[sonneillonv]

Most villains were just like everybody else, once upon a time.  Occasionally villains are born, not made, but much more often, they are made.  I’m sure Dukat was a self-righteous little prick when he was a kid, with all the privilege he could shake a silver spoon at, but he wasn’t the DUKAT we know until instances of systematic trauma a.k.a. Just Another Day At The Park For Cardassians screwed up his ability to empathize.

As a villain, I actually really love Dukat, and it’s not just because I think he’s a sexy beast (Mark Alaimo OMG).  I love him because he is the living embodiment of PRIVILEGE.  Everything he does, he sees through the lens of his privilege.  He is the avatar of all the privileged people in our world complaining that they’re ALLIES for fuck’s sake, they’re being so NICE to marginalized people, why don’t the marginalized people SEE that and bake them COOKIES?  Why are the marginalized people so ANGRY all the time?  Don’t they see that hurts their cause?  When Dukat was a Gul and made prefect of Bajor, ruling from Terok Nor (or as we know it, Deep Space Nine), one of his first acts was to cut labor camp output by 50%, abolish child labor, and improve medical care and food rations.  As he put it, the Bajoran resistance ‘repaid’ him by destroying an orbital dry-dock on his one month anniversary, then attempting to assassinate him FIVE SEPARATE TIMES.  [citation]  Dukat saw himself as being compassionate toward the Bajorans and as they consistently failed to recognize how awesome and compassionate he was, he grew to hate them.  Holy metaphor for modern social justice, Batman.

Despite hating the Bajorans, Dukat carried on affairs with several Bajoran women.  He professed to love at least one of these women, despite, of course, the fact that he was A) fetishizing them, B) In a position of power over them that made their ability to consent to his attention dubious at best, and C) using his ‘compassion’ toward their race to try to score points with them.  This is textbook “I just love black/asian/latina women SO MUCH” behavior and of course its gross, but when I watch DS9, sometimes I feel like “OMG, not everybody really gets WHY this is so gross, OMG.”

So, in closing, Dukat is basically Cardassian Privilege-Denying Guy writ large for sci-fi, and that’s one of many reasons I love DS9.