I've always said the great thing about The Orville's Moclan storyline is the fact that it isn't a direct analogy for any LGBT issue on Earth. That's part of what makes it so interesting to explore and why the show has repeatedly struck gold with these thoughtful episodes. That's partly why I'm surprised to see reviews seeing this as a simple trans story when it's far from that.
Consider this: at this moment in time in the West (but particularly Anglosphere countries), we have a mass social contagion of teenage girls identifying as non-binary or as male, only to desist within a decade. Some of these girls never go as far as hormones or surgery, so detransition isn't too much of a problem. Yet many in their early teens are put on an affirmative pathway leading to permanent and irreversible physical changes up to and including double mastectomy and even phalloplasty the moment they're old enough to consent. Instead of addressing the toxic culture that leads tomboys and girls who don't fit in to think they're actually boys, we surgically change them into approximations of boys. Once they hit their early twenties and are in a different peer group environment without the influences and stressors that drove their transition, increasing numbers of these girls are realizing that they made a mistake and reclaming their femalehood. Yet it's not as easy as the procedure shown in this episode. As relevant and hard-hitting as this episode is now, it's going to look brave and prescient in just a few years' time when the class-action lawsuits of detransitioned young women start hitting the headlines.
Topa's detransition is also a great analogy for the kids out there with Munchhausen's by Proxy parents who have deliberately raised their child as the opposite sex due to the desire to have a trans child. This is increasingly happening under the radar - abusive parents (often the mother) do it for social media clout, because they wanted a girl but got a boy (or vice versa), or as a way to get back at their ex-partner. Topa discovering that she was forcibly transitioned as an infant and brought up as the opposite sex purely to satisfy her zealot parent's gender ideology is a powerful scene that recalls the case of David Reimer.
It's an incredible episode with stellar performances, writing and direction, somehow even more powerful than the season opener which deftly addressed the topic of suicide. Peter Macon is just fantastic as usual, Adrienne Palicki is really great too, and Imani Pullum is to be highly commended in a difficult role under heavy makeup.
Consider this: at this moment in time in the West (but particularly Anglosphere countries), we have a mass social contagion of teenage girls identifying as non-binary or as male, only to desist within a decade. Some of these girls never go as far as hormones or surgery, so detransition isn't too much of a problem. Yet many in their early teens are put on an affirmative pathway leading to permanent and irreversible physical changes up to and including double mastectomy and even phalloplasty the moment they're old enough to consent. Instead of addressing the toxic culture that leads tomboys and girls who don't fit in to think they're actually boys, we surgically change them into approximations of boys. Once they hit their early twenties and are in a different peer group environment without the influences and stressors that drove their transition, increasing numbers of these girls are realizing that they made a mistake and reclaming their femalehood. Yet it's not as easy as the procedure shown in this episode. As relevant and hard-hitting as this episode is now, it's going to look brave and prescient in just a few years' time when the class-action lawsuits of detransitioned young women start hitting the headlines.
Topa's detransition is also a great analogy for the kids out there with Munchhausen's by Proxy parents who have deliberately raised their child as the opposite sex due to the desire to have a trans child. This is increasingly happening under the radar - abusive parents (often the mother) do it for social media clout, because they wanted a girl but got a boy (or vice versa), or as a way to get back at their ex-partner. Topa discovering that she was forcibly transitioned as an infant and brought up as the opposite sex purely to satisfy her zealot parent's gender ideology is a powerful scene that recalls the case of David Reimer.
It's an incredible episode with stellar performances, writing and direction, somehow even more powerful than the season opener which deftly addressed the topic of suicide. Peter Macon is just fantastic as usual, Adrienne Palicki is really great too, and Imani Pullum is to be highly commended in a difficult role under heavy makeup.