Not long ago, two people I follow on Twitter were talking about Star Trek.

The first was, based on my knowledge of the tweeter and the context of the here and now, I see as (most likely) a comical remark about the nature of our current culture of politics and how distrustful we are of foreign powers¹. The reply was less clear. It seems pretty obvious that, in the context of the Star Trek universe, the Federation is a peaceful organization. The only wars we’ve seen them take part in have been defensive, and they establish political and economic ties with neighbouring civilizations, including former enemies.

The only two rationales I can see for that second tweet are 1) that he agrees with Matt Yglesias that the Federation is not to be trusted and he misspoke intending to say it is absurd that they insist on claiming to be a peaceful organization; 2) he believes that an organization as large and powerful as the Federation should be a non-peaceful organization, perhaps expanding and annexing nearby planets and civilizations by force. The former is ridiculous when you look at the canon of Star Trek, which clearly shows the Federation as a benevolent force. The latter is ridiculous for a few different reasons.

Arguing for any nation/organization to be aggressive and possessive toward non-members is very odd to me. I’d thought the days of moral superiority, Manifest Destiny, or American Exceptionalism — all the sorts of ideas that lead to thinking a people are above another in some fundamental way — were gone but I can reluctantly accept that some people still linger on some of those thoughts. The even odder thing is that we’re applying 20th century precepts to a fictional 24th century organization, created by a man trying to construct a futuristic utopia. The political realities of today probably won’t apply three hundred years from now, and they definitely won’t apply to the fictional, preconceived-as-peaceful, time of Star Trek.

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Footnotes

1. It’s entirely possible he is genuinely positing that the Federation doesn’t deserve to be trusted, but if that’s the case, this post remains relevant. [↩]

I had a strange thought the other day, as I occasionally do, and it led me through an odd chain of conclusions. That germinative thought was “why do we call someone who rapes a rapist and not a raper¹?”

There are many ists out there, and the four definitions of the suffix at wiktionary seem to cover all the typical cases, but it seems a stretch to consider rapist as any of them.

The first definition says it signifies a system of belief. Perhaps to some rape is a way of life, but is the act itself an expression of a belief system?

The second possibility is that it describes a profession or field of interest. I can’t imagine many making a living through their rape, nor it being a field of interest for anyone.

The third is that it’s something a person uses. This is a pretty vague definition so it seems the most likely candidate for the origin of ‘rapist’ as a term. Rape is often said to be an exertion of power and dominance over people. In prison, and elsewhere, rape is a weapon used to control people. Still, this seems like a fairly substantial allegorical stretch.

Finally, it could mean it’s a biased view of some sort. Admittedly, raping someone probably means your preferences are biased in your favour but is committing the act of rape equivalent to the personal belief that a specific subset of humanity is less than another? I don’t deny that rapists might frequently be sexist, but does that make rape itself an ist?

So while, none of these really fit ‘rapist’ as well as I’d like, a common thread in these definitions is that all these ists are what a person is. It is something that defines them. Put simply, ers are what you do, ists are who you are. There might be a few exceptions to this, but rules always have exceptions.

But let’s overthink the implications of this linguistic hint briefly. Is it a coincidence that Ist sounds like His and Er sounds like Her? Is there a subtly sexist/chauvinist theme carried through the implied nature of ist? That things that are described by an ist are more robust, more steadfast, than the fickle actions of an er? Are we tacitly endorsing an ist every time we use an ist? No, probably not, but thinking about and subsequently overthinking these sorts of things is just what I do.

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Footnotes

1. Shortly after I had this thought, I came to a place in George RR Martin’s A Feast for Crows where someone is called a “raper” and wondered what that implied about the act of rape in that world. [↩]