John@277 Yes. I agree with all of your points, which I stated upthread.

Greg@195, please see the above posts to see what I was saying. You misconstrued most of my comments and mis-attributed (word?) my motives the entire thread. If you read those, you’ll understand exactly what I meant. If you still don’t, well, I can’t help. Thank you.

“(1): It’s unfair and inappropriate to judge the content of an artistic work without first viewing that work in its entirety.” But we’re not judging the artistry of the work. This is a key point. We’re judging specific elements, for which they have issued a casting call. Presumably, for instance, there’s a B plot in the storyline (unless there’s an A plot and this is the B plot), about which we know nothing. Nor are we assaying anything about the cinematography, set design, music, acting, or a great deal else.

But we don’t have to, for this purpose. This isn’t really about the art. It’s about one particular set of concerns in the craft, to which the show’s makers were committed enough to put out commercial solitications. If they’re at the stage of going to look for people to sign contracts with, it’s fair to talk about for the rest of us.

Nor are all of us characterizing the situation described in the casting calls as rape. I’m not. I’m not saying that those who are are wrong – I’m conflicted about it. But certainly I don’t feel confident enough in my judgment of such things to pin it down that far. I’m comfortable right now saying that what they’re calling for panders to and reinforces harmful stereotypes, and letting that do it for now.

Who objecting to the use of cliches about disabled people and lesbians is being disrespectful of others’ spirituality? For all the talk of incarnation and everything else, let’s not lose sight of the fact that what we’ve got here are some easy dramatic thrills that aren’t much different in their level of quality from gimp jokes and Maxim cartoons about suddenly willing dykes.

There’s a certain natural topic drift that creeps into long comment-streams, and I’ve had a couple of different points in different parts of the conversation. Before I attempt to synthesize, let me request a clarification of my own. In the overall thread, I see posts from “CC”, “Ceri”, and “cericonversion” — am I right, on rereading, to discern that all three of those are you? And if so, may I encourage you to stick to a single handle to avoid confusion?

Now, then. Put simply, my points are these:

(1): It’s unfair and inappropriate to judge the content of an artistic work without first viewing that work in its entirety.

Since making that point, I’ve seen the argument advanced that (paraphrased) “well, it’s okay because we’re enlightening the writers in advance so they won’t say something stupid”.

I disagree. To attempt to squelch speech because one disagrees with the content of that speech — or worse, what one thinks that content may be — is still to attempt to squelch speech. And I find that offensive.

(2): The characterization of “rape” applied to a specific incident of sexual contact possibly portrayed in the disputed episode is based on assumptions regarding the nature of identity that may not be valid in the SG:U universe.

Yes, we have Joe Mallozzi’s direct comment that says otherwise. However, that’s why the discussion about body vs. mind/spirit is significant. In the real world, if Tui’s correct that “there is no underneath”, then Joe Mallozzi’s conclusion is dead right. But in the SG universe, it’s been shown conclusively that there is an “underneath” — that identity is NOT fused to physical existence. And that has profound implications both for legal definitions of personhood (as contemplated in criminal statutes) and for the spiritual and moral beliefs of characters confronting the nature of their own identities.

Does that make the (hypothetical) sexual incident morally defensible? Not necessarily. There is still plenty of room to question the situation, whether or not “rape” is specifically the right word to describe it. What the right word may be must, again, wait for better context than we have now.

(3): Just as it’s disrespectful to denigrate or brush off a class of people based on their perspectives toward sexual identity, it’s equally disrespectful to denigrate or brush off a class of people based on their perspectives toward spiritual identity.

This is why I responded to Tui’s post in the way I did. We may not have Buddhists or Gnostics or other spiritual dualists actually “in the room”, but if we as a community are to genuinely respect diversity (as the SF community often loudly professes), we need to respect it in all its permutations — and therefore, we ought to avoid statements that appear to denigrate or devalue concepts of spiritual identity that differ from our own.

So I’m going to do what I do when confused, which is back up.

As I see it, here’s what’s at issue. The SGU production people have put out a casting call with description of plot elements. Some of us find things to dislike in that description, and specifically find that they embody common harmful stereotypes about both life with major disabilities and lesbian life. We aren’t claiming to know everything about what they intend to do with the story, but we can look at the history of related incidents in the various SG series, and at the history of related bits in TV and other pop culture, and at the provided descriptions, and nonetheless reach some pretty solid judgments about these elements.

In the real world, we find that people with major impairments, like quadraplegic, aren’t actually all sexless helpless beings. Disabled people have sexualities and sex lives too. While lots of us would certainly not object to a chance to shed our problems, we find that life has its satisfactions and delights anyhow, and dropping into a borrowed body wouldn’t actually be as wonderful a release or consummation as you might think. Furthermore, lesbian sexuality gets exploited six ways from Sunday, and my lesbian friends have what seems to me an entirely legitimate complaint about having lesbian characters find special fulfillment in the right magical moment with a guy. To turn it around, how many straight guys would figure it obvious that there’d be something blessed and illuminating in just the right magical moment with a gay guy? Lesbian sexuality is just as real as straight guys’ sexuality – it’s not something lesbians make do with until the proverbial holy healing cock comes along, it’s actually what they are when it comes to love and bonding as well as sex.

Some of us are directly affected by this kind of thing in pop culture in that we’re in one or more of the groups whose desires are being misrepresented and misunderstood yet again, and some of us aren’t in one or more of those groups ourselves but are simply in favor of pop culture getting coolness and drama built on better foundations. SG-style tech offers up a lot of neat possibilities that don’t require passing along worn-out cliches, and we like our coolness! So we’re speaking up in hopes of explaining the problem and letting two different target audiences know what’s up: the show’s creators and other pop culture creators, in hopes that they can improve their foundations, and our fellow fans of genre coolness, in hopes that they can understand and join us in smiling at the good (and rewarding it with our attention and dollars) and frowning at the bad (and not rewarding it with either).

So that’s what’s up, as I see it. Other stuff is side trips.

Now as far as broader context goes, I just want to note that the identification of self with body does have some long-standing prior art. “And the World became flesh and dwelt among us”, just for instance. I used “incarnate” in my earlier comments deliberately, because to say that the self is fully manifested in and identified with the body is not to say that there’s no such thing as a soul, or that if there is, it’s also mortal. I’m not a materialist. It’s just that I think that as long as the body lasts, there is no self apart from it.

GLBT people and disabled people both get some “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” messages about our bodies. A lot of people figure that we’re just this way because we’re damaged, and fixing some physical flaw would make us whole, which is to say, straight. Meanwhile, lesbians in particular are used as props for other people’s sexual fantasies. Lesbian figures perform in a lot of porn for straight guys in contexts that suggest (or just flat-out show) that they’re “really” there for the guy’s gaze and that they “really” are only the way they are until the magical healing cock sets them straight. Against this it’s necessary to assert that our bodies are not essentially just props, and not things to be adjusted to suit others’ whims. We do not seek to dispense with them, because they are us and we are them. Etherealization only serves an agenda of pushing bodies into conforming roles, by encouraging us not to take our incarnations seriously.

Warning: Long Rock Ahead!

I think I see what you’re getting at, but I’m not sure that reading holds up under careful examination. Strictly speaking, you’re right to note that what Tui’s post most explicitly rejects is the concept of dualism — but I read it to go much farther.

We’ve been pointed at Gnosticism as an example of a pure dualist belief system, though it might be more accurate to describe it as spirit-centric — since a key premise of Gnosticism is that the self can exist entirely in the absence of physical form. Many more familiar theologies take a middle ground, holding that while spirit and body are severable, either is normally incomplete without the other (at least till the last trump sounds or perfect enlightenment is achieved, with the latter step sometimes taking a great many lifetimes in a great many physical forms).

But what Tui describes is the premise that body and mind are not merely dependent, but inseparable — that the body isn’t a costume the self can put on and remove (as the Slitheen in Doctor Who wear human skins), but that mind and body are literally interwoven, like the threads in a rug or blanket. By this logic there is no “underneath”, no “inner self”; one can’t unweave the component strands without destroying the fabric.

Note that I use “mind” in that formulation, not “spirit”. The one (“mind”) is at least nominally susceptible to scientific study and quantification. The other (“spirit”) is by most definitions supernatural, or at least paranormal, and resists attempts at objective measurement. To put it another way, it’s hard to see how a self incapable of surviving the death or destruction of the body it occupies can properly be described as a “spirit” rather than a “mind” or “consciousness”.

And yet….

As I noted some way upstream, SF is riddled with stories about selves that escape the physical in one way or another — not just by evolving into energy beings, but by being downloaded into computers, uploaded into robots, copied into clones, or transplanted into all manner of receptacles. If Tui’s “there is no underneath” is right, all these things are entirely, irrevocably impossible . . . but on the other hand, if anybody ever makes any one of these mechanisms work, to any degree, then the idea that “self” and “body” are inextricable will be permanently refuted.

Also: since the Ancient mind-exchange tech does in fact work in the Stargate universe, it’s necessarily true that for individuals in that universe, self and identity are separable from physical bodies. We can therefore conclude that Tui’s model is provably not accurate in the SG-universe; for Daniel, Vala, Perry, and Wray, there clearly is an underneath. Which has implications for worldbuilding, storytelling, and character development….

Of course I don’t know enough about the characters to guess how far they are willing to go with what is essentially an unconscious woman one of them can control. However, given what little is known about the episode, the controversial scenes seem to be a B plot.
The next episode is currently untitled and we know very little about it, so maybe it’s devoted to the fallout from whatever was done to Wray while she was not in control of her body. Maybe not. I kinda doubt, but that’s just a guess. If it’s not and given that Sabotage is primarily about Sabotage, then I doubt that what happens to Wray while she’s not in control of her body goes as far as rape, on the grounds that there’s not enough time to deal with something of that magnitude properly. Not having any idea of how the situation fits into the rest of the plot of the episode and series, there’s not way to know for certain. We don’t even know if Rush is still alive by the end of the episode :P Well, it’s very unlikely he’d get bumped off, but it’s remotely possible. He’s not the only ‘main character’ after all.
(episode titles and brief descriptions were looked up at http://www.stargate-sg1-solutions.com/wiki/Stargate_Universe:_Season_One )

Oh, what am I saying. The Stargate franchise PTB would never have written such a thing. And that’s why this SGU scenario pisses me off so much — the knowledge that they would never flip the situation around and have the straight man realize what was done to his body while he wasn’t aware/in charge.

Agnostics would say they don’t know; an atheist could easily say that a spiritual identity exists (though God doesn’t); an atheist could also say that spiritual identity is implemented in matter.

So… no?

But regardless, that’s not what Tui was saying *at all*. Try putting quotes around the ‘underneath it all’ in that post and rereading.