I wasn’t going to watch the “Roseanne” reboot for the same reason Samuel L. Jackson’s character in “Pulp Fiction” says he’ll never learn whether sewer rat tastes like pumpkin pie. But when I read that people on both the right and the left were incensed about the gender-nonconforming grandchild of the title character, I decided to take a cautious peek back into Lanford, Ill., where the beloved sitcom characters of the 1990s have been resurrected, in Donald Trump’s America, a little worse for wear but still devoted to one another.

My colleague Roxane Gay suggested that, despite the series’ charm, it wasn’t worth the effort to watch it, because of the way it normalizes Mr. Trump and endorses the false narrative that it was white working-class families who elected him. At the same time, I’m reluctant to conclude that the popularity of the new “Roseanne” proves growing support for the president any more than the imminent reboot of “Lost in Space” suggests a national yearning for a trip to Alpha Centauri.

But the controversy around the grandchild, Mark, drew my attention. Nine years old, he wears skirts to school, paints his nails and on the whole prefers “colors that pop.” And yet, Mark is not transgender — he says, quite firmly, that he’s a boy. When Roseanne tells him that you have to pick your battles in life, and she asks exactly how important this all is to him, Mark replies, bravely and succinctly, “It’s important.”

So here’s a boy who loves being femme, who’s willing to suffer what the world has in store for him as a result, but who we are told clearly is not trans, and whose interest in glitter and miniskirts, according to him, has nothing to do with actual gender dysphoria.