padawanlost:

It wasn’t the about
the hybrids. I went looking for info on them and ended up finding what can only
be described as one of the most blatantly racist and sexist characters in Star Wars. It’s horrifying to read but at the same time it’s so very realistic. It’s a story
about aliens in space but the rationalization behind the racism and sexism is
very human.

It’s a short story by
Barbara Hambly called Nightlily The Lovers’ Tale. To avoid spoilers I won’t get
into plot details, okay? The main character is Gotal called Feltipern Trevagg,
a tax collector from Mos Eisley during the Empire years.

When a female Modbrek
and her two daughters go to him to ask for help to avoid going without water
and subsequently losing their home, this is his reaction:

The Modbrek female’s distress irritated him.
Coming from another of his own species—another Gotal—it might have evoked pity,
though Trevagg had been less ready than many of his compatriots to yield to
emanations of wretchedness and fear. But Modbreks were in Trevagg’s opinion
only semisentient, wispy
ephemeral beings, hairless as slugs save for the grotesque masses of blue mane
that streamed from their undeveloped heads, with huge eyes, and tiny noses and
mouths in pointy pale faces. 

 He nudged a
toggle on the control board of his desk. A human deputy in a rumpled uniform
came in and showed the three females out. Trevagg could sense the man’s pity
for them, and also, much to Trevagg’s
disgust, the fact that the human found the insubstantial creatures physically
attractive, even sexually interesting. 

Later he meets a female called Nightlily and
is immediately attracted to her. YET…here’s what he thinks of her:

Of course
they couldn’t really be cones, thought Trevagg the next moment. She was no Gotal, but someone of the
dull-minded and insentient lesser races … But the imitation was perfect,
and it was enough. He wanted her. He wanted her badly.

He took her
hand in his, loving the satin texture, the smooth eroticism of the way the
knots on its back tightened and swelled at his touch. “Don’t you understand
what I feel for you? What I felt for you the moment I entered the office, the
moment I heard your voice?” The moment I
sensed in you the ultimate prey, the most beautiful of conquests to be
vanquished?

He wasn’t
sure exactly what inner vibrations he should transmit to convince her of his
overwhelming desire for her—she
obviously didn’t have the civilized sensitivity of a Gotal, maybe couldn’t
pick up anything at all and was operating entirely at the face value of his
words. Judging by her conversation, she
was either barely sentient or truly stupid, and in any case, Trevagg had very
little interest in females’ thoughts or desires.

Besides,
once he’d had her he certainly didn’t want her hanging around under the
impression that he was actually going to go through with marrying a semisentient alien bimbo, wondrous
though she might be between the sheets.

The fact
that she couldn’t even detect him in a lie—that she didn’t have that much
sensitivity to the vibrations of his mind—only redoubled his contempt for her. So desirable—so innocent—so stupid … No wonder they don’t let virgins
travel off her planet. She’d told him that, too. They’d never make it home. Not
as virgins, anyway.