Female Transformer

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}}

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Well, I remember bringing up that question early on with Hasbro, "are any of these female?" And then I think Hasbro's attitude was, 'this is a boy toy. We don't wanna have, you know, girl robots.' So, I said, "OK, just want to clarify that."{{#if:|{{{quote2}}}}}{{#if:Bob BudianskyRusting Carcass interview|Bob Budiansky{{#if:Rusting Carcass interview|, Rusting Carcass interview|}}|}}

Arcee, the most famous female Transformer, poses for the boys. Way to set an example there.

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!) But over the course of decades, while they are still comparatively rare, 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 pretty dang rare 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>Shotgun Mermaid (Mairghread Scott's tumblr), December 27 2013: 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.</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 recently 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

"Of course there's variety! Some of us aren't pink!"

Our mechanics assure us this is a woman.

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

A bunch of Female Autobots from the G1 toon and Alpha Trion. His pimp cane was removed in post-production.

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 females 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 females 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:

1. They were all built/"discovered" after the events of "The Search for Alpha Trion".
2. 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.
3. "Female Autobot" is not used as a description, but as the team's name.
4. 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

This is an official Transformers character. No, really.

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 very 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 females.

Marvel Comics continuity

And what will happen is like this.

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. The UK stories corroborate this and Simon Furman, who wrote the bulk of Marvel's comics, had made it clear he didn't see why robots would have a gender. Arcee was an exception after the film has put in the UK strip's future and eventually "Prime's Rib!" would explain where she cam from: she was intentionally created by the Autobots 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.)

You can't shoot Squeezeplay just because he's a bloke.

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. Theoretically, she is not that different from other Cybertronians and one can only guess how to combine her existence and the "no girls gender"-statements.

The letter pages mentioned another two females: Decepticon Clio and presumed Autobot Karmen. Provided they are real and Blaster didn't just make them up, they might have been built after Arcee's example.

Two continuations of Marvel would introduce female Trasformers. 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.

IDW Generation 1 continuity

File:Spotlight Arcee b.jpg

Information: you are ALL going to DIE.

what do 'he' and 'she' pronouns connote in a TF context? Do they connote *exactly* the same things as they do in a human context? I don't know. It hasn't been properly explored yet. All that said, let's assume that a Transformer who adopts a particular personal pronoun is doing so for the same reasons that a human would.{{#if:|{{{quote2}}}}}{{#if:James Roberts on TwitLonger|James Roberts on TwitLonger{{#if:|, {{{3}}}|}}|}}

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 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.

Despite this, in Megatron Origin, Alex Milne drew what are clearly intended to be female Transformers in a good number of "easter egg" cameo appearances. (Cameos included female GoBots character Crasher, Elita One, Chromia, and a number of generic background femmes.)

This was finally "resolved" in "Spotlight: Arcee", where it was revealed that the malevolent Golden Age Cybertronian scientist Jhiaxus introduced gender to the Cybertronian genome just to see what would happen. Tampering with the CNA of the titular character at her creation to make her Female, he discarded his experiment once he was finished, only to find she had an inherent homing instinct for his creations. Arcee's systems were severely messed up by this experiment, causing her to become tremendously unstable to the point of psychosis and fixated on getting revenge on Jhiaxus.

This... did not sit well with quite a few people, wondering just what this was saying about women, transgender or otherwise.

While the story implies that she is something very rare and unique it does not say that she was the only female Transformer Jhiaxus created, merely the first, leaving it open for the cameos in Megatron Origin to remain in continuity.

Jhiaxus specifically alters Arcee's CNA to make her female and introduce gender to the species. Exactly how deep these alterations went, how closely her form was designed to match the females of organic species on which she was based (particularly in relation to reproduction) is unknown and will likely remain so.

Another female Transformer appears in a flashback to Sunstreaker's glory days in "Replay", staring up at him in doe-eyed adoration. She is presumably less killy than Arcee.

You Asked For Her - You GOT Her!

By Hasbro edict, IDW introduced a new toy female Transformer called Windblade in 2014. Writer Mairghread Scott made it clear that Windblade wouldn't have gender by accident or sinister design, and that female Transformers would have a new type of origin.<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 an excuse 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.

Originally as presented in the first issue of The Transformers: Windblade, the existence of both male and female Transformers on the planet/Metrotitan Caminus was treated as a form of allopatric evolution, with females developing in isolation from Cybertron. Other generic female Transformers besides the three that first showed up in Dark Cybertron are shown or implied. (A running gag showed up where people like Rattrap would ask about their gender and be ignored.) Nautica was also given a "estriol-positive" spark-type, implying that Transformer gender went spark-deep—but James Roberts asked this to be edited to ferrum-positive in the trade paperback, after deciding it was "potentially (if unintentionally) offensive" to imply gender was biological.<ref>Bleeding Cool: "No Little ‘Bots? James Roberts Retcons ‘Estriol’ In Female Transformers"</ref>

The various IDW series then together revealed that gender was present on ancient Cybertron, explaining its continued presence in the colonies and strongly implying that modern Cybertron is the exception rather than the standard. Issue #34 of The Transformers: Robots in Disguise made the first mention of a G1 version of Thirteen member Solus Prime, the first female Cybertronian in the Aligned continuity family. In issue #37 while speaking with Arcee, the ancient Cybertronian and recent Decepticon convert Galvatron stated, "we lost much from the ancient days", implying that Jhiaxus's experiments were meant to restore a lost element of Cybertronian society, rather than to create a new element. The first issue of Windblade Volume 2, part of the Combiner Wars crossover, then revealed that IDW Solus Prime departed Cybertron with Caminus to his namesake colony. Meanwhile, issue #39 of The Transformers: More than Meets the Eye introduced Nickel, the first female Decepticon in the IDW G1 continuity and the sole survivor of a colony world founded by the Metrotitan Prion. The finale of the Combiner Wars event showed that female Transformers were indeed alive and well on the rest of the colonies. Cameos include Moonracer and Override on the planet Velocitron, Airazor, Blackarachnia, Sonar, and Manta Ray on Eukaris and Greenlight, Lancer, Elita One and Strika on Carcer.

Combiner Wars also introduced a slew of fan-created female Transformers. Fans voted for the female combiner Victorion and her six components: Pyra Magna, Stormclash, Skyburst, Dustup, Jumpstream, and Rust Dust. Victorion brings 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>

Several "male" Transformers who make use of holomatter avatars to blend into human(oid) societies do so via female forms: we've seen this done by Bumblebee, Sunstreaker, Whirl, and Ultra Magnus, the latter replicating his one-time human traveling partner Verity Carlo. (The only time anyone treats this as unusual is when Magnus's companions wonder aloud why the legendarily-uptight cop specifically chose free-wheeling, lawbreaking, rules-ignoring Verity as a template.) This was mostly glossed over, but then fan speculation about Tailgate's gender—always presented as male—broke out across Tumblr when a More than Meets the Eye promo called him "The Ingénue", a term for a female stock character.<ref>As debated here, here, here...</ref> (The male version is spelt "ingénu".) This was completely unintentional on James Roberts' part but he was happy to learn what he'd done.<ref>Women Write About Comics: "James Roberts on IDW’s Transformers: More Than Meets The Eye" 18:00 - 18:08</ref> He's since run with the idea of playing with the gender of male characters. He first said that Cyclonus would have had a female avatar,<ref>"Not in the comic, so maybe inadmissible as evidence, but I've said that Cyclonus' avatar is female"</ref>(and a "stern Victorian schoolmarm" <ref>Women Write About Comics: "James Roberts on IDW’s Transformers: More Than Meets The Eye" 19:12 - 19:24</ref>), then that Tailgate's baby avatar could have been female as well<ref>https://twitter.com/jobot935/status/391053739487805441</ref> , and then that it was a baby girl at Autoassembly, before finally stating: "I absolutely think it's the case that there are male-coded TFs who self-identify as female and preferred to be called 'she', and female-coded TFs who self-identify as male and prefer to be called 'he'. I also think there's scope for a TF to adopt a different pronoun if they so choose." (We eventually got to see both of these holomatter avatars in action during issue #43 of More Than Meets the Eye, along with several other female holomatter avatars created by "male" characters). Roberts also said that the specifics of Transformer gender (and what terms meant) had not been explored yet.<ref>[http://www.twitlonger.com/show/n_1sj9u8i James Roberts on TwitLonger: "TFs and gender. A clarification."</ref>

Do you hear the people sing?
Singing the songs of angry men...

(To sum up, Tumblr loves IDW.)

In an alternate timeline created by Brainstorm's time travel, at least one female-identifying Transformer exists. It may be that in this timeline, female Transformers never disappeared from Cybertron as they did in the "main" timeline, or that she may have changed her appearance and/or gender expression; James Roberts has not discounted the possibility of transgender Transformers<ref>Roberts on the possibility of transgender Transformers on Twitter</ref>. A third possibility is that she was born on one of the colonies, which were connected to Cybertron in universe (supported by the presence of the Camien city-speaker Hot Shot on Cybertron).

Beast Wars

Beast Wars cartoon

She was extremely popular with fans, I wonder why...

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)

"I tried to commit genocide four episodes ago."

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 humour, 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 go "without their torso-plates on"... 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 animated 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 manga continuity

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

IDW Beast Wars comics

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

Beast Machines' technorganic reformatting raises even further questions about what it means to be a "female transformer". It is possible that the technorganic female Transformers, being merged organic and technological life to a cellular level, might actually be physically female.

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.

"You gonna make body jokes to my face? No? Didn't think so."

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 fanfiction 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 Aliens. (When the Powers That Be nixed that, Nightscream ended up becoming John Connor in 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)

Females 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. Ask Vector Prime

Unicron Trilogy

But she's got your altmode!

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.

Why do robots have to have gender? thought Override. Bloody masculinists.

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

2007 Transformers film

Comic artists cry when they see this model sheet.

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 recently added to the end of the movie toyline as a Wal-mart exclusive. She has been featured in Titan Magazine's comics, as of issue 18, and in IDW's Alliance series as of issue 3.

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.

Revenge of the Fallen film

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.

Animated

Did you ever feel like the only original designs in a sea full of homages?

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 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

But ignore all the names we're listing, cos 50% of all female appearances are Arcee.

One-thirteenth of Cybertron's population identify as female, and are descended from Solus Prime.<ref>According to @HubTVNetwork and 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 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 briefly mentioned when her hammer is discovered by the Decepticons, and 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.

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 rogue Decepticons are Filch, Slink, and Zizza, who sports a notably un-stereotypical body shape.

Toys

Windblade stands on the extremely pointy shoulders of giants.

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.

Transmetal Airazor is the first Transformer toy designed to intentionally represent a female character that actually came out. 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 Tranformers 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 Strongarms.

Notes

On the other hand, maybe a medic who enjoyed getting skunked on tainted 40-weight oil wasn't the best example, either...

• It's worth comparing 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 more depressing.
• 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.
• 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!

References

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