This thing...

[Mr_Tigg]

Man. Spotlight Wingblade better be good after all this hoo-har. Gonna be some serious egg on Scott's face if it's a naff series.

I've read through this epic thread - some interesting points raised from both angles. I'm more inclined to agree with MV's take on things for now.

[Metal Vendetta]

They're a gay couple. And Arcee is a girl. You're ignoring (in these particular instances) the sense in which the whole fiction is about people, a reflection of our own culture. Which is inconsistent of you, because you must be applying that reading elsewhere, or the whole franchise basically falls apart as a ludicrous string of coincidences, whereby a supposedly completely different, much older society of physiologically non-parallel beings miraculously closely resembles our own.

I keep saying it, and you keep ignoring this pretty simple point: we all read the comic on at least two levels.

Okay, remember Tramp? He was a fan who was obsessed with the idea that all Transformers are not only gendered, but heterosexual, monogamous and raise children in family units. He even wrote a Mosaic to that effect, where Powerglide was apparently trying to scuttle Ironhide's daughter in a room just off the street, which was pulled by the powers-that-be. So that was the level he was reading the comic on - almost completely diametrically opposed to what I was reading. And that's fine as long as he didn't try to foist his view on the rest of us.

But that's kind of what you're trying to do here. You have your own interpretation of the comics which you're saying is more valid than mine. I make a distinction between Transformers and people. I also make a distinction between female Transformers and women. It's easy to do, as the comic contains examples of both. At the level I'm reading the comic on, Arcee is not a woman, much less some token representative of all womanhood, which is vital because the comic only becomes problematic once you buy into that metaphor. If, like me, you see Arcee as some insane scientist's experiment - basically just a couple of levels up from the Marilyn Monroe droid Lister cobbled together for Kryten in series 3 of Red Dwarf - then you're not going to get offended by what is essentially just Kill Bill Frankenstein.

Incidentally, I wanted to come back to this point:

I see what you're saying here, but Furman's clumsy dialogue about the use of pronouns basically makes the notion of Jhiaxus creating a 'boy' Transformer ludicrous. What would they look like? Nearly every other Transformer.

What does nearly every other Transformer look like? Sky Lynx? Bumblebee? Ravage? Cosmos? Whirl? Rewind? There's no definitive look for "male" Transformers, and half of those I listed have had their toys repainted to represent "female" Transformers already.

Harm doesn't have to be physical.

Yeah, it kinda does. If you're being harmed by a "suggestion" in a comic book, then it's not harm. And please, please, please, stay away from Warhammer 40,000 fiction because if you were harmed by Spotlight Arcee you'll probably be horrifically maimed by some of the stuff that's in there - for a start the only female characters with any agency at all, apart from the odd Inquisitor or assassin, are power-armoured battle-nuns and they all get slaughtered horrifically at the end along with everyone else. You won't find many positive messages of femininity, even though some of their writers are female, but that's fine, because that's not what 40K fiction is about and looking for a positive message of femininity in 40K would be as ludicrous as looking for a positive message of femininity in, say, Transformers.

Gender is largely a social construct. Exhibiting different behaviours according to sexual characteristics is ... exhibiting different behaviours according to sexual characteristics. It's not automatic proof of genderedness.

The same plant will exhibit different behaviour depending on the ratio of male to female plants in the "society" around it. They're aware of the sex of the other plants and adapt their behaviour accordingly.

[inflatable dalek]

My, that was some seriously melancholy crap in my last but one post wasn't it? You'd think "Keep away from the internet after beers" would be a day one lesson but no, I still manage it. Worse than the tiny violin playing in the background making the point get a bit lost, is that I should have mentioned it was by no means just Furman's work on Transformers that offended my mother, but pretty much everything we subjected her too that had a girl of some sort in it. Factor in The Girl Who Loved Powerglide was on Every Single rental tape and David Wise is likely on her list of people to go up against the wall first when the revolution comes (and one point worth emphasising is that whilst Furman has his problems as a writer, he is by no means the worst for it of those who've worked on the franchise).

I think one big thing that has changed over the last five years is that the demographic of fandom has changed quite drastically with a lot of younger, and indeed more female people invested in the comics than before. Certainly the amount of teens and women attending Auto Assembly (other than ones dragged along by unwilling partners and parents) has shifted huge...

Nah. I think we've got the same 9,000 to 11,000 comic fans reading TF comics that we've had since the end of DW days. Doubt there's been any real shift in TF comic demographics, really. Just think the female fans who have been reading have had enough of Arcee. Much like the rest of us, I suppose.

Whilst physical sales for the main book/s have stayed roughly the same since Revelvation (give and take the odd bump), one big unknown factor these days are the digital sales (which is the main way new and younger readers would come to it), it may only be a few 100 extra people buying digitally (though I'd love to know for sure) but percentage wise it wouldn't take a huge amount to make a difference to the demographic of a book selling 9/10 grand an issue.

[Jack Cade]

Okay, remember Tramp? ... But that's kind of what you're trying to do here.

No, it isn't. You're an intelligent guy - I don't really understand why you're having so much difficulty grasping the pretty simple concept that we read stories both as literal accounts of fictional universes and representational reflections of our own society at the same time. Tramp's focus is *entirely* on the level of the literal account of the fictional universe. He believes that in their own universe, Cybertronians are sexually dimorphic, sexually active creatures. That's not what I'm pointing out to you. I'm pointing out to you that on the level of representation - the level at which we see ourselves in these characters and are thus able to identify with them and their struggles - Chromedome and Rewind are a gay couple, Arcee is a woman, and nearly every other character is a man.

It's not that I think your interpretation is wrong - it's worse than that, I'm afraid. I think your interpretation is actually exactly the same as mine and you're just not evaluating your own reading with sufficient scrutiny to recognise that that's the case. You're fixating on the 'literal account of the fictional universe' aspect and arguing that this is the only reading that counts in your eyes, but I think you're just essentially denying the other level at which you're reading it. By that, I mean that, for example, if all these characters had been consistently drawn with Arcee's body shape and called each other 'she', I think you would have no problem whatsoever identifying them as female characters. I think that you pretty much recognise that Chromedome and Rewind read as a representation of a gay couple, but that you're then shutting that idea down by saying to yourself, "Wait a sec - gotta override that impression with the in-universe reality."

Or put it this way - I think if a character was drawn with a gun sticking out of his crotch, a part of your brain would think "Penis". That same part of your brain, however much you might like to reason it out of existence, is continually reading the stories at this kind of level of representation, and it's part of what gives the stories their appeal, because you recognise many things as being representations of things that exist or happen in your own reality.

Yeah, it kinda does. If you're being harmed by a "suggestion" in a comic book, then it's not harm.

Either you're talking absolute nonsense, or you're disingenuously including psychological harm in your broader category of physical harm, then trying to deny that fictional media can ever cause psychological harm. Also, I'm not really inclined to keep up this discussion if you keep dodging the important parts of my points in order to stick it to a straw man. I emphasised the word 'cumulatively'. Your approach here is like looking at the result of a stampede and then saying, "Since each individual stampeding animal couldn't do this much damage on its own, none can be held responsible."

The harm caused by this comic book is specifically in the context of other messages in the medium (and in media) as a whole. It reinforces existing negative stereotypes and notions of the 'other'-ness of women. If those stereotypes and that marginalisation of women didn't exist, SL: Arcee's (unintentional) message would have little effect. As it is, it's a problem - it needles at an existing wound. It's another brick in the wall - but one brick doesn't make a wall.

What does nearly every other Transformer look like? Sky Lynx? Bumblebee? Ravage? Cosmos? Whirl? Rewind? There's no definitive look for "male" Transformers, and half of those I listed have had their toys repainted to represent "female" Transformers already.

So you've picked a few outliers, among dozens and dozens of Transformers with the proportions of adult human males - the vast majority. That would include Bumblebee - in particular, the proportions of his hips, thighs and shoulders codify him as male human. Hell, any Transformer with a prominent crotch-piece is basically being drawn with the suggestion of male genitalia. It's a suggestion, of course, so it can be overrided by stronger suggestions to the contrary, but it's there.

Again, I'm talking about the *representational* level here, not the literal reality within the fictional universe.

And please, please, please, stay away from Warhammer 40,000 fiction ...

Yeah, I wonder how many female fans Warhammer 40k has ... You're right that it's essentially a crude, machotastic, masochistic universe and that's what its fans expect from it. That's fine - it's got no pretensions to being anything other than a simplistic, nihilistic fantasy with no bearing whatsoever on reality. But Transformers isn't and needn't be that - it can be a more inclusive universe without sacrificing any core aspect of its appeal, and plenty of fans hope it will move in this direction. That's certainly the direction Roberts has been taking it in.

[Impactor returns 2.0]

W40k Woman say hi

[Jack Cade]

The f**k do they fight in those heels??

[Mr_Tigg]

40k females aren't that bad.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7_b-qBTul44 - just as tough as the lads.

[Impactor returns 2.0]

The f**k do they fight in those heels??

All woman like.

[Metal Vendetta]

I'm pointing out to you that on the level of representation - the level at which we see ourselves in these characters and are thus able to identify with them and their struggles - Chromedome and Rewind are a gay couple, Arcee is a woman, and nearly every other character is a man.

Tramp: They're all men with kids.
Jack: They're all men.

That's not a big difference from where I'm standing. Like Tramp, you keep telling me that I have to read the comics according to your interpretation without the slightest hint of ambiguity, which completely illogical since everyone will have their own interpretation of what is after all nothing but subtext. The comic is explicitly about giant asexual robots, but what you read into it beyond that is your own business, not mine. I didn't read Infiltration and immediately think that it was about a bunch of dudes in robot suits (or indeed a bunch of dudes in robot suits who are missing their wives and kids back home) - I read it as the story of giant robots working undercover on an alien planet.

I mean that, for example, if all these characters had been consistently drawn with Arcee's body shape and called each other 'she', I think you would have no problem whatsoever identifying them as female characters.

If they were written as asexual robots then that's how I'd read them. Pronouns mean nothing - pretty much every spaceship in sci-fi is referred to as "she", it doesn't mean they're women - and metal tits would be irrelevant because what a robot looks like and what it is or does are separate things and everyone knows appearances can be deceptive. The computer in Resident Evil manifests as a hologram of a little girl, but it's not a little girl, it's a computer. It would be perverse to insist otherwise.

I think that you pretty much recognise that Chromedome and Rewind read as a representation of a gay couple, but that you're then shutting that idea down by saying to yourself, "Wait a sec - gotta override that impression with the in-universe reality."

I'm not denying that you can read Chromedome and Rewind as analogous to a gay couple, just like you can read Arcee as a sort-of woman analogue. As I said before, sometimes the Transformers act like us, sometimes they're utterly alien. The point is, I'd no sooner take lessons about real-life gay couples from Chromedome and Rewind than I would read Spotlight: Arcee and assume that it somehow tells me something about real-life human women.

Or put it this way - I think if a character was drawn with a gun sticking out of his crotch, a part of your brain would think "Penis". That same part of your brain, however much you might like to reason it out of existence, is continually reading the stories at this kind of level of representation, and it's part of what gives the stories their appeal, because you recognise many things as being representations of things that exist or happen in your own reality.

There's a character from Revenge of the Fallen who's known as "Dickbot, the blender guy" because he changes from a blender into a robot with a massive gun for a schlong. It's vaguely amusing, but I'm not attaching any significance to it. Even Freud said, "Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar", but you're like a kid in a cigar shop, seeing penises everywhere.

Either you're talking absolute nonsense, or you're disingenuously including psychological harm in your broader category of physical harm, then trying to deny that fictional media can ever cause psychological harm.

"When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less."

Or to put it another way, "Emergency crews were called to the scene where three people were harmed by their interpretation of a robot comic" ran no news report ever.

So you've picked a few outliers, among dozens and dozens of Transformers with the proportions of adult human males - the vast majority. That would include Bumblebee - in particular, the proportions of his hips, thighs and shoulders codify him as male human.

Yet colour the same robot green, call it "Glyph" and hey presto - it's a female Transformer! Same proportions and not even a "feminine" colour.

That's fine - it's got no pretensions to being anything other than a simplistic, nihilistic fantasy with no bearing whatsoever on reality.

I wasn't aware that Transformers was anything other than a simplistic, escapist fantasy with no bearing whatsoever on reality. I'm fairly sure I'm not alone in that.

[Metal Vendetta]

All woman like.

Hot damn, I love 40K.

[Computron]

Nothing beats the French cover of Hereticus

That artist captured Bequin perfectly.

[inflatable dalek]

I'm not familiar enough with Warhammer to comment on how well it does or doesn't treat female characters, but it's a bit of an odd thing to bring up when I don't think that anyone has claimed Transformers is the only form of entertainment that has these problems. Plus (as unlikely as it sometimes seems) as we all presumably like Transformers despite what bits of it we think don't work there's no real double standard in also liking other long running things that have their flaws as well.

Bringing up Tramp is a bit of a strawman argument, as no one is claiming that the IDW/Marvel TF's are supposed to be men, just that they're anthropomophised by most writers enough to basically be read as such. Tramp's stance was that there was only one super Transformers continuity and all Transformers were gendered (as opposed to the more varied reality- The Beast Warriors were gendered, things like Prime and the films are vague on what the presence of female Autobots may or may not mean and the original cartoon was, at best, a bit confused) and indeed had lots and lots of sex all over the place, mainly to justify his own masturbatory interest in sexy robots to himself (he seems to have calmed down a lot more recently though, at least at the Archive. He may be comfortable enough in his own interests to not need to keep trying to persuade everyone else or gotten a good psychiatrist). "I have a problem with a lot of the gender stereotyping that manages to seep into the supposedly genderless characters in a lot of Transformers fiction" isn't the same thing at all.

The claim of just having a go at Furman because I've got some sort of "Rag" with him is a strawman argument as well, because it would be just as easy to say you're being over defensive of him because you're a fan and wouldn't have given Mike Costa (whose first female character was Spike's cum bucket. Christ, I'm glad I only read those comics after they'd been consigned to the dustbin of history or I'd have found them really annoying for enough reasons to fill another ten threads) the same benefit of the doubt if he'd written it.

just as easy, and just as daft, unless we get some sort of mind probe to use on each other to make sure.

[Jack Cade]

That's not a big difference from where I'm standing. Like Tramp, you keep telling me that I have to read the comics according to your interpretation without the slightest hint of ambiguity ...

******* hell, MV - no, I'm not. Are you actually reading my posts as they appear here or are you reading them after they've been run through Google Translate half a dozen times? Because you constantly, constantly miss or ignore the main point that I keep reiterating to you. I'm not even going to say it again because I'm fed up with typing it, but until you stop battering straw men and start actually addressing the point I've been making, I don't see where this discussion can possibly lead.

I explained to you the very salient difference between Tramp's way of looking at things and the reality of the situation that I am imparting to you. You've got to read it again and deal with *it*, rather than some easier-to-pooh-pooh argument that I'm not actually making. Otherwise it's like I'm pointing to a cow in the road and you're denying it's there without even following the direction of my outstretched finger.

I read it as the story of giant robots working undercover on an alien planet.

You also read it as a representational story about people. You and everyone else. Like all fantasy fiction and sci-fi. That's how you identify with fictional characters - you see them as stand-ins for yourself, even though - oh, bloody hell - they're not actually *you* at all! And you read a story, say, about Tyrest wanting to murder cold-constructed alien robots and you innately recognise it as analogous to racism, even though Cybertronians are all one race. Analogy and representation is *hard-wired* into fiction and we learn to read it at this level from the moment we start listening to stories as small children. We are culturally trained to understand fiction as being about people like us, and we're all so good at it that we don't even know we're doing it - it's as natural and effortless as blinking.

The computer in Resident Evil manifests as a hologram of a little girl, but it's not a little girl, it's a computer. It would be perverse to insist otherwise.

No, it wouldn't. What's perverse is your reluctance to admit that stories are about more than the literal events of a fictional reality, and that much of what is representational and symbolic is so obvious it doesn't even bear comment. I haven't even seen this hologram in RE, but just from your description we already know that it is both a computer *and* a little girl.

The point is, I'd no sooner take lessons about real-life gay couples from Chromedome and Rewind than I would read Spotlight: Arcee and assume that it somehow tells me something about real-life human women.

If *that's* the point (and it's really only one of them), then the counterpoint is that the lessons we take from fiction are not ever really the result of a conscious effort to follow examples. We take 'lessons' from fiction in the sense that we build up an idea of our own reality and how it works from the many examples we see within fiction. Thus the widespread portrayal of women in fiction as peripheral or distinct from the norm is a factor in the marginalisation of women in real life.

Look, that doesn't mean that one comic is going to start making you treat women differently, because you individually may well have encountered enough counter-examples and may well be conscious enough of gender issues to counteract much of the negative influence in poorly thought-through fiction. But it's still worth criticising individual instances where the tacit message in the representation and symbolism of the story is that women are some kind of freakish 'other' that needs to be explained, or where they're peripheral in some other sense, because it can affect how readers see women and it can affect how women see themselves. If the only representation of your gender in the fiction you follow is a violent freak, that's alienating. So surprise, surprise, many female readers found SL: Arcee alienating.

It's vaguely amusing, but I'm not attaching any significance to it.

It really doesn't matter one iota whether you attach any 'significance' to it. The fact that you find it 'vaguely amusing' means that you innately read it on the representational level - enough to get the joke - and that proves I'm right. It proves that you're really talking out of your arse when you say you *only* see them as genderless inhuman aliens and don't ever read the story on any other level than the literal.

I wasn't aware that Transformers was anything other than a simplistic, escapist fantasy with no bearing whatsoever on reality. I'm fairly sure I'm not alone in that.

You may not be alone, but neither are you in the majority. I wouldn't be here - and I wouldn't have started reading this stuff again in 2005 - if that were the case. I've got no interest in escapist fantasy that has no bearing whatsoever on reality. I'm interested in Transformers for the potential (realised to some extent by Furman and to a greater extent by Nick Roche and James Roberts) for stories that have a very real bearing on things in reality which I'm interested in. And I am certainly not alone in that.

But in addition to that statement, I'm also going to challenge you on this assertion. I'm not sure you really do think of Transformers like that, unless you're saying that you like McCarthy and Costa as much as Roberts and Furman. If not - if, like me, you have the vaguest inkling that Roberts in particular is the superior writer - you might want to ask yourself why. Because the idea that Roberts writes pure escapist fantasy is grade A balderdash.

[Impactor returns 2.0]

Hold on the computer in resident evil is a computer. It picks the Lil girl stereotype as the image seems incredibly harmless and is designed to put humans off.
Lil girls are not supposed to be scary but it transpires they are...

Dunno why I'm getting involved but I can't accept that it's anything but an artistic choice and I never think the computer is a girl I just think it's trying to scare me.

More 40k birds?

[Computron]

More 40k birds?

[bumblemusprime]

This is a good discussion to have.

And of course we would have some fans of Spotlight: Arcee. We are... trans fans.

[Mr_Tigg]

To be fair, I think it’s a little unfair to make a sweeping statement in one post saying 40k is a simplistic, escapist fantasy and then in a follow up post argue why Transformer’s precisely isn’t that. If anything - until Roberts came along - 40k was the more mature Universe with bigger, grander ideas.

[Shanti418]

Geez, I turn my back for ONE second and this board starts having the kind of deep, respectfully contentious, academic discussions that I love about it again! In my area of expertise, no less!

Which means of course - in the company of such thoughtful people - everything that needs to be said has already been said, with special thanks to bumble for the "recreation of binaries" spot. This is generally my criticism of queer theory/literary analysis: what matters less is the performance and more the audience. Thus SL:A can be high-concept SF introducing gender (which plants do NOT have, but introduction to the gender system IS traumatic for us all, masculine or feminine) or a deeply problematic reproduction of stigmatizing discourses as Kaylee articulate, because, as Kaylee also pointed out, this is how privilege works (not just the privilege of the reader, but also the writer).

That being said, while intellectually I agree with Jack's position that as humans, anthropomorphization is inevitably baked into the cake of how fiction is produced and consumed, I don't want to discount the possibility of something - like, say, robots - being written as genderless. The problem is that the gender binary IS pernicious and cognitively structuring. We don't know HOW to think, much less write, without gender. English may one day have a gender neutral pronoun, but Spanish and French (LA lavadora y EL trabajaor) are effed. Yes, gay rights, but homonormativity. Yes, transgender rights, but the ones that get the most "normal points" are the ones that choose a masculine/feminine side, line their genitals up with their choice, and stick with it. What bothers us (and by us I mean general society) most in these cases is the defiance of categorization, the embrace of fuzziness. We gender everything we possibly can, especially when it comes to subjects (ie individuals). Research has shown that when people think "neutral human," that neutral human is white and is male. Just as whiteness goes unmarked, so do does maleness. So while we can say to an audience "These are robots. I repeat: there are no genitals on anybody and nothing is gendered," that doesn't mean our cognitive and emotional experience won't be tenaciously tethered to these ideas.

And let's be honest here: Transformers is about a robot war. If Jack was controlling MV's thought process, it would go, "these aren't masculine or feminine subjects, they're just robots! Robots concerned with establishing hierarchy and gaining power through violence and conquest who blow off steam getting hammered at the bar while watching Basketrek and Fullstasis.....wait a second..", because thinking that these are things that ALL robots'humans are concerned with is Hobbesian pessimism, masculine privilege, or both.

[Computron]

*snipped*

Really well written, I liked that.

So in short, then, and I ask this in all sincerity, is the question as asked, even definitively answerable or is it inextricably linked to our subjective life experiences, and thus always going to be a matter of perspectives?

For those so inclined, the 40k connection to SL:A would definitely be the all male Astartes and their heroic exploits, versus the continued, almost masturbatory need, to have the Adepta Sororitas (The Sisters of Battle) brutally massacred or converted to pleasure cultists at the drop of a hat. (See Mathew Ward and the Grey Knights Codex) That may just be my view.

[Shanti418]

Not really sure what the question is "as asked." What's a matter of perspective is how much or how well we see these things from or social positionality, yes. What's definitely answerable is that the sex/gender system does exist. If you're a masculine penis looking for a feminine vagina or vice versa, the gender system may well look like a bunch of biology and nature. If you're not exactly that, then chances are you DO have an inkling of a sex/gender system. For example, for the longest time white people in the US were like, "driving while black? That's not a real thing, right?" Then Rodney King, and white people were like, "Ah! So that IS a thing. Got it." Just as same sex marriage debates make visible some of the structural privilege of heterosexuality. So it's not like "everything is relative," it's just that some see normative schemas brought into relief because the schemas position them as abnormal while others are in blissful ignorance.

Now, is the question "as asked" can we not do gender or think in gender? If that's the case, allow me to cut and paste my answer to that from an exam I had to take on that subject earlier this year. I'm just putting it here wholesale, so I apologize for the size, the typos, and for the random cites to books you don't know and don't care about:

How do we undo gender? First, as sociologists, we should be concerned with what’s going on “on the ground.” And as Schilt recently shared with our community, there is plenty of evidence on the ground that people find pleasure in gender (whether this is pleasure in gender itself or different facts of a pleasure of recognition/belonging (ie Connell in “Canon or Agenda) is beyond the scope of this test). In Connell’s “A Very Straight Gay,” Hennen’s Bears & Leathermen, or Hurtado’s teenage Latinas who enjoy their femininity (and see this enjoyment as part of their distinction from Western feminism – see Q 1), we see ample evidence that people enjoy gender. In my view, it’s more than coincidence that these example come from groups disadvantaged through systems of racism and heterosexism. For some people, “doing gender” is how they can access respectability or legitimacy (think of the ways poor mothers did a particular kind of self-sacrificing-motherhood femininity in their interviews with Edin & Kafalas). So on a practical level, undoing gender would advantage some and disadvantage others, which is basically the way it is right now when we do gender.
On a theoretical level – and again harkening back to the first essay – gender is mutually constitutive with race/class/sexuality in both the history (McClintock) and the contemporary moment (Collins, Nagel). In fact, I agree with Kimmel and the radical feminists that gender is the fundamental organizing principle of sexuality. What does this mean? It means that you can not isolate gender as a variable and then remove it from the equation. Systems of race and class – among others – depend on gender for their coherence, and attempting to think about a sexuality without gender would be as difficult as queering a survey and would make sex about as fun as a survey as well. (Recall that in earlier history, gender was less about the self and more about the social role, and sex was not seen as a pleasure pursuit but as a reproductive obligation (Garlick, Katz)). In sum, thinking of gender as something we can undo in isolation from other system of oppression obfuscates the way the gender order supports these other system and thus should be seen as a marker of racial and class privilege.
However, I am cautiously optimistic about the potentialities arising from the separation of gender from sex. My sense from these readings and from the current moment is this: Due to feminism, the LGBTQ movement, postmodernism and the disturbing/reifying of categories promulgated by capitalism (Ferguson on that last point), gender are bodies are growing increasingly independent. 2nd wave feminism took on masculine performance as a way to access power in the 80s, the LGBTQ movement exposed the fact that “gays can be manly, lesbians can be feminine!” in their quest for (homo) normativity, capitalism now seeks to push everyone into the workplace regardless of sex (although the workplace is still masculinist – (Hochschild)), and postmodernism or queer theory aren’t big fans of categories and binaries whatsoever. These are only a few social trends that highlight this drift away from a biologistic understanding of sex and gender. However, this does not disturb the overall gender binary. Halberstam has “Female Masculinity” or Hochschild has “the masculinization of sex” but it still requires us to have a notion of masculinity.
This is why I find Bourdieu’s thoughts on these matters compelling (and also why Bordo tells Butler that a truly transgressive gender performance would not simply exposed the falsity of the categories (drag) but would avoid categorization entirely). Setting aside the previously mentioned problems, I think the notion of masculine domination – that there’s something inextricable about the relationship between masculinity and certain aspects, domination central among them – helps me to understand the modern gender order in a way that other theories do not. (I’m speaking to the West, and in this context, I would put the genesis of this relationship in psychoanalysis and not “homologous oppositions”) When women “do masculinity” or same-sex couples engage in homonormativity through complentary gender roles, this troubles male domination but only further legitimates masculine domination. Thus a productive way to look at the modern gender order is one where the justification for male domination lies not in hegemonic masculinity but masculine hegemony where, to paraphrase Orwell, everyone can be masculine, but some are more masculine than others.

In terms of Transformers and gender, it's been burnin' since the world's been turnin', so I'm not going to act like Arcee's pinkness or red lips (because if we're talking about metal tits, Shockers still has the best rack in town) OR Alpha Trion and Wreck-Gar's facial hair are crimes against gender equality, but I will clearly situate them as evidence of how it's quite difficult to think outside of sex/gender (Obv, Roberts comes close, not just with Rewind/Chromedome but also with kinda-gender-neutral characterizations of Tailgate and Rung). I will be SHOCKED if Windblade's origin/story/characterization doesn't do work towards reifying gender as well, because it seems like it's very much a "No, no, she's a fembot, but she's well adjusted and awesome and made these choices herself!" instead of a deconstruction of male/female categories. But such is identity politics.

[Computron]

Not really sure what the question is "as asked."

I meant the original burning question, is SL:A an example of sexism or was Furman treated unfairly? Sorry. Though I did find your exam response illuminating.

I will be SHOCKED if Windblade's origin/story/characterization doesn't do work towards reifying gender as well, because it seems like it's very much a "No, no, she's a fembot, but she's well adjusted and awesome and made these choices herself!" instead of a deconstruction of male/female categories. But such is identity politics.

I hope it'll be good, but I'm afraid that since it's venturing down into the path of robotic gender in the first place, on purpose, that the premise is already kinda fatally flawed. We'll see. Gotta give the author the benefit of the doubt.

[Metal Vendetta]

I'm not familiar enough with Warhammer to comment on how well it does or doesn't treat female characters, but it's a bit of an odd thing to bring up when I don't think that anyone has claimed Transformers is the only form of entertainment that has these problems. Plus (as unlikely as it sometimes seems) as we all presumably like Transformers despite what bits of it we think don't work there's no real double standard in also liking other long running things that have their flaws as well.

One of the reasons that was at the back of my head when I brought up 40K is that I've been reading quite a bit of Sarah Cawkwell lately, one of their newer writers, and it's notable how instead of trashing the previous writers' work and reputation on Tumblr in the name of women's representation, she's all like, "Check out my Space Marines, these guys decapitate their enemies, encase their skulls in silver and mount them on the prow of their Thunderhawks."

Otherwise it's like I'm pointing to a cow in the road and you're denying it's there without even following the direction of my outstretched finger.

I'm following your outstretched finger, where I can see a rabbit. You say, "But on a representational level, it's a cow!" I say, "No, it's a rabbit." You say, "But it's got four legs and it eats grass, it's obviously a cow!" I say, "Whatever man, you see a cow, I see a rabbit." You say, "No, you have to see a cow too!"

You also read it as a representational story about people. You and everyone else. Like all fantasy fiction and sci-fi. That's how you identify with fictional characters - you see them as stand-ins for yourself, even though - oh, bloody hell - they're not actually *you* at all!

Yes, well done, the point of fiction is that the reader identifies with the characters, but that doesn't change the characters themselves. I can identify with Buffy Summers, but that doesn't make her a thirty-something male from the West Midlands, she remains a teenage girl from LA with superpowers. Just as I can identify with asexual robot characters without having to gender them first. When reading, say, Optimus Prime, I don't take the metal and try and fill it with meat, I try to imagine what it would be like if I were the metal.

I think this probably has something to do with prior exposure to the brand. If, like me, you grew up with Marvel UK and very limited exposure to the cartoon, it's a lot easier to disassociate the characters' "voices" in the comics from their voice actors' portrayal. Whereas if, say, you've spent the last 20 years wanking to The Search for Alpha Trion and that last page of the Victory manga where the Dinoforce have wives and babies then obviously you're going to pin genders on these characters as you read them and if you're obsessed with gender identity politics you're going to see that everywhere too.

And you read a story, say, about Tyrest wanting to murder cold-constructed alien robots and you innately recognise it as analogous to racism, even though Cybertronians are all one race.

Honestly never occurred to me at all until you mentioned it. It's not an analogy I'm comfortable with either, because from the literal reading it would imply that a lack of moral constraints or a predilection to criminality are inherent in some human races. I read it as an allegory for parenthood - in that Tyrest's "children" hadn't turned out the way he them wanted to - with a dash of Pandora's Box in there and the obvious religious "atoning for his sins" metaphor. It also rang strong bells with me based on the creation stories of the Fighting Fantasy books, where the first race that was created were the imperfect "urks" (who would go on to become the "present day" orcs) and the god that created them (whose name escapes me for the time being) was ashamed of what they'd become. That's how I saw it.

So please, can we have less of you telling me how to interpret fiction? You have your own interpretation, I have mine, and you don't get to tell me what mine is.

I haven't even seen this hologram in RE, but just from your description we already know that it is both a computer *and* a little girl.

HAY EMVEE YOU KNOW THAT MOVIE YOU'VE SEEN THIRTY TIMES AND WHICH I'VE NEVER WATCHED? LEMME TELL YOU WHAT IT'S ABOUT.

It really doesn't matter one iota whether you attach any 'significance' to it. The fact that you find it 'vaguely amusing' means that you innately read it on the representational level - enough to get the joke - and that proves I'm right. It proves that you're really talking out of your arse when you say you *only* see them as genderless inhuman aliens and don't ever read the story on any other level than the literal.

For a start, I didn't even notice this guy either time I watched Revenge of the Fallen. I remember a bunch of inanimate appliances coming to life and attacking Shia LaBoeuf and that's about it - the first inkling I had of his existence was when I chanced across a page called "Dickbot the blender guy" on the TF wiki. So I didn't innately "read" it on that level at all, it went completely over my head and as far as I can tell it took one of the special effects guys pointing it out on a DVD extra for Dickbot to even register on the fandom's consciousness.

But in addition to that statement, I'm also going to challenge you on this assertion. I'm not sure you really do think of Transformers like that, unless you're saying that you like McCarthy and Costa as much as Roberts and Furman. If not - if, like me, you have the vaguest inkling that Roberts in particular is the superior writer - you might want to ask yourself why. Because the idea that Roberts writes pure escapist fantasy is grade A balderdash.

There's good escapist fantasy and there's bad escapist fantasy and I think James Roberts writes very good escapist fantasy. One of the main problems with Costa (as emphasised in Besty's .sig) is that he couldn't get his head around writing non-human characters - in his head they really were "people in robot suits". The better TF writers, in my opinion, are those who can write them as alien robots, which is what Furman and Roberts do.

[Metal Vendetta]

[inflatable dalek]

Roberts writes them as Brits down the pub (except for Getaway who is apparently supposed to be a New Zelander, and possibly Cyclonus who is of course a Klingon). There's a lot of (very interesting) SF trappings built around them but their essential characters are... well us. Which is hardly surprising when one of the big themes of the series is is the importance of friendship (from the most casual to the deepest relationships) and the sensible people are the ones who prioritise a beer with their mates over the big world changing stuff.

Costa's problem... well one of Costa's problems was he thought he was better than the material. To an extent his criticism of why the franchise's basic set up doesn't work is a perfectly valid viewpoint, but if you're not prepared to either accept the conceit or come up with something better you shouldn't be writing Transformers (though in fairness, I blame Andy Schmidt for not going through a more vigorous selection process. Or indeed any selection process at all. For all the stick Pat Lee still gets I think Schmidt is responsible for more harm to Transformers comics than just about anyone). Costa was in many ways the most annoying sort of writer, an insanely straightforward storyteller with no depth or subtlety (which isn't a problem in and of itself if the shallowness is fun), but who thinks he's a proper serious writer with lofty goals. The almost entirely inappropriate use of "Proper" SF novel titles being the most obvious sign of that. I would be willing to bet before Googling he thought Alfred Bester was the bloke played by Chekov on Babylon 5.


On the whole "Arcee isn't supposed to be a woman anyway" notion (or to quote directly: from MV earlier: "Not unless by "woman" you mean "mechanical lifeform artificially introduced to the concept of gender". They're not the same thing, unless you're looking really, really hard for something to be offended by") having just checked, no where in his response- either in his own words or in the post he quotes to make his argument for him- does Furman suggest Arcee isn't supposed to be a woman. She's referred to as female several times and you'd have thought if he'd intended for her to not be an actual woman but just a artificial concept (though as it boils down to an aritficial thing that has everyone in fiction treating her like she's become a woman the difference is arguably negligible) he'd have brought it up and shot the whole argument down instantly.

Now obviously, authorial intent ultimately has nothing to do with how we interpret the stories (as this thread shows more than ably), I just think MV has given Furman a bit too much credit in what he was trying to do there.

I think you probably could do a really brilliant version of Transformers where they are properly alien and genderless (there was a pretty good story in Asimov's a couple of months ago about a human anthropologist studying an alien tribe where everyone had multiple genders), but it would require a ground up reworking that would be hard-if not impossible- to pull off in the IDWverse as it stands. At the moment we just roll with the idea that-for example- despite being millions of years old robots they have a psychology that's close enough to human for Rung's psychobabble to be recognisable as a send up of various real world therapy practices (starting of course with the painful pun of his name).

[Shanti418]

I think you probably could do a really brilliant version of Transformers where they are properly alien and genderless (there was a pretty good story in Asimov's a couple of months ago about a human anthropologist studying an alien tribe where everyone had multiple genders), but it would require a ground up reworking that would be hard-if not impossible- to pull off in the IDWverse as it stands. At the moment we just roll with the idea that despite being millions of years old robots they have a psychology that's close enough to human for Rung's psychobabble to be recognisable as a send up of various real world therapy practices (starting of course with the painful pun of his name).

Exactly, and this is my point about the robot war. Transformers were/are robots with guns that transform into trucks and airplanes while they fight a violent, death filled war over hierarchy and power in the service of selling toys to young boys. If we agree on that, the concept has an explicitly masculinist orientation that already shows Transformers as sexless perhaps but not genderless.

If the point about Sarah Cawkwell is that she writes violent, warring, women, this is my point about masculine domination in the essay: these days, women are allowed to be more like men and that's called equality, but that's a one way street. We don't need a word for female Transformer fans because who doesn't love Transformers, but guys who like My Little Pony need a special label. Equality is not naming the experience and feelings of men universal. But again, this is baked into the cake: of COURSE Transformers and Warhammer are violent fantasy worlds, what would they be if not that? But the fact that these are our fantasies, women can join the club, but we don't see men and boys running in droves to stories that are about community, emotion, connection, and communication shows how we live in a male and masculine dominated society. Once more, shout out to Roberts, because MTMTE is the TF universe exception that proves the rule.

Towards the original "burning question" a la Computron, then that's right, there's no right answer. SL:A was sexist, but if you're Joe Male and you don't see it or buy it, I'm not surprised because you're just operating from your assumptions about how the world is organized just as a woman would. I don't think Furman was treated unfairly by the new author, who I do think was trying to be diplomatic while still being persuasive about people buying her new work, but then the Internet got ahold of it and you know how that goes, especially given that Furman's answer showed that he is indeed an aging man who hasn't thought about this stuff a whole lot.

[Impactor returns 2.0]

[Computron]

I haven't read the Calpurnia books. Are they good?

Oh! As an example of well written women in 40k, Octavia from Aaron Dembski-Bowden's Night Lords series is ace.

But one more question...if Arcee had actually been an well rounded character instead of the literary mess she is now, would there still be an uproar?

[bumblemusprime]

I don't agree that she was badly written. Like Scott said, the story is cool in a vacuum but it leaves us with one psychotic figure representing TF femininity in the IDW universe.

If Jhiaxus is going to "introduce gender," then it needs to be more complicated than one psychotic pink murderer. And frankly, that's all I see in Scott's reply.

[Yaya]

I see dead people.

[Jack Cade]

I'm following your outstretched finger, where I can see a rabbit.

No.

The 'outstretched finger' metaphor pertains to your refusal to address/acknowledge/understand my point about fiction operating on multiple levels. You can't see any 'rabbit' because you're refusing to actually engage with this point. Your approach to this entire debate is to pretend that we all read fiction on one level only, entirely consciously, and that you and me merely have different interpretations.

That is wrong. I'm not trying to force any interpretation on you. I'm saying: you already see them as men. You already see phallic crotch attachments as cocks. You already see Arcee as a girl. You already see Chromedome and Rewind as a gay couple. You see all this AT THE SAME TIME as reading the fiction on the literal level, where everyone is a genderless alien robot. You're just not completely conscious of it. Telling me "I just see them like this" isn't very convincing, because it doesn't suggest you've put any thought whatsoever into what you're reading in at a subconscious level.

Very often, when I read a piece of criticism about a film or book or something that I've read, it will tell me something new about what the fiction tells the audience. And very often, I won't have thought about the interpretation the critic is putting on the film or be consciously aware of it. That doesn't automatically mean I react with, "What?? There's no way the film suggested that to me!" Because that would be foolish. It's foolish to believe that you only interpret fiction in a way you are immediately conscious of. There are always ways in which your brain makes sense of things and understands certain depictions that are below the level of your immediate awareness.

If your objection is "Well, how do I know what I'm reading in at a subconscious level? How can we prove it?" the answer is that you *examine* it by looking closely at the way certain things in fiction resemble certain things in real life and you make a judgement on what that means. This isn't a field where things can be consummately proved, but where the argument is sophisticated enough to produce widespread agreement. Thus, most sensible people would accept that there's a lot of sexual imagery in the Alien trilogy, and most sensible people would accept that the majority of Transformers characters are effectively men. If you wish to challenge either interpretation, you're welcome to, but you need a much, much, much better argument than, "No, that isn't *literally* depicted" or "But I didn't see it that way!"

I can identify with Buffy Summers, but that doesn't make her a thirty-something male from the West Midlands ...

At the point when you identify with her, she's both - she's you, she's herself and she's every other audience member who identifies with her. But this is only one sense in which fictional characters stand for things. They can also stand for things we see around us in society.

I think this probably has something to do with prior exposure to the brand.

Only in the sense that the people you deride seem to be more aware of the basic tenets of fiction.

HAY EMVEE YOU KNOW THAT MOVIE YOU'VE SEEN THIRTY TIMES AND WHICH I'VE NEVER WATCHED? LEMME TELL YOU WHAT IT'S ABOUT.

I'm afraid that's just a sign of how incredibly wrong you are about this, that I can describe something I've never seen in more accurate terms than you, simply from what you've inadvertently given away from your description. This is basically the conversation we've just had:

MV: "What about this movie I've watched that totally isn't a Western but stars John Wayne and is about some cowboys and set on the American Frontier circa 1860."
JC: "Dude, that's a Western."
MV: "Excuse me, I think I know a little bit more about this movie than you."

Honestly never occurred to me at all until you mentioned it. It's not an analogy I'm comfortable with either, because from the literal reading it would imply that a lack of moral constraints or a predilection to criminality are inherent in some human races. I read it as an allegory for parenthood - in that Tyrest's "children" hadn't turned out the way he them wanted to - with a dash of Pandora's Box in there and the obvious religious "atoning for his sins" metaphor.

Interesting interpretation, but still shows that you read these things on multiple levels. This whole conversation we've been having, your attitude has been more along the lines of: "No, Tyrest doesn't stand for anything and cold construction doesn't mean anything either. These are alien robots and nothing they do ever has anything to do with things that we might recognise in our own culture. Tyrest can't be a parent figure because he has no sex organs."

There's good escapist fantasy and there's bad escapist fantasy and I think James Roberts writes very good escapist fantasy.

Oh, right - escapist fantasy that, even by your estimation, contains metaphors about parenthood and religion. Sure.