The thing I love about this, the thing I always find funny whenever this comes up, is that these midwits are just too dumb to make the obvious argument. The argument that is "in their face" and "being shoved down their throats."
There is a rational, coherent argument to make their point. It's one I disagree with. It's one that, in my opinion, can only be made in bad faith with no purpose other than to be a concern troll, but it's there.
They always bring up Adira, Gray, Jett, Stamets, Culber, and anything else that's gone up their ass but never any of the actual social commentary because they're so thick it went over their heads and they didn't even notice it. You can see it in this thread. They mention the characters and people respond with "but they're just existing, how does that bother you?" They just bring up the characters again to a response of "yeah, we heard you the first time, what are they doing that bothers you other than existing?" And it just goes in a circle.
There was never an episode of ToS where Uhura talked about how hard it was to be a black woman as a bridge officer, because it wasn't. That's the whole point. In the future Star Trek wants us to imagine, a black female officer is completely unremarkable. Whenever they wanted to engage in social commentary about race relations in the 60s they had to invent an allegorical race, time travel, or use some other device to make their point.
The same thing is happening in the newer series. All those characters are just existing. Their sexuality and gender identity is completely unremarkable in the future Star Trek shows us. If those dipshits had two brain cells to rub together they would see the new series are full of allegories about not just tolerance, or even acceptance, but appreciation for beings with non-conforming expressions of self. If any of that did manage to trickle through their thick skulls they probably just twisted it into "yeah, people shouldn't make fun of me for having a relationship with a waifu pillow."
If they weren't so stupid they could easily give a half dozen examples and say "it's too much," "I got it the first time," "focus on something else for a change," or whatever other bullshit justification they came up with to oppose these themes. It would be a bad faith argument that I would disagree with but at least they could pretend they're not bigots, instead of their current position which seems to be "I've got no problem with these people, I just don't want to see them."
Beau of the Fifth Column does great videos talking about how Trek has always been liberal
In all honesty, most people that hate current trek don't hate it because it's too woke, they hate it because it's just generic trash. Classic trek didn't care much about big space battles, loads of pew pew and great action shots. Classic trek cared about great stories. The ships were places where people actually worked and lived together.
Current trek (anything after enterprise) has horrible story lines, horrible dialogue, is mostly about dump action pew pew and CGI, ignores 50 years of history, is all about fuck this, fuck that and fucking fuck you and honestly: it isn't woke: it's only virtue signalling.
Classic trek was woke by making great stories about real issues in society. New trek is just a sad shadow of what it used to be.
I was never bothered by new trek being too woke because it isn't.
To quote a really shitty show: sheer fucking hubris.
Star Trek is one of the things I still hang onto as optimistic about the future. We can make a better world for everyone and overcome racism, capitalism, transphobia, etc. We can build something better and reach for the stars. And that's always been the message. The characters have advanced technology like ships and teleporters, but what's really advanced is how they are as people. They're curious, educated, accepting people who want to explore the universe for the sake of it.
I also hang onto the X-Men. That was also important to me growing up, seeing how the characters could come together to defend themselves against hatred. I grew up in a really conservative area so I'm always gonna be grateful to Star Trek and X-Men (and later all sorts of books) for keeping me sane as a kid
In my opinion STD is just badly written with the focus on timeline breaking technology and a Mary Sue.
There is nothing wrong with LGBT characters if they fit to the story (not just people with the superpower of being gay).If Kurtzman did anything with it, that trek is likely garbage and ignorable. If someone else wrote and directed without Kurtzman sticking his mystery box horseshit in it, I'll give it a shot. Lower decks is great. Strange new worlds is sometimes fantastic, and sometimes very fucking stupid, which brings it in line with trek in general, so I like it.
Oh ffs can we cut this crap?
Yes, there are legitimate bigoted Star Trek fans. It's the Internet. You can find an abundance of any extreme niche. I'm honestly willing to bet I could find an abundance of furry star Trek fans fairly easily also, despite furries as a whole being vanishingly rare in real life.
However it's a lot more common to see legitimate criticism of Star Trek painted as bigotry, often by people who clearly aren't really that big fans of the series.
You couldn't criticize Discovery for the first year it came out without being called a bigot, and a lot of the people doing so would clearly have 0 idea about the greater Star Trek universe. I remember reading a multitude of comments calling Burnham the first female Captain or first black captain, saying how female senior officers were quiet and unassuming until Tilly came along, and a bunch of other shit that was objectively wrong.
I feel like most implied accusations of bigotry these days are low faith effort attempts to stifle criticism by newer fans who just can't handle criticism. It's exhausting and super toxic.
Finally Lower Decks is a grabbag of woke tropes but was met with widespread and is the most popular NuTrek among hardcore fans. That should tell you something more is going on.
