Actually that’s what acceptance is. On later years Majel realized she shouldn’t accept it, and stopped. And good for her. Acceptance isn’t necessarily permanent. But at the time casting Nichel had nothing to with protecting anything and everything to do with trying to make the cast more diverse. Same reason he cast Takei. Gene didn’t die that early, he was 70. And in the 60s a powerful successful man cheating was not salacious, it was a given. Especially in Hollywood. The casting couch was already assumed. Nope sorry, your dog ain’t hunting.
Like I said-go check out some of the interviews both of those women did after Roddenberry’s death-especially what they say about the way he treated them both like property, and how much they quietly resented it.
Yes, the casting couch was assumed-it still is, except thanks to guys like Bill Clinton and other politicians we know that the couch is used by men in all positions-pun intended-of money and power-nothing much has changed. And the woman still expects a specific reward-in the case of an actress, she wants an important role/top billing-which was what Nichelle got by giving it up to the horndog producer/writer of that series-she played the game to get what she wanted. And yes, affairs like that sold magazines in that pre-internet era-like now, the more well known and wealthy the guy the more interest there was in all the nasty, delicious details-which is why it was worth a lot of money or favors from the guy to the woman to keep her shut up.
Roddenberry dying at 70 was an outlier-since his death was brought on by years of using/abusing cocaine and methamphetamine-and downers-it ruins your heart and strokes you out-like what happens to rock stars. He would have not had any concept of “woke”-but he would have wanted to please the PC du jour-equal opportunity for races ala equal employment, etc and equality for women because of the womens’ lib stuff-as long as he did that and got in good with the equal employment faction, the rest was about the money and fame-he did not seem to be altruistic.
Stupid stuff, but it wasn’t due to any woke ideology-that ridiculous s*** didn’t even exist until antifa and other extreme groups like the believe all women, blah, blah.