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this post was submitted on 22 Jun 2023
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Star Trek
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I really hated this episode for this reason. I hate the thought experiment of "what if we found a planet where everyone practices eugenics and so therefore it's racist to be against eugenics".
Like if the rest of the world had found an isolated Nazi Germany, would it have been discriminatory and prejudiced to be against their practices? To not let them into the military? Of course not
Like why even write that plotline? Why are the writers choosing to legitimize eugenics like this, like it ever could be neutral or good and not horrific? I'm unwilling to entertain the idea that there's a good way to do it, just as I'd be unwilling to entertain a fictional society that showed slavery in a positive light
I am European, we had an interesting talk about the travelling community at my work the other day. When certain groups of travellers come to town there is issues with their culture fitting with the settled communtity and a small but visible element of not following the laws and customs. From issues with their approach to educating their children especially girls, to petty theft, to resolving disputes with violence.
However they revealed among those at my work were several children of travellers or even those that had travelled and settled down. For the first time I heard my self internally saying "not you though your the good ones" and felt ashamed. Ina a sort of interview format they revealed people called local sites slurs in front of them or even they joke about his RV (he has still some connection) being a "[traveler slur] wagon" not realising his connection and that it does hit home to his roots.
It really opened my eyes to those in a communtity where there may be a large minority that have questionable practices but we should still treat individuals on a case by case basis.
a similar thought might be devout Muslims (e.g. personally I think following religious practice IS a choice) with community level mysogeny or homophobia. Again while we may not agree with the community, hating the individual is not humanity.
Again, the strange practice the writers chose for this planet was eugenics. It's like writing nazis as a minority. I'm a Jewish person and my family's entire town was slaughtered by nazis. Romani people were also slaughtered in the Holocaust. I'm sure they would not appreciate their murderers being framed as the victims.
The writers didn't have to depict eugenicists this way, as if their practice was a benign cultural tradition. Eugenics is an awful practice that's killed tens of millions in the real world. It doesn't need apologetics that make people question "but what if we're being mean to the nazis by not letting them do their tradition of genetic modification for the betterment of their race?"
It's illegal to practice eugenics in the star trek world because the eugenicists literally took over as despots and oppressed everyone during the eugenics wars. Do you think that it would be appropriate to have people who are proud eugenicists come into your society flexing their supposed genetic superiority (another piece of writing I protest btw) and teaching people by their presence that eugenics is actually benign and actually does make one genetically superior to others?
When I think of the situation with Una, it makes me think of cultural practices like genital mutilation, a backwards practice that parents make for their children, as individuals, that is traditional but hurts their child. It would indeed be fucked up to hurt someone in that way, and it's illegal for good reason. It's not benign, but it also would be cruel to blame the child for something their parents did to them and make it illegal for them to participate in society.
But genital mutilation isn't genetic modification for the betterment of the race. There's no such thing as genetic superiority, eugenics is a pseudoscience and it's messed up and irresponsible to depict it as an effective benign thing that works at actually making a race superior. The writers should have chosen a different practice than this instead of worrying an episode that does apologia for a terrible practice that is illegal (in universe, not irl unfortunately) for a good reason