Female Transformer: Difference between revisions
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====''Beast Wars Neo'' comic==== | ====''Beast Wars Neo'' comic==== | ||
The young Maximal [[Stampy (BW)|Stampy]] has a [[Kitte Shūshū|mother]]. The actual genetics of this was not explained, but we also see a picture of a rabbit with a mustache on the wall behind her, implying a father and sexual reproduction. Just how in the hell an entire planet-wide race of breeding rabbit-robots arose from [[Tasmania Kid]], who was a Tasmanian devil, is ''also'' never explained. | The young Maximal [[Stampy (BW)|Stampy]] has a [[Kitte Shūshū|mother]]. The actual genetics of this was not explained, but we also see a picture of a rabbit with a mustache on the wall behind her, implying a father and sexual reproduction. Just how in the hell an entire planet-wide race of breeding rabbit-robots arose from [[Tasmania Kid]], who was a [[Tasmanian devil]], is ''also'' never explained. | ||
Later, it was explained and it very much was sexual reproduction. {{storylink|Andromeda - Axiom Nexus News Reporter}} | Later, it was explained and it very much was sexual reproduction. {{storylink|Andromeda - Axiom Nexus News Reporter}} | ||
Revision as of 18:08, 18 January 2026
| This article is about female Transformers in general. For the Autobot resistance group led by Elita One, see Female Autobots{{#switch:{{#sub:Female Autobots|-1}} | != | .= | ?= | .
}} |
Despite being robotic lifeforms with generally non-sexual methods of reproduction, the Transformer species has almost always been shown to include both male and female gender analogues, at least mentally if not physically.
Female Transformers were originally depicted as an anomaly, specifically called out as either a thought-to-be-extinct subgroup or simply never existing in the first place. Thanks, 1980s! Always so sensitive! Well into the third decade of the brand, the number of female characters to have received either mass retail toy releases or recurring cartoon appearances was still in the single digits... and some of those had been originally designed as toys for male characters or were portrayed as male in some cartoon markets. While they are still comparatively rare, as the years went on they have increased greatly in numbers, prominence, and overall fairness of representation, and are considered an official part of the Transformers brand in pretty much every continuity. Nowadays, female Transformers are basically considered a normal part of the Cybertronian population.
There's still a long way to go, since they ARE still uncommon compared to the "guys" and as Mairghread Scott pointed out, this can inadvertently make any given female Transformer and their stories seem like a comment on real women.<ref>{{#if: specifically, arguing that IDW Arcee being driven insane by her gender change can imply the women-are-hysterical stereotype "because she is the ONLY women [sic]" in the story, being one of the few female Autobots in G1 at all. |"specifically, arguing that IDW Arcee being driven insane by her gender change can imply the women-are-hysterical stereotype "because she is the ONLY women [sic]" in the story, being one of the few female Autobots in G1 at all."—|}}{{#if: http://mscottwrites.tumblr.com/post/71325530812/what-are-your-thoughts-on-the-idw-arcee-origin-that |Shotgun Mermaid (Mairghread Scott)|Shotgun Mermaid (Mairghread Scott)}}{{#if: Tumblr |, Tumblr|}}{{#if: |, ""|}}{{#if: 2013 |, 2013{{#if: 12 |/{{#switch:{{#len:12}}|1=012|12}}{{#if: 27|/{{#switch:{{#len:27}}|1=027|27}}|}}}}|}}{{#if: http://mscottwrites.tumblr.com/post/71325530812/what-are-your-thoughts-on-the-idw-arcee-origin-that ||}}{{#switch:{{#sub:http://mscottwrites.tumblr.com/post/71325530812/what-are-your-thoughts-on-the-idw-arcee-origin-that%7C7%7C11}}%7Cweb.archive= (archive link)|}}{{#switch:{{#sub:http://mscottwrites.tumblr.com/post/71325530812/what-are-your-thoughts-on-the-idw-arcee-origin-that%7C8%7C11}}%7Cweb.archive= (archive link)|}}{{#switch:{{#sub:http://mscottwrites.tumblr.com/post/71325530812/what-are-your-thoughts-on-the-idw-arcee-origin-that%7C7%7C10}}%7Carchive.is= (archive link)|}}{{#switch:{{#sub:http://mscottwrites.tumblr.com/post/71325530812/what-are-your-thoughts-on-the-idw-arcee-origin-that%7C8%7C10}}%7Carchive.is= (archive link)|}}{{#if: | (dead link)}}</ref> That's part of a way bigger argument for gender equality in entertainment and society at large that's a bit beyond this wiki's scope to fully explore.
A list of female Transformers from all continuities is available.
Fandom and Terminology
Almost assuredly as a consequence of their rarity in official fiction and toylines, female Transformers are popular in fan fiction, where the term "femme" is often used to describe them, with "mech"<ref>While "femme" obviously is related to the French word for "woman", it's occasionally claimed that the use of "mech" as a name for male Transformers is derived from "mec", the French word for "guy" or "dude". This is probably more coincidence than anything, though.</ref> likewise being applied to "male" Transformers. Both terms have appeared in a piece of official fiction: Venus magazine. This is the first instance "mech" has been used to specifically refer to a male Transformer, whereas the term has been used as a gender-neutral common noun for Transformers in various stories.
Alternative words to denote a female Transformer, all used about twice in canon, include: femme-bot,<ref>"Just imagine all the colony worlds: naive small planetoid femme-bots, unsuspecting targets, Unguarded Energon Reserves..." -Buzzsaw, "Force of Habit" p4 (2008)</ref> fembot,<ref>Rattrap refers to Blackarachnia as "Ya emasculatin' fembot!" after she cuts the tip from his tail/sword in "Nemesis Part 2", while Animated Optimus Prime wonders in "Endgame, Part II" what chance he has in flying combat against the Lugnuts Supreme if he "couldn't handle Starscream's fembot clone" on his test run.</ref> girl-bot<ref>"When we take over Cybertron, I'm gonna have a whole harem of girl-bots! Blue ones, red ones..." - Overkill, "The Art of War issue 5"</ref> robot dame,<ref>In This Is Why I Hate Machines Captain Fanzone refers to Arcee as a "robot dame in a room"</ref> and perhaps robotessa.<ref>In "Enter the Nightbird", "Robotessa" is the word missing from the line "Say good night to your [Robotessa], Megatron!"</ref>
Appearance
The appearance of female Transformers in most continuities would seem to suggest a level of "sexual" dimorphism is present in at least the more humanoid members of the Transformers species (the term sexual is used in a gender-based, rather than physical sense, see the reproduction link above for that whole kettle of robo-fish). In almost all cases female Transformers are portrayed as comparatively more graceful of form, and more rounded and curved in general, than their male counterparts. Often they have a more than passing resemblance to a slender human female made of metal and wearing armor and kibble.
There are exceptions to this rule. Characters with toys could have been bulky and less overtly human-female-like, which was seen in the Unicron Trilogy series and some latter expansions of the Generation 1 series out of Japan, when the characters are often assigned to pre-existing "masculine" toys. Perhaps the best counter-example of this type is Strika, who is female yet neither looks nor acts stereotypically feminine at all. This, however, has dropped away in more recent years as toy technology changes. Numerous female characters from the Aligned and Movie lines would turn into motorbikes, giving them thinner, daintier dimensions in robot mode. There are some exceptions, most notably the recently introduced Strongarm and her distinctly boxy shape.
The main real-world reason for all this can be seen from IDW Publishing's plans to introduce more women in 2014. Plans were afoot to make two look less visually 'female' and more like "the default Cybertronian design" so readers wouldn't know they were female until their dialogue. That was dropped to make it more visually clear that these were the female characters.<ref>Women Write About Comics: "James Roberts on IDW’s Transformers: More Than Meets The Eye" 10:00 - 11:21</ref> Humans are just conditioned to associate certain looks like certain genders. When the Cybertron dubbers wanted to make a male character into a female one, it's probably not a surprise that they went with the (relatively) sleek racing car.<ref>Steve-o Stonebraker's BotCon 2005 Notes, Version 2 at his Transformers site</ref>
Fiction
Generation 1
The Transformers cartoon
Within this continuity, female Transformers are a rarity, but established to have been around from the species' start. A female named Beta existed back in the slave days under Quintesson rule, and thus it seems clear females were produced alongside the males as part of the Quintessons' product lines.
No female individuals were explicitly shown to exist among the Decepticon ranks, although the introduction of Nightbird and implications of an eventual upgrade didn't raise any questions or remarks, suggesting that female Decepticons exist (or that the Decepticons royally don't care about a soldier's gender).
27 episodes after Nightbird's appearance, female Transformers were introduced formally through the Female Autobots. Shockwave at various points expresses surprise they aren't extinct, which would seem to imply females were thought to be no longer part of the Cybertronian race. While at the time a decent (though certainly not perfect) explanation for the scarce appearances of female Transformers, it didn't stop more from showing up in the movie and season 3. Possibly Shockwave's "statement" could be considered as retconned and overwritten, or one of the following explanations applies:
- They were all built/"discovered" after the events of "The Search for Alpha Trion".
- Shockwave constantly calls them Autobots, never Transformers or Cybertronians. It is possible female Neutrals' (and the aforementioned female Decepticons') existence was never thought over... and that none of them changed allegiance any time recently.
- "Female Autobot" is not used as a description, but as the team's name.
- This is the Generation 1 cartoon. You're not watching it for the flawless storytelling.
Females can be seen here and there among the Junkion tribe, mostly sharing Arcee's model. Wreck-Gar has a "Junkion lady" companion according to "The Big Broadcast of 2006". Just how relationships function in this isolated, media-based Transformers society is unclear, although it's notable that Wreck-Gar and his lady friend "slept" sitting up next to each other on giant thrones between television broadcast cycles. The lady's character model is actually that of a female Lithone, another mechanical race, but whether this is meaningful in any way or simple model recycling is uncertain.
In the French dub of The Transformers: The Movie (but not in the TV series), both Starscream and Shrapnel were referred to as female, with Megatron calling Starscream "une imbecile" at one point (French articles are gendered), and Shrapnel referred to as "Mademoiselle". The reason for this gender-switch was never fully explained, though it is possible that Starscream's and Shrapnel's rather high-pitched voices were mistaken for women's voices.
Super-God Masterforce
A female Transformer was created through the introduction of Minerva to the ranks of the Headmaster Juniors. The transtector she was bonded to eventually evolved into a being of her own.
Meanwhile, the Godmaster Overlord existed out of two humans before becoming sapient: husband Giga and wife Mega. Despite the double gender, Overlord is regarded a "he".
Victory
In the manga, Decepticon females make their first (yet still to this day rare) appearance in official fiction as Esmeral (Deszaras's wife) and Lyzack (Leozack's sister). Both show up to show the Autobots just what it is Deszaras and his crew have been fighting for all this time: their poor families back home. This spares the Decepticons' lives in the final battle between the two forces. This certainly casts an odd light on the matter of Transformer reproduction (and on the manga author).
Meanwhile, in the animated series, the Micromaster Holi is shown to have a girlfriend on the planet Micro, Clipper.
Operation Combination
Operation Combination introduced a total of 24 Micromasters, none of which got a bio. Ten years later, Micromaster did provide them, and the Micromasters Windy and Discharge were established as female.
Marvel Comics continuity
No female Transformers are ever seen or referred to in the US stories. In "Recipe for Disaster!", Cloudburst is pressured into a relationship with the beautiful First One of Femax, but he explains that Transformers, as a species, have "no gender". Despite this, male robots are clearly demonstrated as the de-facto norm. They are coded as male, using pronouns and designs depicting what is typically considered "masculine".
The letters page for #53, where "Recipe" ran, further stated that Transformers have no gender and that they use gendered terms because they picked it up from us, and "most have characteristics that are commonly associated with males" while a rare number like Arcee have traits we'd associate with women.<ref>"Transformers have no gender! Since the Transformers do not reproduce sexually, they have no need to be male or female. Most have characteristics that are commonly associated with males, so they are referred to as “he’s”. On a rare occasion, one might come across as female and is referred to as a “she”. Arcee fits into this latter category, but referring to themselves as “he’s” and “she’s” is a convention the Transformers probably picked up from hanging around Earthlings too long."</ref>
Furman didn't have that letters page and came up with an alternative explanation for Arcee, who'd appeared in UK's post-film future stories. As detailed in "Prime's Rib!", she was intentionally created by the Autobots in 1995 to be the sole female Transformer in an attempt to placate human feminists. (See her picture above for a hint of how well that went over.)
In "Ladies' Night" and "Prime's Rib", the Autobots don't 'get' gender or humanity's gender relations and sterotypes. This lasted two minutes once Arcee was created: Optimus asked Arcee to hang back, she grumped about men, and Hot Rod went "phwoar!". In "Prime's Rib" this is played for laughs but in "Space Pirates!", Rodimus Prime can be ambushed by wanting to help Arcee first.
Despite the Transformers having 'no gender', the Marvel continuity was actually the first in introducing a female Cybertronian: Aunty, the onboard computer of the Ark, who was introduced in the very first issue. "Raiders of the Last Ark" gave her a feminine holographic 'face'.
The UK letter pages mentioned another two female Transformers: Decepticon Powermaster Clio and presumed Autobot Karmen, who is Blaster's sister. Provided they are real and Blaster didn't just make them up, they're unlikely to have been built à la Arcee (unless the 'Cons really care about gender representation) and could be taken as falling under that 'characteristics' approach. Or the 'Blaster' staffer didn't care.
Two continuations of Marvel would introduce female Transformers. BotCon's Classics fiction, while not including the UK material, introduced Elita One in "Games of Deception", in a manner similar to UK Arcee; and in Furman's Regeneration One, Botanica is the first of the second generation of Transformers.
Dreamwave Generation One continuity
According to DK's Transformers: The Ultimate Guide (written by Simon Furman), "Transformers are inherently non-gender specific, and only some quirk of their timelost origins can account for [female Transformers'] difference in appearance and attitude." Dreamwave was in the process of introducing more female Transformers and explicating their links to the Quintessons in this continuity when it went out of business.
2005 IDW continuity
IDW comics are aimed at older readers, so this is where it gets complicated.
Originally Simon Furman stated that he would not use female Transformers in the IDW continuity until he came up with a reason for them to exist that made logical sense to him. He did not rule out doing so, as he said he had found a similar justification for the Pretenders, which led to the Stormbringer miniseries. Certainly, however, Transformers do not necessarily identify with the genders of other species while selecting a suitable holomatter avatar, under Furman's pen or otherwise; Bumblebee, for instance, adopted the countenance of a [[wikipedia:{{#if:|:}}Lindsay Lohan|{{#if:||Lindsay Lohan}}]] lookalike, while Ultra Magnus once replicated his one-time human traveling partner Verity Carlo. (The only time anyone treated this as unusual is when Magnus's companions wondered why the legendarily-uptight cop specifically chose the freewheeling Verity as a template.)
The subject of Cybertronian gender first came to the fore for the first time in in "Spotlight: Arcee", which presented the eponymous character as a product of the mad science of Jhiaxus; as presented in the issue itself, he had forcibly experimented on Arcee in a Frankensteinian attempt to introduce gender to the species, a process that involved directly tampering with the CNA of his subject. The experiment did not leave Arcee with the warmest of feelings towards Jhiaxus, and when the scientist abandoned his creation, she began a vengeful rampage that cut a swathe across the galaxy. This... did not sit well with quite a few people, wondering just what all this was saying about women, transgender or otherwise.
When James Roberts and John Barber took the reins of the universe in early 2012, they repeatedly considered adding more female Transformers into the universe as early as "The Death of Optimus Prime", which would have seen feminine Transformers among the waves of NAIL refugees. For one reason or another, these plans fell through and were indefinitely shelved until 2014,<ref>John Barber Q&A at TFCon 2017</ref> when Hasbro introduced a new toy female Transformer called Windblade and a tie-in IDW comic advertising the character. Writer Mairghread Scott made it clear that Windblade's femininity would not be accidental, nor would it be the product of a sinister experiment.<ref>Scott's tumblr: "That’s not how it works for biological women on Earth and that’s not how it’s gonna work on Cybertron. Anybody has a problem with that, you know where I am."</ref> (This led to a brief conflict as Furman initially read this as a personal attack on his work.) Windblade's arrival was used as leverage to double the number of girls to a shocking four as her friends Chromia and new Autobot Nautica showed up with her in Chapter 8 of the Dark Cybertron crossover.
The IDW comic initially established that Windblade and her female compatriots hailed from the Cybertronian colony of Caminus, long cut off from their ancestral homeworld; originally, as presented in the first issue of The Transformers: Windblade, the existence of gender on this distant world was treated as a form of [[wikipedia:{{#if:|:}}allopatric speciation|{{#if:||allopatric speciation}}]] in this isolated culture. Barber and Scott both worked together on developing Caminus' background to avoid falling into the opposite stereotype of a woman-only planet, emphasizing that on Caminus, Transformers of both genders peacefully coexisted.<ref>John Barber Q&A at TFCon 2017</ref> However, it didn't take long before the various IDW series together revealed the truth: Cybertron did once possess a population of female Transformers, but had somehow changed over the interim, leaving Caminus and other lost colonies, such as Prion and Eukaris, to carry on this ancient aspect of Transformer society. Shortly afterwards, issue #37 of Robots in Disguise revealed-slash-retconned that Jhiaxus's experiments were meant to restore this lost element of Cybertronian civilization. The finale of the Combiner Wars comic confirmed that female Transformers were alive and well on the rest of the colonies, and the Combiner Wars coda comic introduced an all-female combiner Victorion and her six components, bringing the number of female combiners up to a grand total of two.<ref>Some female characters such as Sureshock serve as combiner components, although the resulting personality identifies itself as a male.</ref>
At this point, post-Combiner Wars and with the colonies giving an easy-out, female Transformers became just 'a thing' and were frequently added as nothing special. Existing G1 characters like Moonracer and Elita One (including backgrounders Greenlight and Lancer), previously non-G1 characters like Override and Airazor, new ones like Nickel (the first female Decepticon in IDW) and Velocity, and previously male characters like Slide have all shown up.
What, if indeed anything, separates female Transformers from their male counterparts in this universe is not clear. Spotlight: Arcee established that "male" Transformers could instinctually sense a "difference" about Arcee, and unconsciously used feminine pronouns when referring to her; this trait did not carry over to female Transformers from the colony worlds, as Cybertron natives would sometimes refer to them with male pronouns by accident or openly question their gender. Issue #31 of More than Meets the Eye initially described Nautica as having an "estriol-positive" spark-type, (no doubt based off the [[wikipedia:{{#if:|:}}Estriol|{{#if:female hormone of the same name|female hormone of the same name|Estriol}}]]) but author James Roberts opted to change this to "ferrum-positive" in the trade paperback, after deciding it was unnecessary and "potentially offensive" to imply that female and male bots were fundamentally different.<ref>Bleeding Cool: "No Little ‘Bots? James Roberts Retcons ‘Estriol’ In Female Transformers"</ref>
Despite all of these developments, various artists have freely thrown in a variety of female characters in background cameos, even in instances where these female Transformers couldn't have existed on Cybertron. Most notably, Megatron Origin featured a particularly high number of such cameos, including Crasher, Elita One, Chromia, and various generics. James Roberts teased the possibility of transgender Transformers for some years,<ref>Roberts on the possibility of transgender Transformers on Twitter</ref> before finally using the concept to explain these cameos in otherwise incompatible situations. Occasionally, Cybertronians, such as those members of the off-world Primal Vanguard, would encounter gendered aliens, with some choosing to adopt female pronouns (and, occasionally, body-types) after feeling that they fit them better. From this revelation, we got Anode and her partner Lug: the first two definitively, canonically, transgender Transformer characters. Around this time, Robots in Disguise author John Barber would delve deeper into Arcee's original backstory, dropping several hints that Arcee had, at least to some extent, consented to Jhiaxus's gender experiments due to identity issues of her own; the final issue of the original IDW universe would eventually confirm that she, too, had always been transgender, and that she had deliberately sought the services of Jhiaxus, not seeing the mad scientist for what he was, to help her transition.
Ask Vector Prime
Cy-Kill considered female Cybertronians to be little more than "window dressing" considering what a big deal some people made of them as opposed to female GoBots who were an equal, and essential, part of Cy-Kill's various evil plans. Renegade Rhetoric (2), 12 January 2016
2019 IDW continuity
As a result of changing attitudes in both the Transformers fandom and the real-world pop culture landscape, the 2019 comic reboot has largely done away with the convoluted retcons and leaps of logic necessary to increase inclusion of female Transformers in the later years of its predecessor, choosing to instead depict female Cybertronians of all shapes and sizes as an accepted, normal part of Cybertronian civilization.
Female Cybertronians constitute a large percentage of this continuity's ensemble cast. Both Windblade and Chromia return as major characters; new female characters introduced to the mythos include Termagax, Leviathan, Codexa, Accelerator, and Gauge. Meanwhile, Slipstream, Shadow Striker, and Strongarm make the leap from other continuities to recurring roles in G1-based media. The same can be said for previously-obscure G1 characters Vibes and Flamewar.
Beast Era
Beast Wars cartoon
Female Transformers seem to be common here, with no one showing any surprise over their presence. Blackarachnia and Airazor both engage in romances with male Maximals, the former blatantly and the latter far more subtly. Transmutate is genderless but deliberately given "a face that vaguely indicates it is female" in script. (Airazor was made female by the writer's insistence.) Some male Transformers, such as Waspinator and Inferno, possess beast modes based off eusocial insects that would be biologically female, though this does not seem to affect their gender identity.
Silverbolt has an old-school human-style view of women as a fairer and more vulnerable gender, as he refuses to fight Blackarachnia out of lust chivalry. Tangled Web Bad Spark Most of the other Transformers seem unconcerned about this but Optimus Primal sees it as part of his nobility. The Agenda (Part 2) Blackarachnia herself used to find it bloody annoying, beating up Silverbolt to try and get him to fight back already. Bad Spark She is eventually won over when he keeps following her and telling her what she's really like when she yells at him to go away. The Agenda (Part 2) The Agenda (Part III) Some Transformers have another old-school human view, considered those strange fillies to be quite inscrutable: Quickstrike and Tarantulas being two. Tangled Web
For the purposes of humor, over the course of the show characters will make innuendos that suggest that, at least by that era, there may have been something sex-like between Transformers. Cheetor dismays Blackarachnia with teenage slobbering, Crossing the Rubicon she flirts with him regarding his body for info, Feral Scream Part 2 Megatron is blunt that he knows Tarantulas had "ulterior motives" for making her a spider, Double Jeopardy Blackarachnia is involved in a castration joke... Nemesis Part 2
Boy, they sure like doing this with Blackarachnia. Odd that.
Throughout the show Rattrap makes numerous innuendos, especially involving Silverbolt and Blackarachnia's relationship, including the rather seedy "find any new positions?" after Silverbolt's been scouting the enemy (cough). The Agenda (Part 2) He also makes references to a bar on Cybertron where the wait-staff "are walkin' around minus their torso-plates"... which frankly sounds like it'd be really messy. He didn't want young Cheetor to overhear this. The Agenda (Part 1)
Beast Wars II cartoon
Scylla is the impetus for a big ridiculous love triangle of hilarity and embarrassment in both the anime and manga continuities. She is in love with the squid-bot Scuba, who wants nothing to do with her. Meanwhile, the Maximal Bighorn is in love with Scylla, who wants nothing to do with him.
The non-Transformer female robot Artemis harbors a crush on both Scuba (poor guy) and Starscream.
Beast Wars Neo comic
The young Maximal Stampy has a mother. The actual genetics of this was not explained, but we also see a picture of a rabbit with a mustache on the wall behind her, implying a father and sexual reproduction. Just how in the hell an entire planet-wide race of breeding rabbit-robots arose from Tasmania Kid, who was a Tasmanian devil, is also never explained.
Later, it was explained and it very much was sexual reproduction. Andromeda - Axiom Nexus News Reporter
2006 IDW Beast Wars continuity
In the spin-off comics, Manta Ray and Sonar are female Transformers, though the latter was previously established in the 3H Productions The Wreckers comic. Neither character was specifically given a gender in their toy bios and this was seized upon as a way to get extra women in.
Beast Machines cartoon
Rattrap and Botanica end up in a romantic relationship towards the end of Beast Machines ("So, I'm a tree-hugger!" Rattrap remarks). What this means for his bar-hopping days is never explored. Innuendo makes a big return when Botanica and Rattrap argue about whether he'd rather insert his tail into a computer or be "plowing your little field of dreams". Spark of Darkness Yeah.
The Vehicon General Strika is referred to as the "consort" of Obsidian, and has been serving by his side, seemingly as an equal, for centuries. Some have taken this to mean the two have a romantic interest in each other, but the show itself does not offer any hints to this. This is the first time in Transformers fiction where a female robot has a high rank; where Elita One got to run a small rebel group, we're told Strika is a famous officer who has overseen and won numerous wars. Sparkwar Pt. I: The Strike
Story editor Bob Skir also wanted main character Nightscream to be a young female Transformer, patterned after the girl "Newt" from the movie [[wikipedia:{{#if:|:}}Aliens (film)|{{#if:Aliens|Aliens|Aliens (film)}}]]. (When the Powers That Be nixed that, Nightscream ended up becoming [[wikipedia:{{#if:|:}}John Connor|{{#if:||John Connor}}]] in [[wikipedia:{{#if:|:}}Terminator 2: Judgment Day|{{#if:||Terminator 2: Judgment Day}}]] instead.)<ref>Bob Skir Q&A 3 December 1999 (archive copy)</ref> This would've given us a Transformers cartoon with a shocking four female main characters out of sixteen speaking bots!
Robots in Disguise (2001)
Female Transformers are seemingly rare in the Viron universal cluster as none appear on-screen, if one doesn't count the female Cybertronian intelligence computer, T-AI. We know they have gender and gender relations due to both the aforementioned T-AI and Side Burn's obsessive lust for red sports cars. He was even able to plausibly pretend he had old girlfriend cars in "Sideburn's Obsession", only getting tripped up by lying it was on Earth.
In 2015, Ask Vector Prime said that the Spychanger Optimus Prime from Viron 1103.12 Gamma, and thus Scourge, as well as the Nightcruz from Viron 102.0 Beta, were female.
Unicron Trilogy
The existence of female Transformers throughout the Unicron Trilogy is portrayed as slightly uncommon (it is a fiction aimed at young boys, after all), but hardly remarkable. They just exist, as do "males", and no special attention is called to them. Quite a few appear in various places in "civilian" roles, as nurses, and even on colony worlds.
There are examples and hints of romantic interest between males and females in both Armada (Redline and Falcia in the Linkage comics, plus Nightscream's eagerness to appease and defend his Bulk partner Airazor), and Cybertron stories (most obviously Thunderblast's intense infatuation with Megatron, Ransack's secret crush on Override, plus Downshift reportedly has an unnamed "fembot life partner" lost somewhere on Earth). This too is treated as a fairly common event.
There are female Transformers in positions of very high power as well: in the Energon cartoon, Arcee is the leader of the entire Omnicon race, while in Cybertron, Override is the leader of the planet Velocitron. The Unicron Trilogy is the first Transformers continuity to explicitly give female Transformers that level of responsibility... but the only other one (so far) does so via a direct analogue of Cybertron (see the "Aligned" continuity below for more on that).
However, in the original Japanese, Override (called Nitro Convoy) is a male Transformer. Cartoon Network, the channel with the airing rights to the dub, felt it needed more female presence in the main cast and Override was chosen to change genders.<ref>Steve-o Stonebraker's BotCon 2005 Notes, Version 2 at his Transformers site</ref>
In the French version of the Energon cartoon, Arcee is dubbed by a man. Why she was is currently unknown.
Live-action film series
Arcee was originally going to be featured as part of the cast of the Transformers film, but was cut early on in the movie's development. The script writers felt they would need to explain the presence of a female in an entirely robotic race, and there was not enough time in the film to do so. Arcee was replaced in the movie by Ironhide. Even so, Arcee was featured in IDW's Movie Prequel comics and remains in the movie toyline as both Deluxe and Scout-class toys.
One other female Autobot is featured in the movie continuity family, another Scout-class toy, Elita-One. Both Elita and Arcee, however, are featured in Titan Magazine's alternate reality stories as regular characters, with Arcee getting more prominence. Both also appear in IDW's Movie Sequel comic series The Reign of Starscream, with Arcee playing quite a prominent leadership role. Surprisingly, Elita-One does not fare as well as her sister-in-arms, dying at the claws of Starscream himself. Although it is unusual for a female Transformer to die in fiction (compared to how often Transformer death happens in general), it has happened before.
As for Decepticons, Fracture, based off of the aforementioned Crasher, was added to the end of the movie toyline as a Wal-mart exclusive. She featured in Titan Magazine's comics and in IDW's Alliance series.
After Titan's first volume, the female characters were seen less and less. When a reader asked why in #4 of the third volume, editor Rona Simpson broke character in the letters page and admitted: "This is something we would love to change, but for the moment, the 'mech' figures are more popular and our hands are tied."
In the Tyran cluster romantic relationships between male and female robots seem to be possible; an example are Optimus Prime and the aforementioned Elita. David Reeve (in the IDW's prequel comics) refers to Diabla as Bumblebee's girlfriend. Although Bee seems to deny the relationship, their past together on Cybertron and Bumblebee's impetuous rage after realizing Diabla's death allow you to believe the opposite if you want to.
In all the comics where female Transformers do appear in the Movie continuity, their gender is never considered an issue. This raises questions about just how necessary "explaining" them would be in future movies.
And apparently, two years later gender was no longer an issue at all, as Revenge of the Fallen featured Arcee, who now inexplicably existed in three separate bodies, as well as Alice, a Decepticon Pretender. No comment was given on the subject of the characters' femininity. Frankly, not explaining Pretenders is a bigger oversight than not explaining robot gender.
The Last Knight introduces Quintessa, a female robot (and also the first female main antagonist) but none seem to be surprised. However, this could be explained by the (possibly) not-Cybertronian nature of Quintessa.
The prequel film Bumblebee features a cameo appearance by Arcee in the first scenes of the movie, while main antagonist Shatter has a bigger role.
Arcee returns once again in the prequel sequel Rise of the Beasts while live-action versions of Airazor and Nightbird are introduced as part of the Maximals and Terrorcons respectively. Unsurprisingly, none of their comrades sees their gender as an anomaly or anything special.
Animated
Female Transformers were present in Transformers Animated from the very beginning of the cartoon, starting with Blackarachnia. What this meant for the state of females in the continuity at large was not immediately apparent; in "Along Came a Spider", both Bulkhead and Bumblebee expressed confusion as to what Blackarachnia was. Though they were referring to her partially organic nature, Sari jokes "Duh, she's a girl" as a nod to the rarity of female Transformers.
As the series proceeded, multiple lady-bots were progressively introduced, among which were a female clone of Starscream, the obligatory Arcee and many more. Although they remain distinctly outnumbered by the male Transformers, this makes it clear that while female Transformers may be relatively uncommon, they aren't considered very remarkable or noteworthy—unless you're a young, male Autobot who's spent waaaaayy too much time fixing space bridges.
Despite Optimus's confusion over where organic babies come from in "Transform and Roll Out", implying that there is no Cybertronian equivalent to sexual reproduction in Animated, Transformer relationships are implied to be a possibility, as in "Along Came a Spider" and "Black Friday", respectively, Blackarachnia takes advantage of Bulkhead's and the Dinobots' obvious interest in her, especially Grimlock's. There's also the fact that Strika is said to be the "consort" of Lugnut.
Ratchet's role as the Autobot medical officer was originally supposed to be assigned to a character named Red Alert, who was originally designed as a female, but then turned male. When brought in at the start of Season 3, Red Alert was female once again as an homage to the original design.
Because Sari was originally a Cybertronian protoform, she could be considered a female technorganic Transformer, although her origins were not revealed until Season 3.
Shattered Glass
While in most universes the number of females on the side of good is significantly larger than the number on the side of evil, this universe has more evil ladies as a result of its status as a mirror universe. The first two introduced were Arcee and Crasher—an (evil) Autobot and a (good) Decepticon respectively—but since then the balance has tilted.
It would seem that female Transformers in this universe are as they are in most: few in numbers, but nothing remarkable. Crasher appeared bewildered when Cliffjumper (who hails from a Marvel Comics-derived universe) tried to tell her that he thought her feminine shape was unusual, and no one else seems to regard the females as something noteworthy.
Aligned continuity family
One-thirteenth of Cybertron's population identify as female, and are descended from Solus Prime.<ref>{{#if: Female Transformers only make up 1/13th of the population. #trans4thofjuly |"Female Transformers only make up 1/13th of the population. #trans4thofjuly"—|}}{{#if: https://twitter.com/DiscFamilyDay/status/87976495074639872 |discoveryfamily|discoveryfamily}}{{#if: Twitter |, Twitter|}}{{#if: |, ""|}}{{#if: 2011 |, 2011{{#if: 7 |/{{#switch:{{#len:7}}|1=07|7}}{{#if: 4|/{{#switch:{{#len:4}}|1=04|4}}|}}}}|}}{{#if: https://twitter.com/DiscFamilyDay/status/87976495074639872 ||}}{{#switch:{{#sub:https://twitter.com/DiscFamilyDay/status/87976495074639872%7C7%7C11}}%7Cweb.archive= (archive link)|}}{{#switch:{{#sub:https://twitter.com/DiscFamilyDay/status/87976495074639872%7C8%7C11}}%7Cweb.archive= (archive link)|}}{{#switch:{{#sub:https://twitter.com/DiscFamilyDay/status/87976495074639872%7C7%7C10}}%7Carchive.is= (archive link)|}}{{#switch:{{#sub:https://twitter.com/DiscFamilyDay/status/87976495074639872%7C8%7C10}}%7Carchive.is= (archive link)|}}{{#if: | (dead link)}}</ref><ref>According to comments made at BotCon 2011.</ref>
In The Covenant of Primus, Alpha Trion expounds on the nature of gender among Cybertronians. He mentions that Transformers are technically asexual, but divide themselves into two distinct categories based on how they process information. He speculated that Solus Prime required this unique cognitive structure in order to properly utilize her Creation Lathe. Before making contact with gendered aliens, Cybertronians used a single pronoun to refer to all individuals. After taking a greater role in the galactic community, they began incorporating gendered pronouns into their culture, to demonstrate that they recognized and celebrated differences among themselves while maintaining their equality (here, Alpha Trion breaks the [[wikipedia:{{#if:|:}}fourth wall|{{#if:||fourth wall}}]] to apologize to any readers who might feel insulted by Cybertron's 1:12 gender ratio).
Before the war, Ratchet worked with a female Arachnicon doctor named Cogwheel. The female Transformers Azimuth founded the Patterner movement. The leader of the Mutacons is the female Transformer Mercury. The ruler of Velocitron, Override, and the Decepticon soldier Slipstream are also female. Additionally, Chromia and Firestar are leaders of underground cities which are destroyed when Cybertron is restored. Ser-Ket, a female member of the Forged, was one of the main antagonists of the Rage of the Dinobots miniseries. Ripclaw and Flamewar were both toy-only female characters, their only fiction consisting of character bios or roles in prose stories packaged with toys. Elita One, Moonracer, and Akiba Prime also exist in the Aligned continuity family as female Transformers.
Prime cartoon
The only female Transformers portrayed as cast members are Arcee and Airachnid. Solus Prime is also mentioned whenever her hammer shows up on screen, and was momentarily seen in a flashback. Showing up in Arms Micron Theater segments are Arc, Arcee Blade, and Ida.
Transformers Online
Transformers Online introduced numerous female Transformers for both factions. Yes, the Chinese MMO that lasted about a year, in the continuity family where female Transformers are canonically rare, introduced more female characters than any single other source in years. Other than getting some minor details and anglicised names in Ask Vector Prime, they've yet to be used by anyone else.
Transformers Universe
The Decepticons have the female warriors Astraea, Diabla, and Duststorm on their side, while the Autobots have Cameo and Catapult.
2015 Robots in Disguise cartoon
The Autobot cadet Strongarm is a member of Bumblebee's team, with Windblade later assisting the team. Among the many evil Transformers are Filch, Zizza, Glowstrike, Scatterspike, Nightra, Cyberwarp, and Skyjack, with variety in body-types. As such, this series increased the number of female Transformers than any show prior, with tie-in material also introducing Slink, Retrofit, and Overhead.
Cyberverse
Much like Animated, female Transformers, namely Windblade and Slipstream, were present from the start of the continuity and were treated as nothing special by their male counterparts. Introducing many more characters, this series boasts the highest number of female characters in a Transformers television show.
In a rather unique addition to the franchise, the Seeker Acid Storm, traditionally a male character, would be depicted as swapping between a male and female appearance between episodes of the cartoon, with one of the show's writers, Mae Catt, eventually declaring that the character had euphoric tendencies of changing appearance,<ref>{{#if: That’s just something Acid Storm likes to do. #Cyberverse #AcidStorm |"That’s just something Acid Storm likes to do. #Cyberverse #AcidStorm"—|}}{{#if: https://twitter.com/MaeCatt/status/1076200426586877952 |Mae Catt|Mae Catt}}{{#if: Twitter |, Twitter|}}{{#if: |, ""|}}{{#if: 2018 |, 2018{{#if: 12 |/{{#switch:{{#len:12}}|1=012|12}}{{#if: 21|/{{#switch:{{#len:21}}|1=021|21}}|}}}}|}}{{#if: https://twitter.com/MaeCatt/status/1076200426586877952 ||}}{{#switch:{{#sub:https://twitter.com/MaeCatt/status/1076200426586877952%7C7%7C11}}%7Cweb.archive= (archive link)|}}{{#switch:{{#sub:https://twitter.com/MaeCatt/status/1076200426586877952%7C8%7C11}}%7Cweb.archive= (archive link)|}}{{#switch:{{#sub:https://twitter.com/MaeCatt/status/1076200426586877952%7C7%7C10}}%7Carchive.is= (archive link)|}}{{#switch:{{#sub:https://twitter.com/MaeCatt/status/1076200426586877952%7C8%7C10}}%7Carchive.is= (archive link)|}}{{#if: | (dead link)}}</ref> paralleling what some know and experience as genderfluidity though not stating explicitly that Acid Storm was genderfluid. Thrust was made female in the Japanese dub of Cyberverse and renamed to Red Wing, inverting the recurring trend of female characters being made male in several Japanese Transformers dubs.
Earthspark
In addition to the presence of female Autobots such as Elita-1 and Arcee and female Decepticons, Nova Storm, Skywarp, and Frenzy, the new species of Transformers known as the Terrans included the sisters Twitch and Hashtag.
Toys
Though many female Transformers were featured in the fiction from the early days of Generation 1, for many years they tended to either: a) not have toys made of them at all, or, b) for those very few that did get a release, end up as repaints of other molds clearly not designed with a female aesthetic in mind. Budiansky told you why that was up at the top there. There were three separate plans to have toys of Arcee during G1 and all three were scrapped.
Takara beat Hasbro to the punch by releasing the first female Transformers toy in the form of Minerva, but she was only a redeco of Nightbeat, designed as male. BotCon 1995 saw the limited release of the first Decepticon toy to be characterised as female at the time, Nightracer, but likewise she was only a redeco of Generation 2 High Beam and only 298 were produced. Beast Wars brought female Transformers to worldwide mass retail, in the form of 1996's Blackarachnia and 1997's Airazor—but again, these hadn't been initially designed to represent female characters. Thus, it was the 1998 Transmetal version of Airazor that marked the first release of a Transformer toy designed to intentionally represent a female character. Ironically, Airazor was written out of the show in the same year!
The big turning point for female characters came when Hasbro held a "Fan-Built Bot" programme in 2013. Gender was one of the things fans could choose and the fans voted "female", giving us Windblade. This worked out well enough that Hasbro had another contest for Combiner Wars in 2015 and fans voted for female Transformers again: this time six that made up the gestalt Victorion.
Fans having chats with Hasbro people at conventions have mentioned one bar to more girl toys: they still don't sell as well. Large companies can also be skittish about changing the way they do things unless they're very sure the new way is more lucrative than the old way. Female Transformers selling more toys will beget new toys and, of course, get more major characters in fiction. So go buy Arcees.
Notes
- As this article's quotes make clear, back in the day toys, cartoons, and comics were mostly split into For Boys and For Girls, which is still often true now but was more intensive in the 1980s. However, girls consumed 'boys' material anyway (and vice versa). We don't know the exact number of girls buying the comics back in the day but it was probably bigger than one percent. Fan letters from girls appear in both UK and US issues. Women were present in the early days of the organised fandom, having grown up on the cartoon and comics, and the second BotCon was organised by a then-prominent woman in fandom.
- In the Shout! Factory Matrix of Leadership Special Edition DVD set, an interview with Bob Budiansky features close-ups of his original handwritten notes for several characters. Intriguingly, these notes refer to Ratchet as "her" and the Autobots' "go-to gal" for repairs. While this obviously was not the final direction the character took, it does show that female characters were being considered for inclusion in the cast before someone at Hasbro told Budiansky otherwise.
- The very first female character created appears to be Arcee, who was created in the first draft of the movie in the summer of 1984, while "The Search for Alpha Trion" was written in the summer of '85. Ron Friedman says he fought for Arcee's inclusion in The Transformers: The Movie because his daughter was a fan of similar stuff.<ref>Interview with Todd Mathy</ref>
- It's worth comparing the original G1 to GoBots, its big competitor. Our very own tumblr crunched the numbers and found GoBots turns out to have more prominent female robots, all with toys, and we had to include Nancy to have the same number of talking fembots. That's right: the GoBots were better than G1 at something.<ref>TF Wiki Tumblr: If Someone Asks Why We Need More Diversity</ref> More recent franchises lagging behind GoBots is even more depressing.
- Several modern writers have worked to get more women into the fiction, in particular Scott, Barber, and Roberts at IDW Publishing in the 2010s. Jim Sorenson openly stated he would work to get women into his fiction as often as he possibly could to tip the balance.<ref>Beast Wars Uprising AMA at Allspark</ref>
- In 2013, Hasbro ran a "Fan Built Bot" poll as part of the Thrilling 30 celebration, in which fans chose between numerous options to "build" a brand new character-toy for the 30th anniversary retail line, and "male / female" was one of the options. "Female" won!
- In 2015, another "Fan Built Bot" poll was held for the Combiner Wars toyline. Femmes won again and we got our first ever all female combiner team!
- The 2018-2022 BotBots toyline has the largest number of female characters by a very wide margin. As of Series 5, released barely a year and a quarter after the line's debut, 110 out of 332 characters are female, almost exactly one-third of the cast... and there's several characters who don't have published bios yet, or their bios lack gendered pronouns altogether, so who knows? Of course, BotBots has a few safeguards against the above-mentioned "they don't sell": the Bots mostly have very gender-neutral designs, and the bios are (mostly) published online rather than on the packaging.