It was sort of hard for me to watch this episode because I have gender dysphoria myself and I'm kind of sick of hearing about this topic in the media constantly. I liked it a lot, but I think it kind of missed some of the more interesting philosophical points. What was so great about Measure of a Man (which this episode was clearly homaging) was that it did delve into the metaphysics questions.

There is actually a real-world case similar to the dilemma in this episode, (David Reimer)[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Reimer]. He was born male, but had severe genital defects and doctors chose to put him on estrogen, give him sex reassignment surgery, and raise him as female because they thought that would be easier for him. Eventually as an adult he experienced severe depression and eventually committed suicide, insisting that he was a male and that he had been mutilated at birth. This case is often viewed as evidence that gender identity is built into the brain and is therefore immutable. There's also a lot of evidence building that the male and female brains are pretty strongly dimorphic in certain areas. So I would be interested to know what the Maclan sex reassignment surgery was actually like. Did it actually change the brain, or just the sex characteristics of the body? Because if it was only the body, I would imagine there would be an awful lot of sex-changed Maclan males out there who wanted to turn themselves back into females. And if it changed the brain itself, that's an awful lot more like a lobotomy, which makes it seem a LOT more barbaric.

I also thought it was odd that they portrayed the Moclan society as being violent and unemotional, presumably due to the lack of women. I feel like this is a pretty stereotyped view of gender behavior. Yes, males tend to be more aggressive, but there are also a wide variety of male personalities out there, including artists and writers. I thought it was especially odd to portray it that way considering that there are apparently plenty of Maclan females out there, just with artificial sex changes performed to make them look male. I thought it was kind of a cop-out that the whole thing turned into a "girl power" message about how the one female happened to be a genius author, and Alara's physical strength being somehow relevant to the ethical dilemma.

Given the way the show has handled issues like zoos and legalizing pot, I was sort of expecting it to make an actual statement about transgenderism instead of pussying out at the last minute. I think maybe a little too much respect was shown to the Moclan traditions, something that wouldn't have happened in Star Trek.

That said I did really like the comedy this time.