What the Bashir Family Tells Us About Ableism in Star Trek
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- Опубліковано 28 вер 2021
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I'm autistic and have always felt a lot of connection with Bashir. His awkwardness of the early season especially came off to me as a sort of well intentioned detachment. Genuinely likes people, and wants to help, and is smart enough to do so, but has trouble relating to those people and their experiences.
The retcon of his genetic engineering is a little frustrating to me just because it works so well? lol
like, I've watched ds9 a lot, with Bashir in mind for a lot of it, and honestly despite the fact that it was made up in season 5, right when they were writing the episode it was revealed in... it explains more quirks of his character from previous episodes than questions it raised.
His seemingly atypical mistake on his final exam was intentional misdirection, his worries about the prestigious award make sense, his over confidence at helping cure the jem Hadar of their addiction or the people in The Quickening of their disease makes sense. He's super human, *of course* he can solve it. and if he can't, who could?
which is a confidence his father berates him for. Mad that Julian is "too smart" for them, despite the fact that that was the goal.
there's a narrative irony I suppose, that they "fixed" his invisible neurodivergent disability and in doing so gave him a different one.
I know I'm not the only autistic or adhd (or also trans but that's less pertinent atm) person to relate and see themselves in Bashir's narratives. but yeah, in canon it's fair to reason that part of his awkwardness is directly because of his genetic conditioning, he's too smart to relate to "normal" people, and/or his secret forces him into loneliness
but to finish off my long rant here with something more directly related to your point in the video about the bias against mental different people that would lead to this in the Lore, I think the saddest bit is a line from The Quickening, where Julian talks about his teddy bear, a recurring prop/possession of his, Kukalaka.
and he talks about how as a child he learned to patch and sew the beloved bear after it got damaged and his mother wanted to throw it out.
and I know this wasn't like, intentionally deep or anything by the writers but, he's 5 in this story. so it's before he was taken to the genetics lab.
And so Kukalaka has always been heartbreaking to me.
because it means that his wanting and ability to heal wasn't because of the augmentations.
and it's maybe a little telling about his parents/mother that the first reaction to a broken toy, no matter how much her kid loved it was to throw it away.
and that, Idk it's sweet that Bashir has at least one friend who knew both him and Jules
This comment is effing beautiful!💓
I mean, autism is a spectrum. I feel like even if they overwrote some developmental delays that often occur with autism, they didn't make him neurotypical. I heard about it being a good parallel for ABA; traumatizing your kid so that they could look normal.
Thank you for your comment.
@@uncommon_nettle that’s a good metaphor.
I can’t add anything else! You put this so well. I relate to those elements of Bashir a lot, I’m autistic. I was “delayed” in school when no one could explain stuff to me for a couple years, until I finally figured stuff out on my own and “excelled”. So I always feel it hard when Julian says “you didn’t even give me a CHANCE!”. He’d barely began school when they gave up on him.
I felt like you kinda missed a big part of the ableism here. Bashir never even got the chance to consent, he was never even told this procedure was done.
I guess the question that has to be asked then, regarding that point, is how do you have that conversation with a young child who is having trouble grasping major concepts of human existence? Like, not saying that what they did wasn't ableist in the extreme, but seeing as we're talking about a child who has problems with some pretty major concepts, would there even _be_ a way to have this conversation in an acceptable manner? If the kid genuinely is unable to grasp the concepts necessary to have self-agency when it comes to a decision like this, how do you handle it?
@@redengineer4380 hey, you said you don’t solve problems that fall into a purview of philosophy.
Go back to solving practical problems, like how to keep those sneaky BLUs out of the intel room.
And need a dispenser, here.
@@DoctorProph3t nice personal attacks you really showed him (not)
Next tine try arguing the topic not attack the person
@@Patrickf5087It is a joke on his username. The engineer from team fortress 2 states he doesn't do philosophy in the meet the team trailer series.
Well a child under a sertain age is unable to consent so even if he wanted the procedure the famely would be end responsible
Something else I liked from this episode is Julian’s angst over whether he’s the same person that he was as a child. He’s genuinely not sure about it, and it’s played very earnestly
That is the underlying dark side to the point I made regarding the technological improvements to treat his disabilities. Are your limitations what define what you are? There's some really dark answers to that question I think we are not happy to consider.
@@chloe_speaks2384 IRL it isn't true that it can't give people those things. As someone who has suffered from different types of depression most of my life, motivation, compassion, and so much more is heavily influenced by your body, and can absolutely be added by changing your body. That said, I don't really feel like that is something to have any existential crisis about, and that in no way diminishes his accomplishments and his validity.
A person is like a river, the water flowing in the river determines the shape of the river, but at the same time the shape of the river determines the flow of the water of the river. It's a complex system, one that _even_ is highly dependent on the symbiotic relationships we have with skin and gut bacteria, so we are not just our human cells. Our body heavily affects our mind, but at the same time our mind also heavily influences our body (placebo, nocebo, and externally induced stress being the most basic examples). I have known and met too many people with mental/brain illnesses (some of which worsened by for instance B12 deficiency thanks to gut disease in the case of my mother, or serious changed caused by traumatic brain injuries like a concussion, or PTSD), also e.g. dementia and other things, to not consider the sense of self one has to be a fragile and easily changeable thing.
Things we think of as a core sense of self can be easily lost and trying to rediscover or reconsider what one truly is, will be very important for one's sense of self, but it is also an important part of that how unfortunately or fortunately fluid we are as individuals. It doesn't make us less, no more than a change in our life using different external tools does. It's still us, just in various configurations. To use as an example, if you have a robot hand then that is still you, but you will be able to do things you couldn't before that as well as not do some things you could before that. Medication or genetic manipulation is like a robot hand, but more diffuse.
@@KnightSwordAG please see my comment to chloe_speaks. I don't think it is the slightest bit dark. Our fluidity is why we are so good at adapting to and surviving different circumstances, I believe. It isn't a bad thing that we don't have some black and white borders to what is our self.
That’s a very good point you brought up
I still think the scariest part of that episode is that Richard and Amsha's crime is punished by Starfleet and not the civilian authorities. Admiral Bennett even says its his job keeping that "firewall" against genetic engineering intact. Imagine being a civilian and being accused of of a crime then you're hauled in front of a military judge.
I think it was a backdoor deal to keep what bashir was out of the public conscience i asume a civil trial of this nature woukd be news throughout the federation
Furthermore people who have been banned from starfleet for being genetically modified would argue that baning them is unjust (witch it is)
That was a thing during the US civil war in the north. There are a few well known cases of 'dissidents' and southern sympathizers being tried by a military tribunal. Clement Vallandigham is one example as he was charged and tried by military tribunal for violation of general order no.38 in may 1863 as a civilian.
'Genetic Manipulation' possibly classified as war crime [Eugenics War] regardless of civilian/ military status. Scientists that created Khan Noonien Singh et al were civilians. 'Genetic Manipulation' was allowed in the 'most extreme cases'; perhaps Julian fell into the cusp prohibiting treatment.
I was recently diagnosed with ADHD in my 40s. When looking for advice online I saw a lot of articles where the general gist was 'sorry about your broken child, here is how to manage them so it's not too much of a burden for your family'. I was reminded of this episode. Did they alter Julian for him? They don't say he was unhappy. They say they were unhappy.
Indeed.
I was always unsure about measuring how well someone's life was based on their happiness. For instance if you drugged someone into constantly secreting dopamine until they died they were most likely be experiencing happiness right to the end. In the same vein Bashir's parent were probably thinking that their son may be happy living a mediocre life, never being able to achieve more, but that would probably not be the type of life he should lead.
I know how you feel. I was finally diagnosed in my late 30's. There were a lot of painful realizations for me about how I grew up. ESPECIALLY the Rejection Sensitivity Dysphoria.
Let's put this in a different perspective, if you could snap your fingers and give your offspring the ability to fly, would you do it? It's not a necessity, but it's pretty cool and most people would think the same. So is giving a child the ability to fly intellectually a negative or a positive?
Check out the How To ADHD channel! It's been really helpful to me, and I am 37 and was officially diagnosed this year (indirectly last, had to do a lot of waiting).
Damn I like the ending of that episode (just rewatched)
O'BRIEN: Wait a minute. You haven't been letting me win, have you?
BASHIR: What makes you think that?
O'BRIEN: You said your hand-eye coordination had been genetically enhanced.
BASHIR: Well, maybe I have been letting you win a little bit.
O'BRIEN: I don't believe it. I don't need you to patronise me. I can play at your level.
BASHIR: I never said you couldn't.
O'BRIEN: Well play then. Really play.
(Bashir throws three quick bull's-eyes. O'Brien collects the darts and takes Bashir back to double the ockey distance.)
O'BRIEN: All right. From now on you play from over here. I play from up here. And if that doesn't work, we'll try a blindfold.
"A lot of the difficulties experienced by disabled people are not the unavoidable results of the disabilities themselves, but the products of society having been arranged without disabled people in mind."
"Let us never forget that Star Trek is not actually about a fictional society in the future, it's about our real society, right now."
This is one of your best videos, and probably my favourite yet. Those two lines really hit the nail on the head, for their different respective reasonings.
Star Trek and the fandom has gotten so fixated on the whole "post-scarcity" thing that they forget that that only covers the bottom layers of Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Acceptance and social standing is also very important to a person's well-being. If you have a society where people are told pretty much from birth that a person's job, their goal in life is to better themselves, you can damn well sure that people are going to be judged on how much they've "bettered themselves". And in the absence of capital capital, social capital becomes the only capital. People with power and influence will use that power and influence to ensure that their kids get into the best schools, have the best teachers, and get the best opportunities to show just how much they've "bettered themselves". In such a society, having a learning disability would be like having a physical disability in Klingon society.
And such issues would be inevitable in a society like the Federation; people (or societies) who believe themselves to be superior tend to be blind to their own flaws. Star Trek characters aren't exactly shy about talking about how great the Federation is. There's a lot of talk about individuals needing to "better themselves", but Federation society as a whole also needs to better itself, and that begins by admitting to its own flaws.
Regarding the genetic engineering ban in particular, sure fear of another Khan is a possibility but while to us The Wrath of Khan was only five years removed from the start of TNG, to the characters in Star Trek the Eugenics Wars might as well be ancient history. It's not something that immediately comes to mind. Both in Space Seed and in Into Darkness, Khan Singh wasn't someone that Kirk knew offhand. He might as well have been Genghis Khan as far as the typical Federation citizen is concerned. In reality, digging from the history books like that is usually a cover for more modern and immediate ambitions and fears. If a bit of genetic engineering can bring someone like Jules Bashir from disadvantaged to the top of his class, who has the most to lose if that became widespread? The people at the top of the social hierarchy whose children benefit from their social standing and connections.
Ahh but you forget that after Space Seed and Wrath Of Khan federation citizens would know who Khan was and what he represented. Thus a new wave of fear about genetically made super humans. So I could see the background of this episode being believable.
The thing of it was though I thought since money wasn't a problem parents or later the kid when they getting close to being an adult can choose whatever school they want to go to, and the only qualification to go was their test scores. Not who your parents are of what money they have. This would've been a problem for Bashir, first he would've been in a rimedial school for children with mental disabilities, which I think how they were writing it was they fall further and further behind and cannot catch up. Bashir wouldn't have been accepted to medical school not due to a lack of family money or political capital, but because he couldn't score high enough to be accepted.
You're applying our current capitalist social hierarchy to a future where humans have spent hundreds of years bettering themselves. Not just becoming healthier and smarter but morally as well. There aren't have and have nots fighting for placement in some ivy league space harvard
@@NaatClark Then why was Picard so miserable in that episode in which he "died" and Q gave him an alternative life in which he was just a "normal" crew member. Picard couldn't accept not being "exceptional", there are still social haves and not-haves and there is certainly an equivalent to "ivy league space harvard" and tbh Starfleet seems to be exactly that if even someone like Wesley struggles with the workload and requirements of Starfleet.
We also can't ignore how much Sisko's endorsement meant for Nog's chances to enter Starfleet. That is social capital in play...
Also, I wouldn't be surprised if powerful people managed to practice a little genetic engineering on their kids- probably in ways that would be virtually undetectable. The easiest way to do so would be to pull a Gattaca and just select the best embryos from a large number. Because the genetics technically occured naturally, it might not even be considered genetic engineering.
I mean, it's clear that there _are_ social hierarchies- it's certainly not anarcho-communist. So I wouldn't be surprised if- in the absence of a desire flatten all hierarchy into only that which is necessary- we see a slight stratification of resources.
And I mean... It would be _super_ easy for medical professionals to pull a Gattaca. Even if there were countermeasures, eventually a medical and software engineer pairing would come up and they would be able to circumvent those countermeasures. They probably wouldn't see the harm in it.
I grew up with a learning disability, dyslexia. It was the main reason why my family moved from a small Texas town (mostly Black and Hispanic) to a richer town (mostly White) because they had programs to provide the extra assistance. From 2nd to 6th grade I had special ed teachers for reading and writing and went to Summer school every year until 8th grade. Because I had access I have been able to go to college and earn a Master's in Counseling. My success was possible because I had access to specialist and at the same time others are denied that opportunity because their family can't afford to live in a community with wealth. Education in the US needs to switch from individual communities to a National program were your zip code will not determine your access to an education.
It is nice to hear someone really got the help that Learning disabilities promised I know Vocational Rehabilitation has failed for me so many times
Well, I'm quite encouraged by your success. I'm glad you got the right kind of help so that you could thrive. Someday maybe that will be available to every kid who needs it.
I have dyslexia. I was a child of the 80s back then a lot of kids with dyslexia were failed completely but due to where my parents lived I got lucky. I got the services availble at the time. Had I not been in a upper middle class place I do not think I would be able to read and write today. Every single child deserves the best Sped services availble no matter where they live or what their families income is.
And it should be free for everyone, pre-k through college.
Parents need to take a role in their children’s education. I grew up poor as hell, in a primarily Hispanic county and absolutely no access to programs and still I graduated and went to college with high grades, ADHD and Dyslexia. Lazy ass parents that don’t take part in their kids education are to blame for the holes in the educational system, not the lack of programs.
Its interesting to consider this situation as a comment on how the Federation achieved its Utopia. Capitalism and Materialism were replaced with a sort of "Individualist Collectivism," where the driving force in society is self-improvement and the betterment of humanity in general. Julian's father talks about how he wants to leave a legacy that people will enjoy for generations with his park designs, which is right in-line with that. Starfleet requires extremely rigorous academic and physical excellence to achieve officer status, to the point where having the talent to be a Starship Captain was considered to make you a national strategic resource in Kirk's time. The Federation is a classless society, but the philosophy it embraced to achieve that may have inadvertently created a "Class System of Merit," where the worst thing you can have is a ceiling on your talents. This is turn kind of puts a darker turn on the worry that Genetic Engineering is partly outlawed to stop parents from feeling "pressured to help their kids compete."
For the record I don't think this is likely to be an issue for society at large. The episode makes it clear that educational options for Julian existed, his father just found them unacceptable. Most people in Federation society find their way to things that make them happy and fulfilled. Sisko's dad is a chef, and he's got a wait staff and he's training a young man as his assistant chef, and none of them seem all that bothered that they probably wouldn't be talented enough in the realm of quantum mechanics to get grants from the Daystrom Institute. Federation society doesn't seem to have any direct social stigma attached to this. But one can certainly see how an indirect or implied social stigma could be divined by a certain type of person, like Julian's father. Someone who is full of ambition but seemingly lacks ability to fulfill it, and thus feels like he's a failure in the dynamics of Federation society, and thus will do anything to ensure his son won't be (and as Julian accuses, live vicariously through that son).
It might even be worse than that.
I figure the Federation is a pure meritocracy where you are encouraged to continue to "rank up". Want to be a Chef? Start out by sweeping the floor in the Restaurant of the Chef you want to train you. Show effort and get a shot at Sous Chef, then Chef Assistant and so on. Want to be a Reporter? Start out sweeping at the Space Newsroom you want to work at and try to work your way up to the File Room, then Fact Checker and so on until you get the position you want. Then you mentor your subordinates to reach thier goals.
On the one hand, in a society like that most are content because everyone is either actively working thier way to something or helping others to thier goal. On the other hand, if you lack the talent to ever rank up, your prospects are extremely limited, even if you have ambition. Bashir's Father was living that existence himself and sought to "save" his son from it.
It's one thing to know that you won't ever be a Starship Captain, its another thing to know you don't have the talent to gain a standard profession. No wonder he and his wife overreacted.
That might explain why anyone works in those hellish mining colonies that you see so often in Trek. Those are the people that couldn't hack Federation society and thier only chance for advancement is to get as far away from it as possible. Like Harry Mudd but less corrupt/insane.
@@ViccVegaa023 I'm not sure I would categorize the Federation as a meritocracy. Everyone is an equal member of society, no matter what their job is. Picard doesn't get his fabulous vineyard because he was the captain of the fleet flagship, but because it was his brother's before him. I suspect here are a lot of people like Bashir's parents; people that know they want to make an impression on the world, but cannot figure out what. The universities will have rosters of 10s of millions of people studying one degree after another, trying to find what they are best at. By definition, they are doing exactly what Federation society seems to establish as a proper life goal. The end result isn't the objective, keeping busy trying is.
With the pressure off on finding enough resources to survive, people can choose what they enjoy doing, and probably trade jobs and move about like crazy. Those mining colony jobs also are an opportunity to travel 100 lightyears away and make short hops to Risa on the weekends (to quote Homer; "WOOHOO!") That's partly why expansion is so crucial for a society like that, as they need as much as want strange new worlds and new civilizations. Each new planet has the potential to have another 5 billion people find new stuff to do.
The issue with Bashir's parents was that they projected their ambition onto their son, not that they couldn't be content with what they had. To say the Federation must be ablist because of their actions is like saying; "One person, one time, thought that Ramses II was an interesting person, so everyone on Terra must be a By Devine Right, Absolute Monarchist!"
@@ViccVegaa023 Its an interesting picture, although I don't know if its as bleak as that. For one example, Jake Sisko manages to get a position with the Federation News Service as a teenager without higher education. Not that Jake wasn't a talented writer, but he didn't exactly have a robust body of work at the time. It seems more like in Federation society you can go for whatever position you want, starting at whatever you can convince someone you're qualified for, and if you can't hack it at the level you want to go "lower," and either be content there or work to earn your way to the level you want over time, or go do something different. This is the freedom afforded by the Federation's (presumed) system of having all material needs provided for in a just and equal manner with luxuries also available without need for capitalist wealth accumulation.
This does still leave people like Julian's dad, who have big ambition but little skill, in the lurch though. And I think you're onto something with the notion that this might be what's fueling a lot of the Federation's drive for terraforming and colonization, not even just in mining. People like the Maquis or those colonists on the Sheliak planet are willing to die and kill for Space Land in an attitude reminiscent of the worst of Capitalist thinking, something one would think Federation citizens would be far beyond. But in your scenario what those people are fighting for aren't their things or their land or their nebulous "freedom," from stifling Federation society that only their Rugged Frontiersmanship can fulfill. They're fighting for their self-worth.
In a colony where every person's labor matters, where every bit of infrastructure and every crop harvest is made through their own hands for their community, they have value which on earth they might not. On a paradise world like Earth where all the problems have been solved, if they find their ceiling that's it. If they want more than their ability can muster for them, tough luck. But out in the wilderness, just through sheer lack of competition or sheer scale of need created by developing something from scratch, maybe there are no ceilings. Just a wide open sky.
I kinda like what Lower Decks has brought to this, with Mariner outright rejecting the entire rank up system because she finds it a hollow replacement for and even counterproductive to meaningfully helping people. Now that season 2 has reached a conclusion and Mariner has mostly worked through her personal issues with her Mom, I hope they can address that a little more directly. Particularly given the plot turn with the Pakleds.
I always felt like there was some weird unspoken thing going on in Next Generation with the Federation's culture. Like maybe there's some kind of unspoken social credit system or something because while the Federation seems to be encouraging personal expression in hobbies and the arts it seems like everyone is into the same kind of high minded (high falutin if you will) stuff. There's this weird sanitized feel to it all.
Like, sure, maybe the Federation allows people to get into punk rock or 20th Century war documentaries but you're not getting into Star Fleet unless you're into classical music or opera or 19th century literature.
Another explaination would be: that those parents, or rather the dad, lives through his son, as they themselves are in a mediocre situation jumping from mediocre project to the next. So when the dad sees that Jules isn't up to their par, they tinker with him.
While it isn’t actually Star Trek, I think the Orville had a point of view that explains the Bashir parents and the trek society at large in a bit less of a nefarious way.
“Our currency is reputation. An individual's wealth is determined by their individual achievements, not their monetary value”
It is very possible that it isn’t that they thought he would be treated incredibly poorly for being disabled but more that they saw a lack of achievements in his future as a future that they wanted to avoid. Essentially like the child of two stereotypical Indian parents choosing to go to art school instead of being a doctor like the rest of the family. He could have been perfectly happy in his life, but that doesn’t mean they wouldn’t want to change his future anyway.
Not just ST society. But also real life society. It explains why mothers like mine hid the diagnoses for decades.
That sounds exactly like Star Trek. Parents are ALWAYS boasting about their kids, even if the child hasn't done much to boast about. It's like they are trying to prop themselves up through their kids. That does happen a little in my own society, but it isn't quite as prevalent as in Star Trek.
@@macmcleod1188 This is an incredibly ableist and privileged view to have. It is, actually, the exact same bigotry the Bashirs displayed.
Here is where you go wrong: "As long as there are certain concepts that must be mastered (proofs, quantum mechanics, electromagnetism, a vast array of symbolism in literature) there will be inequality."
Why must these concepts be mastered by everyone, and in what way are they the only important concepts? You are right that needing to master these things is why disabled people are seen as lesser, but what if we designed society to value more things? Why throw up your hands and say "Life is inherently unfair" rather than do as Steve is and working to make it fair?
@@pjaypender1009; I don't think ST views them as something that needs to be mastered by everyone. Sisko's father is a well respected member of his community and he runs a kitchen; he never mastered quantum mechanics or excelled in advanced literature. He made a really friendly and welcoming restaurant.
I'm not Mac Mcleod but I think what he may have been pointing out with that is that a complete inability to attain those things is still a limit, it stops a person from pursuing an area that they *may* have been interested in, not one that society viewed as intrinsically required. And where there are things limiting your ability to pursue things there is inequality. And I don't think this is an inequality that could be solved by making society more accessible; it's an inequality of innate ability.
What I find interesting is that while this is a retcon, the seeds of it were there from the beginning:
He often had "foot in mouth" disease; not really understanding/accepting "social graces" much like Jack and the others from "the institute".
"second in his class"; he did not want to appear TOO smart (we learn later that the whole mistaking a post ganglionic fiber for a pre-ganglionic nerve was not something common).
Sector champion in racquetball; he beat a vulcan.
The "story" of how he gave up tennis; his first high level match, "opponent served and he heard the ball go by".
In can be said that all of these stories/events were him hiding his engineered body and mind.
It always felt to me, even before this episode's revelation, that he always knew he was the smartest person in the room wherever he went, but if he made that too obvious, he wouldn't make any friends, so he actively tried to hide it.
I always took this story to be about the harsh reality of narcissism and the consequences children of narcissists suffer.
Richard seems a narcissist to me. He talks of his lofty jobs and successes to people he views as important. He is emotionally manipulative of both Julian and His mother. He tries to assert his dominance over him by using his child-names, tries to take the limelight for Julian's success as a doctor (by leaking that the manipulation occurred, even if accidental).
His wife, so loyal, defends him even against her own son when Julian calls him out privately on this. This is one of the only times she really spoke. Otherwise, Richard's personality seems to silence her.
His dad is embarrassed because he couldn't produce a successful son, and I imagine the emotional manipulation his wife went through under his hands at producing such. Actions that led them to "agree" to undergo illegal and dangerous procedures on Julian.
Finally, Julian's astranged relationship stance shows that there's something unhealthy in their relationship.
I think the ableism read is valid, mind you. In either case, I hope we can agree Richard is a bit of a Dick.
There are sooooo many different societal problems one could analyze from this one episode. Ableism, meritocracy, intellectual disability, and all the other ones mentioned so far, but you could also cast a light on narcissism (as you suggest), co-dependency, the failures of the legal system, the failures of medical advancement, the failures of proper background investigation, social stigmatization, bullying, medical tourism, fear-mongering, and I'm sure I could come up with more...those are just off the top of my head.
10:22 "Social progress of one form doesn't guarantee progress of another form"
As a non-black minority, all I have to say is "LOUDER FOR THE PEOPLE IN THE BACK!"
@@adamgoss3638 or cis gay/lesbian/bi who discriminate against our trans people, when they were a huge part of our struggles to get real rights and even a huge part of Stonewall.
@@Call-me-Al yeah crazy stuff, even the current pressure on cis attracted lesbians to be attracted to trans lesbians
@@jimpickins7900 that's not even the same thing wtf
@@jimpickins7900 *Sigh *
I'm a trans guy- admittedly not a trans woman, but I am trans and I thought I was a part of the lesbian community for awhile.
We're not advocating lesbians have a quota of trans women they have to date or anything- that's weird. If you're not attracted to a trans lesbian, you don't have to date her... just like with cis lesbians.
Think of it like this: maybe large birthmarks or vitiligo are huge turn-offs for you. Yeah, it's little bit of an asshole move to dump someone over discoloration under their clothes, but it's within your right. Additionally, if you can see the birth mark/vitiligo in public, no one is going to tell you to be attracted to that person if you're not attracted to them. Same with genitals- if you dump someone over _only_ that, it's kind of shallow of you, but you're entitled to dump anyone for any reason.
An example: if I ever got to the point where I pass and I got involved with a straight girl, I'd feel a little cheap if she only wanted real-dick and was grossed out by my man-pussy- because that suggests she didn't really want _me_, the person, just my body. But at the same time, I'd never, _ever_ want to pressure her into having sex with me!
And also, as-is, I don't expect straight women to be attracted to me. I understand that I look like a woman, and anyone who isn't attracted to women won't want to date me, _and that's okay_ ! And if a lesbian were to be attracted to me (maybe I'd feel a little dysphoric about it) but I wouldn't be offended by it. Do you get what I'm trying to say here?
Also, just remember there will be people who straight-up don't understand why body-parts matter to you. Some people are attracted to feminine bodies and others are attracted to... Uh... "feminine souls" for lack of a better word. I think most people who like women have a combination of both. It might be helpful to try to identify how much of your attraction is body based vs soul based. Those who don't understand why certain bodies are a turn off are 1) probably bi or attracted to souls exclusively, and 2) unempathetic assholes. Try to understand where they're coming from so that you don't wind up being an unempathetic asshole too. 🙂
Yes! I'm mixed White and First Nations and don't ever seem to get a voice in discussions about racism.
Great way to start the morning. As a kid who was real smart but had severe learning disabilities this one really touched me. The "was I not good enough the way I was" line had me a little choked up the. Good job Steve!
To see this comment Brandon, really touched me. It gives me hope for my son, who is also super smart but has difficulty communicating... to see someone else start off and be able to overcome.. Thank You.
If you lived in an era where a surgical procedure (or some robotic/genetic manipulation) could remove that issue, would you want it? If you wouldn't why not?
Sometimes a person *isn't* good enough. Look at Geordie: born blind. He didn't demand that the world conform to his blindness; he (or at least his parents) *fixed* him. And as a consequence, he's objectively *better* in many ways than those not born defective. Bashir turns out to be the same, just with his mind, not body.
There are plenty of gifted students who are also learning disabled...they're called twice exceptional by the educational system...you can look it up...many of these kids carry 2 IEPs...one for their LD plan and one for their accelerated plan...🤷♂️ problem is that most schools have terrible gifted programs. LD =/= mentally retarded ... yes I used the "R" word...but too many people confuse specific learning disability with a generalized learning disability...the 2 are not the same. What Dr. Bashir had would be described in the old days as mental retardation and not a specific learning disability. Your IQ must be average to be diagnosed with an LD. Brandon, you are probably twice exceptional, or G/LD...🤷♂️ life is hard as a gifted/learning disabled person because you have traits of both and will always be the square peg in the round hole.
@@scottlowther9967 I wouldn't call it not good enough, rather that it wasn't suited for what he wanted to do. There are many potential lives one can have where a loss of sight isn't really a big deal, but also many potential lives where where it is.
Geordi got an aid to live the kind of life he wanted that is easily removable, but Bashir was irrevocably changed not because of his own desires, but because what his parents wanted for him.
There are many easy parallels to things that happen today without it having to be scifi, especially in more cutthroat competitive cultures. A decade or two ago in China children could medically get their legs broken and gradually elongated, in order to have a taller adult height as that will give them social advantages that are expected to translate to financial advantages, and the parents are the ones who wanted it not the child. Growth hormone abuse also happened and in other countries, for same reason. Older teen children sometimes are pressured into plastic surgery by their parents not for things like malformations but because their *average* (not even disabled) self is not advantageous enough for the future their parents want for them. Sometimes it is an external local culture of "not good enough unless you are great" for children, sometimes it's just those specific set of parents and not also their peers.
Children who grow up with their peers also suffering usually learn to accept that it's not a them problem it's the local cutthroat culture, while if it is just you then it's a lot more painful because it is more personal. You specifically were seen as not up to snuff not by your peers who liked and even admired you for your abilities, but by your parents.
That shit really hurts, I can tell you, as someone whose parents got pissed off at school grades that would have made other parents happy. Because they came from far more cutthroat cultures than the one I grew up in, and they forced that on me and I too have little to no contact with them. I was inherently wrong to them, and was not able to be the child they wanted which very much was absolutely not me. Irony being that I had been infinitely more financially successful if I had been raised by any of my friends' parents despite my autism and ADHD, as my parents massively compounded on my problems and were directly responsible for my mental breakdown in the first year of my beloved computer science civilian engineer education and subsequent years long burnout.
If you're hyperactive and keep compulsively moving, that is a serious disability if your love lies in subjects you have to be very still, but a serious advantage if your love lies in for instance dancing. If you love dancing and yet your parents don't consider you a real child of theirs if you don't become a very still person working with still thing X, and they change your body somehow to make you a successful still person, that will emotionally hurt a lot. If you are a normal person who is altered like that, it will still emotionally hurt. If you have disabilities which limited the ability to become what your parents wanted for you, and not what you want, that still emotionally hurts.
My sister is legally blind, and while lack of sight is disadvantageous in a very sight based culture, she's an awesome and successful soundtech. Lack of sight isn't a problem for her daily life unless it is made a problem by lazy inconsiderate jerks who dislike making environments suited to multiple types of needs. Which is as ridiculous as making a multi type work place suitable only for the blind or the only deaf people. It isn't hard, it just takes more effort than if you act like you are the center of the universe and everyone else is clones of you.
When this episode first aired I was in high school and couldn't understand why they'd make him disabled in the first place, I thought they had curred all that "stuff" by then. Many, many years later I found myself relating to the distress of his parents as I struggled to potty train an almost four year old, as my own six year old didn't know a 9 and a P were completely different, much less be able to read, as I saw my child not able to figure out how to interact with other kids on the playground. It was an awful feeling I lived with for years and often wondered if it were available, would I have done what they did?
My son did eventually potty train. I had made peace with the fact he was never going to read when in third grade he finally started reading simple sentences. He is now in 8th grade and reads above grade level. He is transitioning out of special Ed classes and into mainstream classes. So now I feel like Bashir's parents maybe gave up too soon, that maybe he wouldn't have been a genius but might have been ok with the right help.
I also feel that they killed their child and replaced him with a better one. A person is the sum of their experiences and a person's disabilities do play a part in shaping who they are and who they become. My son would not be who he is today if he had not had the struggles he had, if he did not understand the world through his autism lense. If the autism is erased then he is erased. So even though I sympathize with Bashir's parents' feeling of failure and helplessness, I wouldn't make the same choice. I strongly feel doing so is saying he was not good enough, he was not worth the extra work and effort. They're no different than the Romulan that told Geordi he wouldn't have been born in Romulan society.
It's actually not inconsistent at all, the episode was intentionally showing the downside of the meritocracy at the center of federation culture. A society in which people no longer work for money but work to better themselves sounds good but it's also a recipe for a cutthroat world of overachievement in which the only measure of success is to be considered the best at what you do and mediocrity is considered failure. We get an example of this in the same episode with Julian's father, he's considered a failure because in spite of being good at what he does he's far from the best and has never done anything that stands out. It's not exactly a society built with the mentally handicapped in mind. The fear that even someone who's just a little bit slow would never be able to compete makes sense, especially if one of the parents knows how hard it is to succeed when you aren't below average. This would also explain why so many Federation citizens are interested in getting out, either through settling colonies or getting involved with for profit business outside of the Federation.
Well, it's more a problem left over from the Eugenics War, when basically a whole mess of super-soldiers nearly wiped out the non-enhanced humans.
Well, except that's not how the federation is always depicted, more often when it's being played up for the audience it's portrayed as a state of affairs where people strive towards self improvement, making themselves the best they can be, we see this in groups like the Vulcans always striving for better emotional control and all the human musicians constantly trying to play better and the countless star ships of star fleet itself striving to learn more, not to do better than anyone else but to improve all their collective knowledge.
In TNG we also see it with Commander Riker and how they want to push him to be a Captain of his own ship although he feels comfortable where he is.
I don't really see an alternative to a meritocracy though.
Drawing lots maybe?
@@oliverhug3 Maybe they feel they need him to be a captain?
I did like that the "lazy, inconsistent" writers on DS9 had the forethought to make Julian's "coming out" story largely about the reasons WHY he was modified rather than the DANGERS of encouraging it, even though that's the direction they do go in the next time they cover it.
Like Jack says in Statistical Probabilities "I knew you were going to trod out the Eugenics Wars" like the main downside to genetic engineering is the odd time you create a supervillain. When the main cast discuss things at Sisko's dinner party, Bashir mentions that if it were legal, everyone would feel compelled to get their children "improved" in order to compete. Which says some OTHER worrying things about the Federation.
I do love that DS9 shows the cracks in the façade of Star Trek.
This was such a good video, I'll always be impressed by how much effort Steve puts into these supposedly low-effort "not actually" videos.
Yes, the potential for a sort of genetic arms race is an insidious aspect of this subject. Khan and his Eugenics War gave us big bads with little need for subtlety, but I'm glad that you see the harm of hyper-competition as well.
@@JosephKerr27 Speaking of Jack -- there is a real danger to the people facing genetic modification. Sometimes there are unintended consequences, and the child spends a lifetime institutionalized.
@@Dave102693 Probably because the rest of the Federation understood the dangers of unchecked genetic manipulation.
@@Dave102693 Most of the Federation, for better or worse, seems to follow human issues (which is mostly because of it being a show written by humans). The Starfleet we saw in TOS, TNG, VOY, and DS9 was very human-centric, with what appeared to be most of the important positions being staffed by humans (with the occasional Vulcan).
For what it's worth (in-universe), the Federation could have adopted such policy in part because of the experience of humanity and also because of when the Klingons made similar mistakes with genetic engineering.
I do find that argument a wee bit strange though, as no humans are put off doing, say, track team just because there’s a Vulcan competing too. Nor do they want genetic modifications to be akin to Vulcans en masse, despite Bashir holding his own against Vulcans so it’s totally doable. It might make sense if it was just humanity, but it’s not.
As an autistic person, I've always deeply, DEEPLY related to Bashir and even more so after this episode. Especially his misery when he asks "Was I not good enough for you?" That's a feeling I've had many times in my life, when I can feel the disappointment in my mother that I never lived up to the 'potential' she thought I had.
Sometimes I wonder if she would've tried to talk my dad into giving me those treatments if they'd existed...
I think that this episode actually goes a long way to explaining some of the troubling aspects of Julian's behaviour in Melora. His initial fascination with her as someone who faces difficulty without wanting assistance could be viewed as a projection of his regrets about his parents depriving him of coming into his own. Then, like his father, he becomes determined to "fix" someone who isn't really broken because of his attachment to a vision of what their life should be, even if it isn't what they want themselves. I'd love to see a scene of Bashir reflecting on his past decisions in light of his new relationship with his parents, maybe even visiting his Dad in the Prison Colony in NZ. This still doesn't fix all the issues with the episode Melora, but I love it when that happens, especially by accident.
Thanks for all the awesome insight. Keep it coming!
Yes!
It’s also worth nothing the writer of Melora uses a power chair and wrote Bashir’s response specifically to comment on the kinds of attitudes he didn’t like seeing from his medical professionals. All the inspiration porn stuff. But of course it’s really uncomfortable to watch that episode as a disabled person for those same reasons 😬
I interpreted the motivations of Mr. and Mrs. Bashir to be symptoms of the pervasive, insatiable desire for hyperachievement in Starfleet. It appears in the development of many characters, most notably in Picard's revulsion to being a mere science officer in "Tapestry" (though, in that instance, I think anyone would be resistant to having their life undone). Self-improvement and ambition are laudable goals, but the dose makes the poison. His parents' foolhardy quest to improve Julian's opportunites for success also robbed him of what could have been without genetic tinkering. That doesn't mean we should feel bad for enjoying him for the brilliant character that he became; but, as someone on the spectrum who gets pissed when anti-vaxxers talk about autism as a disease to be cured, I'm glad Steve thought to address this topic. Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations.
I mean, that's not a fair characterization of Picard's position in that episode. It had nothing to do with him being a "Mere science officer" and everything to do with the alternate life that led there and the fact that he personally didn't find it challenging or mentally engaging enough. I don't think there was any snobbery involved of the "I'm too good for this" variety. It was more of the, "this life doesn't satisfy my soul" type of problem. I think Picard is the type to value every member of the crew and their contribution, and you can't do that if you find the positions contemptible.
For instance, a slight counterpoint to the "hyperachievement to the top of every ladder mentality" argument:
Spock stays a first officer because he genuinely does not want to become captain and much prefers doing science to commanding a ship. It fit's what he "Enjoys" (for want of a better word to describe a Vulcan) doing and his skillset perfectly.
Now obviously he's at the top of his game professionally, But I personally think it's a reasonable stipulation of the federation to have the best of the best serving on board starships considering how often they need to serve as ambassadors for Earth/The alpha Quadrant and also save the planet/ Multiple planets/ a star system, etc. I can see how that mentality could lead to problems but honestly, it's probably still the best mentality to have. (The hyperachievement part). No system will ever truly be perfect, but one that encourages learning, personal growth, and competency sounds pretty good to me. We'd just have to deal with the side effects.
It's like right now, only the best of the best of the best become astronauts, and frankly that's a good thing. Smart talent people driving the big explosive device only please.
This episode hits me really hard. I remember being slower than everyone else, just because of how I take in knowledge due to me being on the spectrum. I remember being prescribed drugs to improve me in some way, and I resented this from the beginning. Being aneurotypical is not an illness to fix, just a variable that many humans embody.
I have cerebral palsy: I use a communication aid and powerchair. I would love to see characters like myself on the bridges of starfleet starships. Think what a powerful message that would send out, akin to Uhura appearing on the bridge of the original Enterprise. Why wouldn't I be able to, with the right help and support? Do people like me not have just as much to contribute to society as anyone else. I don't want to be cured - I love being me - but wish others could see that I'm just as valuable a member of society as anyone else. Besides, if I can pilot a powerchair, I can pilot a starship..
I get that you take pride in this part of who you are and you wouldn't get rid of it.
I've got fibromyalgia. Joints hurt too much to get out of bed some days. Skin feels like it's on fire. I'm proud I survived, but fuck this condition and all the others that make life this hard. The immoral thing is that the federation banned genetic engineering that could fix these problems early on, before they become a part of us and we need to gain the strength to conquer them.
Once they grow up the kids that get saved can pay someone to break their legs or randomly beat them while they are sleeping if they want the experience: they won't because that'd be crazy, but they could.
@@TheGrinningViking About twenty years ago, when I was eighteen, my school friend Andy died. Andy was a massive Star Trek fan. He had Muscular Dystrophy, a genetic condition which slowly wastes away your muscles until you can no longer breathe. Going to a special school, I lost several of my classmates to it. None of them ever complained about their fates but held their heads high; they just got on with their lives. I am immensely proud to have known boys like Andy: such people have a type of strength nobody who hasn't experienced it could understand; a strength derived from their disability. I feel privileged to have had friends like that. We don't want to be cured, but accepted for who we are: we contribute to the beautiful diversity which makes up human civilisation, and would love to be shown contributing to it's future.
@@matthewgoodsell480 I'd rather children hadn't died, but I get where you're coming from. I don't think we will ever see eye to eye but I respect your view.
It's a different perspective, being so disabled somedays that even leaving bed is impossible for hours. Even with help. Some days walking and being almost "normal" - whatever normal means. I'm the same person in both situations, one is just being crushed and having to move that impossible weight to do anything.
@@TheGrinningViking But the thing is "disability" covers a huge area of conditions. Some of which inherently affect quality of life, like yours, some where the impact on quality of life entirely depends on society's response and everything in between. The character we're talking about had an intellectual disability or a learning disorder. Even if he never progressed past where he was at at 6, there's nothing to say he couldn't have lead a happy and fulfilling life. He was also only 6 freaking years old, so who knows how he would have progressed.
I don't do this often, but I have to disagree. Mostly to maintain the image of the Federation utopia. We can only infer what the conditions of those children with learning disabilities are but it can be assumed to be comfortable and cared for rather than some dark unknown that scares Richard. I choose to believe that the impetus could have been Richard's own personal bigotry and Amsha's concern. Not that Julian will be mistreated but that he wouldn't live up to the potential that she sees in him. Something many parents are guilty of.
I agree completely. He keeps saying "we can infer" alot and everytime he did I kept thinking "no. we. can't". We actually can't infer anything from 1 specific case. The most we can conclude is that Julian's parents "believed" that he would lead a mediocre life and that such a life was intolerable to "them". There is no evidence that either that was inevitable or that society as a whole does not treat such people with compassion or give them options. The episode itself mentions "remedial education" etc... doesn't sound to me like a society that turns it's back on such individuals but rather 1 which has methods in place to help them.
As a rule Star Trek really doesn't say much at all about how "mediocre" people actually live, but I think it is heavily implied that even the "underachievers" are living a great life free from hunting and gathering for their survival and hanging out in the holodeck playing video games all day. No reason to believe that the disabled are not similarly able to live a great life, it's just one that julian's parents can't accept for some reason.
His second point however is on target. Just because you live in a society where mediocrity and underachieving are no longer barriers to living a good life does not mean that every single individual will accept it for their own child. Just because you live in a society where bigotry as a whole has been eliminated doesn't mean you will never be able to dig out some fringe asshat who is a bigot about something. Especially in a show designed to be a commentary on present day society.
If the writers did not pull such a person out of their magic hat, who is diametrically opposed to the values of the federation, there would literally be nothing left to talk about. Such persons exist as a dramatic device to point out how silly those who hold their views and attitudes in the present day are, not how bad the federation is. Because this is Star Trek, all of the outliers he points to in the shows history are redeemed by the end of the episode and grow, evolve and learn that their behavior is antithetical to the society they live in, which is based on tolerance, mutual acceptance and mutual help not status.
At the same time a part of me can relate to Richard. If I had a child who had a learning disability and they legitimately wanted to learn and grow but they simply could not due to their disability and there was a way to alleviate their condition then I would be tempted to do so. The thing I took issue with is they did the modifications to him while he was young, I dont know if they would be less effective if they were older but I would rather be able to have my child consent to such a procedure.
When the potential is the stars, what would you do to get to the stars,
@@Suninrags I think there's also the matter of what the risks and benefits of the proposed "cure". Bashir could have *died* as a result of the genetic enhancement they subjected him to. Most parents wouldn't consider that a reasonable risk to take for a mildly disabled child. We know that Julian was bright enough pre-enhancement to teach himself how to sew at age five, so whether he had an intellectual disability, autistic spectrum disorder, or specific learning disabilities, he wasn't that seriously impaired.
As someone on the spectrum, Julian always feels coded what used to be "high functioning aspergers"(though these terms are now considered offensive, but not sure the proper current term to describe it) even as he is, I actually very much associate with him there
The 'proper' term is simply "Autism", Autism affects people in such markedly different ways, affecting different aspects differently, that trying to create some sort of "high functioning" vs "low functioning" dichotomy both obfuscates the ways in which a 'high functioning' Autistic might struggle, and erases the ways in which a 'low functioning' Autistic might excel.
I agree 100%! Dr. Bashir is definitely on the spectrum.
But you can list the accommodations you need. And a neurodivergent character can, and should, do the same. And also, neurodivergent characters should be played by neurodivergent actors.
But this concepts were not as developed as they are today back in the mid 90's.
@@KayleighBourquin while good in theory, what shades and gradations would one use then when suggesting treatment and/or accommodations? Statistical studies need comparative categories to allow for comparison, additionally, there are related neurodivergent conditions that manifest almost identical to autism but with different root causes, the most obvious one being nonverbal learning disability, which manifests quite similar(to the extent that many trained experts cannot tell them apart) but appears to be caused by a breakdown in the spacial processing system in the brain rather than the breakdown in sensory processing that is linked to autism(in neither case is much known about WHY this happens, simply the underlying difference) do these fall under autism, neurodivergent, or other?
why offensive?
Thank you for this, Steve. A lot of Star Trek is subtext and easily recognized as such as far as I’m concerned. I cried when Bashir asked his father why he wasn’t good enough without the genetic reengineering, but once his parents spoke, I get it (being a parent myself). I very much identified with him as I became disabled myself around 38 years old - I went from being a semi-pretty woman to being avoided by most of my peers due to a disfigurement that wasn’t my fault. Ableism is definitely still around today. Having said that, in Statistical Probabilities, I was shocked that the character of Lauren (being both a mutant and something of a nymphomaniac), which to me, doesn’t disqualify her from working. Give the girl some Adderal, have her work with an occupational therapist, and she’d be fine - I think a lot of the issues her character faced had to do with the perception of women’s sexuality in the nineties, and that’s just sad.
Great timing. My daughter and I were just talking this morning about how the media portray kids with disabilities as large burdens on their families, when many don't consider it a burden at all. Or the burden is imposed by the inadequacies of our society, rather than being inherent to the disability itself.
My mom's calling was to work with special needs kids, real young ones, at the shitty underfunded school the district had for them. That label encompasses a lot of different types of people with different disabilities, but in almost every case she and her team would work with kids schools or parents had decided were "lost causes" (in some cases even assuming they were completely non-verbal), and suddenly their emotional issues got better and they were learning much more easily. Many were speaking again. When I asked her why the program she worked for was so effective, she said "i treat them like the people they are, meet them where they are, and let them show me what they need". Basically, she said they had been so mistreated by their previous schools and even parents because of their disabilities that it had become nearly impossible for them to successfully function. When I was young I looked at those kids and wrote them off too, thinking that it was their divergence from what we consider the norm that was the issue. But the problem did not lie with them.
They cut her funding 15 years ago and she's worked at a bank ever since.
What a shame. Your mother sounds amazing.
Julian's story fits well with the early TNG tone of the franchise, where we saw a future utopia populated by insufferably smug people so dull they apparently have nothing better to do but brag to each other about how evolved they are. No wonder Julian's parents felt pressured to do whatever it took to "fix" their son.
As someone who suspects I have ADHD, I feel this. I've always felt like I'm stupid or lazy because I have trouble grasping math like everyone else can or that I can't really study like everyone else can.
I've found my own work arounds, but because I am female and ADHD isn't looked for much in women, I never knew that it was a possibility for me.
thats true of a lot of these conditions they seem much more pronounced in men
@@katakisLives 'more pronounced? The diagnostic criteria and studies were almost entirely developed looking at young men. Women with these conditions suffer similar struggles but the differences in what is seen, what is tolerated and what is ignored in children vs adults and in women vs men, girls vs boys (and thats only big two genders) result in massive diagnosis and treatment disparities.
I have Autism, ADHD and anxiety, and saw myself in Julian even before the reveal. And having been on both sides of the issue, being both very behind intellectually and then very ahead (and switching between those extremes at about the same age Julian did) I resonated with him a lot. I also resonated with his apparent awkwardness and his difficulty with relationships and his million-thoughts-at-once and his hyperactivity. (He fidgets a lot). Even with the genetic resequencing, Julian Bashir was still disabled. He was just disabled in a more socially acceptable/"cuter" way. (I'm very aware that my ADHD/Autism/Anxiety/But-really-smart combo makes people see me as the "cute quirky science girl" often portrayed in media. It's annoying.)
Yeah, " Star Trek: The Federation isnt actually perfect" should've been DS9's title
To be fair, to my knowledge they never said the whole federation is an utopian society, only Earth is described as a paradise. TNG had enough instances of federation failures
@@bepkororoti8019 TOS had a whole bunch as well. The Federation never was portrayed as the utopian society that Roddenberry and some of the fans kept talking up, and there's actually a very good reason for that: utopias tend to be boring to write and read about. You need something to go wrong to have an interesting story.
Julian Subatoi Bashir is my favourite Star Trek doctor.
After season one, of course.
Season one Julian is an absolute twerp.
I quite liked the genetically engineered reveal. It's a great mirror for modern ableism and said some pretty worrying things about his family and also the society they live in.
Also... First! Woo!
@@sarahscott5305 My favorite doctor too. Unpopular opinion?
@@sarahscott5305 Yes, anyone can be a fan of Crusher or Phloxx or The Doctor, but it takes real genius to see Bashir's value... especially after the trainwreck he is for the first two seasons
I would also like to join the "I liked Bashir before it was cool" party.
I personally think that there is more blame to lay upon Richard Bashir than on the society he and his family live in. The episode tells us that the man is an absolute failure at everything he touches, changing occupations from one week to the next and then pretending he's a genius at whatever random thing he's doing this time. And I'm pretty sure he's aware of it, because I personally know loads of people like him. He doesn't believe the stuff he tells other people about himself, it's all about keeping up appearances. So what's important for him would be to have one actual real success, so that he finally can see himself the way he thinks he deserves to be seen. And people who are like that have one unfortunate tendency: when they fail at becoming great, they put the burden of fulfilling their dreams onto their children in ways that are harmful, nonsensical and overbearing, basically suffocating the child. The relationship the Federation has with disabled people does not matter here, because no matter how many support programs for Julian Richard could have gotten, he always would have taken him to that clinic. It wasn't about "fixing" Julian's disability, it was about pre-programming him to become a prodigy. Justifying it with the disability might have even just been an afterthought, he may have even done it if Julian hadn't been disabled
T R ump
You know, there's another way to look at this. Richard himself is neuro-atypical. Possibly ADHD. He gets a new interest, pours his heart and soul into it for weeks or months, then his hyper-focus latches into another interest before he's really become good at what he was doing last time.
Maybe he just couldn't beat to see his son struggle the way he did in life.
Which doesn't change the fact that the society itself is thoroughly screwed up.
It's just a possible read on his motivations that doesn't make them completely villainous, but doesn't give him or the federation a free pass on ableist crap, either.
Hm, I agree that Richard has issues that might very well have resulted in him never being content with a happy, satisfied, but below-averagely successful child. But than again, living in the same society just a couple decades earlier, what has to have happened so that Richard grew up to be absolutely positive that there was something great within him he just needed to archieve somehow, and why wasn't he able to a) archieve something or b) be recognized and helped with the insecurities resulting out of wanting to but being unable to succeed? Of course it is harmful to lay ones own insecurities and pressure to succeed onto ones children. And of course as adults every person has a responsibility to be or become aware of that and adjust their behavior. But why in a society where little Richard or young Richard should have been able to succeed at something, literally anything, but wasn't, and where the insecurity and pain coming from that was blatant, there wasn't a support programm for him? After all, the idea to be able to archieve greatness coupled with the fact of little to no successful results usually hints at either big pressure from the parents and/or neurodiversity in itself. ADHDs can sing a song there, ususally. So why wasn't there a school programm or some such to catch these kind of things early on and help Richard, as well as later on Julian, three centuries from now? That's still a sad thing.
While I don't think Richard would have put Julian through genetic engineering if his son didn't have learning difficulties - or at the very least, I don't think Amsha would have agreed to it - it is quite telling that the procedure Julian was put through, didn't just 'fix' his learning difficulties, but actually gave him an upgrade. If all his parents wanted to take away the learning difficulties, then they would have gone through with a procedure that brought Julian status quo with the rest of society. Richard clearly wanted to go one step further, which suggests it was more about his ego than his son's well being.
I do, however, think that there is still an element of a societal problem at work. Aisha says Julian was falling further and further behind, which suggests that there was not enough of a support structure within society to help kids who needed additional learning aids. We also see by the way that Reg Barclay is treated in his first appearance that people who are neurodiverse aren't always shown the respect they deserve, or given the given time or patience to be understanding.
I'm reminded of something Picard said to the newly unfrozen humans in ST:TNG. "The challenge is to better yourselves." Well, if you are the limitation to your own improvement, and that is what is measured as valued in society, then what Richard Bashir is doing is living out the potential of his own society. He can't really better himself; why is irrelevant. But he constantly leaves everyone with the impression that he is by continually trying new things, hoping the next one he tries will be "the one." And maybe in a post scarcity society, that is the best he can accomplish. But in the minds of most people, Julian especially, it looks aimless, and even shiftless. So there is still this judgement that follows Richard, even if only Julian perceives it.
Steve, you also need to address the enhanced group (Jack, Sarina, Patrick and Lauren) whose parents also enhanced them but at the expense of the rest of their mental faculties. They pretty much represent Neurodivergent people who are social pariahs in real life and aren't utilized for their strengths
I like that episode a ton because it was written at a time where autism wasn’t as well studied as it is now but did a wonderful job. The clearly neurodivergent people were well varied in type and gender. Often times disabled individuals are infantilized by society and these people are told they cannot contribute. I like that the neurodivergence isn’t treated as a super power but a difficulty that sees life in a different way.
There are attempts even today to “cure” autism so it shows how damaging those attempts can be on the people involved
I remember thinking it was an intellectual disability, not a learning disability. A learning disability is something like problems reading, or focusing, or listening. A good teacher can plan around it, and the student can still keep up with the class. An intellectual disability would be problems with understanding concepts, like when Julian said he couldn't understand something about the difference between two animals, or something in the episode. That's the only criticism I have for this pretty good video.
Note this is an issue of different terms in different dialects of English in the United Kingdom (and some other English speaking countries?) a condition like Down's syndrome is said to be (among other things) a "learning disability" and a condition like dyslexia is called a "learning difficulty". Conversely in the United States (and Canada) Down's syndrome is an "intellectual disability" and dyslexia is a "learning disability". I noticed this because I would be reading internet posts about these sorts of things (links to BBC) and the UK terminology would through me off versus the way they are talked about in North America.
I noticed a lot of people in the comments to the disability video were using the UK terminology when describing young Bashir's possible condition, I guess Steve used that terminology because of that context, although maybe he finds the British names more apt?
I thought so too--a so-called "24 hour mentally challenged child". I used to teach kids who fit into this category. They were normally aware of their deficiencies (much like young Julian) and though while well able to learn would always be less capable. I have also taught learning disabled kids--and they were able to catch up sometimes. Since the program is not very specific , I think the word "learning disability" works well. I would also think the 24th century would have more means to teach disabled kids--though perhaps it is less than a priority, like it is now.
@@allanolley4874 This is interesting. I'm from the UK, and you're right, we use the term 'learning disability' in both of those senses. I have not actually come across the term 'intellectual disability' before, so it must be a British English vs American English thing.
"for every julian bashir that can be created, theres a khan singh waiting in the wings"
upon reading it now that line strikes me as one that feels real, because we the audience *know* Khan.
but I think that It too reveals the prejudices of the federation. while there might be legitimate reasons for regulation of augments, is it necessarily any less discriminatory to punish the ones that do exist, than it is for other demographics?
like, Bashir's dad cut a deal, why was it necessary? Julian had no say in what was done to him, neither did any of the augments that appear later in the show that are under permanent containment.
and how legitimate are the assumptions made about Khan and his people? they say the augmentations made them innately power hungry, but like how much of that idea that became common sense that became law is true? how do they know that the genetics is what did it? how can they then assume that all similar peoples are inherently the same?
I don't buy that. I think the whole idea that no genetic engineering can be done is crazy
That's one argument against genetic augmentation. Another is about consent, and "death of self." Sure, most couldn't argue against curing a genetic disease such as Sickle Cell, but when you get into neurodivergence, then you're playing in murky waters. Hell, you'll find deaf people who are so invested in the culture of their community that they'd forgo medical treatment and assistance devices. As a person with Autism requiring very little accommodation (previously called high-functioning), I would not want my Autism "cured." I would consider it the death of who I am. If you could perform a procedure that would remove my Autism, I would walk into the room one person, and walk out a completely different person.
When it comes to Julian, he was primarily augmented mentally. Jules walked into that facility, and Julian walked out. One son died, and a more "acceptable" son was born.
@@KGillis I would take out an unpayable loan to cure my autism, it has been a constant invisible disability that has caused so much trauma and shame. My executive dysfunction has cost me nearly everything on more than one occasion. So yeah if there was a cure i would drown my mother to get it.
I also wonder to what extent "learning disabilities" is defined by this episode, or by the Federation in general as this topic addresses it. I seem to remember a Next Generation episode where parents were concerned about how their grade school-aged child was struggling with his calculus homework. I mean, if that's the curve, we would all be "learning disabled" by 24th century standards.
Ah yes, I recall that too. OTOH, I thought some of that is because there has been progress in figuring out how to teach various subjects. Really algebra (I have seen it done) can be taught to first graders. It's how you approach it, so if it is done visually they can get it. Or was that just a Starfleet daddy being way too pushy.
There are schools of thought that introduce calculus earlier in education. And as history has progressed, we've introduced more and more complex ideas to children at earlier ages. A few hundred years ago, most people wouldn't learn reading and writing. A hundred years ago, you'd have to go to college to learn algebra. Now, we introduce calculus and physics and such in middle and high school. It stands to reason that we'd need to introduce Calculus to young children to keep apace in the 24th century.
As someone with a learning disability and has struggled with Math since the third grade I imagine that there might be a range; but some people do really well in certain subjects than others.
I’ve heard lots of jokes that people great at math suck at spelling/another subject.
But as others have commented on if subjects are being introduced earlier it might accelerate learning in certain areas or parents are sending their children to schools that might require different things from the children; I’m sure that there’s a higher standard of learning on Enterprise D as only the best of the best get assigned there and having the best education for children would be an incentive for parents with children who don’t want to leave them with family while they serve for however long.
I know that one of my pet peeves about Algebra was is I’ve used the math symbols for years and now you want me to chuck them out the window and use different symbols to figure the math problem out.
It didn’t help that multiplication wasn’t, and still isn’t, my strongest suit and because I can’t easily do multiplication I can’t divide reliably to save my life.
Few notes here:
1. The JAG made a good point regarding the overall ban on genetic engineering, thanks KHAAANN!!!
2. Bashir makes it a point to mention there is an exception to the ban to correct lethal birth defects
3. Makes one wonder the discrimination Tilly faced her whole life
4. Are the staff of Darwin Station on Gagarin 4 imprisoned for genetic experimentation on CHILDREN??
Tilly facing discrimination? On the contrary it sounds like she just had a bad time being labelled Gifted And Talented and shuttled between overachiever programmes. But then I did have that experience myself so maybe I just projected that onto Tilly.
@@kaitlyn__L as an autistic person myself, I got the feeling Tilly was coded as autistic herself (which is awesome)
@@MultiMackD I got the same vibe. And yeah, 100%, what was going on on Darwin Station.
I Just watched the Darwin Station episode of TNG, and I remember basically going “wait, that’s illegal!” the whole time. Although i also kinda thought it might be one of those super shady spec ops things that Starfleet totally does and pretends it doesn’t? Not quite Section Whatever levels tho.
I've always liked these things that take the shine off the veneer of the Federation - it makes the setting MORE realistic in my eyes, because the Federation is an ideal to uphold, and the point is that it's supposed to be HARD to uphold those glorious ideals, but if we try hard enough we can do our best to do so. People will always be people, and people have their own opinions, thoughts and ideas; we aren't drones that all follow the will of the government why would that be any different in the 24th Century? Even the ever-logical Vulcans have been shown to be less than ideal throughout various Trek shows, moreso recently with the 'logic extremists' introduced in Discovery, but even so.
I think it's also really helpful to examine WHAT that ideal is? I think when those ideals are challenged, the Prime Directive, genetic manipulation, it shows that the Federation isn't a utopia. It's an arrangement, a society no different than any other society that has preceded it, not necessarily better or worse, but certainly different.
Yes! Various characters in the difference ST series have referred to the Federation having solved problems like poverty and hunger, but the Federation hasn't achieved perfection. They are still striving for it, or for something close to it, while still learning "what it is to be human." That was Data's whole story arc - learning what it meant to be human, and trying to get there. It's also pretty much "the human condition." What are we? What are we capable of? How much more do we need to learn? Star Trek has always explored these questions. Julian's situation was one more way to examine what it is to be human, what do we value and why, what do we still have to work on, not in terms of physical or mental achievement, but in values, principles, etc.
I like how this episode also speaks to the opposite: when parents are unwilling to accept the fact their child needs help and unwilling to get them that help. Parent's pride or a lack of knowledge of what is actually best for this child is a serious problem in our society. Obviously parents usually know their child and should make the big decisions on what is best, but those should be informed decisions.
That is one of the most Like A Sir endings you've ever used, Steve. Thank you, from the bottom of my deeply-neurodivergent heart, for covering this aspect of Star Trek lore so respectfully.
1) As others mentioned, I think Julian's procedure has a lot to do with his dad's projection. It may be less about society being less evolved than we thought, and more about how an 'enlightened meritocracy' is just as capable of leaving people behind as a capitalist hellscape, especially in the eyes of a man how constantly gets tracked into low-mid grade menial jobs when he clearly strives for more than his (measured and tested) capabilities. It also may be a commentary on the education practice of 'tracking' something I'm sure a lot of us as kids had experience with even if we never knew it.
2) The genetic plotline is clearly a retcon, but I've enjoyed seeing some things earlier in the series fit neatly into the new plot. Mirror Universe Bashir will always be 'Jules' to me because he always seemed more dimwitted and short-tempered than life in that reality would account for, but if you think of him as Bashir if he never got the augments, it makes a lot more sense.
[reposted because my original may have gotten eaten]
The big diference between the star trek federation andmour ca0itaois5 system is that the people with said disabilities will be treated very well instead of being left to starve
Honestly with the sort of logic in that episode you could probably just secretly modify your kid's genes to be like the X-men powerful or something and then just keep it secret for 30 years, he joins starfleet. Then at the end you just sacrifice yourself to go to jail, and starfleet has a super human. Win-win-win-lose
Honestly, ableism towards people with learning difficulties makes perfect sense in a world that put so much value on constant self improvement and intellectual growth. It's a world where success is measured in the contribution you make to the world around you, and while that can be good and is definitely better than measuring it in money, it's obvious that certain ways of doing this are more valued than others. Joining Starfleet requires a lot of education and is obviously a position of prestige. I doubt it's the same for cleaning a dining hall even though that is also a position that is absolutely required in order order to keep people safe and healthy.
Hmm you are aware how well respected boothby is, or siskos dad...be good the best janitor you can be is definitely meritorious.
I'm not so sure Bashir implies disabled people are treated poorly. His parents say they wanted to save him from a life of "mediocrity". After all, if hunger and poverty truly no longer exist on Earth then their son could have still lived a perfectly comfortable and long life no matter how severe his mental deficiency might have been.
The "problem" might be more so on what we are otherwise told has become humanity's driving motivation in this post scarcity world, to improve themselves and better siciety. I don't know if we should take it as an implication that all humans incapable of persuing such lofty ideals are looked down on, but it certainly tells us that Julian's parents feel that way.
If Julian's parents feel that way in the canonical text of the work, which I would argue they do, we must ask _why_ they feel that way. Surely this opinion didn't spring fully-formed into their minds from _nowhere_ after all.
I don't think even the idea of being "looked down upon." is right. I think no one would look down at Julian for being disabled. But it's also the realization by his parents that his disabilities would present challenges to what he could contribute. That's not quite the same, but it is a sort of practical understanding of those limitations and wanting more for their son. I wouldn't characterise it as looking down.
As the grandmother of a child on the autistic spectrum, all I can say is...
BRAVO, Steve!!!!!!
It's a very human trait to let one's idealism take a back seat when the wellbeing of one's immediate family is involved. I know lots of people that have been ideologically opposed to private schooling, but then pay for their own kids to go.
I can say in all honestly I'd send my kids to private school if I had them and could afford it and I would definitely do what Bashir's parents did
I thought this was a really cool and interesting reveal for the character.
My headcanon for this was that there are still pockets of sympathizers and maybe outright loyalists to Khan Noonien Singh and that might've fed into their decision about Julian.
Not loyalists to Khan Noonien Singh, but to the ideal behind the Genetic Engineers, who tried to improve Mankind by producing the young supermen as the first among millions or billions. If they just had better controls over their behavior …
As a parent myself I absolutely understand and empathize with Bashir’s parents.
So far as I am aware my son is okay and so far checks all the boxes regarding development for his age. That said, I would do absolutely anything and everything to help open doors for him in his life.
He doesn’t need to be a great success, career or otherwise in my mind BUT deep in my bones I want him to be able to freely choose his life insofar as he is capable.
To major degrees, this is our job as parents.
I wouldn't worry too much about him checking all the boxes of development for his age, cos a lot of people don't develop at the same speed naturally, so long as he's happy and healthy.
When I was little a lot of people told my mum I was behind on my development for my age and tried to fix me but they gave up when they couldn't, and so I developed at my own pace. I'm just naturally slower than a lot of people when it come to certain things, and I'm glad that my parents allowed my to exist at my own pace rather than trying to force me to always "keep up" with the others.
then the most important thing for you to remember from this video is "A lot of the difficulties experienced by disabled people are not the unavoidable results of the disabilities themselves, but the products of society having been arranged without disabled people in mind." as long as you encourage and support him and help him work differently if the "normal way" causes him to struggle, he'll have a happy, well-adjusted life.
I always find your channel very interesting as someone who has been a Trekkie since 1983. Our points of veiw on aspects of Trek often line up but, even when they don't, I still appreciate your point of view. It is always well thought out. That being said, this video is easily one of my favorites. One of the things I have always loved about Star Trek is that it is a social commentary on current events. Again, I love your channel and hope you keep doing what you do!
I have a nonverbal learning disability that wasn’t diagnosed til I was 28. It presents in some ways that are similar to parts of the autism spectrum. The Bashirs remind me very much of my parents: they want so much for their child, but in a society where anyone can be anything, or so we’re told, there’s immense pressure to be someone of note rather than be yourself. My parents could never understand how I seemed so bright but struggled so much. They didn’t know what to do to help me. Learning to reconcile that I both love and resent them has been difficult, especially because they’ve also changed (particularly my father who had undiagnosed OCD and a job that was killing him). I can’t imagine how tempting it would have been for them if somebody had told them they could ‘fix’ me and my equally troubled sibling. I think about Julian a lot.
Here's a third possibility, Steve:
Federation society has no issue with disabled people, and the concerns and discomfort of Amsha and Richard at Julian's lack of progress, were exaggerations. Julian would have gotten along just fine in Federation society without the genetic treatment.
But Bashir's parents were perfectionist jerks who couldn't stand not having a "perfect" son. So they got worked up about his "failing" (when he was doing okay), and had him modified into the "perfect son".
People don't come up with their attitudes in a vacuum though. If that's how they feel then it must mean that to some degree or other those attitudes already existed in the society.
As someone with a degenerative disease that's put me in a wheelchair, why the fuck would you curse someone with a disability?
Fuck. You.
@@topogigio7031 Was Bashir disabled before, though? We don't *really* know. Autism (which is what it sounds like he had) is a spectrum, and while certainly somewhere along that spectrum it is disabling, at many points where you can still see clear differences, it's not. It's *differently* abling. And diversity, especially in thought, is essential to progress as a society and as individuals within a society.
Edit to add: spoken as someone who is on the spectrum
That possibility was raised and commented on within the Video, and how it would still be caused by a social failing.
However - I want to both help your argument along and reinforce the above statement, as they are not exclusive.
This is a universe where Third Graders are expected to understand Calculus! So I will be able to easily conclude the same thing as you did, What we are told is a 'learning disability' may simply be the reality of a human growing up in a terrible educational system. If the real goal here wasn't education but promoting exceptionalism over all else... quite Roddenberry if you ask me... then it will always create parents who are going to want far more out of a child then all but a few are capable of achieving.
And what happens to those children who can make it through this hellish of an educational system?
Those we have seen on screen end up working for Federation Research and other programs, don't they?
Parents wanting any child capable of surviving such a terrible system wouldn't be that abnormal either. That above reference to Third Graders and Calculus is one of the most glaring examples, because it also involves a parent having insanely high expectations for a child! It is a quick scene too, played off so casually that I am left to conclude that it is a common occurrence. Children are simply forced under intense pressure, so the exceptional can shine and everyone else can crash and burn.
At this point I have to ask myself - how 'experimental' is that treatment?
How many other Federation Scientists out there have this same dark secret?
I was diagnosed with a host of Learning Disabilities in grade school during the early 90's. Severe Dysgraphia, mild Dyslogia, An Expressive Writing Disorder, and, of course, severe Dual-Type ADHD. I could read and comprehend college level books. I absorbed my textbooks voraciously and could verbally answer any questions they asked me without any difficulty. But, as soon as I was asked to write it down, I locked up. Nothing. And if I did manage anything, it was slow, disjointed, and utterly indecipherable. Cursive was a insurmountable challenge I still haven't beaten, and never will. And this, of course, is if they could manage to get me to sit still long enough to get anything done in the first place. I was the very definition of a "Wall Bouncer." I was utter chaos incarnate.
My teachers had not the slightest clue what to do with me. I baffled them. They had literally no training for this. I lived in a very small, very rural, and horrifyingly under prepared school district at a time when only the best schools had teachers being even marginally trained for these kind of things. My parents had to take me to the neurological department of the children's hospital in the nearest city to even get a solid diagnosis on what was actually going on with me. To my teachers credit, they tried. Bless those patient, saintly souls. They are the reason I've said for DECADES that teachers are criminally underpaid, undertrained, and underappreciated.
My salvation in all of this has been the rise of computers and the internet. This technology allows me to spew out the randomness of ideas and knowledge my brain creates into a blank canvas, then freely rearrange, correct, edit, add, delete, copy, paste, and perfect them into something at least resembling coherent train of thought. It allowed me to finish high school, attend collage, and function in the workplace.
So, after all that, I guess what I'm trying to say is, YES! I lucked out by being born into a time when technology had advanced far enough to provide me a functional solution. But, this society has a LONG ways to go before people like me can feel like we belong in it fully.
On the other hand, I will say this, it's getting better. I have a nephew with many of the same issues I had, going to literally the same school I went to, being taught by some of the same teachers I had. They get it now. He's doing ok. Not perfect. But better.
As someone who struggled growing up with learning disabilities, I am grateful for a mother who did everything she could for me to help me move past them.
But as a parent myself, the fear that my children would have to struggle like I did makes me feel desperate to find ways to help them.
I can absolutely understand both perspectives of Dr. Bashir and his parents.
As a person who's partner has a learning disability, who feels that systems have failed them and their family never understood them, who wants them to succeed because they can if given the opportunity, and feels that Star Trek at its best when it's an inspirational and cautionary work of art: thank you for saying these things, Steve. It means a lot.
Excellent insight, as always, Steve.
As a father of a special needs child (one on the verge of special needs adulthood), this one hits close to home and I'd been thinking about this video and the issues you explore for days.
Without going too far into it, my son isn't a source of shame but rather of frustration. A vibrant and charming young man one moment and then, well, not the next. Often to the point of endangering himself.
I love my son. He is not some broken thing to be fixed.
But I also empathize with the Bashirs. If I was offered a chance to lift these burdens from him (and yes, selfishly, from myself), even at the risk of losing a part of who he is now... I would at least be tempted.
All of that is context for a very heartfelt "thank you" for using Star Trek, and your own entertaining presentation, to give me food for thought along this journey.
Thank you so much for posting this, it means more than you know, the first time I watched that episode I cried because I knew my mother would of done the exact same thing without blinking an eye, I lost count how many times I was told me extreme ADHD/Dyslexia “brought shame to my family of teachers” even with a high IQ I just can’t function in a classroom environment and my value as a person is directly tied to my GPA in their eyes.
This episode always hits me hard. Especially the scene where he really talks to his parents about it. I personally have a learning disability. While I was in the 1st grade my parents were told that "I'd never graduate high school". I have a Master's Degree. I went into social work and currently work with Developmental Disabled Adults. I really feel a connection to this population and this episode really shows the real life struggle and ethics a family goes through.
lol I never noticed the Charlie Chaplin resemblance, but now I can't unsee it.
I've been enjoying your videos a lot, but this one made me join as a channel member, both for the well presented discussion, but also for the recognition that before all else Star Trek is a show about and for our society ✊
OK, wow. Great video. I was diagnosed Asperger's in '93 when I was 25. Of course, that diagnosis has been incorporated into autism spectrum since then. In the '70s that diagnosis didn't exist in the U.S. I was given a generalized "learning disabled" diagnosis, then told for the next eight years that the real problem was I didn't apply myself. In other words, the teachers and schools didn't need to figure out how to teach me. I needed to figure out how to learn their way. As a teen and adult I've been in conservative circles, and experienced dismissal and social pressure to conform. I've been in progressive circles, and experienced dismissal and social pressure to conform. I think your analysis of "Doctor Bashir, I Presume" hits uncomfortable facts about how a fictional and the real society respond to people with disabilities in general and people with invisible disabilities in particular.
Watching this episode when it aired, as a teenager, and then watching it again as an adult with a son on the autism spectrum, were *wildly* different experiences, let me tell you.
I totally agree with Steve's take on this.
At the same time, I always thought that the portrayals of disability in Star Trek mostly made sense. In a society where most disabilities are long gone, and a thing of the past, the few individuals that do present problems will stand out more starkly.
The fact that Kirk cannot take the usual medicine to improve his eyesight, and so must eventually wear glasses, which are hard to come by because no one wears them anymore.
The person who needed wheelchair to get around because she was born in a low-gravity environment, and found that doorways weren't designed for them..because it's not something that comes up often enough anymore.
Commander pike's near total disability even with the advanced medicine of his day.
None of these are the norm, but it has a parallel in the modern day: we don't expect to see anyone crippled by polio anymore, or suffering from leprosy, or tuberculosis.
When we do see someone with those afflictions today, we're shocked, because we believe such things are a thing of the past.
I feel like that's the background to place the Bashir's reaction to their son's disability. It's rare. The few people that have such disabilities are institutionalized because society doesn't know how to deal with them anymore.
That may not be a part of an ideal utopian society, but it felt very realistic to me, a father of a child with cerebral palsy.
He can do pretty much anything he wants, but with less motor control than his peers, obviously. It's made him the man he is today, but if I had had the chance to "fix" him, I would have certainly done so.
I can't say that would have been a mistake, it would have certainly made my son's life easier, but it would have changed who he was.
I think sometimes the writers dropped the ball when portraying both disabilities and society's reaction to those with them, but I believe that in this case, they handled it pretty well.
This is why there should be more disabled people in the writers room or involved in producing disabled stories, right now it’s often people speaking for disabled people and not disabled people speaking about their own stories
(Don’t worry, I do get more to talking Trek after the first couple paragraphs….)
Have you talked to your son about this? How does he feel about it? Would he have supported such a decision, even if just retroactively?
I only ask because in online disability activism communities there is a fairly widespread push amongst people with cerebral palsy, and other conditions like Down’s syndrome, Rett syndrome, and others which are all increasingly being screened for and selectively aborted against; where they see it as a kind of eugenics. But of course that’s separate from an outright cure, although those (theoretical) cures are also discussed in these communities.
The term “curebie” started out in autistic communities but I actually see it even more in cerebral palsy communities now. But there’s also an element of a generational divide, usually a majority of people older than say 40 years old or so will say they wish they could’ve been cured, while a majority of the younger folk say there just needs to be more societal support and so on and that they’re just different not defective (social model of disability).
To that end, I think a lot of the things we’re shown in “classic Trek” _could_ be viewed as realistic _if_ we make the assumption that disabilities were all by and large cured with a pill.
The question is whether that’s the setting we want to continue to create or not. And modern Trek seems to have taken criticism by disabled Trek fans to heart, people who say “how can I see this as a utopia if I’m told I’ve been erased? Was there no room in “infinite diversity in infinite combinations” for disabilities and different accommodations?”; and we’re now shown far far more people using VISORs, wheelchairs, hearing aids, cybernetic implants for various neurological functions (Rutherford, Detmer) and so on in Starfleet.
When you have a level of technology that makes disabilities just as much of a non-issue as a medical procedure, but far less invasively, it makes total sense to me that at least half of the people would choose to keep their disability even if a cure were theoretically possible (see Dr Pulaski trying to convince Geordi to try replicated eyes!) because they’re just accustomed to their aids, or don’t want to deal with the downtime, and so forth.
You see this a lot with blind and deaf communities, there’s a fairly even split between people who would consider hearing aids, or implants (cochlear, visual, etc); and people who don’t even want to have to explain to another person why they don’t ever want them and please shut up about it.
And personally, I like the idea of a Federation society where there’s dozens of different options, of varying levels of body modification available to all folks with disabilities, and people have as many if not more opinions on those matters as they do today, since that centres the individual‘s needs as the Federation tends to do.
Of course one could always suppose that 99% of people would take a cure over treatments, but there’s no way to really be sure whether or not that would happen IRL given we don’t live in that world. And as such, I think it’s better to have a wide wide diversity of people’s responses and options available to them - not just as part of the “reflection of society” thing Trek has going on, but also to give writers the biggest sandpit to play in! If any and all mobility aids, computer assists, or medical procedures are technically on the table, writers can pick whichever ones they want (hopefully influenced by the character’s, well, character motivation).
And that also keeps the door open as wide as it can be for disabled writers to write their own stories in the setting, rather than being told “uh yeah we cured all that, you can’t write about your experience”.
@@kaitlyn__L I think we also have to define what exactly is meant by "cure", as well. Like, I'm a trans woman, would I want my transness to be "cured"? If the "cure" means undergoing a procedure that removes my internal perception of what gender or sex I'm "supposed" to be and leaves me "happy" with "being a man", then no, I don't want to be cured. If the "cure" is that I get to have extensive body modification that removes the effects of male puberty, makes me look and feel more like a "conventional" woman, and gives me estrogen-producing organs so that I'm not dependent on external supplements, then yeah, I want a cure.
Do I want my fairly severe ADHD cured? Well, this may not be the "cool" thing to say, but yeah, probably. I'm already on stimulant medication so that I'm functional and focused enough to be able to keep a job, but even if more employers were accomodating to people with ADHD such that it wasn't _necessary_ for people in my situation to take stimulants in order to live, I'd still feel like my ADHD was constantly holding me back from being my most fulfilled self. It's just not who I feel I truly am, I desperately want to be able to focus on my hobbies and interests more, and I just _can't_ most days because of my terrible executive function, even _with_ the medication. So I _do_ wish that it could be removed for people who want to do so, but at the same time, a lot of people with ADHD are not nearly as grim about it as I am and don't view it as an inherent liability, so I'm extremely hesitant to support any hypothetical measure to eradicate it from the population by preventing it from developing in the first place.
It's just very complicated, the idea of "curing" something can have lots of different approaches.
@@Zernium I'm like that, too! I definitely want to be cured of my digestive ailments and wish I didn't need powerful glasses (an extra hassle in the Age of Masking). I also want to be free of whatever-the-hell causes excruciating muscle spasms and restless leg syndrome.
But... being "cured" of my neurodivergent take on the world? I've learned to value my different perspective, and recognize that I can sometimes see things the allistic miss because they're distracted by the social posturing. No thanks; I don't want to be that obsessed with other people's shoe choices. 😄
My son has bipolar disorder 1 and the discrimination he suffered in his childhood and adolescence was severe. If he hadn't been so large (he was 6'1 in the 9th grade) I think he might have been bullied. As it was, I had to fight hard with the district, some of his teachers and the administrations of his schools, from the elementary school, through high school.
It's been over 20 years since all of that happened; but my son (who is saner now) and I still have scars. 💔
My cousins kid was thought to be significantly impaired mentally until she was 4. The poor kid had so much trouble identifying animals and shapes and even her family members.
Eventually I found out what her parents and grand parents were saying about her and I freaked out in a big way.
I decided I would help the kid and went to this place to hang out, I was going to start spending weekends with the kid.
I didn't need to, I spent 1 hour with the kid, I actually paid attention to everything what she said, how confident she was, how much she was focusing on the thing.
The.kids eye sight was so bad she could count her own toes. She could daily count to 10 if she was holding things bit ask to to count anything small from 3 feet and she just guessed.
The kid just thought everyone else was a better guesser.
Literally every line of this video is so well written. There are so many powerful, quotable segments in this 16 min video. Great job! 👍
I love how you spoke about ableism being a “serious problem”, but is it weird that I’ve been disabled my whole life (wheelchair user) and never thought of ableism as a serious problem until recently?
One thing to note on Bashir falling behind as a kid, is that it seems to imply that the education system used on earth hasn't really changed much from the classroom setting where everyone is taught the same way, rather than kids or students learning in ways that best suite them, without needing to worry about the lesson pacing being too fast or slow.
On the station, Keiko's classes seem to have all the kids in one classroom regardless of their age or 'level', with assignment requirements being 'harder' for the older students.
And TNG didn't ever seem to have a consistent or clear depiction of how kids learnt.
On Voyager, we do see the edutainment holodeck program with Flotter, which from what we see, seems to be a pretty good educational program.
And on this topic, it would be neat if the next new star trek show would be set in the academy, or star civilians in the everyday life, with both adults and kids, and we can see what civilian life is outside a starship or base.
I have lived with cerebral palsy my entire life and can confirm that abilism is daily struggle when in public spaces. Working from home and social distancing during a pandemic offered a reprieve in many ways but as we know technologies like Zoom are far from perfect. 🖖
As someone who has pretty serious learning disabilities I really connected with this episode. It also leaves me feeling insanely annoyed. I always see people say that what his parents did is wrong. That they should have embraced him for who he was. Which yeah thats true but also they should have also gotten him the help he needed. It seems that the Federation doesn't have those resources otherwise I assume they would have used them. Instead of finding a skilled but shady doctor willing to do illicit genetic alterations. Beyond that let's assume Julian grew up to be a reasonably functional adult. The genetic alterations that would allow him to really excel would still be denied to him. I would love to get some genetic alterations so I could figure out where to put a damn comma or pick up another language (without it feeling like I was having invasive dental surgery).
Then there is the Khan thing. Which feels like such a cheap cop out answer. To a complex and interesting question.
We only see Dr Bashir mother once but man her monolog hit my right in my heart. My child has a genetic deletion that we share and it eats me up inside often
Yea, try being a parent of an autistic child.
I was so heart broken when my wife's parents started treating him different than their other grandkids. I worry for his future because the world still has no place for autistic citizens when they become adults. The only refuge my son has is the internet, and that he is actually quite gifted. We spend a lot of time and resources encouraging his skills - he makes computer animations - so that he can find purpose in life and find something that can drive him to work harder and be proud of his accomplishments. He still gets treated like a leper by others. But, thats how people are, vile petty creatures full of lies and secrets. We love him, and we surround him with others who love him, and sometimes thats all that matters.
So I tried to come out to my dad at nineteen. True story, I did. And lacking a better way to go about it, I did it on yom kupur. Went to services with my girlfriend, all dolled up at cute. It was more of a stupid than brave gesture, because I figured I would just be accepted for it. My dad was less than amused. And wanted me to promise him that I was only kidding around. He insisted on it. Gave me a this long speech about how it's okay to be gay, for other people, anyone. Just not me.
The whole experience was crushing.
He had this real pull yourself up by bootstraps narrative about me that developed as I got older. It was revisionist history, it always was. It ignored all my failures, and false starts, at least until he wanted something from me. But the overwhelming feeling I got from him was that he was really proud of this person I became. This fake life that I had built up, in large part because I was deeply afraid of disappointing my parents. And, generally, when you're afraid of something like that, there's good reason to be.
I finally came out at 41, in the middle of a brutally cold winter on the east coast. I was living in my car at the time, but that's a totally different discussion.
Anyway, my mom disowned me, and dad spent months coming to terms with it. At one point, he threatened to write me out of his will. Thankfully, he sought out members of his local trans community that helped him understand what I was going through, and to get his head on straight about the issue. I talked to one of them once, over the phone, months later. I don't remember her name, the woman that called me, but she was nice.
I still don't understand why his perception of my gender was so important to him.
I guess the moral here is that parents do what they feel is the most comfortable for them. And they can be selfish. Their expectations can totally and completely change the direction of the children's lives, if they realize that's what they're doing or not.
This episode of Deep Space 9 came out around the same. Or maybe it was in early syndication by then. I don't remember. But it was the first time I saw it. And that's sort of the way it resonated with me. I dunno. Do white people go through this kind of stuff? Maybe it's a south asian thing.
What I find interesting and almost abhorrent about Julian's parents here is that they *knew* what they were doing was wrong. They thought that, if/when Julian's genetic therapy was found out, they would be far enough away and out of the picture for them to get any real consequences. Obviously they didn't foresee the invention of the EMH. But they knew there would be a risk of Julian being found out. (Though it raises the question of how/why it wasn't found out earlier; I imagine that genetic tests are done on Starfleet cadets, to specifically find any evidence of gene therapy. Possible plot hole?)
His parents passed off the "shame" of having a child with a learning disability onto adult Julian, for him to deal with later. He now has to live with the "shame" of being made perfect against his will. To have that belief that his accomplishments aren't really his own.
as a wheelchair user and a life long Star Trek fan I knew I wouldn't be as accepted early on because those door widths are just so damn small, not to mention the frame underneath most doors meaning I'd have to bunny hop over them to get through (not possible by the way).
It's been a long time since I have seen the episode, but to me one other point was sticking out. That the federation would have kicked Julian out, not because of something he did, but something his parents did without him having a say. Yes, there were the eugenics wars and that probably colored their thinking when making such a rule, but that the federation would condemn someone for this is just horrible.
As a person with disabilities, I really appreciate your talking about this. Thank you, Steve!
I’ve always thought that Julian’s story spoke to the sort of “benign” tyranny of the Federation. A sort of “Well we’re providing for all your basic needs so yay us but we’re just going to put all the best toys out of reach of the mediocre mind” like I don’t see the person who can only get a job as a janitor being given a palatial estate like Picard. Yes their Hab Cube is perfectly serviceable but they are limited in what the can do.
Picard wasn't given an estate, its his family estate apparently for at least a century by the time of TNG.
You also have absolutely zero evidence that a non conforming person would be actively denied anything.
The prejudice against those perceived to have mental disabilities is on full display in the TNG epsiode "The Samaritan Snare". The way everyone on the Enterprise dismisses the Pakleds as harmless because they present as being slow witted is a pretty damning example of how Trek's future society still devalues people of differing abilities and intellects than what they consider to be the status quo.
As an Aspie, I can say that you have said this very well.
One of the things that's not often brought up about the Bashirs is that they *are* South Asian. I asked a friend from the region about this episode, and she said that's very much the sort of thing parents from her culture would do if it was possible in the real world, because having a child who can't achieve the goals set by them would be a major embarassment.
That said, I also find it very, very weird that the Federation makes it illegal for someone like Julian to serve in Starfleet because it's "unfair," but somehow joined Trills like Dax and androids like Data and Vulcans in general are allowed and even encouraged to serve, even though they have the exact same abilities and advantages Julian does.
I had a comprehension learning disability and struggled making notes and learning from my notes and text books which made it harder. Because I was actually faster at typing then writing one of my teachers actually set up a program that got laptops provided by schools to other kids that struggled taking notes like I did. When she was trying to get the program going she actually in my grade 11 year was finally going to get a laptop supplied to me by the school and while it was getting set up for the network it was misplaced and they never actually could find it. As a result she gave me her own personal laptop to use during the school year. Several years after I graduated high school the program my teacher setup to get students laptops became a full functioning program in the school board because my cousins that had other types of learning disability got laptops provided to them at their school.
There's an interesting parallel between Julian's secret and children who were brought to the United States by their parents without documentation.
What a gift to wake up to. A Trek actually on my birthday 🎉🎉. Thanks Steve!!
Happy birthday!
@@SteveShives Thanks man!
Thanks for reminding me of why I love Star Trek (and especially DS9). Great insight into what this show has always been about. Intelligent commentary and reflection on society through the lens of the future.
Great analysis! Social progress doesn't mean each individual and remains contingent.
We still fail children with struggling with learning. Barclay's dysfunction also teaches us many lessons.
Small point: actor Brian George
(WIKI) George was born in Jerusalem to Jewish parents of Baghdadi Jewish (Iraqi Jewish) descent, who had immigrated to mandatory Palestine. His father was born in Lebanon;[1] and grew up in Bombay. His mother was from India. A year after his birth, the family moved from Israel to London and then, in 1966, to Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
One problem I had with the writing of this episode is Baahir says what happened to him was only legal in severe cases, then he went on to explain that prior he had a hard time telling the difference between a house and a tree. That would be the definition of severe. So what do the writers think a severe disability even is?
I am glad that even though Star Trek as a whole shows how we have evolved to no war or poverty on earth we still see things in ourselves that might be too ingrained in us to ever truly change them.
As a person with a learning disability, the arc concerning Bashir and his genetic alterations does show how intolerable the idea of someone, or your child having a disability, they didn't choose is. With the resurgence of vaccine denial thanks to the scare during the 90's concerning the combination vaccine and a now discredited ex doctor. Apparently having Autism is worse that a disease that, if the person is lucky kills them, and if they aren't are left in a condition worse than death.
The other thing we see in the episode where the geniuses which are institutionalised come to DS9 we also see the continuation of the attitude that people with Autism, or developmental issues, etc, should be locked away and left unseen.
Love this as an ADHDer. There's one other thing I notice about this episode and Bashir as someone with a mixed British and Middle Eastern heritage like Siddig Al Fayad. Other than his name Bashir's entire MENA or Desi identity is nonexistent, so apparently the only thing of our cultures that's survived to the future is overly demanding parents. Okay, that's a distinct possibility.
Something I want people to be aware of too:
The Education System within the Federation is particularly condensed.
I don't have a walking encyclopedia of episodes in my head, so I can't give particular examples right now, but there where a few scenes that touch on this. Episodes where Education was a key element, or simply flashes of what children have to go through while living onboard a star-ship, showed us glimpses of what a child goes through to get educated. Those few scenes have almost always highlight just how much pressure is placed on a young child to understand concepts that most of us don't touch on till high-school.
Personally, I think this is nothing more then Roddenberry patting himself on the back and stating his Utopia has 'uber-smart children in it' but... does it?
There is a very good chance that Bashir's situation wasn't that abnormal, that a good deal of the children going through Federation Education will come out simply... unable to gasp the concepts being forced on them. This condensed education system isn't designed to make people more intelligent, brains are not simply books needing to be filled with facts, but to single out exceptional children that can then be fast tracked into a Research facility somewhere. Considering a population of trillions on trillions, this sort of 'Educational system' can actually work if you simply don't care that most people will end up as chaff to be tossed aside.
Those average people just ... whom knows, screen time is rarely devoted to the average person.
It is a Utopia Trap though, so I think they live decent lives even with their 'learning disabilities.'
In one of the Star Trek novels, Julian Bashir is briefly put into mental contact with his unenhanced self in another universe. He was shocked to find that his alternate was happy, had friends, and a job. This tells you something about the lives of "average" Federation citizens. It also tells you something about Bashir's childhood indoctrination by his parents.
Thanks for this. I also grew up with invisible disabilities that contributed to me underperforming in my education and later professional life. My parents didn’t genetically engineer me, but they did ignore any of the signs that I was struggling without accommodations for my neurodivergence, probably because they couldn’t cope with the idea of having a disabled child. It’s good seeing fictional parents - who similarly felt shame for the shortcomings of their child - get called out on their bullshit and take some accountability.
As a lifelong Trek fan, a teacher, and an older brother of person with special needs, this video really resonated with me and made me appreciate the intent of the episode. You covered every point really well. I think what it comes down to is what Star Trek often comes down to- society advances, but it’s only ever ad good as the individuals who make it up, and on that front we can ALWAYS do better. And as long as we individuals strive to always do better, then there will always be the hope that we as a society will be greater than the sum of our parts. That we can always dream of a better world for ALL of the people living in it.
Thanks for this, Steve. I’m such a massive fan of yours.
I didn't realize that I was on the spectrum until a few years ago, so this episode hits a lot harder for me than it used to.
Thank you, this was very well done, great points throughout.
This leads me to another thought. Why is this supposed enlightened society punishing a child for actions taken by parents when the child could not consent? I get Khan made a huge issue out of genetic modification, but it’s not like Bashir chose to be modified.
I struggle with this one. I, like many others, relate to the specificity of the story here. It's unbelievable the extent to which children are made to feel disvalued by their parents merely for having been born to them. However, it is undeniable the pressure exists to provide a liveable foundation for your children to grow upon in some way. If I had been my own parent I would have made the same choices for myself as the Bashires did for their child. All the while well and fully aware that wether or not I was good enough would never matter if I was unable to survive.
Hot take: The human side of the Federation Starfleet should allow genetic engineering and they are prejudice.