discussion of DS9 and transgender subtext
TLDR: As a trans man I related to Odo building himself out of the men around him, and that's pretty cool!
The weird thing about DS9 is that, although the writers had no such intention, it's surprisingly good at offering LGBT+ rep. As a trans man, I found a lot of Jadzia and Odo moments to actually be incredible rep without any of the mishandling you might see a cis writer commit had they included this rep intentionally. Whether it be Jadzia correcting people who misgender her, or Odo mimicking the men around him, the amount of trans subtext in the show almost felt intentional at times. I think that's what made me connect with Odo so quickly. In the episode where we first meet Dr. Mora, it's made visually obvious to us as viewers that Odo copied Mora's hair style. I knew this was because he was a changeling and because of Mora's role in Odo's early life, but as a trans man it felt significant. He reminded me of the ways I've built myself out of the men around me over the years -- the way I've seen a man on the street's walk and tried to mimick it, or the way I've tried to mimick the wsy a man I admire dresses, or maybe the way he carries himself -- it was an episode that affirmed for me that Odo had undergone these experiences and knew what it was like. In a later episode, we see a younger Odo and younger Kira interacting on the station prior to the federation take over. He starts the conversation with her in a way he has seen other men do, and mistakenly makes her believe he is flirting with her. He's directly mimicking the mannerisms of men he's observed, which reasserted this feeling of transness for me.
A lot of people wish Odo had been romantically involved with Quark, or simply that he hadn't been involved with Kira at all, but leave his potential existence as a queer person at this. In fact, most of why I'm choosing to write this is because I've only ever seen people discuss Jadzia's transgender subtext.
It could be argued that Odo is poor representation because his transness, or lack thereof, is linked to his race. As a changeling he technically has no assigned gender -- if the star trek writers had declared all changelings as trans/enby rep I think many of us would be annoyed because of the commonness of claiming aliens, monsters, and the like as enby rep rather than providing human nonbinary characters. This being said, none of the other changelings seem to cling to gender like Odo does. He identifies as a man constantly in the show despite his race not seeming to have a gender binary. In this sense, I honestly don't think it would he unreasonable to argue him as canonically trans, but maybe that's taking it too far. The way he clings to gender could also be argued as just a piece of him clinging to solids' cultures. Regardless, as a trans man I connected with Odo very strongly throughout the series, and wanted to share a bit of my perspective because I've yet to see anyone else discuss this.
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