Complying with tradition, social norms, rejection of other expressions of sexuality or gender than those held by the governing peoples. Essentially The Outcast flipped the real life situation on its head - what if binary gender and heterosexuality was the identity which was rejected by the conservative establishment?
There's no excuse not to.
Not everything is about in-universe logic. Trans actors face enough barriers as it is without adding "sorry, you look too trans for a trans part" into the mix.
This would be one problem in showing a trans character in the process to transitioning. The physical part would be (could be) remarkable quick, although the psychological transitioning probably would be months or even years.
Would you reject a trans actor playing a not trans character?
Like hiring Patrick Stewart to play Shakespeare's Othello?
Not directly, more your ideas sparked my own.
An episode of Trek where every character was played by a trans actor except for the trans character would also be ok.
What psychological transition? Trans people are the gender they identify as, it's just that their body doesn't match. Transitioning makes it so the outside matches the inside. A trans woman is psychologically female the second she's born.
Why would you need to show that process? Just mention in dialogue that a character is trans and maybe deal with their struggles occasionally. Transitioning is a fairly short part of a trans person's life. Usually 2 or 3 years depending on genetics.
A trans woman was never a man.
Of course not. Trans people's lives do not revolve around their transition. That's just the part that cis people are obsessed with for some reason.
That's not the same thing at all. Minorities don't get as many opportunities as the majority. Especially in the case of trans people, where there are plenty of actors and actresses but almost no roles.
No, like black face. Are you fine with that? Because you're fine with "trans face", something that should never happen again.
What you're actually saying is that I'm the future people will be forced to fit into a standard of beauty that's purely focused on cisgender people and that everyone will be forced to comply with that standard. Given that even by the 23rd century, humans have started to delight in their differences such attitudes will be long dead.
Trans people have already played non-trans characters because there aren't enough trans characters being written. That's fine though because there has never been a history of trans people oppressing and erasing cis people. Nothing is being taken from cis people because 99.99999999999% of all roles are for cis characters and played by cis actors. Maybe a handful of trans people will play a cis character, but cis actors aren't being prevented from getting roles.
It's the difference between a white man doing black face for humor and a black actor doing white face. One has a long sad history of denying black actors roles and racism, the other isn't.
I have no problem with that. It's already happened. Female actors have played male roles, Cate Blanchett has played Bob Dylan and Linda Hunt won an Oscar for playing a man in Year of Living Dangerously.
Love that film. That was back from 1982. Dang, 35 years ago.
That's a different thing. He's not playing Othello in blackface. They've "flipped the script" by switching the race of all the characters.
Nope, for the reasons already outlined by @Awesome Possum.
From the people I've spoken to, it's normally the specific surgery rather than the whole transition.
