If I were in charge of starting a new continuity, I'd definitely genderswap a bunch of the characters, but without making them 'fembots' (ie. no redesigns to make them curvy or busty, no romance plotlines, no flirting). I wouldn't pick Starscream and Ratchet though. I'd probably go, for starters, with:

Jazz
Cliffjumper
Soundwave
Wheeljack
Thundercracker
Hot Rod
Slag (own it, girl!)
Blitzwing
Mirage
Sunstreaker
Bombshell
Scrapper
and ... Megatron. Why not, eh?

 

Wouldn't Bombshell be just a touch on the nose?

I would be interested to know how you'd avoid the obligatory romantic subplots that might present themselves, particularly if Megatron is gender flipped and Optimus is not.

 

Well, I guess I see it this way: it'd be exactly the same as if all the characters were male, except some of them would use the 'she' and 'her' gender signifiers (and if it were voice-acted, use female voice actors). Essentially, gender wouldn't be an issue or a plot point.

 

Exactly! Except like I said I would put Starscream and Ratchet, I insist, but adding others would be great. And no need to change anything else, personalities or bodies just because they would be females. And people add too much romance in stories, females should be in stories without being involved in romances.

 

So, it´s like Cybertron Override.

 

Then wouldn't that make the change completely pointless? You can't have them look exactly the same and go "But they're female now because see they have girl voices!" No, they would have to be redesigned as well. But redesigning them doesn't equal completely feminine looks, take Strongarm for an example; she's a huge departure from the typical femme design but she still retains some of those feminine traits so we can tell the difference between her and her male comrades.

Also I don't know why you're complaining about romance when it hasn't really appeared all that much in Transformers. We've only gotten hints and implications but it's never out in the open. This is because the show still remembers that the focus needs to be on the battles.

We also don't need another IDW scenario where the scales are horribly out of balance with either femmes being half-hazardly slapped into relationships or make them so unlikable (or in some cases psychopathic) just in an attempt to try to give them a strong independent appearance.

I would like to point toward Blackarachnia from Animated (hadn't watched Beast Wars) as an example of that balance done right. We got nods to her and Sentinel's previous relationship and some implications she and Optimus might share feelings, but those are in small doses and we get more focus on her goal of getting revenge and getting rid of her organic half.

 

First of all, we don't have the same views at all it seems. So I will explain my point of view but that was why I said there were two types of people with different opinions toward the female subject and I don't think either will change and I guess none is bad.

For me the addition of females somehow increased the female-male ratio difference since before that, to me they were all genderless (as robots should be), not males as many assumed just because of the voice. My real ideal is that they are genderless but since they put genders in this, I want those who were first created as females and forced to be made male because of the time period sexism, to be recognized at least in one series and even some others to be changed sometimes, like Dragstrip was in Animated and like Focksbot said, indeed it would be great to change some Constructicon, Cliffjumper, Slag, or Blitzwing...
Yes, it would mostly be the voice and the she or he. Even now the Cybertronian females and males don't even have what organic females and males have that really distinguish them as such (and I really hope they don't add that, don't show me that disturbing manga...). Gender identification is really complicated and anyone could apply for any of them, regardless of their looks.

Honestly I am not really for lipstick on a female robot to recognize her as such and I wouldn't define a woman by lipstick or curves. Lipstick is an Earthling fashion anyway and not even all Earthling women wear lipstick and have curves to be recognized as so. Some human women look like men yet they still are women, they don't have to have that little lipstick detail.

I like the holomatter avatars in IDW, I like that idea that they can be any gender regardless of their robot looks. Since they appear as humans it's normal then that they look like men or women (it would be then that the gender would count but it could be changed anytime in my opinion).

I'm complaining about romance because I don't like romance and most of the time when females in any series appear, they have to be shipped with someone and are often there for a romantic relation (or have some even if it's not their primary goal). Elita1 is implied to be with Optimus, Arcee has a love triangle with Springer and HotRod, Beast wars Blackarachnia has Silverbolt, females Decepticons are mostly seductresses... they almost always have some relationship while males are not absolutely shipped. Indeed they should not need to be totally crazy to be independent either, yet I can't really speak of that case since I do not know much about love relationships in IDW only that I have the feeling there is too much for me (there are other kinds of relations in life other than love yet love is always looked at as if the more important relation, mostly for women, in any series).

Surprisingly I did not hate the relation between Blackarachnia and friends in Animated since yes, she had an interesting story. But since I am as romantic as Shockwave, my complaint may be on a more personal feeling but that is my opinion.

 

Alright I can understand that and I did mention in a earlier post that I agreed with your point. I don't think that the femmes need curves and as for the lipstick part I think the design of the mouths can stay but I agree that color them wasn't necessary. Basically slight alterations to the face to help the audience tell the difference. Since there have been more of a rise of slimmer design for mechs too, I think it'll be okay to balance it out with femmes as well.

I understand your shipping concern, while I support relationships I do disagree with the notion that all the femmes must be paired off. I think Strongarm is a good example since she has stated single so far and her relationship with Sideswipe has been on a friend term. Heck even Sari who I guess qaulifies too is what a consider a good example. So I do agree with that notion that there should still be single femmes.

As for Ratchet and Starscream, again I disagree with changing their gender due to their fact their images had mostly been solidified. But I do have good examples of two transformers that could possibly be used to use the switch. I would suggest either Red Alert and/or First Aid. The two tend to be forgotten but I really think Hasbro could use the opportunity to push forward a new image. I know Red Alert has only been portrayed as female once but I think Hasbro could push the image forward still since Red Alert doesn't appear too much unless you want to count IDW. As for First Aid, I rarely hear about that character these days.

As for the Decepticons, I think Hasbro could swap the genders of a few of their combiner characters. Though I don't know which ones. So I totally agree the opportunity is there.

 

Indeed Strongarm is just good friend. I was afraid at the beginning but I think they will remain just friends. And Sari was a little young to think about that.

Honestly I disagree again for Starscream and Ratchet, mostly for Starscream. Since they made a female clone in animated and they gave him pretty feminine legs in Prime, I wondered if they were not going back slightly toward the female part with the more recent series.
They also gave him a female voice in the 1986 movie in French, Megatron speaking of him as her, even Starscream being totally jealous of another female like Nightbird in G1, I also wondered if some G1 scripts had not been changed from the maybe old originals but I am probably mistaking for that last part.

I think many would not be surprised if Starscream was female, I always see some comment on youtube about how Starscream is a girl, acts like a girl, has a girly voice (when I was little in fact I thought Starscream was a girl, so it remained in my head even though I saw them genderless after that and I was not surprised and was even happy to see that Starscream probably had been created female) but again I think some, like you, would be against it (I also see the comments of Megatron beating Starscream even if I don't agree with it and I told my reasons). That was why I had proposed the pretender or holomatter, where I think gender matters less even if it shows more since it is a disguise and many not so feminine Transformers had been females (well in holomatter, there remains to have a female pretender if they do other pretenders one day).

People can adapt to changes, some characters are good in some series and evil in others, I think gender is a less important change. From one series to another, there are always many changes. Starscream did change a lot from vain and treacherous G1 to mostly honorable Armada and then to Prime (changed mostly physically from G1 but being more coward) or to the Bay movies being a totally submissive ugly ape chicken. I don't see why gender should matter so much even if Starscream is popular. And that is what I would like a classic and popular character, mostly that one, being a female.
And I honestly always seen animated Ratchet as an ugly female nurse since I knew about it when I was following the Animated series. I thought that would be cool that he would not be a sexy female.

As for combiners, Vortex or Onslaught would be cool as females. Swindle would change some stereotypes since the con man making money is mostly always a male. Rampage or Headstrong would be cool. Scrapper would be great indeed and we could stick with Drag strip for the Stunticons. For the Protectobots First aid could do indeed.

 

Well we don't really need a female Swindle now that we have Trickdiamond.

Trickdiamond - Transformers Wiki

 

We already have a female Starscream. Her name is Slipstream. And Ratchet... no... just no... It was bad enough when they made Red Alert female. Just leave their genders the way they are.

 

so does female Starscream is somehow romantically interested in Megs? yeah that sounded like the worst fanfiction i have ever read that might been written by a 12 year hold on fanfic.net

 

Oh yeah, that was awful, making a homage background character a gurl was the worst thing to happen to this franchise, totally agree.

 

I can't tell if you're being sarcastic or not. It wouldn't be so bad if she was a totally original character. I just don't think that existing characters should be changed like that.

Though to be fair I also once saw comic book art of Arcee as a male character. Not sure if it was official or fan made but there's a design for male Arcee out there some where. We don't really have a lot of female characters so turning the few that we do have into dudes is even worse.

 

Yes it would be

I don't see why a female Starscream should in any way involve a romance

I think they should change any since they are aliens and it would show that somehow they are genderless as they should be since gender would not be something stuck to them

 

Why would showing them switch genders make them genderless? Personally I think the only way to actually make them appear genderless would be to travel back in time and prevent the fembots from ever being created in the first place. The only reason we even think about them having genders is because they introduced fembots as a second gender in the G1 cartoon. Without that we would of just assumed that they're genderless machines cause robots don't have genders. But the moment they introduced fembots into the Transformers universe, which are clearly meant to be female the formerly genderless characters suddenly became male. We would have never thought about gender if they didn't clearly have two genders.

On that same kind of thing some Pok'emon are actually suppose to be genderless which again would actually be fine for characters like Porygon. I could totally see that as a genderless Pok'emon. There's nothing to really define a gender about it. Except there's breeding and in order to breed you need TWO Pok'emon which only makes sense if there's a male and a female. A genderless man made Pok'emon like Porygon should be able to replicate itself asexually without a partner. There are things that reproduce that way in real life. It's called budding. So why do genderless Pok'emon reproduce as if they have a second gender?

Making the female have romantic relationships with the male characters doesn't help matters any either. That and the hatchlings in Revenge of the Fallen. Why did they have to make sex and reproduction a thing that we have to think about in Transformers. Ever since the fembots were first introduced people have wondered why they exist and why they have boobs. There's no sign in the G1 cartoon that Transformers reproduce sexually, thankfully, as we clearly see Wheeljack create the Dinobots. Optimus and Alpha Trion build the Aerialbots. Grimlock created the Technobots and all of this was done without the aid of a fembot. Rattrap does mention Arcee being his great aunt... though I think this could be explained. Wheeljack is basically the father of the Dinobots because he built them. The G1 Dinobots are all brothers. Grimlock is the father of the Technobots. The other four Dinobots would be the Technobots uncles. The Technobots themselves are all brothers. And I suspect that given the shared naming that BW Dinobot is in some related to them. That's all well and good but then why have fembots at all, why have romantic relationships if they don't have any kind of sexuality?

Basically once you open that can of worms you can't put the lid back on. Transformers will always have two genders now no matter how much Hasbro tries to deny it. You need a time machine to go back to the 80's and stop the original fembots from ever being created then then they can be genderless again.

 

Megatron backhanded Blackarachnia at least twice that I recall in Beast Wars. Like a serious "shut the fuck up I'm in charge of you" slap.

But then again I think that just added to Megatron's characterization as a fantastically fucked up dude.

Actually in Beast Machines he got her good one more time when he occupied that diagnostic drone and restrained the Maximals and just walked down the line pimp-slapping them each one by one for no other reason than to be a dominating prick. I died laughing the first time I saw that scene.

What a guy.

Anywho.

Prime Starscream got it way worse than any of the Predacons ever did, except maybe Rampage.

Megatron gave him some brutal smackdowns just for trying the wrong way. But I'd say abuse he delivered to Starscream would still be plain shitty and wrong no matter what gender Starscream was. It's still not okay when male Starscream is one the recieving end. That's the point.

If he was a woman than perhaps social concepts might make the drawn out graphic beatings a little more "shockworthy", but I still think it'd be fine since it characterizes Megatron as the powermad abusive piece of shit that he is.

You couldn't say that it would teach boys that hitting women is okay either without looking like a total idiot. That'd be like saying Megatron teaches kids that genocide is okay or that defiling corpses is okay.

He's the villain, he's the one character that's allowed to do awful things.

Female Starscream could work but honestly I still think using his dynamic with an established female character (Blackarachnia, Thunderblast, Nightbird) or creating a new one is the better way to go.

Can Arcee be male? Can Fowler be white? No? Precisely.

Sue me

 

Or create a male fembot and say its just a sub-group with specific features like insecticons. (I´m joking)

 

If it was only for me, no one would have romantic relationship. Like I said in an earlier post, many other kind of not romantic relations exist and people could focus on those to make characters stories. But then even if I'm not interested by it, maybe romance could exist since even humans fall in love with anyone and romance doesn't absolutely include sex, it may be a thing of the soul. In the case of sex I think the Transformers are genderless since they never reproduced that way. Female seems to be a look or a kind of identity choice, which can be changed.

Thank you.

I wouldn't mind Arcee being male. In the comic Jem, they did change Jetta back to black as she was first designed to be which I'm very happy for. And it worked. In Avengers they even changed Nick Fury to black (even if he wasn't originally meant to be) and it works for many though not for all but many are now okay with it.

By giving them any gender in any series, somehow it would take out the importance of gender (what I meant by being genderless). I mean they make them transform into different things in many series, different colors and looks, they give them different personnalities sometimes, different background, different allegiances, but they can't change gender. It that so important? The only thing that can never be changed? The Transformers are mostly defined by their gender?

 

Well we see that Sari Sumdac got her human alt mode by scanning Isaac Sumdac. Rather than turning into a perfect copy of him like Transformers normally do whenever they scan for an alt mode she became a female... though that really doesn't explain how she ends up with red hair despite Isaac's hair being black. Where the heck did her hair color come from?

Although Cybertronians are freaked out by organics and probably didn't intend for their scanners to be compatible with organic life. Thus rather than turning into a perfect copy of Isaac she turned into his adopted daughter and then was raised totally knowing that she came from Cybertron.