\n\n\n"}\n\n\n\n\nI forget who posted this but it\u2019s a good read
I feel like takes like this are missing the real reason why Kirk gets parodied as a womanizer.
\nYes, part of it is because of Berenstein Bears-esque false memory. But part of it is taking a step back and asking why the narrative was written that way.
\nKirk doesn\u2019t actually womanize all that often, yes. When he does romance alien women, it\u2019s due to coercion, or because he\u2019s trying to achieve something for his crew. But it should be surprising the sheer number of times he has to seduce his way out of a situation.
\n(I haven\u2019t tallied these, so maybe it\u2019s roughly as often as Picard and Sisko and Janeway. If so, the following is probably wrong.)
\nIf Kirk was a real person, it would be absurd to blame him for these situations, for being a repeated survivor of sexual violence. But he\u2019s a result of writers making particular choices, and while those writers were telling a very progressive story I don\u2019t see much evidence they were telling that story.
\nThere\u2019s a worthwhile Bond parallel here. Bond absolutely is a womanizer, but he also frequently gets into situations where a woman rapes or tortures him, or where he has to seduce someone to save others. I don\u2019t think anyone would disagree that whatever the difference in-universe, from a writing perspective these come from the same place. The writer wanted to put Bond in situations that he found sexy.
\n(I don\u2019t think that\u2019s quite what\u2019s going on with Kirk, precisely because it doesn\u2019t fit his character. Instead, it\u2019s one step removed. Kirk gets into these situations because sci-fi and adventure protagonists typically got into these situations, because somebody, probably Burroughs, was into it. Kirk isn\u2019t unique in that respect, he\u2019s just the most memorable heir to that tradition.)
\nParodying or deconstructing Kirk by characterizing him as a womanizer isn\u2019t saying the character is depicted that way, any more than Evangelion and Madoka are claiming that kids in anime are depicted as child soldiers, or Worm\u2019s \u201cyou needed worthy opponents\u201c is claiming that the worst supervillains are depicted as existing purely as a foil for superheroes, or Cabin in the Woods is claiming there\u2019s a government conspiracy in the background of every horror movie. It\u2019s saying that the way the universe is set up is weird and dissonant and breaks suspension of disbelief in a way that wasn\u2019t apparent at the time but is to modern audiences, and asking what would need to be true about that universe to make it actually work that way. The message of Brannigan isn\u2019t \u201cKirk was a womanizer, he was probably also a jerk\u201d, it\u2019s \u201cKirk gets coerced into having sex with beautiful women pretty often, wouldn\u2019t it make more sense if that was just his excuse for harassing them\u201d.
\nAnd yeah, that\u2019s importing in a pretty negative view of masculinity. It\u2019s probably unfair to the writers of Star Trek. But I\u2019m not sure it\u2019s unfair to Burroughs.
\nwhat about Kirk ripping his shirt all the time, is that fake too
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