Bodies With Purpose: an exploration of the intersection of autistic and transgender coding in Star Trek

Gil Goletski
Nov 3 · 11 min read

Like most modern Science Fiction, Star Trek, although set in the future and on the frontiers of strange alien worlds, is always based in human story. The distance of speculative future to the viewer allows shows like Star Trek to explore stories, ethical dilemmas, and lifestyles that would normally be taboo subjects when set in the present. Star Trek primarily functions as a study of fictional rhetorical listening. This is a term coined by Krista Ratcliffe, which she defines as a “code of cross-cultural contact, […] [a] rhetorical stance of openness that a person may choose to assume in cross-cultural exchanges”, with the goal being “to generate discourses, whether they be in academic journals or over the dinner table” (Ratcliffe, 46). Star Trek invites the viewer into a science fiction, future world in which boundless alien cultures exist, it invites us to empathize, scrutinize, root for, and reject the different characters by generating different discourses within an episodic, serialized structure. Star Trek is the dinner table the audience is invited to sit at.

Star Trek’s utopian view of the future communicates a moral of universal acceptance difference. Star Trek (ideally) promotes empathy. However, Paul Heilker and Melanie Yergeau in “Autism as a Rhetoric”, interrogates empathy itself, employing Ratcliffe’s rhetorical listening; in order to listen properly, we must rethink how we have been taught to listen. (Heilker and Yergeau, 491) Star Trek: The Next Generation and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine bring empathy into crisis through characters like Data, Jadzia Dax, and Odo. Through explorations of their personalities and (multiple) lives, the viewers become familiar with their inherent Neurological Queerness (a term coined by Melanie Yergeau in her book Authoring Autism: On Rhetoric and Neurological Queerness). Neurological Queerness denotes observing cognitive difference from a queer theory stance; to accept queerness within the brain’s wiring as identity rather than a neurological problem. Deconstructing each of these characters with a “neuroqueer” eye allows us to rethink gender and neurological difference (as portrayed in Star Trek as simply artificial intelligence or alien difference) not as two disparate character traits, but as mutually inclusive.

Data is an android. He was constructed in his male creator’s image. Because of the limits of cybernetics within Star Trek’s fiction, Data does not possess emotions. Data is coded as a superhuman autistic savant; a literal walking talking supercomputer with unlimited access to boundless information, yet Data struggles to accomplish tasks as simple as understanding an offhanded use of sarcasm. This is because Data is not part of the human system of signification, he does not belong in the human “signifying consciousness”. Like in Barthes’ “Myth Today”, to expand on his rose example: Data can learn that a rose signifies passion, but he cannot infer the meaning of a sign without first learning that the act of giving flowers is a sign of affection. (Barthes, 2, 3) A coworker can tell Data their own connotative interpretation of the roses, and Data can remember and mimic their perspective, however Data cannot come up with his own unique connotations. Data is a master of the denotative, but cannot grasp the connotative because of the way he is wired. In the episode “In Theory” of The Next Generation, one of Data’s fellow engineering colleagues aboard the Enterprise, Jenna, attempts to start a romantic relationship with him. Although she is aware–as everyone else is–that Data does not possess emotions, she is shown to be visibly uncomfortable by Data’s attempts to simulate romance. In one scene in particular, Jenna arrives unexpectedly at Data’s quarters while he is painting with a gift for him. Data remarks on the unexpectedness of her visit, and Jenna responds, “I’m sorry, don’t let me interrupt,” clearly insinuating that she wishes for Data to stop what he is doing, rather than ignore her and return to his painting. To Jenna, Data’s behaviour is callous because he cannot understand the subtext in her language. But to Data–who learns through imitation and instruction–doing what someone tells him to do is the only way he is capable of showing respect. After their misunderstanding, Jenna remarks, “what matters is that you’re trying”; Data can simulate human displays of romance, but this doesn’t mean he does not have his own legitimate way of showing affection. Throughout the episode, Data shows that he is very capable of being considerate to Jenna, as well as his friends and coworkers; even going as far as writing entire subroutines within his programming specifically for interacting a certain way with a certain person. This a key in autistic affection: openly sharing information and creating information for another individual is a way of creating intimacy, the same way a neurotypical person shows it through flirtation and physical touch. Data’s own struggle to understand connotation also carries over to Data’s own perception of his gender. To Data, his body serves only as a vessel for him to interact with his surroundings. Data cannot infer the social value inherent in his fabricated appearance as an adult man. Data’s autism manifests because he is an android created in the image of a human man, but because the signifier of “being” a man is empty. To Data, being a “man” doesn’t denote a common identity, this is evidently clear when you resist socialization. (Butler, 3)

In “Autism as a Rhetoric”, Heilker and Yergeau bring up the concept of echolalia, a characteristic of some styles of autistic language use, characterized through “repeat[ed] stock words and phrases verbatim that they have heard other speakers use.” (8) Heilker and Yergeau identify that this trait has been dismissed by many who study the disorder as simply a meaningless parroting and even an impairment that should be overcome. They add that echolalia-like processes happen all the time in academia, in research and through using citations; choosing to listen rhetorically “offers the possibility of generating a more productive discourse, a way to value autistic rhetoric and build upon it, rather than try to eradicate it” (491). By recognizing Data’s difference as something other than human through interpolation, the audience can realize their own social position in relation to the character. This forces the viewer to realize that they cannot fully empathize with Data, because his otherness cannot be willed away or fixed–because it is so concrete. This is how Star Trek effectively creates a space for rhetorical listening–by making Data less relatable to the audience by removing his humanity in a concrete way, he becomes easier to sympathize with than if he were simply an autistic human.

Dax is a lifeform(s) who is made up of the joining of a symbiont to a humanoid host, the former which has lived for hundreds of years in the bodies of many people of different genders. Jadzia, the Dax symbiont’s current host, holds the collective consciousness and memories of all her previous hosts. Dax is inherently transgender because of her transient corporality, for Dax it is a part of her life cycle to switch bodies (and genders) once the host dies and the symbiont is joined with another. However, Dax’s characterization differs from most popular examples of transgender characters in modern television shows. Cael M. Keegan’s essay “Moving Bodies: Sympathetic Migrations in Transgender Narrativity” explores how transness is reconciled in Degrassi: The Next Generation, and the film Transamerica (2005). Keegan notes the “manufacture of sympathy” with regards to the “pathologized position of trans people in society” (Keegan, 5). The audience is manipulated to feel empathy for the transgender characters through symbolic representations of dysphoria–scene which depict the character being exposed as performing a “fake gender” against their will, scenes of the transgender character scrutinizing their own body in a mirror. In Keegan’s words, “the trans body is traditionally a tragic or melancholic body precisely because its gendered feelings cannot materialize in the world”. (5) The struggle of being “alone” in one’s own transness is necessary in the modern portrayals of transgender characters. Star Trek unintentionally opens a world of infinite transgender possibility. In a utopian future where “anything goes”, where a transgender culture can thrive, Dax thrives because she is never alone; she is, quite literally, multiple people. In the episode “Facets” of Deep Space Nine, Dax performs a ritual called zhian’tara, which allows her previous hosts to be transferred into the bodies of her colleagues temporarily and be communicated with. One of her previous hosts, Emony (inhabiting the body of the character Leeta), expresses that she was “worried [being joined with the symbiont] would affect [her] coordination”, but later found out that it actually improved her concentration, to which Jadzia agrees. This mirrors the anxiety many transgender people harbor when deciding to transition medically; many worry that they will recognize the change as negative, but often, once transitioning, find the change in hormones or body to be highly motivating and even euphoric. It is through exchanges like these that it is made clear that the process of changing bodies is a positive and enlightening experience for the character Dax.

Odo does not have a concrete form, he can imitate the form of other humanoids (albeit not very well) but can only do so for about a day before he must relax back into his liquid form. As an autistic coded character, Odo tries to imitate humanoid life, yet still remains an outsider because he is still imitating, and not truly “being”. It causes him strain and discomfort to perform his humanoid identity for too long. Odo represents a character where transness and autism are interchangeable with one another. Like Dax, Odo also experiences corporality in a transient state. Odo’s species naturally live a communal “hive mind”, named the Link, as one being. On his own on Deep Space Nine he is forced to imitate the conventions of humanoid living, like having a bipedal shape, having a purpose (a job), and having relationships with other people, despite it not being “natural” for him to do so. Like Data, Odo does not care about the implications of “being male”–it is likely he adopts the identity of maleness as a “default”. As Susan Stryker postulates on the performance of embodied gender: “the process of [transitioning] from one sex to another–renders visible the culturally specific mechanisms of achieving gendered embodiment.” (Stryker, 592) Odo’s transformation from shapeless liquid to “male” humanoid reveals the viewers’ own biases and socialised knowledged of maleness–why is Odo “male” if he has no chromosomes, has no genitalia; Odo does not even have internal organs. Why is Odo male simply because we are told he is? Odo takes humanoid form as a way of surviving in a society that doesn’t accommodate his difference. So much of humanoid life depends on one’s ability to touch/talk/interact with the world through the senses.

In the Deep Space Nine episode “The Alternate”, Odo is reluctantly reunited with the scientist who studied him and ultimately “taught” him how to act as a humanoid does. The station’s bartender, Quark, jokes that Dr. Mora is Odo’s father, implying that there is a paternal relationship between the two. Odo avoids eye contact with Mora, and is shown to be in discomfort with the situation. During a heated argument between the two, Dr. Mora says to Odo, “you would not be here today if it weren’t for my guidance”, implying that Odo is a lost cause or somehow less valuable as sentient life because he doesn’t conform to Dr. Mora’s expectations. Odo, is a disabled and childlike subject of for Dr. Mora to indoctrinate. This narrative is all too familiar when observing the narrative of a parents of autistic children and hero complexes–the idea that autistic children owe any semblance of functionality and understanding of human interaction to their neurotypical parents. Mora is hyper critical of Odo’s “performance” of the humanoid figure, remarking that he hasn’t quite perfected the shape of an ear. Other humanoids like Dr. Mora do not have to imitate humanoid shape, they simply are humanoid, and are not questioned for it. Just as it is common for autistic people to struggle to conform socially, and for trans people to “pass”, it is impossible for Odo to become solid; his “imitation” is never enough.

At the beginning of the series, Odo doesn’t know that there are any other shapeshifters like him who exist. Odo’s shapeshifting abilities are both respected because of its usefulness in his job as station head of security, and dismissed because it violently interrupts the illusion that he is humanoid. Odo expresses confusion at humanoid desires to have intimate relationships, to eat and drink and to “have fun” like his peers, because he is not “wired” the same way as them. Odo later finds joy in exploring and fixating on his own talent of shapeshifting so much that he redesigns his own living space so that he can shapeshift into the various shapes around his room. At the end of the fourth season of Deep Space Nine, Odo is turned into a humanoid, removing his shapeshifting ability. It is the ultimate punishment for Odo’s repeated failed performance of humanoid behaviour. Odo is trapped inside a solid body that looks like his own imperfect simulacra of a human as a reminder that he will never quite fit in. His profound distress at this mirrors transgender and autistic discomfort of being forced into a body and/or forced to follow rigid social norms that goes against their own identity. Odo experiences the discomfort of feeling hunger, thirst, and itchiness for the first time and is overwhelmed by these sensations that are commonly felt by other humanoids.

Myself as Data, Halloween 2009

Much like the way female celebrities become icons for gay men through lack of proper representation, Science Fiction becomes a space for autistic viewers to imagine themselves within. It is not a coincidence that this is the most common stereotype associated with “high functioning” autistics. Through the guise of speculative fiction–the modern constraints of gender, sexuality, and ability can be crossed safely without raising eyebrows. By creating alien characters with differences much more concrete and identifiable than the differences between humans, their inherent neurological queerness becomes more “believable”. I can remember being the 14 year old in this picture and wanting to become Data; it’s strangely childish to have that kind of desire even as a 14 year old. I feel humiliated looking at this picture from a Hallowe’en almost a decade ago. I can remember realizing putting on a costume that could be recognized as a symbol of how I felt about my own body and mind made me feel seen and understood. I remember how embarrassed I felt at myself for wanting to emulate a character rather than be a three dimensional human being. To me Data represented a character who didn’t have to embody his body. His failure to conform is accepted because he is a computer. Even in in my transgender, autistic adulthood, my echolalia manifests through the repeated reconciling and deconstruction of these characters I desperately identified with as a teenager.


Works Cited

Alexander, Jonathan. “Transgender Rhetorics: (Re)Composing Narratives of the Gendered Body.” College Composition and Communication, vol. 57, no. 1, 2005, pp. 45–82.JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/30037898.

Barthes, Roland. “Myth Today” (1957;1972) Art In Theory, eds. C. Harrison and P. Wood, (London: Blackwell, 1992), 687–693. PDF

Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. Routledge, 1990.

Echevarria, René. “Facets.” Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. Dir. Cliff Bole. Syndicated. 12 June. 1995. Television.

Heilker, Paul, and Yergeau, Melanie. “Autism as a Rhetoric.” College English, vol. 73, no. 5, May 2011, pp. 485–497. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/23052337.

Keegan, Cael M. “Moving Bodies: Sympathetic Migrations in Transgender Narrativity.”Genders 1998–2013, University of Colorado Boulder, 1 June 2013, www.colorado.edu/gendersarchive1998-2013/2013/06/01/moving-bodies-sympathetic-migrations-transgender-narrativity.

Menosky, Joe, and Moore, Ronald D. “In Theory.” Star Trek: The Next Generation. Dir. Patrick Stewart. Syndicated. 3 June. 1991. Television.

Ratcliffe, Krista. “Rhetorical Listening: A Trope for Interpretive Invention and a ‘Code of Cross-Cultural Conduct.’” College Composition and Communication, vol. 51, no. 2, 1999, p. 195., doi:10.2307/359039.

Stryker, Susan. “My Words to Victor Frankenstein Above the Village of Chamounix: Performing Transgender Rage.” GLQ, vol. 1, 1994, pp. 237–254., read.dukeupress.edu/glq/article-pdf/1/3/237/277034/ddglq_1_3_237.pdf.

Stryker, Susan. “Transsexuality: The Postmodern Body and/as Technology.” The Cyberculture’s Reader, 2000, pp. 38–50.

Menosky, Jim, and Dial, Bill. “The Alternate.” Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. Dir. David Carson. Syndicated. 9 Jan. 1994. Television.

Yergeau, Melanie. Authoring Autism: on Rhetoric and Neurological Queerness. Duke University Press, 2018.

Gil Goletski

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Gil Goletski is a multi-media doer. They live in Vancouver, Canada.

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