Dear Readers,
The episode with the aliens of no gender. At first glance it would appear to possibly be about how people would deal with other people who are different and my first thought upon the first time I ever saw this episode ever was "this has to be about illegal aliens and immigrants". But it absolutely isn't and I don't know why I ever thought that when the issue to begin with was about gender. What really has to be talked about is the ending. The question we were asked in class was whether or not it was a cop out and while my answer could take a sociological approach (The effects the people around the person have on the persons decisions) I will attempt a psychological approach (The effect of an individual's mind on their decisions). My source shall be an article written by the APA (seen here: http://www.apa.org/helpcenter/sexual-orientation.aspx). Now there are a few reasons I thought the end was not a cop out, for example "most people experience little or no sense of choice about their sexual orientation" which is all caused by nature and nurture of an individual. However the keyword there is "most" which is because people studying homosexuality have no idea what causes it which means there could be several different ways for its causation. Perhaps one of these ways is choice at least on a subconscious level and no longer is it so insane that some therapy would make Soran the same as the rest of her species (having no orientation) but created a perfect balance to the rest of the episode which showed Soran being a functioning member of her society (despite what would have been discrimination against her had she been open) and her coming out speech (which show case the thoughts of many liberals as to why homosexuals are happy as they are, require no cure and don't choose to be that way), thereby not making the end a cop out as the writers simply show cased a rebuttal which all good arguments do however instead of choosing a winner they allow the watcher to choose a winner and hand power to the viewer. I would like to state now that I am not saying that everything I just wrote is necessarily true as the jury is still out on causation but it is a theory which I believe fits the episode very well.
Thank you for reading,
Mike Hand
You have very good ideas, but a complex way of getting them across, like you are thinking faster than you can think. Can you re-phrase your main argument such that it is easier to follow?
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