In terms of "gender" as humans experience it in general, there really wouldn't be one.

In terms of masculine/feminine personality traits, you could argue that certain traits would be beneficial in cybertronians geared towards certain tasks. This would require deliberate control over the personalities of cybertronian during manufacturing, however. In the fiction, there are far more examples of personality traits that are superfluous, or even detrimental, to the tasks assigned to given characters than there are synergetic traits, I would say.

It's possible that the origins of personalities in cybertronians are just as nebulous as in humans, or possibly even moreso given the lack of biological motivators present in humans.

 

That's the thing, Shockblast2. We don't know for sure, since there is no official answer. That's what everyone here has been trying to tell you: No piece of Transformers media has ever delved into this subject to the degree you're asking for, and most likely it never will. Despite many fans' insistence that Transformers is/can be a mature franchise, at its heart Transformers is really a kid's franchise and will continue to be such.

 

People love to bandy this statement around, but I find it very hard to accept. The fact that Cybertronians themselves refer to males of their species as 'he' and females as 'she' is, I think, enough to torpedo such a viewpoint.

 

I think they had as much of a choice as you did.

 

Setting aside the obvious issue of translation (and the fact that they are anthropomorphized fictional characters written by humans), the use of "he" and "she" shows gender identity, but not necessarily gender in a sexual sense. Add to this an explicit statement that there are no genders in transformers in some continuities, and it further muddies the water.

Similarly, people car boats "she" and power drills "he", but it doesn't mean they're actually male or female.

 

Well, there you are, you see. "Gender" is the cultural and social identity. The biological identity is "sex". Transformers HAVE that cultural identity (well, in MOST continuities - Marvel and IDW were explicit about there not being females, but as soon as Arcee was introduced into the race - whether through deliberate construction to appease feminists as in Marvel, or through the machinations of Jhiaxus as in IDW - boom, gender identity) - they HAVE "genders", but they don't have "sexes".

 

well if we go by the Quintesson origin of the Transformers then they could have simply made them male and female because they made them after their own kind,male and female,assuming there are female quintessons,which I assume there are since they are organic in nature,unless they reproduce "Asexual",with the primus origin it doesn't make sense to produce them both male and female if there is no reproduction needed,HOWEVER it's possible that when Primus created them he could have noticed life on other planets were male and female and could have simply copied that aspect of them without thought of reproduction. mostly to make them differrent from one another..

 

Exactly. An individual's "sex" refers to their biology (genitals and such). Transformers don't have this. "Gender" refers to the social and cultural construct of whether or not one views themselves as male, female, or something else. Whether Transformers have gender or not varies by continuity.

In the IDW continuity, this was rather poorly handled. I think Furman got "sex" and "gender" confused, because it's written as if Arcee had her sex forcibly changed and not her gender (since changing her gender would actually rely more on changing how she thought about herself, not "tampering with fundamental CNA"), but Furman used the term "gender" anyway.

 

well then there is no "sex" if you count the tf's having "private parts" lol..because they don't have any and this whole thread is useless ..but if you count Gender then yes they have male and female gender and we can try to explain that aspect of it..which I just did in my own way..   bTW I don't think they have choice in being male/female I think they are made that way..as explained above in my other post..

 

There is no such thing as gender without sex. The former derives its meaning from the latter. Transformers have the appearance of gender due to their anthropomorphic origins, but that in and of itself does not automatically confer gender.

 

None of the series have really actually said a lot on this.

G1 you had a small group of fem bots. No explanation for them because in G1 transformers are built and then a personality is placed within the bot. As to them choosing one way or another, in G1 I recall an episode that goes back to when Prime was Orion and Elita-1 was Ariel or something like that. The 2 characters were always shown being a male or female.

The movie there was no explanation for female transformers either. The All Spark was their way of reproducing. So again. Anything said about the differences of being a male or female robot are really speculation.

IDW however I think they're thing was all Cybertronians are male however Arcee was experimented on and thus turned female. But IDW contradicts themselves as I have seen some female bots drawn a bg characters in some places. So, I really have no concrete answers.

 

This topic is never going to be fully settled unless Hasbro says something (which they wont), so I'll just be fine with "it is what it is"

 

But the funny thing is, in the stories which have addressed the specific in-universe origin of artificially-induced gender within the Transformers, it DOES, in fact, do just that. In the Marvel continuity, in the story "Prime's Rib", in which Arcee is created, although Jazz and Hot Rod express puzzlement over what the difference between "male" and "female" is, all the Autobots react to Arcee as something "other", something "not what they are". When they want her to keep out of the fight that ensues in the story in a typically chauvinistic "protect the womenfolk" way, Arcee actively calls them out on, angrily remarking on them being typical "Men!" And in IDW continuity, Arcee herself actually addresses this fact, and the fact that the "male" Transformers spontaneously adopt the female pronoun to refer to her because they recognize her as "not them". Arcee's appearance of gender DOES cause gender identity to be perceived by the Transformers.

 

I'll quote that one for you so everyone knows what we're talking about, since I have the issue handy:

 

While I agree with much of this, and that they have what are essentially gender identities, I'm not sure if they truly qualify as possessing genders, absent of the biological and cultural/societal implications surrounding the human understanding of gender. Granted, what it means to be a fembot and their role in Cybertronian society is something that doesn't really get a huge amount of attention, and it could very well have the same sort of use in their society that it is in ours, but other than the few stories that explicitly focus on "gendered" relations, I always got the impression throughout the narrative as a whole that there wasn't quite as much of a divide between cybertronians with differing gender identities as it is in human society. It simply didn't seem to be as much of a deal (maybe because there's so many other larger concerns), and seemed more to be a set of differences that was more along the lines of differing alt-modes than differing factions.

On the other hand, the defining feature of most of the fembots during the G1 series was their use as romantic foils for the dudeformers, so maybe there is an anthropomorphic sense of gender in the TF universe, despite there being no biological motivation. I suppose you could explain that if there were more non-gendered romantic parings, but there really aren't that I can think of.

 

Well there was that one episode Prime had to interface with Elita and I dunno if it's just my lack of innocence now but when I rewatched it after I got the matrix boxset that whole part just seemed dirty.

 

I find the thread title to be something of a misnomer. They are Robots, and therefore have no inherent gender (sex).

What they CAN do is start with/adopt/develop masculine or feminine personality traits that make up the individual character's identity. The default seems to be the masculine. We see this in the G1 episode where Vector Sigma gives the Aerialbots their personalities (which Optimus Prime asked for) along with their lifespark. And in the case of IDW Arcee, the feminine trait was forced upon her by Jhiaxus's experimentation.

 

this thread need go to fuzzy world

 

No it does not. Fuzzy does not want. For that matter Fuzzy does not want 99.9995% of the threads people say belong there, because they don't. 

That out of the way, I always found it fun to think whatever creator of whatever line of robots in whatever series just hit create random body each time, and made up jobs and traits to fit the frame. Scientists, warriors, leaders, scouts so on and so on.  

But that could just be the gamer in me speaking.

 

Well, that's because Transformers are LIVING BEINGS first, and "creations" of some other race or power second. They do not consciously "decide" what they are, they do not VIEW THEMSELVES as constructs to be mentally reprogrammed or reshaped (outside of the obvious alternate mode choice) or otherwise artificially sculpted into something other than what they are, the way someone else might think of a robot. They're lifeforms in their own right. They are what they are created as, whether that's a random whim of destiny or the universe, the specific choice of a space-robot-god, or the conscious design of an alien squid who wanted to make a robot nanny to sell. Just as you did not choose YOUR gender, a Transformer does not choose THEIR gender. They are what they are.

(Referring, that is, to universes where the genders exist naturally, and aren't an artificially-induced difference.)

(Not, mind you, that there's not the potential for a story where a Transformer created with a male bodyform believes that he was really a female created in a male's body, and so modifies himself to reflect his inner nature, like a human sex change operation! But I don't think that's quite the same sort of thing you're getting at, as it relies on the idea that the gender identities exist naturally rather than being something a Transformer chooses to have.)