Why there should be Female Transformers 

Links to my social media: beacons.ai/emperor_kumquat

Transformer SHOULD have female fans! I've had a few people tell me "You can't be a Transformers fan! That's for boys, and you're a girl!" This is absolutely annoying! No one I know understands that Transformers is for EVERYONE!

They did the same thing with Starscream and most of the males having feminine hips but Breakdown has the big chassis

Transformers: *meets an organic civilization* Organic civilization: *uses the word gender* Transformers: the f*ck is a gender Transformers after learning what gender is: screw it, I'm a girl now

Humen: Do the Transformers have have genders? Primus: I'm not sure but I thought variety sounded fun.

Starscream in Prime was a trendsetter for being a guy Cybertronian with a slim figure and walked in what were essentially stilettos.

I’m still bummed we don’t have a masterpiece style Prime Arcee, only masterpiece I’d be willing to fork cash over for. Not just for *hxrny* reasons but she is and always will be my favorite transformer from the series I grew up with.

I think the problem is, Hasbro didn’t want female transformers as it was meant to be “for boys”. So now they’re like “oh crap we need more females, but only have like 10” so it’s just a matter of having to create new ones, or gender swapping which can cause issues. I actually like the idea of a female swoop, i wouldn’t want Swoop to just stop showing up but Cyberverse Straife was neat and more fembots is always great, because it just means more characters. However Hasbro still sucks at making female transformers toys sadly, after trying to transform WFC Arcee again really reminded me of this. But I love characters Nautica, Windblade, Annode, etc. Chromia might be my favourite fembot mostly due to her design in the comics, but I’d love to see these characters fleshed out more. Also although they don’t reproduce, another explanation for them having gender might just be so they aren’t confused when they meet species that require gender for reproduction, so they’re familiar with the concept of gender. Hopefully we’ll get a prominent fembot in the movies at some point so it becomes more normal in the general audiences eyes. Until that day, Till all are one

Everybody, say thank you to Elita & her team and Arcee for being the reason why we have more female Transformers today. 💕💕💕💕

Speaking of gender, TFP Optimus has a hip-waist ratio and butt reminding me of the female Quarians in Mass Effect and I rewatch the show because he’s so distractingly hot. I love it that he’s so sexually confusing.

Gender stereotypes are getting so old now. I believe children and adults alike should like/love wherever they want. And not let what others tell them you can't like it because of what your gender is.

THIS! I've been wanting to voice my thoughts on this topic when talking about it in the community, but it's so hard to do without truing it into a +500 word essay. But you presented and explained the issue perfectly. I'm so sick and tired of having all the fem bots be just a human female body with hour glass frame made from metal. It makes no sense when all the males can have vastly different body shapes, build, figures and frames, but all the females look the same.

Primus wanted to imitate life forms he'd encountered. It's also why there's animals on Cybertron.

I believe in curviness for all robots

Memorable femme transformers to me (regardless of affiliation or continuity): 1. Arcee 2. Elita-1 3. Chromia 4. Flamewar 5. Strikka 6. Airachnid 7. Slipstream 8. Windblade 9. Blackarachnia

I mean, id imagine just having one general body type is kinda boring. Plus thinning down can be advantageous for less material use and less weight

am I the only one who wants to see a cute little protoform like in IDW silent light but in prime? It would look so adorable and to see miko's reaction to the baby. 😍

yes we need more. I believe Transformers Animated had the most as standby civilian bots.

Its a really weird situation in the comics that for a long time they couldnt do genders and suddenly Arcee in that is basically a trans transformer and the default of things was gay blocky dudes. Like it really racks the mind on how sexist the idea in the early days was that "we cant have females in this franchise cause its only for boys" but in later writers this became a chance for homosexual respresentation of all things. Which is a good hustle ngl. But I just dont really want any of this drama in transformers, just have genders be a thing and call it a day. Individual characters like us can simply choose their orientation.

I always never question why there was a female transformer when I first started watching transformers ( Tfp was my first). I always thought it natural and didn't need an explanation for it, This is the first time I'm hearing people question a female tf and to me it's a fantasy race so why not.

Even though I wasn't a huge fan of Robots in Disguise, I'm glad that they introduced more female Autobots and Decepticons, especially Strongarm being my favorite due to the fact that she has a different bodytype to the normal smaller, feminine bodytype. It's little things like this that make body diversity in transformers make me feel hopeful and proud of my body. Windblade is also a favorite though due to design and it's saddening that we didn't get to see more of her outside of the two most hated incarnations of Transformers media of all time (RiD and Cyberverse)

Honestly, as someone who was first exposed to Transformers thanks to the Bay movies. It was hard to have toys like these because "Oh that's for boys," "Sweetie you don't want My Little Pony?" and "That isn't for girls." Like, I was literally watching the films and at the time, Transformers Prime (As well as Robots in Disguise). It always overwhelmed so much, that it almost made want to stop dealing with these things. But I love it so much and I'm bummed that there aren't many female characters other than Arcee and Elita One.

arcee from transformers prime was both cool, badass and attractive. Its a shame we dont have more of her

People of quality do not fear equality

I think the Cybertronians' alt-modes also play a part in their body shapes. Arcee (in TFP) is a motorcycle, much smaller and slimmer than a truck like Optimus or ambulance like Ratchet.

I'm a woman and I've been a big fan of transformers since I was kid and my mom was also a fan when she was kid. It'd be nice if toys and cartoons weren't so gendered. As for transformer genders, personally I don't think it really needs much explaining why female transformers exist. Logically, they probably shouldn't even look or act human to begin with. I also enjoy seeing cool female characters and I think it attracts more female fans. Also I agree with your point about them just making a metal human woman and putting all the kibble on the back. I think it'd be nice if they made more bulkier female characters so they wouldn't need all the back kibble. Or at least do what they did with Prime Arcee and choose a vehicle mode that isn't super bulky. It'd also be nice to see more slender/curvier looking male characters instead of the same old blocky look as long as they don't have the back kibble problem.

Idw2 have some of the best female Transformers designs because they're cool looking robot with very subtle female features. I wish Hasbro and other Transformers fans kept that same mentality

It could be more about design. Arcee from TFP is an agile and quick combatant. Thus having a smaller design that appears more feminine, makes sense for her skill set. Same thing with Arachnid. In Transformers Animated, RC was originally a school teacher (if I’m remembering correctly). So her design is not made for combat. Instead, her design was meant for knowledge, and distribution of knowledge (in more ways than one). As a school teacher, she has a more friendly design, using a softer pallet of colors, and a silhouette that that is non-threatening. It may be, that when we hear “he” or “she”, the transformers are saying a word that refers to a type of build or design that they may have. The words themselves going through the translators and coming out as “he/she”.

I honestly also am tired of this whole "masulinity is a default setting" mentality in general, especially with the things I enjoy. For me gender is not something that should matter at all in a series about robots turning into cars, tanks and planes, but sadly as you noted, transformers to this day suffer from their sexist roots. Femninity is not something that should be ridiculed or forcebly differentiated, but simply accepted as a diverse part of life. But at the very least with time we got better with this, and were blessed with so many cool and awesome female transformers of all shapes and sizes.

The issue with boxy body types is that these robots turn into vehicles that are mostly cars/tanks, generally things that don't fly. There are exceptions like Tailgate with his enormous thighs and rounded shoulder pads and on the opposite end of the spectrum there's Strika, that's built like a brickwall. Shatter doesn't have a rounded chest either but she's far from the feminine stereotype, just like the bb movie design for arcee that gave her robust legs. Also the use of he/she pronouns is to make things easier to explain without making a lord of the ring esque universe where everything is super specific. After all the franchise is aimed towards both young people and adults

I think we need more of them

I agree with you because female transformers are good

This goes exactly with why I would like there to be more "girly" or "pretty" male Characters in media because the fact remains that all males have never been just only big, squarish, masculine, brutish in who they are, that is only how others in society choose to perceive them. And even then, that shouldn't be considered "normal" because not only have more feminine male Characters and actual historical people always been a thing but to assume that "oh, big and rough edged person means male" isn't fair to the people who may fit more of the "normal" male appearnce but they could still have feminine personalities or traits. We should judge people by their actions and what they actually try to become rather then just how some simple minded and corrupt societal norms perceive them as. That's honestly I think part of the reason why I love the Furry Fandom so much. It's kind of hard to say any one single race or species looks "normal" when there are so many different individuals who may even share a same category but still be vastly different to other considered similar to them. I apologise if anything I just said was offensive or brash or anything negative or made anyone uncomfortable. I just felt like maybe I could put my own perspective on this kind of matter out there so that I may better learn from other perspectives different from my own and show that I am willing to learn and tolerate differences so long as you do the same.

Are there any Yellow Fembots? I was thinking about this the other day after seeing the RID episode where Strongarm is in Bumblebees body

you bringing up thick thighs with a picture of drift and bigger lips with a picture of overlord gives me so much seratonin. idw is one of the continuities that introduced me to transformers and got me into it. (i do hc idw cyclonus as nonbinary too, mostly just me projecting a little tho)

I never understood why these were and still technically are “problems.” It’s annoying and frustrating to think about it!

I finally got around to reading IDW, and I agree it has the best female characters. I think the best example is Lug, but that's just me.

I never found female cybertronian's weird

I think that the most perfect in between of a masculine female and a feminine male structure is Splendid Convoy, the yellow repaint of RID01 Optimus Prime/Fire Convoy. She should be used more often in fiction to set a standard of diversifying body types for any gender.

You know which are my favorite girls? Lug and Anode. They are whole vibes

I don't mind there being a Male & female Cybertronians (mechs & femmes) in fact I'm down for it. It makes them more like an actual living species rather than just a bunch of constructed robots. It's just that whole thing of being able to easily modify gender through the excuse of "they're robots" that irritates me, especially in the later IDW before it's reboot. Or in Cyberverse, the creators tried to change the gender of certain characters just to try and either shoehorn or forcibly diversify the cast.

As a transfem Transformers fan, my answer to "why should there be female transformers?" is simply "why not?"

Wait? People complained and find something weird about this? I always thought it is natural to have female Transformers…

Don't forget Arcee wasn't in the first live action movie because Michael Bay couldn't fathom how an audience would feel about a girl robot in a movie full aliens that turn into cars. Sure the Arcee triplets eventually made their debut but it's amazing how something as stupid as "a girl transformer might confuse people" was what was prevented her character in the first movie. Thank God we eventually got Shatter as a main antagonist who doesn't have a traditional feminine body type and no one batted an eye in Bumblebee. Hopefully Rise of the Beasts doesn't drop the ball to "explain" gender with Airazor and Arcee.

I like the fact they point this out due to the fact back during transformers prime there was a female predacon called ripclaw made but never shown in the show

you should do a compilation of funny things from the novels and covenant of primus. they sound hilarious🤣🤣🤣

In all honesty shatter from the bumblebee movie was probably the best version of this she was feminine but she looked like a proper transformer

A lot of my favorite Transformers are ironically almost all female. Sari Strika Windblade Elita-1 Arcee (Prime) Slipstream Flamewar (2019 IDW) Pyra Magna and the Torchbearers Strongarm Arachnid Moonracer Javelin Shadow Striker Blackaracnia Aileron Novastar Lug Anode Nautica Velocity Glyph Mistress of Flame Solus Prime Botonica Red Alert (Animated) Lightbright

Unrelated but who wanted to see buster the puggle in tfp? If there was an episode where the kids find a box of abandened puggle puppies (one of the little girls is buster) and take them to the base how would the bots and cons ( when buster follow's miko onto the battle field) react to the little puppers?

I totally agree keeping femms in tf media. Idc what they look like but theres gonna be fans quistioning about everything especially getting butt hurt when fems has a bit of human female anatomy. Aren't mechs no different? Yeah I'm all for fems being in the tf media. What's hilarious is when I draw my friend's ocs people call Me sexist when I draw curvy tf fem designs especially when those ocs come from girls and they apporve.

Me(a guy):Never understood what was the problem with female Transformers. Literally my second fav Transformer is Arachnid and/or Arcee!👍👍Guys who the f cares?!

As a female transformers fan I heavily agree with this video

I'd like to mention the gender debacle in rescue bots as in one episode, Salvage and Blurr were confused by the concept of gender but as soon as Quickshadow arrives everybody can immediately determine that she is female.

Not enough talk of kibble placement occurs during gender discussions

6:20 Nightshade:am i a joke to you?

The argument i see taht fails the most is "these are asexual beings, having female makes no sense. " Asexual creatures can look like anything, you can have creatures that look masculine and feminine and still be asexual or agendered. To argue against female appearing cybertronians is to argue against male appearing ones too. Ans it makes it seem like you are unintentionally advocating for androgynous cybertronians that look like neither. Male is just as much of a gender as female after all. And I can make my robot look however I please. I can make them look like a hippy male hooker with tiny heels or I can make them look like a female my little pony style dragon for all I care. They are transformers. Transform them . Also allow me to add that I've been a transformers fan for years , and a girl last I checked. Gal transformer fan. my mom introduced it to me and my siblings, most of whom are gals. She was there from the start... So I do not get them breaking their next to make it strictly for dudes now.

Because of an accident in Cyberverse, we have a male that just swaps body forms because he wants to. Acid Storm is a he, but uses a male or female Seeker body at random times, which is cool to see!

It could be possible that Transformers could have parents. In Transformers Revenge of The Fallen, Jetfire mentioned his father and in The Last Knight, Hound mentioned his father.

Your argument is logical.

More arcee😋🔥

4:06: "Because trust me, the fans find it attractive anyway" Can confirm, Overlord would be a babe if it wasn't for all the murder, torture, death fights, temporary ending of the best relationship in all of Transformers, and other assorted war crimes

I agree with every single one of your points, exempt from the neoprounouns part. it makes sense, but I feel like that's a bit of a leap.

Really, really well thought out and presented.

Arcee from Prime is my favorite. ☺️🥰 As for the "female body-type" designs, while most Transformers should have a athletic/soldier appearance, both male and female, different body builds wouldn't hurt, we got some big bois so we could have some big gals. I actually think Clobber, (big gal) is kinda cute.☺️🥰 Uh... I'm trying not to sound superficial... I will not apologize though for having a Transformer wiafu list, that has both Arcee and Clobber though. ;)

They should be the Default for Cybertronians. It's also great for toons as toy Ads as it encourages the use of character names which helps marketing.

Could you do a video about buster thundercracker's dog?

If ima be honest I kinda didn't like that fact that the cybertronians couldn't have kids. Not because of anything weird I would just like to see an father Ironhide yelling at his kids for taking one of his giant cannons😭😭💯, and all I hear is "CLASS DISMISSED!"

I'm a girl and I like Transformers (if I pretend like those live action movies never existed) when I was 12 years old I had a big crush on all of the characters mainly Bumblebee girls should also be allowed to watch the cartoons and buy the toys and enjoy them without being mocked

I love that rid 2015 and cyberverse break the stereotype, that the female characters have female human bodys and they give them bodys similar to the male characters making the vehicle mode part of the body

In the 80s was different. In Cyberverse with acidstorm and skywarp might be editing error.

We´ve also seen some shell-formers among male bots, sadly, as they are kinda bad.... and male Transformers nipples. Looking at you, Wreck-Gar! It´s a shame IDW has lost the rights. And yeah, Simon Furman will only be remembered by the big disaster of Spotlight Arcee, as none of his other histories are remarkable enough to fix that disaster.

I am guilty of using "he" as a genderless pronoun and not really writing any female OCs or official Cybertronians in my fics, but the OCs I end up writing in mostly just die, though I do like to "write a design" that has a feminine design but uses the male pronoun. I never put any thought into the male pronoun issue until now. So thank you for enlightening me! I also now realize that a pretty large number of characters in Cyberverse are female - heck, even several characters normally male have been turned female, like Cosmos, Skywarp, Nova Storm and Clobber (Lugnut from Animated). Not to mention that several of the generic Seekers with no names also have female voices (and lipstick, oh well) and not just being all males. And no one questions the he/she pronouns, ever! Not even when Acid Storm seems to change between appearing male and sounding female (then with lipstick) throughout their showtime. I think Cyberverse is going in the right direction. :3

G1 Shockwave: FEMALES, I THOUGHT THEY WERE EXTINCT

I kinda feel like relatability is put the window at this point. They are giant metal aliens. They are meant to be entertaining, not relatable

You know in Transformers robots in disguise 2015 if you zoom into Bumblebees eyes it kinda looks like he has eyeliner on

Nice video as usual ☺️ But i want to know when will you realise the second chapter of mercy on RU-vid ?

Well it really doesnt matter whether there gendered or Not. Since they reproduce ether by factory(independent or by assembly line) Or by self dividing(in the event of critical species loss) Then of course there's primus who pumps out bots now and then. As to there being separate genders it's likely a way to differentiate each other better since it isn't uncommon for there to be hundreds of bots with the same builds/designs besides different color schemes and self modification. I think bots like bumble bee , starscream, shockwave and sound wave are good examples of the many possible body types. Be is pretty small and lean for a standard male bot, And sound wave and shock wave share similar body types with some difference in shape, with the exception of there heads. And starscream has almost 10 different look alike with the same builds except witbdifferent colors, and 1 or 2 of the are also female bots too. And those bots while the same hight and build differe in only in there slimmer body type All in all there isn't any issue in them sticking gender label in my opinion because doing so has no effect on the characters or there interactions with others

Question: why do transformers have gender? Primus: yes

I LOVE THIS!!! You explained this perfectly, and it makes so much sense. :D

Doesn’t cyberverse already have a female lead? Aswell as a lot more female transformers

Thanks for this interesting video. It's also interesting that "Crasher" from the original Gobots cartoon, did a much better job of including female bots. One thing of note is that the English we "hear" read are more or less the universal translation, so it's perhaps "our" prejudices that we read or hear (even though, in fact, it's also those of the writers)? I do think they should use more neutral terms, such as"they" for most TFs or aliens, etc (and then using gendered terms appropriately) and also while I'm at it, I wish they would not use gendered or "human" terms for themselves ("chairman", "pencil-pushers", etc). Anyway, cheers for the video!

I've seen those sexist folks too, I'm a cis, het, male and I never got why it was an issue to have female bots, hell GoBots had them from episode 1, I played TF with my sister all the time. Besides, the argument they commonly use is that the bots have no gender and the choice of male pronouns is either implied to be random in universe or male pronouns are just considered "normal", these same folks would have a stroke if you pointed out that by that logic identifying with ANY gender would make all of the bots transgendered. Yeah, Optimums Prime is trans.

Loved the video

Wait why tf would people argue of why transformers have female characters in it? I'm suprised-

A true Decepticon always respects his comrades whether they are fembots, bots, beastformers or minicons.

I really do hate gender stereotypes, anyone can like Transformers or anything else.

6:25 Your wish has been granted

I consider them all genderfluid in the sense how some species of animals can switch gender over the course of their life depending on circumstances, only that Cybertronians can be what they want whenever it suits them no matter how temporarily.

and yet the sad part is the 1/13 gender ratio... makes sence with the Lore Hasbro has made as it has to do with the 13 primes, the first Cybertronians only 1 of the 13 was female

Fun fact, in the original Marvel run of Transformers the Watsonian reason for why Arcee was created was because feminists were complaining that there weren’t any female Autobots. It honestly is a contender for one of the worst in universe explanations for not only Arcee’s origin but explanations for why female transformers are a thing.

I do think that using she is fine, I like it and I don’t care but honestly this whole video’s answer to the “problem” is kind of lame.

I think one of the problems with g1 arcee or elita-1 design wise is that they are woman first and then a transformers For example titans return subnatica is a good example for that I think its better to not give an explanation couse most of the time when they try it doesnt work that well, couse if they are males without explanation why not females? And have more female characters be more common (sry for my bad grammar im not a native speaker)

Great video. Agreed on IDW2, not only do they have a diverse female cast alongside it's diverse male cast but also, as you say, don't bring up gender. They exist, they're everywhere, and no explanation as to why is given, nor is it needed; helps normalises the concept of gendered Cybertronians. Transformers acquiring a concept of gender from organics makes sense; if they're willing to take the forms of vehicles, tastes in music and other things from alien cultures, why not concepts like gender? Do some Transformers choose a gender or just roll with what gender the race they're talking to gives them? The 13 primes are given genders in some telling; was that them meeting organics themselves or did modern Cybertronians ascribe those qualities to them in hindsight? There's a number of interesting stories you could tell. I'd say either a) Don't mention it. Have diverse character of both genders and don't remake whether it's unusual or not. Or b) dive right into the deep end and explore Cybetronian and their relationship with gender in story building depth.

Robot is robot. Problem solved 👍

Honestly I never got the idea that female characters in transformers needed to be explained because in a franchise with weird shit like canned food induced lycanthropy, Bumblebee peeing on a guy, the flip flopping authorial intent when it comes to Sideways, and various crossovers being simultaneously canon and not canon it's the robots that use "she" as a pronoun that doesn't make sense. If anything they shouldn't be questioned as it's absolutely mundane compared to the actual weird stuff that goes on in this franchise.

I like how Hasbro has managed to do that in most of it's series, although I agree that this should be more normalized in the franchise Cyberverse I believe was one of the series that make body variety best

This is why I like Cyberverse for allowing more inclusion of female transformers. Although some pre-existing transformers being reassigned as female may rub some people off since its not how they're used to seeing those characters. Still this could just be a reinterpretation of the character and I quite like a few who were reassigned a different gender such as Swoop.

they really should just use it/ its/ they/them pronouns to show they are machine and it would make the most sense or maybe they're gender could be xeno and be literally what they are like Optimus identify's as a truck

Maybe one day we could get a video talking about the humans in transformers prime, no one really talks about them very much and it's be interesting to see what we don't know or what could've happened, or maybe find out why so many human companions of the autobots are often forgotten about after a series, like how transformers cyberverse I think was the sequel to prime, the humans from tfp are completely forgotten about when bumblebee and the others come back to earth, I need answers

I love your videos.