Arts & Entertainment

“Star Trek” and Queer Space

The first openly gay characters in the “Star Trek” television universe weren’t introduced until 2017.

Published

4 years ago

April 7, 2022

Photo courtesy of National Air and Space Museum.

“Star Trek” blazed some trails in its early days with women in leadership roles and the first inter-racial kiss on television, but how was it at portraying queer stories and characters? This is a question that we began wondering about when working on the National Air and Space Museum’s recent QueerSpace project. It may have been being a leader in terms of gender and racial integration, but it turns out this environment of inclusion did not extend to queer identity.

Star Trek’s groundbreakingly diverse cast helped signal that the show took place far in the future, making the delay in introducing LGBTQ+ characters even more pronounced. Surely this future society wouldn’t be exclusively heteronormative and cisgender?

In the 1980s, science fiction fans began calling on “Star Trek” for queer inclusion in the series. The late 1980s-early 1990s tv show “Star Trek: The Next Generation” released a few episodes with allegories to queer experiences, including “The Host” which involved a character falling for an alien who changed bodies — and gender presentations, and “The Outcast,” which uses gender identity as an allegory for homesexuality in a way that disappointed fans at the time and doesn’t hold up today.

The first openly gay characters in the “Star Trek” television universe weren’t introduced until 2017. On “Star Trek: Discovery,” Paul Stamets and Dr. Hugh Culber, portrayed by LGBTQ+ actors Anthony Rapp and Wilson Cruz, are the first openly gay characters and the first gay couple portrayed in the central cast of a “Star Trek” tv show. Later, the show also introduced a non-binary teenager named Adira and their boyfriend Gray, who is trans.

Although we cannot change the past and the time it took for queer representation on “Star Trek,” what we can do is continue to establish science fiction as a realm that is welcome to people of all backgrounds because, after all, the future — real or imagined — is what we make it.

In one of the episodes of our QueerSpace podcast limited series, we explore just that through an interview with a local bookseller about queer worldbuilding in science fiction literature. Other episodes explore the community of gay flight attendants in the 1970s, the Air Force and Space Force’s LGBTQ Initiative Team, and how themes of space and queerness intersect in art.

Read our full exploration of LGTBQ+ inclusion in “Star Trek” and listen to episodes of the QueerSpace podcast at airandspace.si.edu/QueerSpace

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Online Culture

Clavicular charged in alleged rape of teenage influencer

Online personality’s real name is Braden Peters

Published

6 hours ago

September 23, 2026

Joe Reberkenny

Braden Peters a.k.a. "Clavicular" (Screen capture via NBC News/YouTube)

Online personality Clavicular, whose real name is Braden Peters, has been accused of rape.

According to NBC, Aleksandra Vasilevna Mendoza, an 18-year-old influencer known online as Alorah or Alorah Ziva, accused Peters of sexual assault, and the case is making its way through the court system.

The alleged incident occurred on May 23, 2025, when Mendoza was 17.

According to a criminal complaint from the Chatham (Mass.) Police Department, Peters called her an Uber to his family’s home. Once there, he allegedly got her drunk on vodka while they livestreamed on Twitch and then raped her. His mother and grandmother were allegedly in the house.

The documents allege Clavicular committed rape, drugging a person for sexual intercourse, and procuring and providing liquor to a person under 21.

According to court documents acquired by NPR, Mendoza began communicating with Peters on Instagram, where he paid her to appear on his livestreams to help her “make her name known on social media.”

According to those documents, Peters arranged for the minor to come to Cape Cod home to participate in a videostream for his 437,000 followers on Kick, 1.2 million followers on TikTok, and more than 1 million followers on Instagram.

At his home, Peters allegedly instructed Mendoza to say she was 18 on his videostream and to claim the alcohol on camera was water instead of vodka. Mendoza said she felt peer-pressured to drink the spirit and that she became noticeably intoxicated after a couple of drinks.

The allegations go on to state that after stopping the stream, Peters and Mendoza kissed on a couch and then had sex in his bed without her consent. Mendoza said she did not receive a sexual assault forensic exam after the incident. NPR does not name alleged victims of sexual assault.

The charges come months after Mendoza sued Peters in Miami, accusing him of sexual battery in connection with the events of May 2025. The civil lawsuit also separately alleges that he injected her face with a non-FDA-approved fat-dissolving substance during a November livestream in Florida.

Peters is known for his “looksmaxxing” concept of vanity, which is at the core of his online presence. The “looksmaxxing” culture he has helped cultivate combines elements of incel culture and heterosexuality, with the stated goal of attracting the opposite sex. He has gone as far as to say he has undergone “bonesmashing,” or hitting his own face with a hammer; taken anabolic steroids to more rapidly grow muscle; and used crystal meth as an appetite suppressant.

At the same time, looksmaxxing has been described as having elements of homoeroticism, with “looksmaxxers” appearing more concerned with impressing other men than women. Peters has multiple times pointed to openly gay actor Matt Bomer as the gold standard for male facial aesthetics.

Peters’s arraignment is scheduled for Oct. 14.