Gender and TFs-- Hasbro's official explanation

[Beastbot]

This seems to have been glossed over in a lot of Botcon reports, but I thought it was pretty important news, so I thought it worth posting here.

During their story building panel at Botcon, Hasbro laid out the official, canon explanation for why there are female Transformers, but why they aren't nearly as many in number as male TFs.

Firstly, TFs do not reproduce sexually, and they do not actually have sexes. "Male" and "female" are more our conceptions of them because they have characterisitics we associate with certain sexes. TFs are an asexual race.

Secondly, the reason there are so few "female" TFs is pretty cool, in my opinion. Of the original 13 Transformers, only one, Solus Prime (forger of many of the legendary weapons the other 13 have), had a "female" body type. Those original 13 were prototypes for all the Transformers to come after (for example, another of those 13 was the first Combiner, another the first Beastformer, etc.), and so roughly 1/13th of the Transformer population is "female".

Thoughts?

[WorpeX]

Pfft. It's about 50/50 in our own little RP universe here. Explanation makes sense, although I still wish their were more.

[JazZeke]

I dunno, I inferred the no gender thing was only for the current continuity. Because there are definitely genders in other continuities.

[Beastbot]

I dunno, I inferred the no gender thing was only for the current continuity. Because there are definitely genders in other continuities.

The Thirteen are multiversal singularities (the only exception to this is the movieverse)-- i.e., they simultaneously exist in every Transformers universe and they can never truly die. Thus, this explanation retroactively applies to every non-movie continuity. Granted, some things certainly won't fit, as is the case with every retcon.

[Alak]

Pfft. It's about 50/50 in our own little RP universe here. Explanation makes sense, although I still wish their were more.

LOL! If you just look at the OCs alone, females outnumber males 11-6. I think the 1/13 theory is kind of cool although I'm sure if someone did the actual math then that explanation won't hold up. As for gender, I would say that could be plausible, except that every relationship we've seen so far has been male-female coupling. Same-sex coupling only exists in fandom and I think writers just want to avoid the controversy of not including homosexual relationships by claiming Transformers are genderless. Not only are femmes given feminine structures, poses, and voice actors, but they're referred to as "she" and "her". Detractors to the TF gender will say that the human mind is incapable of thinking of something as genderless. I say disagree. Nature alone is living proof that every species with two blatantly different anatomies consist of two genders. Species that are hermaphroditic appear uniform in phenotype. Mammals, reptiles, birds, and most insects follow this pattern. It's easy to recognize genders in the Transformers universe.

Now, just because they have genders doesn't mean they reproduce via sexual means. This I can understand.

[NaitoKage]

Heh, 50/50.. I believe I had Glowstick point out how odd it was that there was a collection of so many females on that planet on one of the episodes.. and horrified his crew when he mentioned Steelclaw and Sonar could just as easily build a kid with some spare parts and jumper cables, though considering how many females are on this forum they can select whatever purpose they like for explaining why there are so many females for that specific universe.


This explanation has been gone over before, originally transformers was a boy's toy line, so they ditched the idea of female robots until that one cartoon episode.. In the case of Arcee you have more or less three ways of how she was built, just appearing for the movie, being rebuilt because feminists were whining about cybertronians being sexist(Which is the silliest thing..), or IDW with.. forced genderization by Jhiaxus.. which turned out pretty badly for him with a psycho hormonal Arcee.

As for transformer reproduction, there have been many methods shown in various canon.. Either building one and using something like the matrix,vector sigma,All spark or whatever you had floating around to bring it to life. Comics had Budding like a single celled organism.

As for reasons why you'll see things like romance or..lust in some versions of transformers is rather simple as well, the writers have been trying to convey emotions onto robots, but mostly all they know is human responses and acts, thus Silverbolt and Blackarachnia, Arcee and.. everyone,Thunderpunch/Chromia and..everyone, and Octane and his porno magazines from G1. At the end of the day, it's easier to relate to a human response when your audience is human.

And yeah, Alak pretty much hit the homosexuality stuff on the head, I'm pretty sure 90% of parents in america would blow a gasket if something like, well heck one of the comics I've drawn of a friend's character flirting with another (http://i304.photobucket.com/albums/nn18 ... rChee2.png), if that was in the tv show we wouldn't have Transformers anymore.. But that is just for America, in Japan.. Armada Shockwave/Tidelwave ended up revealing himself to be openly gay by the end of Superlink for Galvatron, complete with floating hearts.

The REAL reason Hasbro pulled this 1/13 percent thing out their tailpipe is simple. They don't want to make 50/50 for female characters, they are trying to produce a toy line of robots in war, you wont see 50/50 for ANY toy line with a focus like that. Heck.. you wont see that in the real military. This in the long run makes it easier for the cartoon producers because they don't want to make original models, the cartoon is a toy commercial designed to inspire kids to buy the toy to make money. Making characters they can't sell is a waste of money in time and design unless they're only used in one episode or something a kid wouldn't want (Like humans). And while I know Arcee doesn't fit that explanation perfectly, originally there WAS going to be an Arcee toy released, just like Unicron.

[Nurann]

I dunno, I inferred the no gender thing was only for the current continuity. Because there are definitely genders in other continuities.

Frankly, the impression I got from the panel was "this is our official stance now and we want to make this canon, so please stop trying to kill each other over our product line and buy more shiny toys!"

...but mostly all they know is human responses and acts, thus Silverbolt and Blackarachnia, Arcee and.. everyone...

Thank you. It was the freakin' Eighties when the franchise started, and the writers are still only human. This debate is rapidly becoming a pet peeve of mine for this very reason. Don't get me wrong; I love some of the deep, philosophical conversations Transformers has inspired, but this one just tends to get way out of hand.

[NaitoKage]

Well yeah, and essentially the writers just see this as a job. They don't write for the same product all the time, they're just hired to make up or convey a story and often may not even KNOW the past history of what they are doing or just throw that out all together. It's not star trek, or star wars, or.. anything else. The only thing holding all these series together is a few old ideas and some plastic toys which first came from a few failed toy lines in japan. So obsession on continuity for the canon is just.. pointless.

[Beastbot]

The REAL reason Hasbro pulled this 1/13 percent thing out their tailpipe is simple. They don't want to make 50/50 for female characters, they are trying to produce a toy line of robots in war, you wont see 50/50 for ANY toy line with a focus like that. Heck.. you wont see that in the real military. This in the long run makes it easier for the cartoon producers because they don't want to make original models, the cartoon is a toy commercial designed to inspire kids to buy the toy to make money. Making characters they can't sell is a waste of money in time and design unless they're only used in one episode or something a kid wouldn't want (Like humans). And while I know Arcee doesn't fit that explanation perfectly, originally there WAS going to be an Arcee toy released, just like Unicron.

Oh, I understand the real reason for it. I'm just glad we finally have a canonical explanation for it by Hasbro now.

[Aesir]

so by bestial forms, you mean characters like G1 Ravage and Laserbeak rather than those with Beast alt modes (like the Dinobots and Insecticons etc) right?

[Beastbot]

I don't know, we weren't shown any picture of the First Beastformer or anything like, they just said there was one and he was one of the 13. I'd imagine the First Beastformer wouldn't have an organic alt mode, at the very least-- either technorganic like the Cybertron Jungle Planet TFs or fully mechanical.

[G1990]

Well; In theory Yes, They don't need gender like at all. Please pardon my ignorance on the Matter of Transformes reproduction system since the only notion of reproduction I've seen it's on the Live Action movies when they use the all spark to give live to product placement...I mean other robots. Or while in the Deception base when Tranformers are being hatched like alien eggs