Of Vulcan Sexuality and Pon farr by LT

Hehe, I actually wrote this for a Star Trek forum (as you might surmise), but when I saw the description for this forum and saw that it was empty, I thought, why not? ;D I was actually spurned to write this by the suggestion that Vulcans couldn’t be gay among other things because such a character came up in conversation about a fan series. There has always been a lot of bickering from various other fans who don’t think T’Pol should have been as…permiscious as she was, so here’s some theory with established proof to back it up. T’Pol is used as an example, but even without her and any examples in TnT, there are plenty of others. Anywho, I wrote up a rather large section dealing with just this very subject for the Star Trek: Foundations writer’s bible to avoid confusion I think has been engrained with “fanon”, which seems to hold that Vulcans only ever have sex during Pon Farr, and strickly to reproduce. However, there is plenty of evidence to suggest otherwise, such as Pon Farr being refered to as a “blood fever”, which suggests to me that it is simply a chemical imbalance resulting from the rigid control Vulcans maintain over their urges and emotions. Furthermore, mating isn’t the only way to cure it, as Spock proved by fighting Kirk to the death (or so he thought), and by Torres fighting Vorik and both of them being cured by not even having to go to the death. To add to that we have the fact that Tuvok’s children are not 7 years apart, and that it is only mentioned that one of his children was born as a result of one of his Pon Farrs. There is really nothing on screen to suggest that Vulcans only mate during Pon Farr, aside from one of HoloDoc’s lyrics in one of his songs during one of his daydreams, but to be fair it was a daydream and he was having fun. Also, we have T’Pol mating with Trip on at least one occasion and she wasn’t undergoing Pon Farr. Of course if you ask any Trip/T’Pol ‘shipper they’d say that must have been intimate at least once more before “Home”, and we have some behind the scenes information that says that at first they were supposed to have been caught just short of kissing by T’Les, but they cut that because then later on it wouldn’t have shown T’Les being so shockingly intuative when she confronts Trip about his love for T’Pol.

Anywho, I thought I’d also post up the excerpt from the FND writer’s bible as my working theory:

[quote:2nv1cnoy] Vulcan logic has often been seen by outsiders as just the way Vulcans are, and Vulcans don’t help to dispel this myth any by denying that they have any emotion when this is in fact not the case. Vulcans do feel emotion and react to it; it’s just that mental discipline has been so engrained into their society that they don’t understand emotion anymore than what they see in the displays of more emotional races.

Also, contrary to popular belief, Pon farr is not the Vulcan imperative to mate, it is the imperative to enter total emotional abandon as a result of their engrained rigid emotional control. As a result, Vulcans either have to mate, or fight (usually to the death), which can be fairly easily explained by the release of hormones and other chemical secretions that occur with either action, and in Vulcans’ case they need them to survive. Scientists have tried to make artificial substitutes for it, but all of them fail for a reason they can’t explain. Kolinahr seems to make it possible for the Vulcan body to produce just enough of these hormones and other chemicals to allow those who achieve it to go without suffering Pon farr. For everyone else though, Pon farr is a cyclic occurance, for most occurring every seven years, but there are occasional exceptions with it being brought on by a traumatic event for example.

At any rate, Vulcans can and do mate whenever they wish, and while they will claim that love has nothing to do with it, it is seen as an expression of affection to those they are betrothed with, with reproduction spurring from the need to continue ones self. However, Vulcans tend to come off as having an almost Victorian attitude towards sex, but this is more of a disapproval of what they see as irresponsibility in the acts of other “less mature” species, and they just don’t talk about their mating habits. Marriage is a lot more complicated than the Human concept, and it could be described as somewhat sterile and heartless (with which Vulcans would no doubt heartily agree). Marriage for Vulcans is more of a tradition than an expression of love, but usually parents try to find someone who shares a lot in common with their children in the hope that they will develop affection for each other. Yes, that’s right, parents betroth their children, usually at the age of 7. This can be taken by some as rigidly as a contract, and strictly speaking it is according to Vulcan law, but most are more lax and permissive about it as its only true function is to ensure their children will have a consenting partner with which to deal with Pon farr, and after that being able to go on as they decide. However, there is always hope that each couple will join in marriage to produce children, so when they are betrothed at 7, a telepathic bond is established between them that is hoped will be the beginnings of a mating bond. Superficially this bond brings them together when one of them begins Pon farr, but for Vulcans there is more too it, as it allows them to truly experience one another, especially when the stronger mating bond is established (which coincidentally can only happen through intimate physical contact), and for good matches this only makes their affection for each other stronger. There are poor matches as well, and there are legal recourses to get out of a marriage contract. One is simply to never establish a marriage date and keep putting it off, and another is to be released from the contract by either the male of the pair, or by the one who had wished the marriage to go forward. This can be done through a Koon-ut-kal-if-fee, or more specifically the “challenge” part, which allows the person who doesn’t want to be married to choose someone to fight the one who does (usually to the death, though either side can also yield), most of the time this being the person the other does want to marry.

So why is all this stuff still a surprise to Kirk and others so much later on? Vulcans are a very private people, and don’t speak of such things unless they feel they really need to, and even then only with someone that have a deep trust in. Fact of the matter is that Vulcans just don’t care to discuss anything they consider private, even something as simple as their age, and instead prefer only to discuss professional and academic matters.[/quote:2nv1cnoy]

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Heh, no one knows what to make of this eh?

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Of course it’s fictional, that isn’t the point. The point is to have a little fun discussing what we’ve seen of Vulcan sexuality on screen and to a limited extent what we’ve seen in some official publications.