Christ, don’t remind me. I’m only 31 but I have pretty vivid recollection of the Prequels release. When I was starting to realize I was gay (around 11-12ish) that homophobia around Jar Jar was extremely loud. It’s no surprise why both Star Trek and Will & Grace became my safe havens on TV. Also no surprise why I fucking immediately latched onto Stamets. From the second he appeared on screen I related to him. The moment we found out he was gay? I was floored. He had been on screen for like two episodes, been in a scene with his husband, and was never mentioned. No one made a deal out of it because it didn’t matter. Because it doesn’t matter. But my god the hatred that spunout around him was over the top. A lot of the “Oh well why is he gay? Why does that matter? They’re shoving it down our throats” garbage but then the utterly fucking insane take of ‘Star Trek is woke now’ as if it hasn’t been ‘woke’ (whatever the fuck that means) since 1966.
Then Discovery had the audacity to include a non-binary character and a trans character as if they were, you ‘people who deserve dignity and love like anyone else’ and the same shit started up again. I am fucking tired bro.
However, my ADHD ass says as he goes off on another slight tangent, that is not the types of jokes that bother me the most. I’ve been stabbed for being gay so words/jokes don’t bug me as much as they used to. What gets on my tits in a huge way are the outright ignoring of shit in lore. Like people saying “Spock would NEVER hide the fact he doesn’t have a sister” as if he didn’t hide the fact he had a wife, his father was Sarek and that he had a fucking brother. Or the misunderstandings about how the Spore Drive work because they didn’t even take 5 seconds to read the opening paragraph on Memory Alpha.