[x] Jonathan Frakes has criticized the episode The Outcast, believing that the decision to cast only women as the J’naii was a mistake, and that if Soren had been played by a man, the message of the episode would have been much stronger.

I am female.

I was born that way. I have had those feelings, those longings, all of my life. It is not unnatural. I am not sick because I feel this way. I do not need to be helped. I do not need to be cured. What I need, and what all of those who are like me need, is your understanding.And your compassion. We have not injured you in any way. And yet we are scorned and attacked. And all because we are different.

What we do is no different from what you do. We talk, and laugh. We complain about work. And we wonder about growing old. We talk about our families, and we worry about the future. And we cry with each other when things seem hopeless.

All of the loving things that you do with each other, that is what we do. And for that, we are called misfits, and deviants, and criminals. What right do you have to punish us? What right do you have to change us? What makes you think you can dictate how people love each other?

5.17 | The Outcast