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There is a Borg collective from an alternate timeline where the Queen fuses with one of the main characters and together they create a collective based on consent and approval from people who wish to be assimilated.
maybe it wouldn’t be traumatic then, but hivemind status is orthogonal to gender and contingent on the type of hivemind. outside of unimatrix zero, which is arguably not “the borg”. and the character of the borg queen who probably doesn’t have a human concept of gender, the borg don’t seem to have gender at all
mammal hiveminds in fiction run the gamut from individuals who are constantly connected telepathically yet retain recognizable individuality to groups where the individual is only a meat robot. the gender identity of the “members” of any given hivemind is different in each depiction, each fictional universe’s rules.
you’re perfectly welcome to identify with a concept of gender that is impossible to explain to others but you aren’t the sole arbiter of what hiveminds are or what writers decide about the genders of members of hiveminds.
and for completeness, multiple personalities in one mind is also not usually what anyone means when we say “hive mind” but even if we do for the sake of avoiding a tangent i don’t care about, the gender identities of people in that situation are varied as well.
yeah that’s how it goes when terms are poorly defined, concepts are as abstract as possible, and someone makes absurd claims about the interiority of fictional characters created and written by distant third parties.
There is no academic literature, because the culture responsible for producing academic literature ever since the Enlightenment has historically been transphobic, and only took gender dysphoria out of the DSM in 2013. You think there’s a book out there explaining every single nonbinary gender identity? No, there are thousands of nonbinary gender identities. What field of academia do you even want to hear from? Biology? We’re a gender, not a sex. History? We don’t have any, there aren’t enough of us. Physics? Math? Not relevant. Anthropology? There aren’t any established populations of us because we’re born at random at a very low frequency within a transphobic society. Psychiatry? Being swarmgender isn’t an illness.
I mean even though society is transphobic it still manages to produce “research” or really just any discussion at all on the subject. I couldn’t find a single article or the like. I’m just used to queer identities having some sort of representation in the LGTBQ sphere, rather than just popping up on a website with seemingly no history - like neopronouns didn’t just come from out of nowhere.
While you say swarmgender isn’t a mental illness, you also admit that the psychiatric field has a history of cataloguing gender identities diverging from the binary. While non-binary isn’t a mental illness, it was still studied enough to be in the DSM, so it’s existence was known - it was just treated with bigotry.
I don’t think of any specific field, but usually there is something, anything really.
The entire point of the Borg is that they’re what the federation would be without the prime directive and a value placed on consent. If the Borg asked nicely, they’d be the Federation.
The Federation initially rejected Seven’s attempt to officially join because of their Borg implants
I’ve never heard of that, source? It sounds like you might be misremembering “you can’t become a starfleet officer based on information you downloaded from the internet, you have to actually go to class”.
Also, the Prime Directive is sus. “Oh, you can only access post-scarcity once you achieve warp travel.” What the fuck?
Warp drives and replicators are not a prerequisite to post-scarcity, nor are they a solution to scarcity. As we all know on this site, capitalism manufactures scarcity. Earth became post scarcity when it transitioned to communism, not when it invented the replicator or the warp drive. If you are talking about giving post-scarcity to primitive planets, then what you are talking about is invading their planet, dismantling their government, and setting up a socialist state. That’s what the Borg do. If you want to discuss whether the Federation ought to move over to the Borg way of doing things, then I’m happy to have that conversation.
Capitalism didn’t bring scarcity into being and communism won’t end it. It might be better at distributing resources equitably and preserving them longer, but the physical reality of the universe is that there’s e.g. only so much grain you can get out of the ground every year and so many years at a certain level of production that the soil can sustain, so much land to be cleared for agriculture etc. The Earth is functionally a closed system and as much as communism might allow for technology enabling its matter to remain in a state useful for human social reproduction for far longer than under a capitalist mode of production, there’s no solution to physical phenomena being fundamentally irreversible reactions. Even if we were to expand the reach of our species to the stars, that’s still just kicking the can really far down the road.
Picard Season 2 established that Starfleet (not the Federation, oops) rejected Seven specifically because of the implants, which has implications for their supposed tolerance of a hypothetical peaceful Borg. Seven became a Fenris Ranger instead.
If you are talking about giving post-scarcity to primitive planets, then what you are talking about is invading their planet, dismantling their government, and setting up a socialist state. That’s what the Borg do. If you want to discuss whether the Federation ought to move over to the Borg way of doing things, then I’m happy to have that conversation.
That is what I’m saying, yes. I don’t really believe that the Federation is justified in allowing the existence of slavery and feudalism and capitalism in the galaxy and I don’t believe there’s a sound reason to force people to go through the misery of historical development by themselves. Hence, a hypothetical peaceful Borg that practices internationalism on a galactic scale.
Picard Season 2 established that Starfleet (not the Federation, oops) rejected Seven specifically because of the implants
Oof. That sucks.
and I don’t believe there’s a sound reason to force people to go through the misery of historical development by themselves
Because if you let capitalist species climate change themselves back into the stone age then you limit the number of fascist empires running around in space making problems for everyone else. Gene Roddenberry was a big believer in the idea that a closed minded people does not deserve to go into space and meet the diversity that is out there. Honestly, I wouldn’t want the humans of the real world going into space either. They’d fuck everything up. Aliens, if you’re spying on us right now: please go away. We’re not ready to meet you.
So you think the Galactic International would allow capitalist worlds to stay capitalist, or that the process of uplifting them wouldn’t be revolutionary at its core.
Something just feels gross to me about that kind of manifest destiny thinking. Starfleet’s reasoning on the subject is that if you don’t allow cultures to develop independently, you end up with less diversity, which can have terrible consequences down the line if the One Way your civilisation does things can’t cope with a novel situation. We actually have that going on on Earth. Every country is pressured to do things the capitalist way, and that’s why none of them is taking appropriate action on the climate crisis. There aren’t any countries left that have novel solutions to offer. In Australia, the white people took over the running of things from the indigenous by force and it didn’t go well. They suck at it.
Every country being pressured under capitalist imperialism is fundamentally different from revolutionary internationalism. What we have happening on Earth is absolutely nothing like a hypothetical that uplifts people out of their material conditions; imperialist “development” is not internationalist, it’s superexploitation. There is no interest to improve anything for anyone but the rich.
Furthermore, indigenous people weren’t peacefully assimilated, they were killed and imprisoned and enslaved and raped and had their children kidnapped and their languages/cultures made illegal and all of this was done through the use of incredible violence. Manifest destiny was all just colonialist propaganda. The White Man’s burden was a lie that whitey told himself to not feel bad about murdering and raping everyone. Never, at any point, did the empires actually try to make things better for other people around the world. It was always for themselves.
What if the Borg asked nicely?
Assimilation into a hivemind doesn’t seem so bad, at least in the abstract.
People love to hate on Picard but in Season Two
spoiler
There is a Borg collective from an alternate timeline where the Queen fuses with one of the main characters and together they create a collective based on consent and approval from people who wish to be assimilated.
maybe it wouldn’t be traumatic then, but hivemind status is orthogonal to gender and contingent on the type of hivemind. outside of unimatrix zero, which is arguably not “the borg”. and the character of the borg queen who probably doesn’t have a human concept of gender, the borg don’t seem to have gender at all
That’s an exclusionary thing to say with a swarmgender not-person in the room.
fuck off
I’m OP. You fuck off, and maybe make it clear whether you think my gender is valid first.
mammal hiveminds in fiction run the gamut from individuals who are constantly connected telepathically yet retain recognizable individuality to groups where the individual is only a meat robot. the gender identity of the “members” of any given hivemind is different in each depiction, each fictional universe’s rules.
you’re perfectly welcome to identify with a concept of gender that is impossible to explain to others but you aren’t the sole arbiter of what hiveminds are or what writers decide about the genders of members of hiveminds.
and for completeness, multiple personalities in one mind is also not usually what anyone means when we say “hive mind” but even if we do for the sake of avoiding a tangent i don’t care about, the gender identities of people in that situation are varied as well.
yeah that’s how it goes when terms are poorly defined, concepts are as abstract as possible, and someone makes absurd claims about the interiority of fictional characters created and written by distant third parties.
Removed by mod
There is no academic literature, because the culture responsible for producing academic literature ever since the Enlightenment has historically been transphobic, and only took gender dysphoria out of the DSM in 2013. You think there’s a book out there explaining every single nonbinary gender identity? No, there are thousands of nonbinary gender identities. What field of academia do you even want to hear from? Biology? We’re a gender, not a sex. History? We don’t have any, there aren’t enough of us. Physics? Math? Not relevant. Anthropology? There aren’t any established populations of us because we’re born at random at a very low frequency within a transphobic society. Psychiatry? Being swarmgender isn’t an illness.
I mean even though society is transphobic it still manages to produce “research” or really just any discussion at all on the subject. I couldn’t find a single article or the like. I’m just used to queer identities having some sort of representation in the LGTBQ sphere, rather than just popping up on a website with seemingly no history - like neopronouns didn’t just come from out of nowhere.
While you say swarmgender isn’t a mental illness, you also admit that the psychiatric field has a history of cataloguing gender identities diverging from the binary. While non-binary isn’t a mental illness, it was still studied enough to be in the DSM, so it’s existence was known - it was just treated with bigotry.
I don’t think of any specific field, but usually there is something, anything really.
Well, I had to figure out my gender all on my own. It took years, after I had already become an expert on queer theory. But here, this might help:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Identity_fusion
The entire point of the Borg is that they’re what the federation would be without the prime directive and a value placed on consent. If the Borg asked nicely, they’d be the Federation.
The Federation(oop, it was Starfleet) initially rejected Seven’s attempt to officially join because of the Borg implants. Clearly not.Also, the Prime Directive is sus. “Oh, you can only access post-scarcity once you achieve warp travel.” What the fuck?
I’ve never heard of that, source? It sounds like you might be misremembering “you can’t become a starfleet officer based on information you downloaded from the internet, you have to actually go to class”.
Warp drives and replicators are not a prerequisite to post-scarcity, nor are they a solution to scarcity. As we all know on this site, capitalism manufactures scarcity. Earth became post scarcity when it transitioned to communism, not when it invented the replicator or the warp drive. If you are talking about giving post-scarcity to primitive planets, then what you are talking about is invading their planet, dismantling their government, and setting up a socialist state. That’s what the Borg do. If you want to discuss whether the Federation ought to move over to the Borg way of doing things, then I’m happy to have that conversation.
Capitalism didn’t bring scarcity into being and communism won’t end it. It might be better at distributing resources equitably and preserving them longer, but the physical reality of the universe is that there’s e.g. only so much grain you can get out of the ground every year and so many years at a certain level of production that the soil can sustain, so much land to be cleared for agriculture etc. The Earth is functionally a closed system and as much as communism might allow for technology enabling its matter to remain in a state useful for human social reproduction for far longer than under a capitalist mode of production, there’s no solution to physical phenomena being fundamentally irreversible reactions. Even if we were to expand the reach of our species to the stars, that’s still just kicking the can really far down the road.
Picard Season 2 established that Starfleet (not the Federation, oops) rejected Seven specifically because of the implants, which has implications for their supposed tolerance of a hypothetical peaceful Borg. Seven became a Fenris Ranger instead.
That is what I’m saying, yes. I don’t really believe that the Federation is justified in allowing the existence of slavery and feudalism and capitalism in the galaxy and I don’t believe there’s a sound reason to force people to go through the misery of historical development by themselves. Hence, a hypothetical peaceful Borg that practices internationalism on a galactic scale.
🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮
fair lol
Oof. That sucks.
Because if you let capitalist species climate change themselves back into the stone age then you limit the number of fascist empires running around in space making problems for everyone else. Gene Roddenberry was a big believer in the idea that a closed minded people does not deserve to go into space and meet the diversity that is out there. Honestly, I wouldn’t want the humans of the real world going into space either. They’d fuck everything up. Aliens, if you’re spying on us right now: please go away. We’re not ready to meet you.
So you think the Galactic International would allow capitalist worlds to stay capitalist, or that the process of uplifting them wouldn’t be revolutionary at its core.
Interesting
Something just feels gross to me about that kind of manifest destiny thinking. Starfleet’s reasoning on the subject is that if you don’t allow cultures to develop independently, you end up with less diversity, which can have terrible consequences down the line if the One Way your civilisation does things can’t cope with a novel situation. We actually have that going on on Earth. Every country is pressured to do things the capitalist way, and that’s why none of them is taking appropriate action on the climate crisis. There aren’t any countries left that have novel solutions to offer. In Australia, the white people took over the running of things from the indigenous by force and it didn’t go well. They suck at it.
Every country being pressured under capitalist imperialism is fundamentally different from revolutionary internationalism. What we have happening on Earth is absolutely nothing like a hypothetical that uplifts people out of their material conditions; imperialist “development” is not internationalist, it’s superexploitation. There is no interest to improve anything for anyone but the rich.
Furthermore, indigenous people weren’t peacefully assimilated, they were killed and imprisoned and enslaved and raped and had their children kidnapped and their languages/cultures made illegal and all of this was done through the use of incredible violence. Manifest destiny was all just colonialist propaganda. The White Man’s burden was a lie that whitey told himself to not feel bad about murdering and raping everyone. Never, at any point, did the empires actually try to make things better for other people around the world. It was always for themselves.