slavery - Why are there slave girls in Star Trek?

From Captain Pike, to Captain Kirk to Captain Archer a span of centuries, we see examples of green slave girls.
Why?

The Federation's own charter says:

"We the lifeforms of the United Federation of Planets determined to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, and to reaffirm faith in the fundamental rights of sentient beings, in the dignity and worth of all lifeforms, in the equal rights of members of planetary systems large and small, and to establish conditions under which justice and respect for the obligations arising from treaties and other sources of interstellar law can be maintained, and to promote social progress and better standards of living on all worlds..."

So why does the Federation captains (et al. one would assume) tolerate, indeed partake, in the enjoyment/subjugation of said slave girls?

I don't buy the Prime Directive argument, they all broke it when they deemed it was for the greater good.

Answer

In "The Cage" one of the men watching the Orion dancer with Captain Pike marveled that Orion women actually wanted to be taken advantage of. According to Memory Alpha this was because Orion women were Sirens rather than slaves, luring unwary males into a life of subjugation via potent pheromones. So the women were not in fact slaves, and the behavior of men around them was the direct result of their hindbrains being tickled by Orion sex hormones.

As for why Starfleet officers would partake of the sexual bounty, consider that these people seemed to live in sexually liberated times. In the TNG era we had the pleasure planet Risa, where the inhabitants seemed happy to give pleasure to visitors as part of their tourism industry. There was the civilization in the TNG episode "Justice" that "made love at the drop of a hat." On DS9 we had Quark and his (to us) depraved holosuite programs, offered alongside the other traditional vices of strong drink and gambling. It wasn't unreasonable that an officer faced with an amorous green dancing girl might believe that she was happy with her life until presented with evidence to the contrary.

Comments

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