Final frontiers: “Conversion therapy” and “Star Trek”

By Neal Schindler

My wife, a longtime fan of “Star Trek: The Next Generation,” is introducing me to its wonders. During the last few months, I’ve watched several episodes that struck me as particularly relevant to issues we poor 21st-century humans are still grappling with. The most recent of these, “The Outcast,” comes across as quite forward-thinking for 1992, when it first aired. The episode not only deals compassionately and thoughtfully with matters of gender identity — hardly a buzzword in early-’90s America — but also makes a powerful case against “conversion therapy,” the widely discredited practice of trying to “convert” gay or lesbian counseling clients to heterosexuality.

“The Outcast” revolves around the interactions of the Starship Enterprise’s crew with the J’naii, a race whose culture and society don’t recognize the concept of gender. The J’naii can be seen as agender — another term that wasn’t exactly in general circulation 24 years ago — or all of the same gender, which corresponds to neither the human concept of maleness nor the idea of femaleness. Yet one member of the J’naii, Soren, develops romantic feelings for the Enterprise’s resident “man’s man,” William Riker. Riker isn’t exactly the crew member most likely to fall for an outwardly androgynous humanoid, as he himself readily admits. Yet fall he does, and the forbidden romance that ensues gets both Riker and Soren in hot water, though Soren faces much heavier punishment at the hands of the J’naii.

As Riker and Soren grow closer, Soren confides in him that she, unlike most J’naii, identifies as female. She tells the sad story of a fellow J’naii she knew as a child who identified as male and was mocked, bullied, and ultimately brainwashed through a sinister-sounding technique called “psychotectic therapy.” J’naii officials describe this supposed therapy as helpful, since it resolves the “confusion” of male – or female-identified J’naii and allows them to conform to their society’s strict beliefs and rules about gender.

Present-day organizations such as Restored Hope Network similarly frame the “conversion therapy” they provide as a way for people who “struggle” with same-sex attraction to find a sense of inner peace and, not incidentally, to get right with God. While there may indeed be individuals who see their same-sex attraction as a problem and wish, of their own free will, to change it, “conversion therapy” has a deeply problematic history of being forced on adolescents. Transgender teens have had to endure forced “conversion therapy” as well, sometimes with tragic results.

Riker sees “psychotectic therapy” as a human rights violation, which is also how President Obama conceptualizes “conversion therapy.” Yet the Prime Directive, the central principle that guides the Enterprise in its space explorations, dictates that no crew member may “interfere with the healthy development of alien life and culture.” What “healthy development” means is not always so easy to determine, of course.

Every so often, an outcast from a planet that the Enterprise crew considers terribly oppressive hitches a ride on the ship as an asylum-seeker. But the Enterprise’s mission isn’t to cruise the universe picking up people who don’t fit in on their home worlds. We 21st-century earthlings, in contrast, have not only the right but an obligation to help shape the society that surrounds us.

One of science fiction’s most valuable qualities is its ability to present modern problems in a fresh, provocative light. By making Soren’s “crime” a turn toward the gender binary, rather than away from it, “The Outcast” turns the tables on our current culture wars about gender identity and LGBT rights. By the end of the episode, many viewers are likely to share with Riker the conviction that J’naii society’s repressiveness is the problem, rather than Soren’s gender identity, which she has experienced from a young age and which, as she points out, harms no one.

These are ideas worth considering in light of the Republican Party’s recently minted 2016 platform, which states that “Our laws and our government’s regulations should recognize marriage as the union of one man and one woman” and rails against legal protections that allow transgender men and women to use public facilities that match the gender with which they identify. We don’t need to live by fear and legislate conformity; we don’t have to be like the J’naii. We’re better than that.