Hasbro's Final Word on Transformers and Gender

Okay, I have been stating for several years now that Hasbro has maintained since the creation of the Transformers in 1984 and reiterated repeatedly since then (most notably at a Botcon 2010 panel) that the Transformers are in fact GENDERLESS.  Well, this Transformer Tiggy preordered the Covenant of Primus as soon as it was available to do so and it arrived at around noon-thirty on December 13th, 2013 (and as of this posting I am half way through reading it).  This book is “written” from the perspective of the third of the thirteen Primes and inherently their historian, Alpha Trion, to the human friends of the Autobots.  In the Forward (the third paragraph specifically), he states the following [with my personal notations and clarifications]:



“For the ease of your reading pleasure, I have translated many Cybertronian proper nouns, pronouns, and phrases into English, and into Earth-normative concepts also.  In doing this, I hope that I have not caused confusion or overstepped my authority in the use of your language and customs.  It has long been our habit to observe alien cultures and attempt to make ourselves intelligible to them in their own terms wherever we can, be it in physical form, language, or manner.  Where a significant deviation from Cybertronian culture cannot be avoided, I shall make a note in the text.”  [Cybertronian is translated to human centric terms, language, and cultural idioms, but clarified as to the actual truth of the matter where needed to avoid confusing anyone. ~ Leathurkatt]



Chapter 1 gives brief overview descriptions of all thirteen Dynasty Primes, including all of their names in creation order – Prima (Leader and first Matrix Bearer), Vector Prime (Lord of Space and Time), Alpha Trion (Historian of the Primes and Memory of Primus), Solus Prime (the Creator – Blacksmith of the Primes), Micronus Prime (First Minibot and Powermaster, the Conscience of the Primes), Alchemist Prime (Spiritualist and the Mechanist of Change), Nexus Prime (the first Combiner – 1into5, 5into1), Onyx Prime (the Beast Prime with the Tryptich Mask – the Spirit Warrior), Amalgamus Prime (Prankster and the Mechanist of Transformation), Quintus Prime (the Experimentalist and Dreamer), Liege Maximo (the Charismatic Silver-Tongued Manipulator), Megatronus (the Unstable Lord of Entropy, later becoming The Fallen and is Lord Megatron’s namesake), and “Thirteen” (the Visionary and Unifier of the Primes who’s name was removed from the Covenant and replaced with the symbol for 13 by Alpha Trion at Thirteen’s request).  If you have read the Covenant and know the true identity of Thirteen, KEEP IT TO YOURSELF AND NO KIBITZING!  Let others read it for themselves, okay?   Now, this brings me to Solus Prime in particular, the so-called “female” Prime.  After describing her on page 12, Alpha Trion (the Author of the book) goes on to clarify the facts of gender or lack thereof among Cybertronians on pages 12 and 13 [my personal notations and clarifications]:



“I note at this point for those of you who may be curious: the Primes, and later the Transformers, do not have gender in the way that humans and other biological species do.  Here Solus Prime, and those who were later formed in her lineage, are referred to as “she” in order to comply with your human gender reference terms and to show a distinction that Cybertronians recognize among themselves (though other races do not).”  [Yes, they are in fact a genderless race, guys. ~ Leathurkatt]

“To Cybertronians, there are two distinct “kinds” that we easily divide ourselves into, recognizing key feature differences in the manner in which information is processed.  It is widely supposed among the remaining Primes that this difference was necessary for Solus herself to operate the Creation Lathe, which required a vast capacity for wide-ranging and parallel thought processing.”  [As opposed to the more narrow and linear thought processing of the other 12 and their descendents. ~ Leathurkatt]

“After becoming part of a wider galactic community, we adopted the habit of using gender reference protocol when interacting with gendered alien species in order to demonstrate that we are not unfamiliar with the notions of difference and equality; we recognize our difference; we celebrate our equality.”  [They have no gender biased terms in their culture or language at all and such terms or pronouns are strictly a product of their interaction with organic, gendered, intelligent races and used only when interacting with such races, like oh say, humans for example. ~ Leathurkatt]

“In early, pre-contact Cybertronian notation, however, all Primes and others are referred to by a single symbol.  I note that in human terms there is a rough 1:1 ratio of male to female that does not correspond to our 1:12 distinction, and I apologize to any females of the species who may feel slighted at having their pronoun applied to the less-numerous type of Cybertronian.”  [They call each other by the same term which has no gender distinction at all and the mental processing difference between them is not so relevant to them.  Don’t be offended that the human term of “female” was applied to the rarer of the two and is outnumbered 12 to 1. ~ Leathurkatt]



The short version – Transformers are a purely genderless, intelligent, sentient, transforming, robotic, alien race with no gender based terms or identifiers within their culture or language, but differentiate themselves by the type of information processing within their neural cores – Broad and Parallel vs Narrow and Linear, not feminine vs masculine.  They refer to each other by a single “symbol” or term and display equality among themselves rather than actually singling out their differences the way humans do.  The only time they use gender based terminology is when interacting with organic races with gender biased cultures and language, like humans.  There is no such thing as Male, Female, Gay, Straight, etc in Cybertronian language and culture, period.

In other words, I was mostly right all along; the part where I was wrong – I stated that apparent gender was strictly an apparition of their personality.  The fact is that Transformers have no gender at all, not even mentally.  What we perceive is nothing more than their attempts to make themselves relatable and understandable to US.  Now it is rendered as official, In-Character, Transformers Canon by Hasbro themselves and removes all debate and speculation on the subject.  Sorry guys, but you can’t argue with set established canon, and it states in blue text on the back of the box itself that “After 30 years of Transformers storytelling, here at last is the complete volume that ties together all the lore surrounding Cybertron.” IE – that what is in the book applies to ALL continuities over the last 30 years as well as those yet to come, including the genderless robots distinction that has been maintained since day one by Hasbro.

So don’t argue with me about Transformers and gender simply because your human egocentric mind is not capable of understanding or accepting the fact that a sentient race of ROBOTS simply do not have gender or sexuality of any kind while you insist on writing about and/or drawing them with human sexual and reproductive parts (which they do not have because, gee, they are ROBOTS) for your own human egocentric sexual fantasies.  **facepalms**

Spark Melding and/or Pair Bonding in some form, however, has been Canon since G1 and was explicitly shown or described in several continuities over the past thirty years.  It is a Spiritual Life Force connection, guys, not a sexual one.  There IS a difference.