It’s LGBT Pride Month again and a popular Star Trek meme is making the rounds. It shows the touching moment in Deep Space Nine when the Klingon Kor greets Jadzia Dax. Kor was friends with the Dax symbiont’s previous host, Curzon, whose memories Jadzia shares. She tells him she’s no longer Curzon and he happily accepts her new name and new identity.

For many Star Trek fans, whether LGBT or not, this moment has found a new resonance in an age when Transgender people are becoming far more accepted and visible, while also suffering increasing levels of discrimination. But sweet as it is, is it proof of DS9’s surprisingly progressive agenda? And is it helpful to the LGBT community today?

There seem to be two central question: How queer was Jadzia Dax? And how did DS9 handle LGBT characters?

Context is for Kings

Deep Space Nine was broadcast between 1993 and 1999. In that first year, the Clinton administration introduced Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.  This policy allowed gay men, lesbians and bisexuals to serve in the US military by keeping themselves in the closet and preventing others from investigating their sexuality. It was a stopgap measure that really satisfied no-one and spoke to the degree of anti-LGBT feeling in the country at the time.

In 1997, DS9’s fourth year, Ellen DeGeneres came out as  Lesbian. This was a huge moment for gay representation in mainstream American life, and came two years after a DS9 episode involving two women in love (see below). Not everyone was happy and even Oprah Winfrey was criticised for supporting her.

 

Queer as Folk wouldn’t hit British screens until 1999 and Will & Grace began broadcasting in the US in 1998.  Any attempt to discuss LGBT representation in DS9 must be conscious of its era. Equal marriage in the US was 23 years away when Emissary aired. It’s not a stretch to say that most people watching had no idea what a Transgender person was.

Are Trills Trans?

This isn’t a question the DS9 writers could possibly have expected when the show premiered. Most likely, Jadzia started off as a simple but very interesting idea: What if a species frequently changed bodies, swapping male to female? How would they deal with the change? How would other people react? (See Note 1, below).

It’s tempting to retroactively impose our conceptions of Transgender people on Jadzia. After all, she had been a man, she had had male friends, she had engaged in many stereotypical male behaviours. And those who knew her struggled with her transition. Ben Sisko referred to her as ‘Old Man’. Though a term of affection and something Jadzia embraced, it’s hardly the kind of thing that we’d expect to call a Transgender woman today.

Kor may have been instantly accepting of Jadzia, but the other Klingons were not. Kang wasn’t sure Jadzia should join them on their hunt for the Albino, believing their old friend was truly gone.

Was Jadzia still Curzon? Or was she just someone who happened to have Curzon’s memories? This unresolved problem comes up again and again in DS9 and it led to an episode that pushed the boundaries of LGBT inclusion for Star Trek.

In 1995’s Rejoined, Jadzia meets a Trill named Lenara Khan, whose former host was married to Dax’s former host Jorias. Jorias was male. Jadzia and Lenara explore their feelings for each other in what is essentially a lesbian love story. But there’s  a catch: Jadzia’s feelings have been inherited from a previous, male host. Therefore, the writers have plausible deniability against accusations of homosexuality. She is, after all, a strange alien.

By allowing that Jadzia had been male in former lives, DS9’s writers gave her an opportunity to do things her character otherwise couldn’t get away with at the time. Jadzia was something other than a queer woman, or a bisexual woman. The vocabulary for Trans rights barely existed in 1995, at least in the mainstream.  It’s hard to imagine the writers’ room intentionally loading Jadzia with so many expectations.

Yet their intentions may not matter. For those who grew up watching her on DS9, Jadzia could easily have been a role model for LGBT fans. And the often understated way the show explored her complexities has aged well, even considering it was working in an often unfriendly social environment.

For my money, Jadzia Dax is as queer as they come. She has transitioned from male to female, she has loved both men and women, she has had sex with both men and women, she has maintained friendships after transitioning, she has struggled through those changes. As Ezri Dax did in Season 7. But was all this essential to her character, or just a happy circumstance arising from storytelling?

A Mirror, Queerly

DS9 has won plaudits for is treatment of religious conflict, racial prejudice, sexism and the legacy of colonialism. A book could be written about the many ways the show broke Star Trek‘s boundaries, but was it really as progressive on LGBT issues as many modern fans insist?

If Jadzia was the only evidence of queerness on DS9, the question would be moot. However, a subtle thread of progressive ideas on the LGBT community runs through the whole series.

The Cardassian tailor Garak is a popular queer figure from the show.  His mysterious, flirtatious personality and his relationship with Dr. Julian Bashir have made him a fan favourite and the object of much speculation. There is no direct evidence of his bisexuality, and the only romantic relationship he pursued was with a woman. Nonetheless, the idea of Garak as queer persists and actor Andrew Robinson has done nothing to discourage it.

The most explicitly queer characters in DS9 are found in the Mirror Universe. Intendant Kira Nerys is undeniably bisexual. Ezri Tigan is established as a Lesbian in the 1999 episode The Emperor’s New Cloak. The episode gives us a glimpse of a budding relationship with Mirror Leeta, much to Rom’s surprise.

Indeed, it seems like almost everyone in the Mirror Universe is bisexual or at least open to experimentation, with the exception of Regent Worf, who pointedly refuses sexual favours from Mirror Garak. Or at least that’s what’s strongly implied.

A caveat on all this parallel universe queerness, however: The Mirror characters are naturally flamboyant and overstated. Their sexuality is often played for laughs or even shock value.

The Intendant uses her sexuality as a weapon and is portrayed as promiscuous – pernicious bisexual stereotypes. At the same time, the male characters are often pointedly heterosexual. It’s hard to escape the notion that queer women were inserted for the titillation of certain fans. That said, most of the queer characters are strong, brave and have happy endings. The Intendant gets into more trouble when she’s with men than women. The queer women of Terok Nor seem to teach the usually sexist Ferengi a thing or two about equality.

Quietly Defiant

Taken together, the cultural context and the queer subplots suggest that the show as following the progressive path laid out by Gene Roddenberry in 1966 – a time when kissing the wrong member of the opposite sex could cause outrage, let alone the same sex.

But DS9 was treading a careful path. The show exploited loopholes in the plot – Jadzia’s alien nature, the cartoonish Mirror characters, their own horny fans – to create a space for LGBT people, at least as far as the storytelling restrictions of the 1990s would allow them.

DS9 came amid major changes in public representation of queer people, or at the very least gay men and Lesbians. DeGeneres’ coming out in 1997 may have affected the show’s willingness to showcase gay women and there is a stark contrast between DS9’s portrayal of sex and sexuality and Voyager‘s rather buttoned down approach (which might deserve a post of its own).

Of all the Generation II Star Trek shows, DS9 comes closest to getting it right. LGBT inclusion makes DS9 look more modern than its counterparts, so it’s no surprise LGBT fans and allies turn to it for comfort or even inspiration.

Was all this intentional? Who’s to say? But this Pride Month, I think it’s perfectly acceptable to celebrate your favourite LGBT moments from DS9. If a  Dahar Master can do it…

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Note 1: I am aware that the Trill and the gender-swapping concept were originally introduced in the TNG episode The Host in 1991. In the episode’s denouement, the Trill symbiont is revealed to have been transferred into a female host and Dr. Crusher makes remarks about humans’ ability to love. I feel there is an extent to which this conclusion was done for shock value and in order to wrap up a relationship quickly. LGBT representation in TNG is worth a post of its own.