You know, Robin Williams was the reason that I started doing stand-up comedy? My personal hero. Knowing that he did this for Neelix, especially when he was getting a lot of hate? Robin is a saint. Also just a small thing because I wanted to honor the man...
Reason #72151.
7-21-51.
July 21st, 1951.
Robin Williams birthdate.
Carry on 💙
Not me. The.older I get the more I think it's creepy that when we meet him he's dating a 2 year old. As a teenager I bought the "they develop faster" hand wave, but if you think about it regardless of how quickly kes's species develops physically, they still only have a level of experience and knowledge you can learn in 2 years. Dating someone that naive is a very rapey power imbalance. I can't believe they allowed him around Naomi. Should have thrown him out the airlock.
I agree that you can’t really compare years to years here. They clearly mature mentally and physically faster. It is altogether weird still, but so is the basic concept of dating aliens from another species.
For me the problem isn't so much in the concept itself, but rather how casually it's treated by the writing. Almost nobody on the show ever delves deep at all into how strange it is from a human point of view. It's taken as read, and the audience is just left to stew in their own notions.
Vulcans may live longer, but they mature at about the same rate, reaching adulthood in their early to mid 20s. I'm not saying humans (or talaxians) are superior to kes's race, only that there's only so much you can learn in 2 years. It's more like a 50 year old human dating a 17 year old human, it's creepy and exploitative.
It's not about "better", it's about power imbalance. When we meet her, when neelix has already been dating her for quite a while, she has the life experience of a very small child whereas he is a full grown adult who served in tne army and ran a trading business. It's a classic example of grooming.
On the surface, yeah, it's pretty bad, and if Neelix was a human I wouldn't excuse it (cough cough TOM), but Talaxians had much more cultural exchange and knowledge of the Ocampa. I can criticize the writers for not properly dealing with the squick factor, but in-universe I have to give characters the benefit of the doubt and take them at their word.
Ocampans really do mature and accumulate knowledge and understanding at over ten times the rate of humans. They have passed all galactic cultural standards for being able to consent, and are granted the ability to choose for themselves. They clearly also have some telepathic abilities, so it's likely those come into play in passing on knowledge and understanding from one generation to the next, allowing them to progress through maturity exponentially faster than most other species.
And since Talaxians have cultural history with them, Neelix has enough of a rich understanding of that dynamic to make an informed choice that has nothing predatory about it.
Kes could out-maneuver almost anyone on board both intellectually and emotionally, but she also has enough gravity to not seem either fey or condescending about it. I don't see any power imbalance there. If anything she's the one taking advantage of Neelix in order to escape the drudgery of her own life. She cares for him, but it's obvious from the eventual outcome that she doesn't really see him as a life partner so much as an opportunity.