The Mary Sue recently put up an article chastising William Shatner for so-called un-Kirk-like views regarding the #MeToo movement. I’ve chided Shatner myself on the subject and have been banned from his Twitter feed for doing so. The part of The Mary Sue’s article that annoyed me, though, was the Kirk/Shatner comparison. Ever since Erin Horáková’s essay “Kirk Drift” there’s been a new movement to beatify James T. Kirk as some kind of über-woke bae who slaps down misogyny at every turn. But what kind of feminist was Kirk really?
Horáková’s main piece of evidence is the excellent job Kirk does mentoring young Charles Evans of the Original Series episode “Charlie X” on sexual consent. Written by Dorothy Fontana, it features Kirk telling the kid not to force his affection on women and never put his hands on them without permission. He is not owed their attention. Considering the “boys will be boys” attitude many still have today, the speech seems downright radical for the late 1960’s. But did Kirk practice what he preached?
The fact is Kirk was, in many cases, a pig. I’m not here to bash Kirk’s general libido. We at the comic approve of and encourage physical love often and in all combinations. And, as Horáková points out, Kirk’s serious exes are all brilliant, professional women who still respect him with only a few exceptions. But what we see in action is a different Kirk, one that crosses a lot of professional lines and has a general disdain for female opponents.
Let’s start with the work place stuff. The first glimpse we get of the Kirk/Rand relationship is in “Corbomite Maneuver” Kirk is extremely rude to Rand and complains to McCoy about having a “female yeoman” forced on him. The implication on the part of both men is that Kirk is not trustable alone with a woman, even a subordinate.
Not long after, in “Enemy Within” we get the ugly side of Kirk’s lust where we’re shown that at least part of him is, in fact, capable of assaulting his assistant. After Rand is attacked by Evil Kirk, Good Kirk confronts her directly in front of Spock and McCoy who all gaslight her into believing it didn’t happen at all. Only the corroboration of a male witness makes Spock and McCoy take the accusation seriously. And even then they come up with the flummoxing idea that it’s an intruder, an assumption not yet borne out by the evidence they have so far.
Topping off the Rand weirdness, Kirk actually pulls her into an embrace on the bridge during a tense moment in “Balance of Terror”. From an erotic/dramatic stand point this is pure red meat for the audience, but from a real world, professional one it’s pretty unacceptable. Oddly enough prospective script writers were told this exact behavior was a no-no in the 1968 book “The Making of Star Trek”.
Rand isn’t the only female crew member who is the object of Kirk’s misplaced horn-dogging and general disrespect. In “Who Mourns for Adonais” Kirk and McCoy ruminate about what a waste Lt. Palamas is because female officers are bound to leave the service to start a family. To this day that’s an argument used in offices and academia to enforce the glass ceiling. In both this episode and “The Lights of Zetar” Kirk allows Scotty to harass an underling even thought they’re clearly not interested. He seems to even find it cute. In “The Immunity Syndrome” Kirk talks about how great it will be to take shore leave “on some lovely planet” while leering at a female crew member with McCoy and Scotty. After dealing with the Mirror version of Marlena Moreau, Kirk implies to Spock that he’s going to hit on the one in our universe. He then walks over to her and possibly does just that as the credits roll. “Wolf in the Fold” starts with Kirk and his male senior staff at a belly dancing parlor and ends with him inviting them to go to a club “where the women are sooooo…!” This is after witnessing several women, including a member of his own crew, get brutally murdered.
It actually gets worse when Kirk leaves the ship. Sometimes he’s just plain inappropriate with the natives like when he falls in lust with the ward of the one guy who can save his crew from a virulent disease in “Requiem for Methuselah” or when he sleeps with a sex slave that’s offered to him in “Bread and Circuses”. Then there’s that time he says the Federation will just have to “find another woman somewhere” to replace Ambassador Nancy Hedford when they’re forced to leave her behind in “Metamorphosis”. More often than not the captain uses his sexuality as a weapon against female opponents. How about that time Kirk forces the robot Andrea to kiss him so hard he leaves marks on her arms in “What are Little Girls Made of”? Or when he tries to win the affections of Sylvia, Shahna, Kelinda, and Deela in order to defeat them? Kirk never tried to seduce Kor or Rojan or Anan 7, so he’s either too much of a homophobe to take that kind of one for the team or he simply thinks there’s something specifically naive about women that will make them give up everything for his D.
And then let’s never, ever forget the unforgivably grotesque time Kirk asked Dr. Miranda Jones, point-blank, what a pretty thing like her is doing spending her life with an uggo like Kollos in “Is There in Truth No Beauty?”. It’s interesting yet unsurprising to note that this episode, with its deconstruction of Kirk as an insecure lothario and its example of murderous male entitlement as seen in Lawrence Marvick, was, in fact, written by a woman.
There’s no doubt that if Kirk was real he would be rightfully #MeTooed out of his command. But Kirk isn’t real. He’s a character. And we don’t have to approve of everything a character does to be entertained by them. We don’t have to be politically aligned with everything a TV show is putting across in order to watch it week after week. But we also can’t be blind to its faults and unsound messages. “Is There in Truth No Beauty” proves that even at the time Star Trek was airing women were seeing Kirk as problematic. He was a liberal guy who constantly strove for a better tomorrow, but when it came to women’s issues he fell way short. Trying to make him into a feminist icon is not helping anyone.
Though some of these criticisms are valid, many of them are missing the point or are simply inaccurate.
The implication that Kirk can’t be trusted with Rand alone is brought by McCoy, but Kirk himself looks at him annoyed, as if he had said the most stupid thing.
The actions of the evil Kirk in The Enemy Within can’t be used as an example of what the real Kirk would ever do, since he’s acting completely out of character. Production notes show that the good Kirk was referred to as “the real Kirk”, and one producer even suggested making it more clear that evil Kirk was a completely different entity.
In Mirror Mirror, he simply says that he could be friends with Marlena. No need to read more implications than that (unless you do the same for the million times Kirk refers to Spock or McCoy as his “friends”).
He didn’t fall in “lust” with Rayna. He was impressed by her beauty AND her intelligence (Rayna being a clear parallel to Spock, and even more intelligent than him), and fell in love. Later regretting his fighting over a woman as a deplorable spectacle, certainly not celebrating it as a macho right.
The slave from Bread and Circuses wasn’t “offered” to him. He was locked with her against his will by their master, who wanted them to have sex. His first reaction was trying to escape, and it was her the one pushing for it, not him.
Also, Kirk an homophobe!!? Lol. Not only did Roddenberry say that Kirk and Spock were designed as a love relationship, and that he could see them having sex behind the scenes, but for every loving gaze he directs at a woman in the show, he directs 1000 at Spock. In Shore Leave he quickly lost interest in a massage once he realized it was being done by a female yeoman and not Spock (he thanked the yeoman for her efforts anyway). If we don’t see him seducing male villains is simply because the network would have NEVER allowed such a thing in 60’s tv.
His seduction of Miranda was just a distraction while Spock mind-melded with Kollos. Otherwise, he acts as an overprotective, jealous boyfriend towards Spock, not Miranda.
Last but not least, you’re forgetting all the many, many times that women were the ones abusing Kirk or forcing him into non-consensual relationships. Dr. Noel brainwashed him to make him believe he loved her. Nona drugged him. Elaan drugged him again. Deela kidnapped him and used his crew as bargain chip to have sex with him… There are quite a few.
Kirk himself says he’d like to murder the person who assigned him a female yeoman. McCoy simply puts the reason into words, most likely because he knows the good captain’s history. There may have been a different intention with the Enemy Within split, but what we saw is clearly two sides of Kirk. Spock says it bluntly and it’s clear Good Kirk cannot survive without Evil Kirk. They’re both the real Kirk.
With Marlena I guess you can take Kirk at his word with zero subtext. I personally don’t. I don’t think people watching at the time took it without subtext. But its debatable, certainly.
I do think he fell in lust with Rayna because what else is there after spending a few hours together? Its not love. And I think its inappropriate for him to be focused on that when his crew is in danger. It’s not problematic, per se, but it’s unprofessional.
I’m going to stand firm on sleeping with a slave. She says they’re alone. Kirk only protests that it may be a trick to take advantage of him. She may have pushed it, but she clearly states he her owner. That’s not consent. Kirk didn’t have to do that.
I didn’t say Kirk was a homophobe. I fully believe Kirk is a pan sexual. I also support Spirk. Just did a whole interview on it with two Spirk fans. But I question why he only uses sex against women opponents. That’s a legit question, no?
Miranda Jones was harassed by Kirk, McCoy, and Scotty through most of the first half of the episode, not just in that scene. They were awful. And there are more ways to get a woman’s attention than trying to seduce her. Which is part of my previous response. Why does he only go there?
Yes, women behaved badly in TOS. I don’t think other people abusing Kirk makes up for him behaving badly. They can both be wrong.
In the end this is a product of Gene Roddenberry, a guy who slept with underlings on a regular basis. Some of that is, unfortunately, in Kirk. I’m happy that Strange New Worlds is bringing us all the good things about Shatner’s Kirk, but with more respect for women.
I still see McCoy’s comment on the yeoman more like projection of what he (McCoy) would do himself, rather than what Kirk would do. People tend to forget that McCoy is more of a womanizer than what Kirk ever was (see Shore Leave, specially the ending). The show’s “Writers Guide”, written by Gene, explicitly put the Captain embracing a yeoman as example of something that should never happen in the show. There’s one episode that doesn’t follow this rule, true, but the fact is that this moment goes against the show’s guidelines; it’s a moment of bad, out of character writing, not a defining moment to establish Kirk’s character. Shatner also said once in an interview (from his 70’s biography) that Kirk may have had relationships while on shore leave, but never with yeomen. In fact, it’s Rand the one who chases (unsuccessfully) after him, not the other way around.
Kirk’s negative qualities in The Enemy Within are defined as “hostility, lust, violence”. This is something that every single human has to some degree. But it doesn’t necessarily translate to “getting drunk while on duty, beating subordinates or attempting rape”. It translates like that in evil Kirk because he’s an artificial distillation and concentration of all those negative qualities. Moreover, the episode isn’t making a statement about Kirk specifically; it’s making a statement about all human beings. If you’re going to use evil Kirk as proof of Kirk being able to rape, you may as well extend that to every person in the world, because that’s what the episode is saying. If the transporter had split nurse Chapel, for example, I’m sure she’d have assaulted Spock. Same for anyone else.
“Requiem for Methuselah” has pacing issues, and tries to shoehorn a romance in a plot that isn’t really appropiate for it. It may be a case of bad writing, but that writing is pretty clear that Kirk’s love for Rayna is real. It’s evident in his defense of her individuality and freedom against Flint’s control, and in McCoy’s speech about love at the end. You may not buy it as a realistic romance, but it’s intended as a genuine romance nonetheless.
The issue with Drusilla, I think is more a case of the viewer’s sexism, than the sexism of the scene itself. If it’s true that nobody’s watching them, then Drusilla can do whatever she wants in that room, orders or not orders. If she had wanted to sit down and chat, she could have done exactly that, and Kirk would have happily chat with her, since it wasn’t his idea to have sex. People seem to have a hard time considering that, maybe, Drusilla just wanted to fuck Kirk, simple as that. Of course, she’s a woman, so the viewer automatically assumes she has less agency than Kirk, she has to be the victim.
In any way, I suspect that whole scene is just a placeholder to distract the censors from what really transpired there. Before the scene with Drusilla, the proconsul orders Kirk to his quarters. And after the scene, Kirk wakes up in bed with the proconsul watching him, not with Drusilla. Cut the scene in the middle, and suddenly the whole story makes a lot more sense. Really, why would the proconsul share his slave with another slave? Why so generous? It all sounds very phoney.
Yeah, it’s true TOS uses too often seduction as a weapon to defeat female villains. Though sometimes, Kirk gains the male villain’s trust by placing himself in situations with certain… innuendo (Kor, the proconsul). But in general, seduction is a weapon that can only be used against women (censorship of the era wouldn’t have allowed it otherwise). Most of the time is used by Kirk, but Spock has used it as well, without getting the same shit for it than Kirk. In fact, I think his seduction of the Romulan commander is one of the worst examples. Here’s a strong, commanding woman… and yet she falls for the trick like a naive schoolgirl, after three minutes of meeting Spock. It’s terribly disappointing, and I don’t understand why people praise this episode for good female representation, when it’s one of the worst.
Anyway, it’s not like TOS and Kirk are perfect. But I think it gets an inordinate amount of criticism that it’s not all that deserved. Specially when you compare it with more recent shows that do comparatively much worse. I don’t know much about the Berman era of Star Trek, but I’ve seen often complaints about how much more mysoginistic it was in the 90’s, when compared with TOS in the 60’s.
McCoy and Kirk can both be bad. They both lear at underlings. They both had that convo about women leaving the service when they find a man. They both gave Miranda Jones a bad time. It’s not really either/or. And Kirk did hold Rand in Balance of Terror despite that being verboten in The Making of book, and Kirk doesn’t have to have slept with a yeoman to create a creepy work place.
Enemy Within is very much about Kirk. Sure, it could happen to anyone, but it happened to him. And Chapel actually does assault Spock in Mudd’s Passion.
Slaves can’t consent to people they are assigned to by their master. Maybe they can in erotica, but not real life.
The seduction scenario is as bad when Spock does it. I agree completely that it diminished Star Trek’s first woman captain.
Yes, TOS Kirk isn’t perfect and TOS isn’t perfect.
Well said. There’s no need to try to “reform” TOS’ terrible treatment of women with selective recall; it was a product of its time and of its creator. For every noble aspiration Gene expressed about the show’s intentions, he was sure to counter it with boys’-club garbage.
How did Nomad describe Uhura’s mind? “A mass of conflicting impulses”? The same could be said for Gene’s Vision, as expressed in his public speeches and on-air execution.