Star Trek Social Club

All I know is content in general from major entities do not appeal much to me. There is a lot of it though and things will show up that are good im sure.

who is "most star trek viewers"?

Ghibli might be a more interesting case study - Miyazaki repeatedly said that he did not write his stories with an audience in mind besides himself, but his movies quite clearly have universal appeal. His stories are quite clearly grounded in his own culture, but they touch on universal human experiences.

However, there are definitely stories with a specific audience in mind that do not have universal appeal (e.g., Transformers smut fanfic) though generally authors are aware of this.

I think there are also folks who write stories with an idea in mind of universal appeal, but do not understand themselves enough to actually do so - things they take for granted as "common sense" may not actually be human universals. Or, because they fail to say anything at all in their work, it ends up fading into the background. (I don't believe in sociopolitically "neutral" works, we are all shaped by our beliefs and cultures).

These works aren't necessarily bad, either- I think Andy Weir has said a few times in interviews that his works aren't meant to be "political", but the two that I've read (The Martian, Project Hail Mary) are both a sort of "sci fi optimism" about people from different nations coming together to solve a problem. That may be "common sense" to some people, but it is certainly NOT a universal (even if I do share the outlook that people of Earth should work together to help each other regardless of national boundaries).

the audience ends up being (I’ll allow myself this just once) men rather than women

I know Trek has a rep here for the fans all being guys—specifically guys who can't get a date—but I don't know if it holds up to much scrutiny. The campaigns to rescue TOS were spearheaded by Bjo Trimble and I believe the participants were a pretty mixed crowd, including a lot of women who appreciated good sci-fi in addition to those who thought that—in the immortal words of Isaac Asimov's daughter—"Mr. Spock is dreamy." I haven't been to a lot of cons, but the ones I've seen felt like pretty mixed crowds as well.

the average viewer is, well, just that—the average person in the country where it’s broadcast

Isn't the average in most countries a roughly equal split of men and women?

My mother and I had very little in common outside of us both liking Star Trek. It was the bridge that allowed us to reconnect after I hadn't spoken to her in 12 years.

My wife also enjoys it, and my Dad, brother and sister aren't fussed about it at all.

So, from my immediate family, all of the fans are women.

I think the closest thing to that is Harry Potter

Regardless of JK's bigotry, Harry Potter just isn't that good, it's kids books that never evolve beyond that, that makes it easy reading and good for fanslop, but it's really a bunch of stories where the good guys are good because they are good and the bad guys are bad because they are bad, there is no complexity or real world morality, it's just slop of kids that people who never read books for adults like. Which makes it good to make movieslop from.

do you write with a specific audience in mind

Have we learnt nothing from the SnyderCut? imagining a fan to make your movie for makes for bad movies.

Can there be stories that anyone—regardless of gender, ethnicity, or country—can enjoy?

Sure - there are plenty of global mega-hits, from the MCU to Star Wars to The Fast and the Furious.

But I don't think you can (or should, really) separate a work from the cultural context that led to its creation.

There are a lot of unknowns in this question, and assumptions filling in for facts about audiences (intended as well as actual viewership), writers/producers — and the gender ratio of each group. Throwing international, culturally diverse audiences into the mix doesn't do much to focus the subject.

There's a lot to unpick, especially when replies to comments show you're also implicitly concerned with the "anti-woke" crowd and their perceived gender majority. As well as their outsized public voice (ie, loudness) compared to their actual numbers, as @ValueSubtracted@startrek.website says.

Personally, and therefore also based in assumption, I don't see Trek as written for an "average viewer" vs an actual, predominantly male audience. I've only observed Trek viewers to be a fair mix of all gender identities, and the show's appeal to such a wide spectrum must come from the show itself, as written and produced.

But the individual shows must also be considered in isolation. Where shows like Discovery and SFA have celebrated woke (ie, humanist, progressive) values, I very much perceive the SNW show runners as a gang of old, male fans who somehow have been allowed to create the world's most expensive, regressive fanfic. But that's me.