Headscratchers / Star Trek: The Next Generation S5E17 "The Outcast"

• If the J’naii are meant to be androgynous, why are they only played by female actors?
  • Because that's the way that J'naii look. Incidentally, if you look in the background of the trial scene, it appears that one or two extras are male.
    • Jonathan Frakes stated that it would have been more interesting if some of the J'naii, and Soren in particular, had been played by male actors.
      • YMMV
• If the J’naii are meant to be androgynous, why are they still able to choose a gender at any point? How does that work from a biological standpoint?
  • It's apparently the case that they're hermophrodites, so J'naii identifying as male or female doesn't mean that their physical sex changes.
• Why are only binary genders presented? The writers clearly didn't consider that gender identity and biological sex are two completely different things. If a member of the J'naii can chose their gender, can they be transgender or genderqueer?
  • It appears more that J'naii like Soran are basically transgender, as their gender identity is different from what's socially assigned and what follows their biological sex (which is a mix of both).
  • The writers weren't actually trying to address gender identity at all. The whole thing is a metaphor for homosexuality, which was a hot-button issue at the time. Gender identity didn't start getting widely discussed until later, after homosexual acceptance had become more mainstream.
  • This also misses that separating the concept of gender identity and biological sex is one of the core premises of the situation. J'naii have a single biological sex, neither male or female, and a nonbinary gender identity is the societal norm. Identifying as a gender at all, and attraction to physical gender traits, are the "deviant" behaviors that Soran is persecuted for.
• Why are only heterosexual couplings mentioned? The episode never even mentions or considers homosexuality, bisexuality, pansexuality, or asexuality.
  • They probably didn't directly address homosexuality because they didn't think they could get away with it without Executive Meddling and chose to address it only through a central metaphor. They didn't address bisexuality, pansexuality, or asexuality because those were not well-known concepts let alone accepted in 1992. The LGBTQ movement progressed one step at a time.
  • Gene Roddenberry himself tried for years to slip casual references to gay people into the show but was constantly being shut down. We wouldn't see any actual same-sex couples in the franchise until "Rejoined" in 1995, and the first same-sex couple without a sci-fi explanation for its existence wasn't until Sulu and his husband in 2016.
• How much of Soren's curiosity over male and female genders is legitimate, and how much of it is just a facade? In the first half of the show, she acts like she knows nothing about males and females, yet later she admits that her society had male and female genders in its history. And then she admits that she identifies as female and has known others who identify as male. She must have already known something about maleness and femaleness if she recognized those genders in herself and others.
  • She does sound a bit like a closeted gay person who's talking to other gay people for the first time (particularly back when this episode was aired): she's heard of the concept basically, but is starving for details on something she's never been given proper information about by her society. Also, the crew are aliens and may approach gender roles differently from the way gendered J'naii would, not least because being gendered is normal in their societies and they've grown up with it, making the subject more interesting. (Imagine our closeted gay person talking to other gay people for the first time and they're from a planet where everyone is gay.)
  • Please understand this was 1992. It was already a breakthrough enough for the TNG writers and crew to come up with an LGBTQ reference in public broadcasting. Though the LGBTQ Movement was slowly making progress at least in the West, it was still a very sensitive and borderline forbidden topic especially when religious and political conservatives had a lot of influence in the media despite the Star Trek Universe's attempts to be inclusive to the best of their abilities.