As a race of sapient beings that don’t reproduce sexually in most continuities, Transformers are oftentimes (and sometimes adamantly) referred to as genderless by their real world creators. Other times, the existence of womanhood in Cybertronians is recognized, though heavy bias from our reality is reflected, historic and traditional misogyny affected Transformers from the very beginning, influencing the lack of women characters for decades to come. Transformers were made and marketed to boys; it was a No Girls Allowed club.
With the release of The Search for Alpha Trion in ‘85 and The Transformers The Movie in ‘86we were given our first look at female Cybertronian characters. Unsurprisingly, all these female characters are svelte and lipsticked, a stark contrast to the sturdy and boxy frames of their male counterparts. Yay, cartoon sexual dimorphism.
As the years have gone by, female transformers have appeared more and again, giving us the occasional pink sports car and love interest.
In more recent media, the subject of gender has appeared more prominently. In the Aligned continuity, writers attempted to address the gender disparity by giving it an in-universe explanation;
“One-thirteenth of Cybertron’s population identify as female, and are descended from Solus Prime.“
Alpha Trion breaks the fourth wall to apologize to any readers who might feel insulted by Cybertron’s 1:12 gender ratio.**
This shoddy lore tries to tell us that female Transformers are Cybertronians forged with the imprint of Solus Prime, the first female Cybertronian, and therefore every bot created in her likeness has the innate ability to create.*
Behold our Robot Eve.
Alternatively, we are told this;
“The explanation for the use of the ‘she’ pronoun for Solus in the Aligned continuity, as detailed in her section of the Covenant, is that Cybertronians do not possess gender, but instead use pronouns as a result of a communication protocol designed to help facilitate dialogue between Cybertronians and the members of races who possess gender, as a means of recognizing and celebrating difference. This does not conflict with the Autobit regarding Arcee being an “exception”, as the explanation does not preclude the possibility that a Cybertronian could voluntarily self-identify with a gender, merely that they do not inherently have a gender, female, male, or anything in-between.”
This reinforces the idea that while Cybertronians do not exactly have gender, we as humans perceive them to be masculine or feminine.
In IDW’s G1 comics, gender isn’t touched, its hit over the head by Furman and then wakes up in a hospital room with Roberts at its side while Scott shuffles in the background with some flowers.
At some point in Cybertron’s early history, there were originally male and female Cybertronians. This doesn’t last long for some reason or another, leaving the planet without women-coded characters, though femininity remains a part of life for colonies off-world.
First up we have Arcee, a Cybertronian originally perceived as male. Arcee experiences gender dysphoria and agrees to allow Jhiaxus, one of the series’ antagonists, to alter her physiology in an attempt to “reintroduce” gender to Cybertron. This ends up being extremely traumatic for Arcee and Jhiaxus drops her like she’s hot. (This entire sub-plot is a hot mess, you can read more here.)
Next we have Lug and Anode, two married transgender Cybertronians. Both Lug and Anode were originally perceived as male by their peers, until the two explored the galaxy and were introduced to the concept of gender by organic races. The two found that womanhood was something they felt and subsequently embraced, with Anode reformatting her frame and Lug not.
Lug and Anode’s story, coupled with Arcee’s, gives us the implication that women-coded bots on Cybertron before the reintegration of the colonies were almost certainly transgender women.
Another concept*** exists in IDW’s comics, a somewhat sloppy metaphor-slash-parallel-slash-actual-example of transgender Cybertronians. Synthetically produced Cybertronians are sparks (the Cybertronian heart/soul) placed in pre-constructed bodies, as opposed to “forged” bots, Transformers who begin life in the body their spark chooses for them. These “cold-constructed bots” often suffer from body dysphoria, notably experienced by both Megatron and Starscream, and in turn often change bodies in hopes of finding a more comfortable one.
In Till All Are One, Starscream is shown his “true form”, the body his spark would have given him, rather than the multiple constructed bodies we see him go through over the series.
While Starscream has arguably fallen into feminine narratives, queercoding, and addressed as femininein certain media, his dysphoria and change of body doesn’t fully condone Starscream to be transgender, though the longing for one’s “true” self rings familiar with some transgender people.
In conclusion; through most (if not all) universal streams Transformers can be considered genderless, agender, or different varieties of non-binary, though through our own creation and perception they are coded as men and sometimes women, but Transformers themselves are capable of forging their own gender and expression thereof.
*(What does this mean? I have no idea. Aligned is a mess.)
**(The Primal Blueprint 1:12 ratio is a load of exhaust in my personal opinion; If the ratio were true, we wouldn’t have mini-cons with beast modes or female pronouns, or Blurr asking what the heck Dani Burns is.)
*** (The narrative of Cold-Constructed added to Functionism also parallels racism.)
A Force Sensitive Phasesixer 