I have been and always shall be

[pameladean]

Sometime in my forties, I vaguely realized that my gender role when I was a teenager had been, not a girl (funny-looking by the standards of the time, hated makeup and girl clothing), nor a tomboy (clumsy, hated sports), nor a nerd or geek (bad at math after geometry, bad at physics, see above, clumsy), but rather, an intellectual. I imagine that I must have been pretty annoying, but if you give people a few very ill-thought-out, badly designed but very well-made boxes to cram themselves into, it serves you right if they instead construct weird lumpy things out of stone knives and bearskins and bump into your shins with them afterwards.

Anyway, I was not a geek or a nerd, but both of my best friends in high school were. I never called them names or made fun of their eschewing of ordinary feelings; in fact, having read quite a lot of science fiction by then, I held them in considerable awe. We all watched the original "Star Trek". They both identified strongly with Spock. I felt that I could never live up to Spock's standards, and might possibly have a talent or two that he did not. I was certainly not able to identify with Kirk, whom I tried to love because Spock and McCoy did. Among the women Uhura (whom I adored) was intimidatingly feminine, Chapel very ill-served by the few scripts that featured her, everyone else mostly just a prop, except for the guest stars, who, well. The one thing I never, ever forgave Gene Roddenberry was his extremely twisted notions of what women were like and where they fitted into stories. But watching McCoy learn to love Spock, as I loved my friends, had a profound and lasting impact on me.

I did not follow Leonard Nimoy assiduously in his career outside of "Star Trek." I do recall reading that he had performed the part of the psychiatrist in a production of "Equus." I had seen the play in London when I was in college, and eerily, when I read this tidbit of news, I could hear Nimoy's voice saying some of the lines that had stayed with me from the play. Much, much later, just last year, Raphael and I watched all of "Fringe." Nimoy's character in that show is a marvel, appealing and appalling at once, a thinker and inventor who never grew up, both in the good sense of having an unlimited zest for life and for any situation in which he found himself, and in the bad sense of having no clear idea that other people (to lift a term from The Just City, where I most recently encountered it) have equal significance.

I loved knowing that he was there, that Spock, in some sense, was there. And now he is gone.

Pamela

Comments

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

Oh, yes.

[evelyn-b.livejournal.com]

The one thing I never, ever forgave Gene Roddenberry was his extremely twisted notions of what women were like and where they fitted into stories.

I do love some of Original Trek's female guest stars in spite of this, but yes. It's fascinating to me how much superficial / career equity he was willing to grant while packing in so much mid-twentieth-century gender essentialism about What Women Want.

Like at some point, I'm going to go through TOS and count all the times an accomplished scientist / ambassador / whatever gets grabbed by both wrists and reminded LOUDLY that she is STILL A WOMAN! With a woman's needs!!

Sometime in my forties, I vaguely realized that my gender role when I was a teenager had been, not a girl (funny-looking by the standards of the time, hated makeup and girl clothing), nor a tomboy (clumsy, hated sports), nor a nerd or geek (bad at math after geometry, bad at physics, see above, clumsy), but rather, an intellectual.

And today I read this sentence and realized it was the same way for me.

Anyway, this is a good post and I'm glad you wrote it.

[pameladean]

Several of the guest stars were very good actors and did their best with the material; and I liked quite a few of them until their stories really got going. There was one with just a lovely voice and a very arresting presence -- I think she was in "Is There in Truth No Beauty."

But yes, that earnest grabbing by the wrists and spouting platitudes at successful women who seemed quite vital and engaged with what they were doing -- oy.

Thank you for your kind words. I wonder if we read a lot of the same things at a formative age, or if those alternate roles were just pretty much ingrained across a wide range of situations.

P.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

There were "intellectuals" in my high school, but I wasn't one of them either because they were all about things like teasing Hidden Meanings out of Joseph Conrad stories, the pointless committed on the boring. Being not quite one of them, and not quite a nerd either, I didn't find what kind of person I actually was until I found fandom.

Nimoy work besides Star Trek I know best:
Mission: Impossible
Invasion of the Body Snatchers

[pameladean]

While I'm sure we did have intellectuals at my high school, and, since I went on to major in English, the teasing out of deep meanings in canonical literature would not have been annoying to me, I didn't hang out with them; I got the idea from books.

Fandom is a better fit with a wider range of possibilities, to be sure.

I did watch "Mission: Impossible," but felt that, while Nimoy did a fine job, the show in general had veered away from stories that interested me by then. It looked to me as if he was having a lot of fun -- it always looked that way, no matter what he was doing -- but didn't really have a role with a lot of scope.

P.

[martianmooncrab.livejournal.com]

I have always loved the term "bluestocking" to describe a woman who wasnt all that interested in Society..

[pameladean]

Oh, yes, that's a very good term indeed. I didn't encounter it until later.

P.

[papersky.livejournal.com]

But bluestockings are not supposed to be interested in sex either. It takes you out of the mating pool.

I think that for the last hundred years, in Anglophone society, we've allowed some women to be exceptions as long as it goes without saying that if they won't do the expected thing of being the support system then they clearly won't have sex and babies. Now getting to have a life of the mind and not being the support system is way better than the alternative, certainly for the individuals, but it's still a long way from good.

If and when women are not socially inferior, when there is equal pay and no glass ceiling and people stop automatically assuming men are the real gender,when I see men having this kind of conversation about gender presentation then I might be interested in exploring these interesting gender roles. For now I am sticking with the gender role I've been working on for decades of "This is among the normal ways of being a woman".

[pameladean]

I'm happy to transform the term, especially since birth control will handily take one out of the mating pool without depriving one of sex. Always supposing that one can get access to it, which is another part of the still quite horrible overall situation that you describe. At the time in my life that I talked about in the post, I didn't want to have sex anyway. At this point, I don't need a word, but I'd have liked one when I was younger.

I'm reminded of my utter befuddlement when I first read Gaudy Night. I was historically ignorant, and Harriet's position, which she felt so keenly as anomalous, made no sense to me until I figured out that for some crazy reason women dons were supposed to be celibate.

P.

[inlaterdays.livejournal.com]

I loved knowing that he was there, that Spock, in some sense, was there. And now he is gone.

This is beautifully stated. He will be missed.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

I love how you describe teen-you, and I completely agree about the boxes and the bearskins.

I watched classic Trek as a kid, but I came to appreciate Spock more when I was older--not only in the series, but in the movies. He's the first actor whose death has made me feel *sad*--and that's even recognizing that he had a good long life.

[pameladean]

Older Spock is a very interesting character indeed. Even worth watching the horrible reboots for.

Nimoy was just about the same age as my mother, but she quit smoking about twenty years before he did.

P.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

That means your mother and my father are peers :-) My father is that age.

[skylarker.livejournal.com]

It's interesting to think about those boxes you describe. I never did find one for myself.

I was good at math and might have made 'nerd' but I was more interested in the arts than the sciences. I wasn't rigorous enough in my thinking to qualify as an intellectual, even if I loved little better than reading. Definitely not a jock, but I enjoyed archery. I'm thankful to Buckminster Fuller for the term 'generalist,' though I didn't have it in high school.

[pameladean]

"Polymath" is useful, too.

P.

[skylarker.livejournal.com]

'Polymath' makes me think 'many maths', and while I like some maths, many seems like too much. :)

[alfreda89.livejournal.com]

I loved knowing that he was there, that Spock, in some sense, was there. And now he is gone.

This, yes. And Old Spock was the best part of the reboots.

I am not sure I ever found my place, as only a tiny part of SF and fantasy seems to get what I wanted to say. But Nimoy's Spock learned to center in himself, and that good friends were possible. I have found these things to be of value.

I think that overall Nimoy liked his life and had a good one. May we all be able to say that.

[pameladean]

Old Spock is amazing; when I think of those performances and also of Nimoy's William Bell in "Fringe," I feel that he never stopped learning as an actor.

I don't know if I get what you want to say, but I do really love the Afreda books.

And yes, Nimoy did seem to like his life; I never really saw him speak or read what he wrote without feeling that he was having a splendid time doing it.

P.

[alfreda89.livejournal.com]

I'm glad that you like Allie!

Yes, he kept learning. A good lesson for all of us. But then we like learning new things!