I started thinking about it before Amok Time aired.
In the summer of ‘67, watching the reruns of the first season, I very clearly remember a growing sense of, “They really love each other.” I did not jump to “they are in a romantic/sexual relationship,” but I was increasingly aware that there was love and devotion between them. I wrote a speculative essay about their platonic love in our summer fan club newsletter, which I remember being well-received.
With the start of Season 2, our whole fan club (and often others) watched the show together, at the house of the one person we knew with a color TV. The show was on Friday nights, so we would start the weekends by piling into her living room and watching “in living color” for the first time. Afterwords we would stay and discuss.
When Amok Time aired, we definitely had a lot to talk about. I am pretty sure no one suggested that they were gay – that would have been quite a scandalous suggestion at that time; and I don’t think I thought it myself. But we did have quite a discussion about how much Jim was willing to sacrifice for Spock, Spock’s reaction to seeing Jim alive, and what did Spock mean by “having not so pleasing a thing after all as wanting…?”
Did Spock … want Jim?
Two camps formed: one believing that Spock was in love with Jim and was pining for him, the other believing no way! that’s ridiculous!
Single copies of “Spock pines for Jim” stories started appearing and being circulated hand-to-hand. Two other women and I were doing most of the writing in my circle of fan friends, and because distribution was so difficult, we started having Thursday night gatherings. Anyone could come and we would read the latest installments in our Spock-loves-Jim stories out loud to the group.
Sometime between the second and third season, my primary writing mentor – an established, published sci-fi writer who was much older than me – told me in private conversation that she thought their love was mutual, quite possibly physical, and that she thought their relationship was worth exploring in writing.
She and I each started working on long pieces exploring the Kirk/Spock relationship, and it was the first time I had seriously entertained the idea that their love was also physical. That was a very secret project. We only ever shared our work with each other for comment / revision, and never mentioned it to anyone else at the time.
The first time I realized that the K/S relationship – which was called “The Premise” in those days – was being explored by other writers and even artists was in the summer of ‘69. Star Trek had been cancelled and I went to another state to meet with a handful of people who were forming a fan network to try to get Star Trek back on air. While there, a fellow fan showed me a set of drawings, all very tame by today’s standards, that depicted a physical relationship between Jim and Spock. I remember how shocked I was — not by the subject matter, but by the fact that someone had dared depict it.
Slash stayed very much underground until late 1974, when the first published K/S story used very coded language to suggest a love relationship between them.
Additional history note, for people who aren’t aware of it: In 1973, homosexuality was removed from the DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorder) as a mental illness. Before that time, it was officially listed as, and treated as, a psychiatric disorder, like schizophrenia: a condition that requires treatment, with the goal of removing it, or minimizing its effects if that wasn’t possible.
How happy someone was with it wasn’t important – it was considered a disease. Anyone who was happy being gay was considered to ill to realize how damaged they were.
Claiming that Kirk and Spock might have those feelings for each other was a hard clash against mainstream psychology. It was a very controversial opinion, because it meant not only looking at the series and saying, “I’m seeing a relationship that I’m pretty sure the writers didn’t consciously intend,” but also, “oh, and the entire AMA and the combined wisdom of its doctors are clueless about how human relationships work.”
Believing that two people of the same sex could have a healthy, loving relationship was an act of defiance all on its own.
I see that this post is trending today, so I’m going to take this moment to reblog it myself with the important addition of the comments from @elfwreck (Thank you for these, @elfwreck !)
I’d like to add a bit more historical context myself. Until the 1970s, years after TOS had finished its run, sodomy was a felony in 49 out of 50 states of the US – a felony which was punishable by prison or death. Throughout the 60s and into the 70s, I can remember reading carefully-worded news stories about gay men being arrested and given decades-long prison sentences.
For being gay.
Think about this for a moment. When TOS was on the air, not only was a white man kissing a Black woman a crime in a third of the country – but one man in a consensual, loving sexual relationship with other was committing a crime so serious he could be imprisoned or killed in every state but one.
I’ve seen tags from people and received questions about why Spock and Kirk were not allowed to be out on TV, since they were so clearly in love. This was not remotely possible at that time. The average American understood a man who loved another man to be mentally ill and his behavior to be criminal.
@elfwreck put it beautifully above: “Believing that two people of the same sex could have a healthy, loving relationship was an act of defiance all on its own.”
In the early years of writing slash, one had to be very, very careful about who knew you read or wrote such material. Women and men both went to jail for violating obscenity laws. Just letting people know you entertained the idea of “The Premise” of K/S love could (and did) have people openly questioning your mental health, your morality, your character, your ability to do your job, and the safety of children in your presence. I know a woman who lost all rights to visit her own children in a divorce, when the court found out she had K/S slash material in her home.
Tag: fandom history
I’m not even much of a fan of genderbends but goddamn am I even less of a fan of getting ordered around about what I should enjoy and how I should enjoy it and being lectured about how ‘problematic’ it is, when the real problem is that they’ve cast the thing in question in black and white and refuse to admit that there’s anything but their narrow framing.
Changing a character to the ‘opposite’ cis gender is a very different thing than making them trans or nonbinary. Insisting that people only change characters to trans is also really damn invalidating, because it implies that being trans is interchangable with being cis. Whoopsie doodle!
I think the real issue here is that a lot of people want to see more trans headcanons, but for some reason think that using sj words while being bossy and rude is the way to go about it. Dress it up in progressive language all you like; at the end of the day you’re still being bossy and rude to get what you want, regardless of anyone else’s valid feelings.
i get really irritated at kids who scream that genderbends are transphobic because they’re completely missing the context and history. they have no idea. it’s like to them, Cis People made up genderbends specifically to thumb their noses at trans people.
rule 63 was originally a guy thing, sexual objectification thing. it states ‘for every male character, there’s a female version of that character’, and not because the dudes who were into it cared about having more realistically rendered female heroes in their media. it was made popular on 4chan and porn boards and comics+gaming forums because you could reduce a manly male character into a sexy tits-and-ass pinup. there were related kinks of sissification, but mostly it was about getting to jerk it to a sexy female version of a previously unappealing, macho male character.
then women got hold of the rule and started going, okay. let’s look at the female version of this male character. let’s talk about being a woman in a man’s world. let’s talk about rorschach’s misogyny, tony stark’s womanizing, batman’s grimness, the fact there’s one girl ninja to every four or five guy ninjas, let’s talk about that in the hypothetical context of these male heroes being women instead. if there’s a girl version for every male character, what does that mean? what’s her story?
and it became this really amazing lens for female fans to interrogate stories through, to examine the effects of sexism and misogyny and masculinity, to introduce another woman into a story with very few, to identify with fully-rendered heroes of the fan’s own gender. and to interrogate the very nature of gender, which led into the development of genderbends where the character’s gender identity didn’t necessarily match their assigned sex, and from there an increasing interest in, and familiarity with, trans characters, trans people, and trans issues.
so like. people now reducing the issue to ‘cis people are gross and hate trans people’ is pretty ridiculous. it ignores basically twenty years of women questioning, confronting and then dismantling the de-facto heteronormative, exploitative male gaze in order to create the radically progressive fandom atmosphere as we know it today on tumblr.
I’d been trying to put into words my issue with the idea that genderbent versions of characters are somehow automatically, innately transphobic, and I think you pretty well nailed it.
Originally, it was called ‘genderswap’ or ‘genderswitch’, which was rightfully criticized for reinforcing a binary view of gender. Hence why it is now ‘genderbend‘. Things can bend in many directions.
Yeah basically.
Rule 63s can be transphobic and gender essentialist, no question, just as m/m slash can be misogynistic, but it’s not inherent to the genre.
The way I see it, rule 63 and trans/nb headcanons are two subsets of what I call “gender AUs”, and they’re not mutually exclusive. Girl!Sherlock Holmes is an example of one, trans!Holmes is the other, and trans woman Holmes is both. All those would be worthwhile explorations.
Yes! And all sorts have their place because all of them are exploring the experience of an under-represented group (or two) in a different way.
Beltainefaerie's Flights of Fancy 