Gender Trouble in the Neutral Zone

A pop-culture thought experiment on libraries as venues for competing rights claims.

Image: DeepAI image generator

(On January 9th, 2025 Judge Danny C. Reeves of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Kentucky struck down the outgoing Biden Administration’s previously-instituted changes to Title IX [the landmark 1972 civil rights law which prohibits sex-based discrimination in federally-funded education institutions] which had sought to redefine sex to refer to “gender identity”, on the grounds that these changes had “fatally tainted” the rule by [among other things] allowing biological males to compete against [and frequently defeat] female athletes. The ruling takes effect nation-wide. Then on January 14th, the U.S. Congress passed the Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act of 2025, which “prohibits school athletic programs from allowing individuals whose biological sex at birth was male to participate in programs that are for women or girls.” The Bill now goes to the Senate. Finally (and most significantly) following his inauguration on January 20th, 2025, President Donald Trump issued his Executive Order, Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government which commits the U.S. government to recognize only two sexes, to keep men out of women’s spaces (including prisons), and to cease any federal funding for the promotion of gender ideology.

The legal and policy changes represent a significant victory for women’s rights activists and gender-critical feminist scholars following years of lobbying, writing, and public speaking in defense of their sex-based rights. Yet, as we have discussed in a number of articles on this Substack, most public and academic librarians have deliberately and specifically sought to exclude these feminists’ books and speaking events from their libraries, in the process disavowing library neutrality and our long-standing professional ethical commitments to represent diverse perspectives in support of the public interest regardless of our personal views—breaches of principle which I and other critics argue constitute a grave and lamentable failure of professionalism. To gain a fresh perspective on what is at stake in this debate for the rights of women and girls, and the extent of the failure of our profession to recognize and represent it fairly, I suggest here that a science fiction allegory and thought experiment based in popular culture—specifically Gene Roddenberry’s Star Trek—might offer some illumination—MD).

Captain’s Log, Stardate 2486.7

The Enterprise has been called to the Federation-Klingon colony of Trimark 4 to help settle a dispute over contested rights. Jointly governed and operated by both the Federation and the Klingon Empire since the war, the planet is situated deep in the Neutral Zone, and its institutions have been instructed by Treaty to maintain a fragile peace through the exercise of strict neutrality on the part of public institutions.

Despite this joint governance, human colonists from the Federation are outnumbered 5-1 by the Klingons, necessitating a number of historic provisions to guarantee the rights of the humans as a protected class, such as minimum representation within government, public institutions, schools and industry, and fair competition in public sports and recreation intended for humans.

However, in recent years a movement of genetically "augmented" Klingons who nominally "pass" as human (sometimes so well, in fact, that they can only be detected by tribbles), yet retain their superior physical strength and endurance, have claimed for themselves many of these rights guarantees and provisions formerly reserved only for humans. Stating that they “identify” as human, and motivated by what critics of the movement are calling “genetic ideology”—or the belief that one’s genetic makeup should comport with one’s self-perception—the Augmented Klingons have organized under the slogan, “humans’ rights are Augments’ rights." This competition for entitlements recently reached a boiling point when major athletic prizes in human-only competitions in the Trimark Games were awarded to Augmented Klingons, with the human athletes protesting that they stood no chance against them. Yet, it is the Augments who are frequently depicted in major Klingon media as an oppressed minority which faces human prejudice, earning a great deal of sympathy and support from other leading institutions.

Beyond matters of fair competition, of much greater concern to the human colonists are the lobbying efforts by the Augments and their allies to change the definition in the law of "human being" to refer to "anyone who identifies as a human being". They warn that, without a stable definition of human, it will be impossible to define and defend the notion of “human rights” in any meaningful way. Such a change would also open up the very real possibility that all of the positions reserved for humans in government, public institutions, and organizational boards could be filled by Augmented Klingons, shutting humans out from the planet's governance altogether--a direct violation of the treaty that established the colony to begin with.

In an effort to raise public awareness of the conflict and to reassert their rights, a group of male and female human colonists recently scheduled a public meeting at the planet’s Central Public Archives, which is a guaranteed haven for free speech. Insisting that they hold no ill-will towards the Augmented Klingons but that they simply want to regain their hard-won rights to fair competition and representation in public bodies, the colonists began setting out their “genetic-critical” case before a largely supportive audience. However, in violation of the Treaty stipulations of neutrality, the Archives’ Director Kang G’Lath condemned the speakers for “mis-genusing” Augments by referring to them as Klingons, and evicted them.

Furthermore, these human rights activists have pointed out that the Archives has refused to purchase and make available to the public any of the “genetic-critical” books, recordings, and reports they have prepared arguing their case, but has instead stocked its collection with pro-Augment literature, condemning the humans' publications as "anti-Augment bigotry."

With their access to the Public Archives, the news media, and most other major institutions now gone, the humans of Trimark 4 no longer have any means to make their case and reclaim their rights as a protected class.

The Federation is therefore taking this matter very seriously, and have instructed me to address the controversy in a way that recognizes the freedom of the Augmented Klingons to live as they choose, while defining and preserving the existing rights of humans. I must persuade the Director of the Archives to honor the Treaty’s neutrality stipulations and its free speech provisions, and once again allow the humans the opportunity to argue their case before the colony’s citizens—and its joint government—so that an equitable solution may be reached. I must remind the Director that, only by maintaining the neutrality of the Archives can the long-term interests of both humans and Klingons be assured, and the citizens of Trimark 4 be given the opportunity to make an informed decision about the controversy.

If I fail, life for humans in the Neutral Zone may never be the same.

(UPDATED January 21st, 2025, to include reference to President Trump’s Executive Order on federal policy regarding biological sex).

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