I'm not non-binary, but I'm trans and in a lot of queer spaces (or at least I used to be before the whole global pandemic business, but I digress). That being said, what Adira goes through this season, opening up about their identity and finding a family of other lgbtq+ people, that they aren't related to, very much reflects my own experiences and that of non-binary people I know. Just a lot less bigotry and negative reactions and more undead ghost boyfriends. And as far as portraying that bigotry goes, since Adira mostly interacts with Discovery's crew, that would've meant casting main characters or Starfleet personnel in a negative, and frankly in a workplace unprofessional, light, which they obviously wouldn't want to do. Don't get me wrong, I wouldn't have minded seeing more of Adira's pre-Discovery journey and discovering their gender stuff, but due to lower episode numbers we only have so many episodes and the season was pretty packed as is. And frankly, I'm not sure how much I'd trust the Discovery writing staff to pull that off well, especially since internal coming outs, as the name suggest, tend to be a largely internal process that could be hard to portray in a visual medium. IIRC there's a non-binary writer currently working on a DS9 novel, maybe getting them to write an Adira backstory novel would be neat.
