Didn't MTMTE already kind of suggest that Ultra Magnus in some ways identifies as female, at least on a subconscious level, by how it was Verity Carlo's form that was chosen as "his" Holomatter avatar?

 

All I know is I don't take kindly to some Johnny come lately writer having a go at our longest tenured and loyal serving scribe in public the way she did. However I didn't particularly care for the Arcee spotlight or the gender manipulation angle so I'm glad to see it being addressed. Also I see so many ladies into this franchise so I think it's great that a woman is penning a mini series about a fan voted female character that might become an ongoing. Still lay off my homie Simon.

 

Furman's response was unprofessional and ridiculous. Apparently he lives in a world where no one is allowed to critique his writing, ever.

For the record, I am female and I find Arcee's origin offensive and frankly rather stupid.

 

No, the issue explicitly mentioned that Magnus's avatar wasn't auto-generated from his psyche. He chose Verity manually.

Whirl's little-girl-with-an-eyepatch avatar, however, was auto-created, so there's some food for thought.

 

Again, as he said everyone is allowed to criticize his work, even collegues, but they should do it privately.

He should have stayed quiet about it, and do the same thing, do it privately, but that doesn't make Scott's post as you put it not "unprofessional and ridicolous.".

 

I'm sorry this happened Mechafire. You're not the only one who really wants to see was Ms. Scott does with Windblade.

Agreed, and this is why.

 

I can't believe the shitstorm that has landed over this. I mean, I know Transformers fans are notoriously divided on issues, but this? This is ridiculous.

 

Yeah... give us an inch of debate... we'll take it 10,000 miles...

Heck... around the world and back again!

Gotta love the warts and all.

*HUGS*

 

XD Oh Crona. One day the english language will accept a gender neutral pronoun. I'm voting for Thon.

 

Did it ever dawn on anyone that Furman might've had other plans for female transformers provided he didn't get canned in the middle of "Revelations"?

I mean it doesn't make any sense that Arcee would be Jhiaxus's only Autobot SRS experiment. So other females could be added in as easily as a sixth Dynobot.

We're talking about a population of millions that has existed millions of years before humans populated earth. So there's definitely room for growth story wise.

 

Agreed.

I mean the guy is Shockwave's mentor, so if Shockwave's MO is anything to go by, Jhiaxus could've easily had 5 or more different experiments in the works we just didn't hear about.

It's a shame really.

EDIT: On the topic of languages with GNPs, not every language has GNPs. French for instance? Everything is inherently gendered. Even the word for "chair" is inherently gendered. So just because one foreign language has GNPs isn't enough to go "So why doesn't English have these!"

 

I have heard it said that the attitude to things like Boats or bridges and the language used to describe them is very different between countries where in those countries a feminine masculine or neutral pronoun is applied. for example Boats are described as male in Russia where as in English they are "shes". Makes you wonder if the attitude of the sailors towards the ship is drastically changed by that difference. It's even been suggested that Bridges are designed more feminine in nations where they have a female describer and more solidly in nations where it's neutral or male they are built more for utility or an appearance of strength.

So I'm not sure how that works for international types when it comes to robots.

[edit]

As for the T-X I would say that Robot is broadly female for the following reasons :

1) The endoskeleton is female shape and size actually more than it should be to be accurate to a Human skeleton.
2) It's programming self-identifies as Female (in most contexts) though like the T-1000 it can more than likely shape itself to either gender since it has limited shape shifting abilities - it's default setting seems to be female though.

So as a shape shifting robot rather than as a cyborg covered in Human flesh it has no innate femininity but in context it "appears" to be functionally female so there's no reason to not call it that when it's shaped like that if it changed shape more often or wore it's base body in a more neutral mode (no obvious female traits on the skeleton) then I'd say IT would be permissible I'd probably call the dog Type Terminators and The straight combat forms "ITs" But I might call the Harvesters Him (possibly) as it's quite Transformers looking so it make me think "Him" to some extent.

They strongly hint that T-1000 have almost biological gender identities or perhaps might even all be female (of a sort) especially if they may be capable of reproduction of some sort there's certainly more to T-1000''s than it and more to them than dumb robots too (especially when operating for extended periods) as they have way more potential processing power than a T-800 does as their entire structure is part of it's mind. They also strongly suggest Skynet self identifies as she too (at least in Sarah Conner Chronicles anyway).

 

I think this is a valid point of view. I don't necessarily think that it closes debate on the subject, because fictions should not exist purely in terms of justifying their sociological function/benefit, but in general spirit I agree very much.

I think most genre fictions DEFINITELY would benefit from more strong female roles... but I think Transformers is exceptional in that it offers an unusual opportunity to address gender in far more fluid and ambiguous terms... and that has a special value that is particular to this franchise.

I have a female friend who has recently (thanks to MTMTE largely) gone from casual fan status to "serious fan". I don't want to speak for her, as she now posts on this forum, but I do want to relay something she said to me.

She has a long history of involvement with sci-fi, gaming and other nerdy pursuits, and so she's certainly felt the brunt of masculine exclusivity and weak female representation. She is now very vocal about female roles and empowerment in games and popular fiction, but on the topic of Transformers she has confided that she much prefers the genderless approach that MTMTE seems to be working with over the insertion of unambiguous fembots. Her reason for this is that gender is a background noise that is felt across so many fictions... sometimes progressive, sometimes toxic. In Transformers, because of the alien robot setting, there is a great potential to develop a fiction that isn't beholden to archetypal gendered relationships... and she finds that refreshing... a relief of sorts. It gives one a fiction that can be enjoyed NOT necessarily as a man or as a woman, but simply as a person.

Anyway, I just wanted to share that particular woman's perspective. I know it doesn't speak for everyone, but I felt like it affirms the point that those of us calling for more gender-ambiguity/fluidity are not necessarily just seeking to erase women's representation and return to the days of the robot old-boys' club under a facade of gender neutrality. I genuinely believe that reinstating "good old fashioned fembots" may actually be harmful in the sense that it only reinscribes binary, normative social architecture, and robs the Transformers fiction of one of its more unique potential aspects.

The sexualized tokenism... it burns!!!  

But seriously, thanks. That image really drives my earlier point home.  

Yeah... I think that's a much better way to go. It makes perfect sense that TFs would consider themselves ungendered, but that they might take on gendered designations depending on what organic culture they are encountering (since "male" and "female" might have very different associations from one interstellar society to another). I think that fluidity would be very interesting. Of course, I think the tendency in the writing could change accordingly... so that every TF without a curvy figure isn't a "he" by default. Once we embrace TFs as an gender-ambiguous species, there's no reason to hold on to the "male default setting".

I think a point that could be driven home in the comics is that Bumblebee and Prowl (as hypothetical examples) don't necessarily identify as female, but have also never identified as MALE either. They are only regarded as male in their dealings with humans, for convenience (and that this could change based on how they would prefer to be identified). It's obvious that Transformers in IDW are not speaking to each other in english, so the presence of gendered pronouns should be assumed to be for OUR benefit, and not an accurate translation.

And yes, this blows another big, problematic hole right through Spotlight Arcee, doesn't it? To follow that, is it not possible that in that issue, Magnus WASN'T using female pronouns to refer to her? That it was actually Arcee that was hearing it that way, as part of Jhiaxus' imposed gender psychosis? It could be that the "gender" he assigned her might be entirely psychological, and it would make sense that it's all in his/her/it's head, since operating on one individual doesn't automatically assign gender to the whole rest of a species. The binary is self-contained in Arcee's altered programming.

Now my suggestion here isn't to unwrite the only "female" TF in IDW, and erase female identity entirel, but to take a step back towards gender-neutral again, so we can then branch out in a more interesting, considered way... rather than just saying "we have generic girls again. deal with it!".

I don't know how Scott is going to handle this, but I think that what Furman did with Arcee is still underdeveloped enough that it could be fairly easy to "soft-retcon" it. It was never actually explained WHAT Jhiaxus really did to change Arcee, and who Arcee was before that incident was also never explored. It sort of amuses me to imagine that she looked absolutely identical to how she does now.  

This.  

I think the suggestion is there, but I think it actually says more about how gender is meaningless to Transformers (or at least to Magnus, who has probably had the most interaction with other alien races). It's not that he subconsciously identifies as "female" so much as he doesn't really "see" gender. When choosing a human-based holo-avatar, he is inspired by a human he respects, and her gender is a negligible biological detail that is irrelevant to him.

Of course, I still used the male pronoun to describe Magnus through that entire paragraph, which shows how hard it is to get away from these things (at least for us), but I think it would be worth it to try shaking things up a bit.

Good point. Whirl is a much better example. The idea of him being female-identified (on a narrative OR meta-narrative level) is just so wonderfully subversive, it makes me giggly.

Of course, the overall abstraction of his form actually helps in that. It's easier for us to assign arbitrary genders to things that are more removed from anthropomorphic standards. It's much easier for us to call a car, or a cat, or a talking box "she" than it would be to apply that to, say Springer or Brawn. So in terms of physicality, Whirl's form is less of an impediment to gender fluidity. His personality on the other hand... well...  

zmog

 

Y'know, I love Transformers, but it certainly disappoints more than it pleases these days, especially the comics. The thing is, when they hit a high, they're REALLY high, and that makes all the crap worth it.

If we had to suffer the original IDW ongoing, RID and Heart of Darkness, at least we got Stormbringer, LSOTW and MTMTE out of it. Hopefully the current Dark Cybertron story won't ruin MTMTE, 'cos it's bloody awful and I can't wait for it to finish.

And frankly it's this track-record that makes me think that the Mary-Sue bot, who let's be honest is basically just a female Drift, is going to be pretty awful. Fair enough if you're just introducing an original character (the DJD and Death's Head are great after all) but having to do so while forced into a retcon, all while the writers butt heads publicly doesn't fill me with confidence.

I don't get why anyone would have any faith in IDW that this is going to be some sort of female-empowering milestone either. They had a great character in Verity Carlo, especially in LSOTW, but they've sidelined her. They took the only female Transformer from G1 and turned her into a 1 dimensional psychopath, unless of course they need her to hug Hardhead's leg for a cover (Heart of Darkness) in a classic damsel-in-distress pose. Barber's RID hasn't helped either, as Arcee is just another victim of his appalling dialogue and plotting.

What I'm basically getting at is that IDW have an appalling track-record with female characters in TF fiction. This is an all-woman team having a crack at getting it right, and if they do I'll gladly hand over my cash and support the book, but given the origins of the character, the people in charge and the fact that the book is now almost a feminist mission-statement, I'm not optimistic.

Oh and asking fans to pre-order before so much as a preview isn't good form either.

Just my 2c.

 

You know I never considered that, however I still don't like the origin he gave for Arcee. Chances are the other fembots would have been just as screwed up as Arcee became.

 

That's 2 cents you can take to the bank. Seconded on all counts. Good points.

zmog

 

Thirded.

 

And then Galvatron II came back in!

I don't like "thon". I prefer s/he.

 

Here kitty-kitty!

http://www.tfw2005.com/boards/transformers-news-rumors/969423-give-some-love-scott-furman.html

 

wouldnt it be great if somehow all our fears turns out to be for naught and windblade turns out to be a fantastic character from the get-go whose comic has a satisfying answer to gender, perceived or otherwise, in transformers

let me just dream for a minute here guys

or what if it turns out windblade is literally drift
literally drift that got a new body