Can of Worms: gender representation in the Transformers
mild EarthsPark spoilers ahead
(i.e. if you don't know who Nightshade is)
Transformers EarthsPark spoiler space
Transformers EarthspArk spoiler space
Transformers EarThspark spoiler space
Firstly, let me just say that gender has always been a weird concept for the Transformers, as a species of sexless and genderless alien robots. The fact is that Transformers have genders because:
a/ the human audience that it's intended for has genders
b/ the human performers who voice these characters have genders
c/ the English language cannot function without gendered pronouns (other languages like Japanese can, but not English); it's even more serious in other languages like French etc.
But we suspend disbelief. Transformers having genders is like Transformers having humanoid bodies with faces, noses, mouths etc., speaking English before modern Earth-contact, having Earth-based names that should be impossible to exist on Cybertron (e.g. Bumblebee, Hound etc.) etc. - but these things all exist in the Transformers for the sake of the audience. Simple. Being a gender neutral Transformer is no better or worse than being a male or female Transformer... they're all equally nonsense in the context of alien robots.But it's just a thing that's existed since the beginning of the Transformers, and it's not gonna go away.
But Transformers has kinda always sucked at representing Cybertronian non-male genders.
Part 1: Female Cybertronians
I'm not gonna go into the history of female Transformers; we all know how they came about ... you don't need a history lesson.
But something I'd like to point out is that G1 canon often had to rub the female TFs' genders in our faces. From the oddly effeminate body designs of characters like Arcee, Elita-1, Chromia, Moonracer etc. that are so impractical that it's hard to make G1-accurate toys of these characters without making them backpackformers, even at an MP level; to episodes like "The Search for Alpha Trion" where the male characters have to act surprised that female Autobots exist, and how they're treated as a separate caste from the male Autobots... Cybertron is clearly a gender segregated society!The word "female Autobots" gets thrown around a lot, Starscream making jokes about the Autobots' "girlfriends" blah blah blah. The female Transformers aren't allowed to just exist incidentally; the audience needs regular reminders about their gender.
Nowadays it's no longer a big deal if a Cybertronian is male or female. In the Bumblebee movie Shatter is a female Decepticon while Dropkick is male... no biggie, it's just incidental. Both Shatter and Dropkick are equal threats to Bumblebee and Sector Seven; you could change their genders and the story would remain the same. We also saw this happen in Beast Wars and the Unicron Trilogy, where Airazor's gender was changed in Japan, and Nitro Convoy's (Override's) gender was changed outside of Japan. No biggie. The Seekers in Cyberverse are a mix of males and females; doesn't matter, they still work the same either way.
Part 2: Gender Neutral Cybertronian
We have had non-binary TFs before, namely in the IDW comics where we saw characters as being gender fluid. But Nightshade is gender-neutral; Nightshade has no gender and the show constantly reminds us that Nightshade's pronouns are 'they' and 'them.' I don't have an issue with having a gender neutral Transformer per se; as I said before, it's no better or worse than having gendered TFs. Fine. But does the show really need to constantly remind us of this? IMO it's about as cringeworthy as "The Search of Alpha Trion" having to constantly remind us that the female Autobots are female. About as subtle as Michael Bay with an exploding sledgehammer.
IMO if you want to have male, female or genderless TFs, fine... but just make their gender incidental. I think that Challenge of the Machine Men did a better of job of gender inclusiveness; characters like Crasher, Small Foot, Pathfinder etc. were female, but no special attention was ever drawn to their gender. Crasher never declared that the Guardians would be facing the menacing might of a female Renegade... she just attacked them and they would fight back, same as any other Renegade. Characters like Crasher was given lipstick, sure, but others like Pathfinder who had a faceplate never had any typical female cosmetic markers in her design. The only way you could tell that she was female was through the use of female pronouns and hearing her voice actress' female voice... that was it. It was all incidental, never rubbing it in your face.
It's like the "seeds of the future are buried in the past" line from Beast Machines, or the "with great power comes great responsibility" line from Spider-Man. "My pronouns are they and them." Yeah, no crap. We got it after the first ten times that you've said it. No need to keep drilling it into our skulls!I would much rather they just play it cool and have Nightshade's gender be revealed more naturally... just by having characters refer to Nightshade with gender-neutral pronouns and let the audience work it out. Nobody ever points out that Twitch, Elita-1, Hashtag and Frenzy are female... we just know that they are. And people would know that Nightshade is gender neutral too without the show having to point it out to our faces. Children aren't idiots. We were able to work out who the male and female Machine Men were as kids in the 80s without that show explicitly telling us who was what. The irony here is that the Machine Men are alien cyborgs who do have actual genders (they have organic brains in robot bodies). Crasher is as female as Kusanagi Motoko is from Ghost in the Shell etc.
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Note that the Enemy (Renegade) Spoiler is arguably gender fluid, as Spoiler's gender alternates between female and male in different canonical sources; and this was all in the 1980s!