Is Janice Lester Transgender?

[Winter]

No!

A while back I posted the question of whether Disney's Ariel and The Beast character arcs could be seen as an allegory for being transgender. The reason for that is that their journey, especially Ariel's, had a number of parallels to someone being trans (discomfort from the body one is born into or viewing it as a curse, a desire to become part of some other group that you feel you more closely identify with and a fear of being forced to act a certain way that does not match your view of yourself).

Most responses didn't see it that way which is fine this was just how I viewed things. However, there are some characters who REALLY shouldn't be viewed as such as it does more harm then good. Enter Janice Lester from Turnabout Intruder.

The reason I'm against the idea of Lester being seen as trans is all down to the reasons she was written the way she was. One thing to remember about Gene Roddenberry is that while he was ahead of his time in terms of wanting to treat everyone as equals regardless of their race he was, plain and simple, outlandishly sexist. Even for his time he was seen as over the top. How bad was it, let me put it this way, the episode we got is the SUBDUED Version of the story. They actually had to Toned It Down from what it was originally was it was THAT Bad!

Now it should be noted that he was going through a rather nasty divorce at the time so combine that with his already low opinion of women and you can see why this episode turned out the way it did. It should also be noted that Roddenberry DID recognize his failings and stated that he regretted writing this episode and that he did try to improve over the years which is more then can be said for others who seem to double down on their awful behavior.

But Roddenberry's mindset NEEDS to be taken into account when it comes to Lester and this episode. Roddenberry was sexist and, to quote Leonard Nimoy who was quoting what Roddenberry had told him

"His goal was to prove, quote, 'That women, although they claim equality, cannot really do things as well, under certain circumstances, as a man' — like the command function, for example... What he set out to prove was that this lady, given command of the ship, would blow it. That's really what the script was about. Just that simple."

As such when Lester says "rather be dead then live with the indignity of being a woman" that's Roddenberry talking not the character. He wanted to prove that women were not as good as men and so created a straw women to prove his point. This is not a transman who feels trapped in the body he was born into this is a sexist man venting his frustration against women at the time and it was so bad that Roddenberry felt ashamed of writing it later on.

[CharlesPhipps]

My assumption with the canon of ENTERPRISE and other Prequels that Janice Lester must have suffered some sort of radiation blast, alien spore, or something that made her feel an incredible sense of paranoia about sexism despite the fact the future is.

I don't feel she's transgender because it seemed very much about his career.

[stryke]

Right, to me Janice Lester is just mentally deranged. It anything saying she's acting like she is due to being transgender is insulting to actual trans people.

[McAvoy]

I am waiting on the giant post about Odo and his race bring gendered when they really can be anything they want.

[Frustration]

One of the big problems with the way Odo's character was handled was that they gave him the psychology of a human being, complete with pair-bonding and sexuality and gender and so on. If he was truly only imitating the researcher who dealt with him to create his appearance, he wouldn't identify as male. More to the point, he wouldn't "fall in love" with another individual, and there'd be no reason for him to have a special kind of friendship with women specifically.

They sort of addressed this problem by suggesting that Odo's people were once humanoids who engineered their bizarre form, but they never really made his background plausible. Earth: Final Conflict, for all its faults, had aliens that were referred to as male but played by women with extensive prosthetics that made them androgynous, and somewhat unsettling.

The whole "rubber forehead" complaint about Star Trek is an inevitable result of special effects budgets. Characterization is an entirely different level of responsibility.