more times than is probably healthy, but the above is just so over-the-top that I finally had to say something, even though the meme is closed now (bless the poor mod--she finally had enough, I think).
Here's what the movie/novelization shows us: Kirk's dad died moments after he was born. Winona is a loving (if sad) mom in the ONE scene with her physically present. Next, we see young Kirk speeding down the dusty Iowa road in a vintage Corvette and hear a not-particularly-threatening man's voice over the car-phone saying, "Hey, are you out of your mind? That car's an antique."
(Angrier now but not yelling.) "You think you can get away with this just because your mother's off-planet? You get your ass back home now. You live in my house, Buddy. You live in my house and that's my car. You get one scratch on that car and I'm gonna whip your a...." (Kirk switches off call.)
That's IT. Movie canon. Complete. We don't know why Winona is off-planet and we don't know for how long. We don't even know that the car isn't Frank's.
In the deleted scene, we hear Frank yelling at George (Jim's older brother) from inside a very dilapidated farmhouse:
"You know what, get the hell out of the house. When your mom comes back, she can deal with you. Go ahead, go. Run away. You think I give a damn?"
Jim: (to George as he exits the house) "Where are you going?"
George: "As far as I can get."
Frank: (following George) "Which won't be far enough. This is my house. Not yours, not your mother's." (turning away from George toward Jim) "What do you *want,* Jimmy?"
Jim: "I just don't want my brother to go."
Frank: "Well, what you want doesn't matter. You're no one and I asked you to wash the car." (stepping back and looming over Jim as Jim winces back from him) "How many damn times to I need to repeat myself." (to George with a look of disgust) "Go." (Frank heads back into the house)
Jim: (to George) "Please stay."
George: "I can't take Uncle Frank any more. Mom has no idea what he's like when she's not around. Did you hear him talking like he's our dad? And that's not even his car you're washing. That's Dad's car. You're gonna be ok, you always are. Always doing everything right; good grades; obeying every stupid order. I can't be a Kirk in this house. Show me how to do that and I'll stay. I'll see ya."
Scene ends with Jim washing the car.
Now, I'm not arguing that Frank is a good stepfather--really, I'm not. Although both boys look healthy, well-fed, well-clothed and unbruised, Frank is certainly verbally abusive in this scene. But this is about Winona's characterization...not Frank's. She's NOT there in this scene, and there's NO indication that she's gone for long periods of time or even that she's going to be away for long *this* time. Frank's comment that their mom can deal with George when she gets back sounds just like my mother telling me that my dad would deal with me "when he got home" and the implicit immediacy of said dealing.
Similarly, in the novelization, Alan Dean Foster characterizes Frank as not a particularly benign dictator. More evidence of this arrived in the form of the loud disposition that was currently emanating from the nearby farmhouse. The irritated voice of his stepfather soared to a peak of exasperation.
"Big man, huh? Go, then! Have a nice life out there! Run away! You know I could give a damn!"
Frank doesn't actually exit the house in the novelization, just yells, but George tells Jim why he's leaving: "I can't take it anymore. Frank, I mean....Gives me orders like he knows who the hell I am! That's not even his car you're washing. That was *Dad's* car. And you know why you're washing it? Because he's gonna sell it! Without even telling Mom!"
Jim responds: "We can talk to Mom about it."
George: "You can't talk to Mom about Frank! I can't take another five minutes! Look, you'll be okay. You always are. Frank--he pretty much ignores you. You're not like me, Jim. Always doing everything right, good grades, teachers' pet, doing everything you're told....It's Frank. Mom has no idea what he's like when she's not here. D'you hear him talking like he's our *dad*?" "You can't be a *Kirk* in this house."
So at the "peak" of exasperation, all this guy does is yell mean stuff. There is no smacking of children. There is no physical abuse at all. So what, precisely, is Winona supposed to see???
As my teenage daughter observed, this is written from a teenage boy's POV, resenting his stepdad, sad and angry that his real dad is dead, and lashing out at everything and everyone. There's no indication that George is leaving Jim behind to face physical abuse--he specifically says that Jim is always ok. George's biggest beef with Frank is that he's "talking like he's our dad" and giving him "orders." And the worst thing that the non-benign dictator does is yell mean stuff. There is NO evidence of physical abuse in the novel.
So where exactly do we get evil!Winona? The fact that George ran away (momentarily, at least) and Jim is a fucked-up, flirty playboy who gets in bar fights and drinks too much? One angry teenager and one rebellious punk do not equal bad mothering. Why must we make excuses for Kirk's behavior by blaming his mother? Why does it have to be her fault that he's turned out the way he is? And why do so many writers cop out on real character development by using this tired cliche instead of delving into more interesting possibilities? It's lazy. And it's insulting to mothers everywhere.
And let's just for a moment assume that Winona did leave her two sons home with her husband and actually, gasp, took a long-term position on a starship because, um, that's her job and she needs to pay the bills? Why does that make *her* evil when the sainted Dr. McCoy leaves his daughter with his ex-wife for FIVE years and that's totally ok??? Why are we still beating up working mothers in the future? Good grief, people, we slashers/readers are supposed to be the intelligent ones.
I'm not even going to start on Uhura (regardless of how little I like her characterization or actions in the movie). The wankiest wanking in the meme revolved around her and the poor anons who prompted for stories involving her. Can't we be slashers without vilifying the female characters who are canonically paired with our favorite shipmates? It's as bad as evil!Narcissa and woobie!Lucius/Severus or demonic!Ginny and Harry/male-of-your-choice.
I'm not justifying verbal abuse. I'm not advocating neglect. I'm not saying that all moms are perfect or that female characters must always be perfect little Sues--please don't think I am. What I *am* saying is that automatically trashing them in order to justify your bad characterizations makes for fic that's, frankly, not worth reading. Especially if you can't spell.
Here endeth the rant.