Boy and Girl transformers exist from a marketing perspective, though not always an in-universe perspective.Ā The existence of gender in transformers is questionable at best, vitriolic at worst.Ā However from a toy-marketing perspective, there are definitely female transformers.Ā These female transformers use the human-gender coded female pronouns on their box and wiki descriptions, and if they appear in a cartoon, they will have a female voice actor.Ā Female transformers toys and characters are created so that female human viewers can hopefully have someone to identify with who looks/sounds more like them, and to act as role models not only for female viewers, but to all viewers.Ā It will always be very important to have this meta-female presence in Transformers.
If all transformers being āgenderlessā actually translated in toys and on-screen as āall male,ā this would be terrible.Ā Whenever āgenderlessā Transformers are trucked out, it always seems reeeeally reaaaallly strange how they all have male voices and bodies that reflect bulky male body types, and personalities steeped in militaristic male culture.Ā Yeah, itās so āgenderlessā when they call each other ābrotherā and donāt understand āhuman femalesāā¦ despite that fact that human males should be equally as mystifying to them.Ā If one says āTransformers are genderless, so we donāt need any females,ā one is also saying āmale is not a gender, also I donāt know what gender is, and also I just donāt want female characters in my boys club.āĀ Genderless has been used as an excuse in TF for too long to be exclusionary toward female-coded characters.Ā We have to remember that Transformers as a show is being presented by humans, for humans, and so gender representation in the media is in fact important.
Transformers may have started out as a cartoon and toyline aimed at young boys, but the fandom as it exists now is surprisingly egalitarian, having people from all ages and genders inside of it.Ā Tons of kids sit down to watch the cartoons, so the cartoons should try to show something cool for all the kids.Ā I donāt want to imply itās bad to have a target audience, but you can target an audience of one age/gender without also making everyone else feel ostracised by the content.Ā For example, My Little Pony is aimed at young girls, but it doesnāt go out of its way to make everyone else uncomfortable by only showing men as rare sex objects or silly mindless token characters whose only trait is āthe male one.āĀ Instead, the recent cartoon presents many different male characters such as Big Macintosh, Shining Armour, Spike, Discord, and even the Flim Flam brothers, as well as numerous male-coded background ponies.Ā Likewise, Transformers should be perfectly capable of adding more female-coded bots to the cast and background.
āBoyā and āGirlā transformers exist so that human boys and girls can see themselves in the media presented.Ā The more āfemaleā transformers there are, the less tokenised, exoticised, marginalised, and othered the feminine will become in the stories and franchise itself, and the more female role models there will be in the media for all humans.Ā This means we need more females of all types, body shapes, interests, vocal styles, jobs, and personalities to be Transformers.Ā Transformers may well continue to be āgenderlessā in-universe, but I sure hope that there continue to be toys and characters called āsheā who use female voice actors, because that representation is very important for all the humans watching the robot show!
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