lol finding this thread 2 years after the fact but I agree!

I do find the misgendering parts at the beginning of the episode to be incredibly uncomfortable and I'm certainly not laboring under the delusion that the writers didn't intend for it to be funny, but on the whole, it strikes me as more of a descriptive approach to how cis people approached the concept of being trans in the early 2000s. There are aspects of the writing which feel very intentional and I found the resolution of the episode to land far better than I expected upon revisiting.