TFs and gender. A clarification.

I'm a little hesitant to write this, because doing so will re-open a debate that is invariably going to leave some people unhappy, and I don't want to do that. But someone whose judgement I trust has asked me to further clarify an earlier tweet, so here goes.

Yesterday, Kenny @nonbInary asked me, via Twitter: "Do the Transformers, to you, follow a gender binary system in their world? Is it alright to call Whirl a she?"

To which I replied, "It's all up for grabs. You can call Whirl a she if you like."

This was a response to the *second* of Kenny's two questions. I must confess that I didn't even attempt to answer the first question (because after a second's consideration I decided it fell into the 'Too Big For Twitter' category). More to the point, I didn't read the second as a corollary to the first. Anyway, I interpreted the second question as, "Would you as the person who 'authors' this character object if, as part of my personal, unofficial take on things, i.e. as part of my 'headcanon', I thought of Whirl as a female Transformer?"

The thoughts behind my first response were as follows: I can't dictate how anyone chooses to read these characters; nor is it my place to police others' headcanon. If a reader for whatever reason wants to say to themselves "Because of/despite what's on the page, my take on the character is that they're 'male' or 'female'," I can't stop that. Maybe my position is informed by my fan-fiction background, I don't know.

I know that lots of people invent all sorts of variations on the canonical MTMTE storyline, with characters being human, being differently gendered, being animals etc. I had those unofficial, 'Elseworlds' type stories in mind when I gave my answer. I was not confirming that Whirl was a girl. Nor was I casually saying 'It's all terribly ambiguous, isn't it, so if you think Whirl should be a girl, yeah, why not, let's make that canon.'

After it became apparent that my original tweet had been misinterpreted (and in hindsight, yes, it was sloppily worded), I sent this second tweet:

'I meant that some ppl read the 'he' characters in MTMTE as female, and I have no problem with that. #Headcanon.'

The hashtag matters.

Having been been told that my position on this is still open to misinterpretation, I want to add this:

Going by what has thus far been presented on the page - because that's all we can go on - the characters in MTMTE who refer to themselves using male or female personal pronouns do so because whatever those pronouns connote in a TF context (see below) complements their sense of self-identity. They are exercising a choice. They are using preferred pronouns.

To reiterate: until a writer comes along and establishes something which contradicts what I'm about to say (always possible), my own view is that the characters who refer to themselves using female personal pronouns do so because they have made a conscious decision to adopt "she" or "her", and they have done this because they identify as "female". And the same applies to male personal pronouns.

What does that mean for those 'male' Transformers who choose a 'female' avatar, and vice versa? I don't know. Discuss! That's not a cop out... it links to the other thing I want to say, which goes back to the first of Kenny's two questions. I was asked whether, in my opinion, the Transformers followed a gender binary system. I'm afraid the answer to that is... I don't know. We haven't established that yet - not definitively. Similarly, what do 'he' and 'she' pronouns connote in a TF context? Do they connote *exactly* the same things as they do in a human context? I don't know. It hasn't been properly explored yet.

All that said, let's assume that a Transformer who adopts a particular personal pronoun is doing so for the same reasons that a human would.

And for the avoidance of doubt, I absolutely think it's the case that there are male-coded TFs who self-identify as female and preferred to be called 'she', and female-coded TFs who self-identify as male and prefer to be called 'he'. I also think there's scope for a TF to adopt a different pronoun if they so choose.

It was never my intention to cause upset by appearing to encourage misgendering. For the record, I believe passionately in a person's right to choose the personal pronoun by which they want to be referred; and I think that everyone else should respect that choice.

I think that's all I have to say on this. Back to scripting.




Reply · Report Post