Sometimes I see people accuse Star Trek: The Original Series of queerbaiting or wondering why they didn’t just make Kirk/Spock canon. So to put things in perspective for you the last episode aired on the 3rd of June 1969, the Stonewall Riots started 25 days later on the 28th of June 1969.
Bro someone told me he could never watch TOS because he wasn’t a fan of queer baiting and I felt really bad about it but I laughed in his face 😳
TOS had to fight for an interracial kiss, there was no way in Hell that they could have gotten away with a gay one.
Not to mention that while Roddenberry found the concept “interesting” when it was brought up later, he didn’t actually intend for K/S to be a thing. He never discouraged it, but it wasn’t something that was on his radar (and why would it be? He was a straight white man in the 1960s).
Queerbaiting requires a certain level of malice aforethought. In this case it was a case of what I’m going to call gentle ignorance—he had no idea it would come across to fans as homoerotic, but once it was brought to his attention he was like “huh. Okay.”
I saw George Takei speak at my college and he actually brought up the fact that after the Kirk/Uhura kiss he asked if there could be a same-sex kissing scene and was told no, because even the interracial kiss almost got the show booted.
When we talk about how Korrasami walked so The Owl House could fly, we’re not seeing too much of the history of creators pushing for representation that was never aired.
These kids really don’t know just how illegal gay stuff was until really recently.