Femscout - Scout's older sister but by a different union. Long thought dead but in fact was recruited into the C.I.A.  She returns to the merc biz after growing disgust of political BS...also punching a high-ranking official out. She's on the run and continues travelling.

FemDemo - Mrs. DeGroot made younger and chaotic by the Eyelander's power. Even heavier drunk than her son and very proficient with swords. Not as great with explosives which kind of defeats the purpose. She is a bloodthirsty warrior but also believes in a code of honor and is above cajoling unless directly provoked.

Femspy - There are two, they look exactly alike, do not age and are hinted by Spy to be both his mothers and taught him everything about espionage. Besides that they are a complete mystery.

Femedic - The product of bizarre, yet surprisingly efficient cloning experiments by Herr Doktor himself. Frau Doktor is not amused by her bruder's methods and seeks to become the better Medic.  She employs more chemical warfare in all her weaponry and has managed to develop a zombification medigun

Music Night with the Dusty Trio

My first ever attempt at SFM. These gals need a lot more love.

As for what they're playing / singing ... Use your imagination ;)

I’ll be talking about this primarily more in the “what Femclass models are available?” cisgender mentality because let’s face it there are some genderbends where you’re like “is this a pinup or are they for real with this concept?” or “heLLO TRANSGENDER OPTIONS PLZ” and those are valid arguments, but Femclass models are easy to go off of rather than expand upon the subgenres of Femclasses that exist. (We will also ignore the “because females are my waifus” argument because while that’s hella legit even if questionable, let’s face it, some people are like HOT DAYUM SHE CUTE and they want that option. That’s okay because I guarantee that every male merc has his fair share of “THIS IS MY HUSBANDO HE IS MINE”.)

First thing’s first: you don’t have to like Femclasses if you feel like you don’t want to! It’s totally okay to not be grown to them even if you are female. With that said since you asked me about them and since I love Femclasses, here’s how I feel about the importance of liking them or at least seeing what the big deal is with them:

So the idea of a genderbend is part of a fascination for AUs in the sense of “what if people were genderbended in a cisgendered way?”. So one would take a male or female character and redesign them with biologically considered male or female features. In the case of Femclasses for TF2, it’s become not so much “what if people were genderbended?” but more of “what if we had female diversity within TF2?”. This is evident with how the outfits or the designs of most female classes are radically different from the original male classes. (We’ll get to how that’s a problem for some later.) Some females such as myself are all up for having female diversity within a game that canonically has put its foot down in terms of expanding upon that (aside from one of the most badass secretaries in existence). The Femclasses give us an option to expand upon that desire to include female mercenaries in a universe where only the mercenaries have been seen as all-male and we’re either not okay with that or we just want a second option.

To what extent depends; I saw somebody who was female who said they could not get into TF2 because they had no options of playing as a female character. That’s very common within video games and you might say “well, that shouldn’t matter since you can play as a man or a woman in some single-player games and have no choice of changing what your gender is”. But the fact is some females like the option of playing as a cisgendered female because they identify more with them or want to play more as them. (You don’t have to be female either to want to play as a female, I know plenty of males who would want to play as a female.) 

Now the controversy with Femclasses comes from a few things:

appearances that cause distaste in either “not attractive enough” or “too attractive”

appearances that are considered impractical for a warfield 

appearances that are based on model quality and therefore do not want to use the model because of LQ

the idea that female mercenaries have no part in TF2 lore because of the time period 

the idea that female mercenaries have no part in TF2 lore because of one’s preference for keeping the game as faithful as possible to the characters established

the idea that female mercenaries have no part in TF2 lore because of one’s preference against somebody else’s preference due to how they feel it is for fetishism or personal reasons instead of logical reasons

Let’s break down each one of these one by one based on my experience with using Femclasses and having to deal with shit from every side when I use them. (And there is some personal bias here, heads-up.)

this assumption is based on people putting their opinions if they do not like Femclasses that Femclasses are one of the two: “ugly, fat, gross-looking and should look prettier or sexier”, or “too attractive/young-looking/not battle-hardened enough, wears makeup when shouldn’t give a shit about makeup, doesn’t have enough body build/diversity, doesn’t need boobs”

this assumption is based on how many of the designs have something that would be detrimental to how you perform on a warfield e.g. skirts and belly-buttons. Skirts are very restrictive if you have to run and so having that on Scout when she’s a runner, especially a pleated one, would be uncomfortable to run in which is why people want shorts/a skirt more viable for running in/pants. This is a backlash not only based on practicality purposes but for anti-fanservice or anti-“I get this is a lady don’t fucking shove her in a skirt for me I already KNOW IT’S A LADY” feelings. (Don’t get me fucking started on how I feel this argument 80% weak considering practicality is dead in TF2 both in-game and in-universe and Medic wears a long-tailed coat that causes all sorts of issues in a fighting environment.)

this assumption is based on how models might look lower-quality than the models TF2 has, this is true especially when one tries to use them in SFM or puts hats on them and they have not been updated in a long time, or it breaks TF2’s art style (see second last point)

the assumption that TF2 time periods are exactly like IRL time periods, going back to what I mentioned before on don’t get me started on how dead practicality is in TF2 in-game and in-universe Shakespeare was a bodybuilder who fucking killed people and New Zealand is At-fucking-lantis

the personal preference to not want a game’s established universe tampered with and therefore do not like the idea of Femclasses, feeling they are unnecessary to the game as fanon. There is some debate as to whether this is MUH MALE MERCENARIES OH NO due to how much these people have been willing to put up with all the other shit the TF2 dev team has thrown in their face that deliberately has broken the established artstyle TF2 started off with before the era of hats and other ridiculous things; the counterargument would be how TF2 had never introduced female diversity in the first-place, thus cementing the acceptance and comfortable environment of having an all-male cast and not having a problem with it. (See: r/tf2 or Youtube everytime somebody uses a Femclass model on their SFM poster or video even if it’s not in a sexual manner and get really upset about it) 

the assumption that if anybody uses a Femclass it’s because they’ve got an attraction for it or can’t accept the fact that TF2 is an all-male cast or are petty people who can’t play TF2 without their silly mods (see: r/tf2 or Youtube everytime somebody complains about sv_pure being now vanilla on Valve servers or everytime they use a Femclass model because they fucking want to and have a right to use it not everything has to be about sex*)

*unless you are pro-sex feminism but pro-sex or pro-fetishism/anti-kink-shaming =/= pro-sexploitation or pro-fanservice if you understand what I’m trying to get at

*additionally with anti-sexploitation or anti-fanservice you have every right to complain about a Femclass’ outfit design choices or build e.g. that one Fempyro’s proportions and latex suit, Femscout’s skirt, Femsniper’s belly-button, BUT a counterargument would be “well they’re wearing that sure but that doesn’t mean they can’t function as people that have been trained to break your skull in and then laugh after you die”

I think this has become an important issue now that Overwatch has been released, has been called “Blizzard’s TF2”, and has offered right off the bat, 5 female characters who are mercenaries. I read somewhere that basically Overwatch is taking advantage of all the things TF2 has failed to neglect, and I have to agree: they’re already offering a competitive scene, they’re already offering more diversity in terms of characters’ races or skin colours (we have a god damn gorilla and 3 sorry 2 robots), and they’re already offering gender diversity by introducing 5 females right off the bat. I repeat this because that is a lot more than most class-based games would introduce, and while their body diversity could use some work, they’re not completely fanservice-based a la Super Monday Night Combat, Tekken or Soul Calibur, and there is more than one female meaning that there is no token singular female like other heterosexual male-targeted audience games would do.