Source: https://tfviews.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=1667
Also, some background:
So, Simon Furman is a writer of Transformers comics who has some obvious issues when it comes to women and gender. He has publicly stated that Transformers shouldn't have a gender (despite almost all of them having male voices and pronouns), and had previously explained the origin of Arcee (a girl Autobot) as she was created by the Autobots to appease angry feminists, which is absolutely bizarre. After this, in the 2000s someone had the bright idea to let this guy write a whole story centered around her, and what he came up with then was even worse. According to what he wrote, she was kidnapped and had a forced gender reassignment against her will, which made her go insane and turn violent. So, he basically replaced a misogynistic origin story with one that is both misogynistic and transphobic. Mairghread Scott, a later Transformers comic writer, made a good attempt at salvaging that dumpster fire while trying to maintain some level of continuity. She made a post about it not even calling this guy out directly, and of course he takes it personally and freaks out, which is what that forum discussion is about.
Yeah yeah, this is all extremely nerdy and there are probably much more important things I could be doing with my time, but I just thought this... uh... Transformers redpill sort-of-eugenics rant was amusing and wanted to share.
All this over a cartoon that was created for no reason other than to sell plastic toys.
The guy who designed the toys intended Megatron to be the good guy lmao.
Transformers, in every continuity, are created beings with a purpose in mind.
The implication, of course, is that only males have a purpose.
Or I think maybe the implication is that the sole purpose of women is reproduction, and since Transformers don't reproduce biologically, there's no point in having Transformers who are women
Hardly an either/or thing. Man strong, man have purpose. Woman weak, woman make baby. No baby, no purpose.
Also, definitely male default too. In the beginning there was man and then god made woman from man, etc.
I thought the purpose was to move a continually cycling cast of toys.
Transformers have guns tho
A larger frame stopped being an advantage with the invention of the gun
a bigger body is still physically better for running fast or storing fuel or holding bigger guns
especially for a giant robot that can't be OHKO'd by a .22
There's very much a balance to be found. There's a reason we stopped developing super heavy tanks after WWII and started focusing on multi-role tanks.
Fair enough, but it's not like there's no niche for lighter, faster, harder to hit combatants either
It's such a weird argument. Like sure, human females generally build muscle slower than human males due to lower levels of testosterone, but why would that affect bots? If they wanted to build a female Transformer and put more "muscle" on her, they could just...do that? What's stopping them from building two genders of bots with different frames, voices, and pronouns, but otherwise the same specs?
First of all, it's alien engineering. It already doesn't mesh well with our limited mastery of machinery, they can literally change between humanoid forms and tool/vehicle forms. That secondary form is also generally much smaller, so their bodies can't be dense enough to humour this "need to be bigger to be robust" argument. Soundwave turns into a casette recorder and has casettes that are actually half-sized deceptions. Either these poor bastards should fly away at the softest breeze or it's alien tech and doesn't share a basis with human biology.
Second, small frames absolutely have a place in combat. A man and a woman of average builds getting into a pistol fight, there's no real physical advantage there. Even if transformers were constantly getting into hand-to-hand combat, that's ignoring the first point.
Finally, women give birth. There's fuckall more robust than that. I had car crash debris removed from my leg without anasthetics, and the perspective that gave me is thank fucking god I don't have to give birth.
I think Mairghread Scott came out and said she'd privately discussed the issue with Simon Furman after this kerfuffle, and that they'd come to an understanding.
Anything alien that looks like a human is overtly just a vehicle for telling human stories.
In this case, a vehicle like a big-ass truck or a sick jet.
