in which I have a go at a certain branch of Merlin shippers and theorize about Ferengi taboos

[selenak]

queer_fest is open for prompts. I enjoyed participating last year and will again this year, though I'm still mentally collecting prompts. One I know already. It's an idea that admittedly ows itself to yours truly being ticked off and truly SICK of one Merlin/Arthur request that asked for Gwen erasure too many (not at Queer_fest, elsewhere), but it's also the wish to see one of my few OT3s getting written. Ater all, bisexuality - and love that works in polyamory, not "just" one person/another person monogamous arrangements - are among the subjects to celebrated at this ficathon. Therefore, my prompt numero uno will be: After Arthur's return, Merlin and Arthur try to live as a couple on their own and quickly discover they can't. They need Gwen. Not just for her common sense but because they love her. They don't rest until they find her in the present. I'd like both Arthur and Merlin written as bisexual (not straight, not gay), and the relationship between them and Gwen explored as a triad where each party is invested in the two others.

One of the prompts I saw already posted is a DS9 one and asks for Jake/Nog, which I'm all for, but the prompt itself positions something I'm not sure about, to wit: "Nog has always broken Ferengi taboos - what's one more?". What I'm uncertain about here is: would it even make sense for Ferengi to have a same sex relationship taboo? I think to assume they have one is to ignore the practicalities and the precedents of a deeply sexist society that, before the reforms that start during the course of the show, isolates their women from public life, most professions and hardly lets them off the planet while at the same time having a floroushing intergalactic economic presence. Bearing ancient Greece and in particular Athens in mind: these conditions are more likely to encourage same sex relationships and the elevation of them not just to equal but superior status to the male/female ones. (A lot of those quotes about erastes/eromenos relationships that often end up in slash said by one character to the other come if you read further with some nasty misogyny, along the lines of women not being possibly capable of the emotional and spiritual depth of true love, etc.)

If we look at tv canon, there is just one incident that could be constructed as a clue to how the Ferengi see same sex relationships, and that's the season 2 episode that's basically Yentl in space, with Quark in the Avigdor role. I haven't watched it for a while, but when Pel, who is a Ferengi woman disguised as a man, kisses Quark (who doesn't know yet she's a woman), he doesn't react repulsed or homophobic, he just doesn't go for it and pretty much ignores it. He only freaks out somewhat later when finding out she's a woman, because this is the big taboo breach. If we include media tie-ins, which of course is optional (and I usually ignore them, but hear me out), there are the complete Ferengi Rules of Aquistion as written by Ira Behr and Robert Wolfe, both writers and producers of DS9 (Ira Behr wrote most of the Ferengi episodes), and they include after a show quoted rule that says "Never have sex with the bosses sister" a rule that says "Always have sex with the boss" with a footnote "In case I need to spell this out: there are no female bosses on Ferenginar".

In conclusion: I don't think the Ferengi have same sex relationship taboos. You can still write Jake/Nog as taboo breaking, but more because it's an interspecies relationship, and while there are a lot of those on the show (to wit: every woman but Pel Quark is ever attracted to plus of course the long term couple of Rom/Leeta), it's in each case not exactly a case of joyful acceptance from both of the species in question.

Comments

[lilacsigil]

Yes, sex-segregated societies do tend to have a great deal of valorisation of male homosexuality (and a good deal of practising female homosexuality) as a rule. Quark seems entirely unbothered by Pel's crush on him. Though I suppose you could go the Edo Period Japan route, where male homosexuality is entirely normal and accepted (and praised, in the samurai class) but you are still expected to get married and have children. I can't see Jake accepting Nog-plus-a-Ferengi-wife without it being an egalitarian threesome; I can see Nog being unable to marry and support a Ferengi wife because in Starfleet he's not earning money, and deciding to marry Jake instead.

[selenak]

*nods* Yes to both. As I said: I'm all for Jake/Nog - but please think the world building through first, and use what the show has given us instead of making the lazy equation that deep sexism = also homophobia.

[muccamukk]

I got in a dust up with the mods last year in relation to normative homosexuality, so I give up.

I agree with you though. I can't think of a Trek culture that's homophobic. The closest we ever got was Bev Crusher being "erm... no" what's his name's changing gender.

[selenak]

Odon the Trill looking unlike all subsequent Trills. :)

[jesuswasbatman]

There is the notorious heterophobic society in "The Outcast", but that's the kind of unthinkingly stupid "discrimiflip" story that makes the trope so widely viewed with suspicion.