And it’s far more than that. Also erased are many examples of Kirk himself, a man, being sexually assaulted/abused, either by coercion/manipulation, or being outright drugged and unable to consent. We’re really out-of-focus as a society over the daily reality of men being sexually abused. Someone once made a book titled ‘Ladies of Kirk’, which included and celebrated several characters whose only contact with him was abusive, and being very rape-apologist about it: “Using a special Elasian technique, Elaan causes Kirk to fall in love with her, hoping that he will use his influence to stop the wedding. But Elaan soon finds out that she is the one falling under Kirk’s spell.” Apart from that being total nonsense, hold up: a SPECIAL TECHNIQUE?? So we call DRUGGING PEOPLE to remove their ability to consent and sexually abuse them a ‘special technique’ now do we???!!! What?????? Imagine this with the genders flipped, seriously; ‘look at this woman and her sexy rapists, isn’t she lucky’. No. Hard no. And the worst/best of it is, when you actually watch the series, and Kirk’s behaviour, the portrayal is spot on. He is deeply unhappy in these situations. Yet the quiet voice in the comments saying ‘he looks unhappy’ is usually drowned out by by hollers of ‘yeah, Kirk getting sum!’
In The Mark of Gideon, as well as the aforementioned issues, Kirk is emotionally manipulated by use of a fake Enterprise which they use to make him question his own reality, and turn to the innocent-acting girl for emotional support/validation. In short, they spectacularly gaslight him - and again, it’s to circumvent his informed consent in terms of the physical/sexual. Even at the end, Odona says “how can you bear to look at me”. Some of these people are themselves coerced into abusing him, but abuse him they do. How Kirk deals with abuse and his abusers is a whole layer to the show that is terrifically relevant. People wonder why he becomes so infatuated by an android woman who the episode goes out of its way to draw comparison to Spock, not to mention the entire end scene which is focused entirely on the idea of Spock loving Kirk, but not acting on it, and then him comforting him at the end (often misinterpreted as erasing him memories or something). Some viewers would rather somehow just say it’s all ‘out of character’, than acknowledge the storyline and character traits that require more than a narrow view of masculinity and sexuality, and which form a broader storyline about Kirk as survivor desperate for love and comfort that is not abusive; his need becoming increasingly clear in its focus, and on whom. And boom, what do we run onto? Star Trek: The Emotion Picture. Again, it’s a mystery to some what this film is about, and people again cry ‘out of character’ rather than engaging properly with the text. It’s the conclusion of this arc, of needs finally aligning. As Spock says of his empathy for V’Ger, looking into Kirk’s eyes: “It only knows that it needs… But like so many of us, it does not know what.”
The ‘Kirk Drift’ bullshit idea of Kirk not only erases women in fandom and feminist issues, but queer narratives and sexual abuse narratives that are also so very important not to be invalidated, as this invalidation reflects back into society where real life experiences are then also dismissed and ignored.
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