UltraPrimal and I both decided to share our views on this troubling comic. See her take here: kzfaq.info/get/bejne/d9xmmMR9s5a2pnk.html Additional note: *Do not seek out and message this writer or anyone mentioned in this video. If you choose to be hostile and confrontational, that is a reflection of you. Even if this content angers you, you have no excuse to commit harassment. The point of this video is to confront ideas, not people. Your discussions should bear this in mind; seek to educate, not hate.

I hated how Arcee was so psychotic. I much prefer when shes fun and bubbly.

“So we’re introducing beloved legacy character Arcee!” “Nice!” “She used to be male but a mad scientist irreversibly changed her gender and drove her insane in the process. Now she’s hellbent on revenge!” “Um…” “You don’t like it?” “Well it just seems a little…are we going to explore it?” “Not really, no.” “Okay then it just seems kinda…” “You’re upset. I can see you’re upset. Well what if we took her traumatic experience…” “Yeah…” “And made the whole thing consensual. She actually wanted it!” “What? That doesn’t make it better!” “No no, you see, we saw people comparing this to trans people. So we took this sci-fi phenomenon and just turned it into a complete 1:1 analogue.” “And her going crazy enough to embark on a murderous rampage?” “Oh y’know, it’s just like, bad meds or something.” “I don’t think this is-“ “Also there were female bots before this so the mad scientist had no reason to do any of it. But they all went to a magical far-off colony of artists so that’s why we don’t see them.” “Okay wait-“ “Also Galvatron’s her brother now.” “The guy you drew her in sexy pose with for that cover?” “Yeah. We wanted to get the Alabama crowd.” “Okay no, you’re just making it worse!” “Worse?” “Yes!” “Oh.” “Jesus…” “Well we gave her a girlfriend…” “What?” “Look how cute she is.” “That doesn’t help anything.” “But doesn’t she look cute?” “…okay she looks a little cute.”

Yknow looking back on it, I genuinely don’t see how Arcee being a by-product of a forced sex change operation was even remotely considered for the comic

What I do not understand is why the hell you would have to justify that Cybertronians have Genders like Humans .

Arcee wasn't the only female autobot either back in the earlier Transformers series. There was others. In my mind, there's just female and male transformers from the beginning series. No crazy plots or retconing needed.😅

I've somehow never heard of this despite reading IDW Transformers before. And after reading it for the first time, I can say without a shadow of a doubt, the writers were high

Leaving aside gender issues, it basically sealed away all other female transformers. Chromia and Elita-1 are beloves characters, and yet they don't appear at all till the retcon during Dark Cybertron. Also, retcons are disgusting, and retconning a shitty history into an absurd one is stupid to the max. Furman hates female bots, period. And fans do not.

I always preferred the Aligned Continuity explanation, which is that Female Cybertronians do exist, but only 1 out of 13, instead of like humans which a more 50 50 split. Or the Animated way of just not giving a reason cause there really doesn't need to be one.

The only reason why I didn't like this version of Arcee was that she was a psycho and not her fun yet professional personality as the Autobots intelligence officer. Prime Arcee while still traumatized, she overcame it and became an even better character.

I hate how male is considered default, genderless, while female is alien

It says a lot about Furman that even when he was directly told why Spotlight: Arcee was offensive and hurtful to transgender and female readers, he'd rather focus on how insulted he felt that another writer and a lot of fans didn't like his writing. Like, Scott didn't even mention him by name, all she did was make a snarky side-comment and he just had a full-on meltdown and cried about how "disrespectful" everyone was. Instead of maybe educating himself and figure out why his comic was so controversial, he just dug his heels in and whined about being "retconned" and people just not getting his vision or whatever.

It’s a rough situation, Simon Firman’s stories and characterisations have been extremely important and influential on me (not the transphobic and sexist stuff of course) in particularly tuff times in my life, but this is certainly one of the worst things not just he has done, but TF has done, and it’s sad because I really like IDW arcee beyond this, in the hands of different writers, having to drastically redo and retcon her origin, all be it sometimes not the smoothest of ways but having to retcon a origin this rocky is no easy tast. It really does sadden me that this bad start really paints a bad look on this incarnation of the Character, but I’m glad she was able to find some redemption later on. It’s just one of those situations that just really sucks and I wish just never happened because it seriously damages the reputation of a Character that I love and the writings of a author that means a lot to me. Especially because I’m a very close ally to many trans people irl, and having this be a mark on a franchise I love, is saddening I’m glad Trans represented would get better over time in IDW, that being said with full knowledge that there is plenty more and better to be done. And it’s one of those situations where I wish I could just do something about it, physically but right now all I can give is some love to all people out there. And especially my Trans friends out there, thanks for all you do and I always stand beside you, the world is angry enough, hateful enough, fucked up enough, we don’t need to be divided. We should all just stick together, be there for each other. ❤️💚❤️💚

Anyone remember the Heart Of Darkness miniseries, you know the one that had the cover with Galvatron looking into the distance while Arcee was doing doing the stereotypical leg cling with him that you'd usually see in Conan comics? Wanna know how that was retroactively made squicky? Years after that series was published, it was revealed in Optimus Prime #10 during a flashback that Arcee & Galvatron were _twin brothers._ Goddammit, Hasbro.

Furman hated fembots so much that he even went so far as to make transgender robots to explain their origin and that ended up being retconned anyway and even then he made the first trans transformer a psychopath and when not a psychopath just mean. Gotta prefer the more fun, caring and sometimes bubbly versions of Arcee

As a fan of Arcee....when I found out of this story I was just face palming myself thinking who editor approved that and assume was a GOOD IDEA?

To me it seems author was so obsessed (at the time of writing the comic) at preaching his distaste for female Cybertronians that they didn't think at all about the implications of the story he was writing. For starters forced sex change has been a transphobic stereotype/rallying call for pretty much always (even though it's not even close how that works), then there's the fact as mentioned in the vid your first female character is a psychotic madwoman who is only let out of prison because they good guys are desperate. There's also the fact that this comic depicts trans people as freaks to be worried about thanks to the only depiction of a trans person being someone who is a danger to herself and everyone around her. This is a good example of why if you're gonna write about something that has real life implications you should be familiar with the subject as to avoid giving a message you didn't intend to give. Just FYI:I'm cisgender myself but I know enough trans people that I know it's not simple or easy even if I can't pretend to know even a fraction of the struggle they have go thru daily.

Yeah...Arcee was never the FIRST female Cybertronian(transformer). There has already been in-canon evidence of female cybertronians since the first cartoon. Just look at the episode of the origin story of Optimus Prime. Before he became a prime he was working at a shipping dock as a records clerk and occasional laborer. Also, he was dating a very nice Cybertronian lady. And that lady in question just so happened to have other lady bot friends.

remember reading a few chunks of this comic for the first time (with no context at all), was so surprised that Arcee was even written this way,, anywho,, since these fellas lack reproductive organs and all, how would the trans label apply? is it just them changin their body types or somethin ??

Seriously how hard is it to just say "some transformers look feminine" The explanation literally anyone with critical thinking had has since they where 5.

Remember when Arcee was just a way to get girls to buy Transformers toys in the 80’s? Pepperridge Farms remembers.

Furman's mind was still stuck in the 80s comic, back when they were all genderless. The only thing they took from the cartoon was the 86 movie, that just happened to have Arcee. The writers were making big deals like why would alien robots need such things and why would they don't do sexual reproduction and stuff. Heck the 07 movie writers plan to have Arcee but then wonder about same thing. They decided to just have her in the next movie and not bother to ask such things. If anything, it's better not to ask and keep things simple. The spotlight has robbed us of our favorite female bots from appearing in later stories and if they do appear, they have have to have the same backstory as Acree. Thank the Allspark this got retcon.

ONE OF THE FEW TIMES WHERE I'M COMPLETELY AGREE WITH RETCONING A STORY OUT OF THE CANON

Yeah I much more like TFP arcee and I think almost every member who is single on the lost light would intently fall in love with her. mainy cause she isn't some psychotic nut job and is a beautiful, nice, protective, friendly and strong warrioress. they would no doubt they'd try to help her with her PTSD.

A huge and unsurprised "NO SHIT SHERLOCK" from me, as you discussed before TF has had a strange history of reluctance for making female robots we really should work to put behind us. Oh yeah and aside from that its a bit in bad taste to turn a beloved usually caring and friendly character into an edgelord murderer +such a traumatic origin story. But I suppose that aspect is more up to taste and pretty minor in comparison. I just feel like its a bit too blatant for the end result and she could be written as less edge baity. Though actually if we ever do get something like Transformers Prime again, a kind of villainous or anti-hero Arcee could be pretty cool, TFP had her be like a cop or soldier, pretty tomboyish but alongside the blue it definitely diverges from the classic design.

I get the sense that Furman doesn't understand why anyone would genuinely want female Transformers to exist. He wrote for the Marvel UK run of Transformers and his means of incorporating Arcee into that continuity was that a feminist mob demanded the Autobots have a female Transformer in their ranks, so Optimus creates Arcee. I wish I was joking.

honestly this was one of the reasons I only read More than Meets the Eyes and Lost light to lesser extent. Why does Arcee has to explain her existance when Optimus , Megatron , Onslaught , Vortex , Starscream and every other 'male' cybertronian are the cool and natural and normal ones.

So my thoughts on transformer gender for my fanfiction are as follows: Physically and mentally, there are no genders. No fundamental differences in biology or mental structure. However, when mingling with alien races (as in humans) that do have genders, and it’s reflected in the language, they adopt whatever gender identity and pronouns feel comfortable to them for ease of relations. To the majority of them, it’s a non-issue that only comes into play on alien worlds. Does that seem offensive or anything? I’d like to get feedback on that.

I just assume that Primus made Solus Prime, and all Female Transformers descended from her,

I already thought this version of Arcee was definitely iffy and her backstory wrong and harmful all around. But you definitely gave me a better grasp on why it is harmful and dangerous to transpeople.

This is why research and developing a understanding is important before you write about anything you don't understand.

This story was... a lot. Choices were made, none of them good. Furman's hangups about robot gender were always so goddamn weird. He's been like this since the 80s, and Arcee was usually the one taking the brunt of it- He just kinda left Elita-1 and her crew out of Marvel, but Arcee almost got a toy, so Furman ended up writing _Prime's Rib_ which reads like it was written by a GamerGater, 30 years early. Spotlight: Arcee didn't just poison the well, but it also put a moratorium on other female bots appearing until the colonies became a thing in 2014. It took them _six whole years_ to get out of this story's shadow, and while it's good that they did, it resulted in some elements that, while better, were clunky as fuck, as Barber, Roberts, Scott, and everyone else had to awkwardly work around it. And yes, that eventually resulted in a retcon, but this story _was itself a retcon._ One of the first IDW stories was _Megatron: Origin,_ which showed Ariel/Elita at Bumper and Fastback's funeral. I'm glad that Barber salvaged it. I am not happy that he had to do it.

So Transformers "have no gender", yet all but a tiny handful of them have male voices, physical proportions that we would attribute to males, behaviours and views of the world that we would typically attribute to masculinity and male gender roles, relationship behaviours and styles that would also typically attribute to masculinity and male gender, and of course, copious use of the pronoun "he". And yet the debate about whether Transformers "have gender" or not only comes up when there's a controversy about whether Transformers can be female. Yeah, ok. Sure. Transformers have no gender. Lol

They're Robots. Just because they have female or male voices does not mean they're completely man or woman. But they have soul and feelings, They feel sadness, pain and anger so focusing only on a bots gender is not gonna make a good story.

This is even more stupid when later on they introduce actual female transformers the caminus colony. Nautica is best girl.

Take this with a grain of salt since I'm a cis man talking about trans issues, but the idea of the male Transformers being able to instinctively identify Arcee as "she" strikes me as gender essentialist rhetoric, and is way too similar to how IRL TERFs and other transphobes will insist how they can instantly clock a trans person (and the fact that transphobic rhetoric has become increasingly mainstream in Furman's home country doesn't exactly help this impression of mine). James Roberts treated depicted how male Transformers would react to meeting femmes way better by them initially assuming a given female Camien was a "he" and needing to have it explained to them, which makes more sense as to how a single-gender society would react to the concept than all of them having instinctive woman-sensing powers.

The “forced feminization” sounds down right terrifying! Retcon or not, that’s part that really bugs me. Also the whole everyone calls “she” because of some “technobabble” which, even back when I was transphobic, I thought it was kinda stupid. Like if they don’t know what she is why would they call her “she” if they don’t know what a she is? Also they were other female transformers before this comic… so… there’s that. Also it is neat to get a Trans person perspective on this. Imma CIS but I like to hear the other side for things like this. So thanks. ;)

Trans Arcee as a concept is ok, and i kinda like the idea that she is in other continuities as well. but the way it was written is....bad. the fangs were neat though.

I haven't gotten into IDW TF comics (yet), so I wasn't familiar with this comic, and damn, I didn't expect it to be this bad. Thanks for this video and bringing these issues to light.

Ugh. I thought we all collectively agreed Spotlight : Arcee didn't actually happen. It was so bad. Just such a clumsy, out of character , bad piece of writing.

This has been an interesting dive, glad you introduced Ultra in this collaboration, coming from a very sheltered environment it’s so fascinating to hear these prospectives and insights on these topics. Anode was the first trans exposure I properly had and I think the explanation there was really cool. Hopefully these topics continue to get tastefully explored as the franchise moves forward. These analysis talks are helpful to point out the specifics, a lot of people just don’t have ways of easily learning these things in a way to understand, most people are ignorant, not understanding but open to learning, it’s the arrogant that cause harm, those that don’t understand and refuse to learn

Fact of the matter is if you give your robots obviously male voices (animations), give the ones with human faces obviously male looking faces and refer to all of them as he then they are all gendered. I love modern day comics and animations. I just wish they would stop giving all the girls boobs. Stiker is awesome. More variety in body shapes are great. TP starscream could easily be female if they wanted to. I have no problem with a psychotic female character. Just not a trans one (because its offensive, when done like that)and *not* arcee. She is a sweetie and I want her to stay that way.

I LIKE TO THINK THIS: *1.- ARCEE SPOTLIGHT IS NOW OUT OF CANNON* *2.- ARCEE WAS ALWAYS A FEMBOT & SHE ONLY SAID THAT TO THE LITTLE GIRL TO NOT CONFUSE HER WITH ALL THE GENDERLESS STUFF IN TRANSFORMERS*

Wait… is it just me or is this video just going in circles? Talking about logic in a race of sentient robots that can also become vehicles seems kinda dumb

Basically Arcee got "The Skin I Live In"'d with Ghiaxius being Antonio Bandaras' character and Arcee being Vincent, getting forced into a sex change and forcibly feminized, despite still identifying as male. That just makes me shudder and feel so icky.

For my own personal fanfiction, I'd intended to show trans representation through Decepticon Dead End (who for some reason has always been my favourite Decepticon lol) whose nihilistic personality was an unfortunate product of his dysphoria for his alt mode, as my idea is that Dead End was once a jet forced into being a car, and his wish to return to his jet alt mode is dismissed by the others, which exacerbates his depression, so he secretly defects and seeks aid from the Aerialbots in order to recover his jet alt mode (though faces disdain from the Autobots by virtue of once being from the former faction, despite now identifying as an Autobot), and once he does, the Autobots notice a sense of euphoria and contentment come over him, though his former allies still refer to him as a car, and call him selfish as Menasor is now incomplete because of him (I imagine Knock Out would replace him), which was my attempt to represent the shame that some transphobic parents place onto their children. I tried to encounter this as delicately as possible, so if any of this appears problematic, I'd love for someone to tell me so I can fix it :)

this is barely scratching the surface but what IS it with male authors making female characters "cRaZy" in their stories???

I just read the title and immediately thought it was about that one Arcee story. The way he wrote this doesn't make sense, A genderless robot that goes by he makes the first "female" cybertronian by altering his body and he hates it, this makes Jeaxius seem like a sexual creep. If you want to tell a story about how Jeaxius changed someone through mad science and now they cant stand to be in their body because something is wrong that's ok but to make this the origin of the first "female" transformer, that he were forcefully changed and that somehow made him "female" just makes this feel... predatory. If I had to re-write this Arcee is born genderless (everyone on cybertron uses they/them) and feels off throughout her life, something isn't right/ is missing. Through the war she is introduced to gender form other species and learns about males/females and finds the thing she found missing now identifying as trans female and using she/her pronouns. If Jiaxus had to be included Arcee could go to them for surgeries to fell better fit in her body and they would break the trust she had in them by using her body for science to make a better soldier or something.

Still For me All Female Transformers Came from Solus Prime and the either their sparks were mixed up from Other Primes thus have multiple characterizations of different female transformers Or just make the primes past some planets and saw that some beings living on those planets had Gender then tried to Imitate them and Liked the idea

Idk why this even has to be explained to people. If you first thought isn’t “yikes” hearing that origin story then idk what to say

My personal headcanon is that transformers have no gender. "Females" are the same as males but with higher toned voices. Though mainly seen in slimmer more feminine body archetypes, they come in all shapes and sizes. Only upon reaching earth do they receive gender assigned pronouns for various reasons (make it easier for humans to identify them, some finding it fascinating, and some find it better to identify one another, as they use to use descriptions of body archetypes (seekers, miners, laborers, medics, etc etc) though those fell out of favor with the whole war being started over class inequalities. Thus gender was the next best thing.

I honestly feel like the main issue behind this comic and it's controversy was the fact that it was created by someone who's subconscious was so drenched in outdated and sexist ideas about gender and gender roles, that he never considered the implications his story would bring. As for him forcefully introducing outdated and sexist human understanding of gender into transformers universe made perfect sense, since "why a genderless race would need gender" (despite every other robot using MALE pronounce and presenting as MASCULINE). This idea that being male is "normal" and the obvious default, and being female is "abnormal" and needs to be forced in and excused insted of just accepting it, in my opinion is the main reason as to why this comic so infamous and problematic. Besides ruining Arcee's character by turning her into a bloodthirsty psychopath and the author's reaction to people not liking his comic and his later whining about it, of course.

Wasn’t there a G1 Marvel comic issue that made fun of this type of stuff? I think it was either the US marvel comic or Uk marvel comic?

Fantastic video. I'm a cisgender fellow and have been, frankly, purposely ignorant about it the issues behind it. This has really opened my eyes. One thing I did notice was how there is, perhaps, an interesting story about how Arcee could have hated their body but continued to identify as "he". Course, that's not great either, but it certainly would have been an interesting story. Course, my question comes down to, well, why is it so difficult to write a story about a female robot when they are, well, robots. All shapes and sizes, and I would assume genders, could be, and would be explored. Course, I am ignorant, but this doesn't seem all that hard. Even more interestingly, why would you introduce fembots like this? People like Arcee, real women identify with Arcee, why would you write her like this? Jeez man, just, jeez.

Wow. Wow, Hasbro. There are SO many ways that this could've been done, and the guy chose easily the most offensive plotline he could think of. Why!? The idea of Cybertronians being genderless or gender neutral (i.e., using they/them pronouns) is fine IMO. After all, Cybertronians are sexless robotic beings with no capacity for autonomous procreation. Sex and gender are completely different things, but they are being treated as if they were one and the same in the context of this story. If gender is going to be a thing for Cybertronians, it needs to be believable and done in a way that doesn't demonize or paint trans-people (or women) in a bad light. A transgender Transformer is a fantastic concept, but this is NOT the way to introduce it into the cannon. I actually thought up a possible scenario for Arcee explaining her self-discovery and transition backstory while watching this video. It's easily 1000 times better than this! 🤦‍♀

As offensive and as sexist as this story is, I can't help but feel a little bit intrigued by the concept of Jhiaxus conducting experiments on transformers that use she/her pronounce. I remember Emperor Kumquat once making a good point about stupidity of adding breasts to female transformers, just because we as humans associate them with female gender. I would like If some future interpretation played with that, simultaneously criticizing stereotypical trope. Imagine Jhiaxus trying to make female transformer "more human" by fusing her genes with human ones. Resulting in female transformer who's design feels reminiscent of characters such as BW Blackarachnia, or Cybertron Thunderblast. Maybe even leaning towards this "traumatized psychotic carnage spreader"-type of personality... This is just something I thought of when I first heard of this controversy... I just hope this idea isn't offensive to anyone.

I think it's a bizarre story, but I will say that I'm happy with the end results of Arcee being a fierce warrior.

It's always annoyed me that a fair sample of the Transformers comic stories, starting with Marvel, have been reticent to have Cybertronians of any gender other than male. Even 17 years ago when I first read the Marvel comics (and I was far more ignorant of social issues in society), I found the dismissal tone the writers had to Cybertronic gender offensive. I'm currently doing a hard(ish) science fiction prosaic reboot of *The Transformers*, with the story starting in 1984 like the original cartoon and comic, but since I'm sick of female transformers being an 'oh, by the way', I included every non-Torchbearer G1 Female Autobot amongst the crew of the *Ark *(Except Aileron, Maxima, and Windblade, as I want the Autobots to be largely confined to the ground before they activate the Dinobots) plus eight original characters. I also rendered Greenlight as non-binary, and will explore how (I extrapolate) society in 1984 reacts to that. The Decepticons are all male, however, as not only was it easier to just go use the cast list from the first two seasons of the cartoon, I also patterned my version of Megatron after a certain someone who was a KGB officer during the events of my story, and as such, he's a male chauvinist. (In order to make it clear that I'm *only* assassinating Megatron's character, I also have Mirage and Trailbreaker shine as heroes). If you read all the above, I appreciate you greatly for indulging my enthusiasm.

Just one of the many Mistakes John Barber had to fix

You think this was rough? Look up the first story Furman ever used Arcee for. It's... interesting...

Idk why any company's hire people who make a story of females alien, animals, AI and many more lifeforms. If I was a in charge of that story I will say the females Transformers races was born the same way with males Transformers life. To think, act and be who they are like they do. I agree with everyone I hate a lot. IDW comic should be care with doing anything. Thanks for for making this video.

I'll never understand Furman's hang-ups about female transformers. Like, these are giant shapeshifting alien robot men. Some of them being women is the _least_ fantastical thing about them!

I’m soooo glad they improved on the whole “explaining why the robots have genders” with Anode and Lug. The way they framed it there, where they interacted with species with genders and decided that they were more comfortable as something else than whatever the hell spotlight arcee was. At least they tried to improve Arcees origins later, with her actually wanting the treatment and Jhiaxus not giving appropriate aftercare, but it was too little too late.

I still don't know how they got this though

personal if I should ride a transformers Story and introduce arcee I just wanted her to be a part of the core cast from the beginning and if I had to introduce more females i just wanted them to crash on earth or Use a space bridge or something like that

They did her dirty

RC's backstory is literally the where my dick at meme

This truly is the TRANSformers

it's funny because Arcee is not even the first fembot There was a whole episode about it in G1 Basically Furman is blinded by his stick up about the whole idea of female transformers, and let it paint his writing

Arcee was not the first female Transformer..Prime had a girlfriend. so, it's all a lie

"How would you have done it?" Me: one (or more) of the next generation of transformers were formed after Solus's bodytype.

look how they massacred our gal

I personally found the production idea a dumb and a lame excuse like Michael bay wanting a reason why there are female transformers. Why do they need a reason at all, no cares. If they needed a reason they can just say they built like the other transformers or they were created alongside with the male counterparts. They have solus prime who alongside with the other 12 primes were created primus. Why need a reason to justify their existence. I won't lie, i like the concept of arcee's backstory and how traumatic/dark it was for her and wanting revenge but using this as a reason why there's female transformers is just ignorant and makes no sense.

It's funny how all it takes to turn a good story into a bad one is a single misplaced detail. I feel like we'ed be singing a different tune if Mr fermen just said she was tortured physically and mentally and left it at that. Or better yet, why not take a page from tf primes book and instead make her a stoic character scared by trauma and prefers to work alone as a result. Anything would be better than this.

I like how this video pointed out that even if we set sexist and transphobic implications aside, the story made no logical sense and doesn't address the questionable question of why gender exists in transformers. If I were to explain gender, I would say humans assign them gender pronouns based on how their appearance fits in our cis-mainstream culture, and transformers themselves just simply don't care about it so they allowed humans to say whatever they want. Maybe their Cybertronian language doesn't even have pronouns, like not even gender-neutral ones, they'll just repeat the name 23 times in a sentence.

I just prefer the pre furman/idw Canon (that also went to on to be included within the covenant of primes) that there aren't actually male and female transformers. It's an easy visual distinguisher for the reader to interpret the difference between the two types of cybertronians; the majority being the generic type (male) and the others, being able to interface,access and utilise systems embedded within cybertron/primus (female). If I'm not mistaken, is this partially fundamental to fermanagh story arc here?

Remember when Arcee was the respected leader of an entire race? It was a weird old time watching these comics unfold. To take one of the few female characters at the time and churn out 'Jihaxus's forced gender affirmation clinic' as a backstory is just bizarre.

If you check the original Transformers cartoon from the 80s, there were female transformers in an episode introducing Elita-One and others. Arcee did not appear until the good 1980s Transformers: The Movie.

I completely disagree with you. It's hard to deny that any cultural product has its effect on the reader, but do not forget that people are not so stupid as to perceive comics as the only truth. In addition, people who really want to make the transition will look not at comics/books/series but at scientific articles and interviews of people. Therefore, I believe that the author should not think about the consequences of his work and people should not tell the authors that their work somehow looks wrong in their eyes, it's just a story, it can be good, it can be bad, and saying that you should always think about the consequences will kill the whole creativity.

Still confused why aliens have earth genders

i feel like how gender works in transformers lore is a answer we dont want to know

Female Autobots? I thought they were extinct - Shockwave Yes, we are still here and will always - Chromia Such noble nonsense - both Shockwave and Megatron

Arcee being trans made me a little uncomfortable as a trans person, kinda got some mixed signals out of that one. I know they probably had good intentions but still its kinda a bruh moment.

When I decided to read the online version of the comic before continuing to watch the video I didn’t notice anything wrong, and when I came back the memory of the comic burned in front of me as Emperor Kumquat pointed out everything wrong about it

I really disliked it as a kid (I've never revisited it since I first read it), but it’s not because I thought it as transphobic or sexist (which, now that you said it, I think the former may be the case), it was because it took itself too seriously, and was trying to hard to be dark, which is a problem with all originally children media turned into adult media. I don’t think that turning one into the other is something bad, but the way it’s done when it’s from childish to adult is always the same: it’s always something no-nonsensical, dark, violent, but filled to the brim with references to the original material, and always trying to make sense of those core or memorable elements from the original that were either silly or outlandish. The Arcee comic was, beat by beat, that: because doesn’t make much sense for a robot to have genders, lets dedicate an entire story addressing said matter to make it harmonize with the common and more logical preconception of genderless robots, instead of just making it so that the transformers just happen to have personalities that to us remind us of those of our genders, like in Digimon 3; all that made in a way that makes you think that the world the story is set in has never seen a puppy before (and I'm not saying it can’t be dark, I'm just saying that they usually try too hard to the point it’s ridiculous).

I'd write my Transgendered character in a way that's respectful And if I don't know a lot about it I'll ask someone who is Transitioning or has Transitioned so I can accurately portray how they feel about it. As for myself, I don't really see myself as a Singular gender from an point of view My physical gender is Male I have Masculine Personality traits And Female Personality traits My own Pronouns, I'm fine with any pronoun as long as it's used in a way that doesn't sound insulting

If there is one…ONE singular positive light of this whole Arcee IDW controversy, is that later writers, namely John Barber, really fleshed out Arcee’s character a lot better and made her go through a bit more of compelling arc and finally manages to find closure, peace and happiness. Hell Arcee basically becomes the one of the biggest main stars during the end of Phase 2 and for the rest of Phase 3.

I kinda get what Furhman wanted to do, but by god his editor should have stopped him

Ok really i read that comic and didn't find offense about a made up world of transforming lifeforms. By the way Solus Prime was female and 0ne of the 13 lmao :) Arcee not the 1st hell elita 0ne was made before her .

Oh Furman, sometimes you really do reap the whirlwind don't you? Really the easiest answer to fender with transformers is that they appear that way to humans since theyre FREAKIN ALIEN ROBOTS. Like why is Optimus Male? Hell some transformers are arbitrarily voiced as male or female in some foreign dubs. It's such a strange thing to get hung up on and not say the wild mass shifting that makes Megatron turn into a tiny gun

First off, Happy Pride!!! Second, THANK YOU for tackling this topic. I’ve had so many dudebros cis-splain to me why this “isn’t as bad as you think” because their idol Furman said so. Third: Furman is trash. Yeah he would never do anything intentionally to harm the trans community blah blah blah. BUT HE DID. Because we (the trans community) said so. And our experiences MATTER. Our voices MATTER. He doesn’t know cus he’s not trans, so maybe listen to the experts on their own experiences. So NUT UP and take responsibility. Finally, saying Transformers are genderless by therefore the default referent pronoun is he…. So the default is male? Ummmm sexist male supremacist much?? That’s kind of like saying the default race is white, and anyone else is an aberrant inconvenience. If you want a default pronoun for a genderless race, pronouns “they/them/theirs” says “hi.” The hellfire fuck kind of “writer” doesn’t know that gender-neutral pronouns exist for a genderless concept race? Oh, cus maybe his content is informed by his PERSONAL BIASES??? HMMMMMM….

YASS! PREACH EMPEROR! PREACH!!! Great vid, thx for making it

Jhaxus was a mad scientist. The retcon can work from that perspective. It was a harsh way to do a transition for Arcee no matter the species. I just took it as IDW's universe.

I haven’t read transformers for a very long time what the hell is going on here?!?

I think I read both comics, but I didn't think much about the message they were giving. It kind of just went over my head, I guess. I was never interested much in Arcee, I was always just excited to see more of Starscream, as I went through the series. ^^; But now that you've pointed it out in this video... that's so ridiculous and really does make no sense, and I definitely understand how offensive this is to trans people and misinformation for cis people like myself. I mean, the message about transitioning being bad was lost on me anyway, I just saw it as a madmech torturing Arcee but not as trans surgery being bad. Though I think when I did reach the comic where Arcee says she wanted to be female, that I was a bit confused, since the first comic suggested otherwise. But again, I didn't think much about it. ^^; I don't know how easily typical people interpret certain scenes and their hidden messages, all I know is that I just... see what's in front of me and only think about what it means in the fictional universe and never really interpret it in a way that corresponds to our own real world. I don't know how to explain it. ^^; I have made the mistake myself of mostly using "he" for my OCs in my TF fics and mostly including males while not really caring much about the females, not sure why. Maybe it's just because I'm used to seeing a LOT of male bots and few females, but I dunno if I used to also think of "he" as genderless or just liking the male characters better because the females are usually exaggeratingly designed as females, to look "sexy" or "hot" or for whatever reason, rather than have their kibble be part of their bodies like the males do. I do like the female Transformers better in the newer shows, like in Cyberverse, Rescue Bots, RBA and RID 2015 where they actually look similar to the males and not trying to look like human women, some even being buff and masculine-looking, like Strongarm and Clobber. I also really do like that many male bots in IDW decided to change to females because they felt better about it, and I even really like that several male characters were changed to female in Cyberverse, like Skywarp, Nova Storm, Cosmos, Swoop (I love geeky girl Swoop), and Acid Storm... sort of, Acid Storm often changes their face from being male to female and back, even in the same episodes or the same SCENES, though always speaks as female. So I decided to headcanon Cyberverse Acid Storm as non-binary and describe them as "they" instead of "she", in my Cyberverse fic. I also decided to include a few more characters in my Cyberverse fic and even change their original gender to female as well, for now just Hotlink and Ion Storm being female, the latter because the other two "Storms" were female (or partly female, at least), so I thought it would be fitting if Ion Storm was also female. And I gave her the original Nova Storm's colors (yellow and orange), since Cyberverse Nova Storm is purple, similar to the original Ion Storm (though he was blue). And Hotlink is female, simply because I think it suits Hotlink, I don't know why. :) Definitely gonna try to include more unused characters in my Cyberverse fic (and maybe future fics? I dunno) and turn some into females, coz I love that feature of Cyberverse. :D Cyberverse definitely says trans rights, even if they were hesitant with making Skywarp female in the start and decided to replace her with Nova Storm instead, but then made her female later anyway, but didn't give her speaking roles anyway... ehhh, at least it's a step forward, right? I think I got a bit off track here with my comment, heheh. ^^; Now I'm just sitting here, thinking about one of my stories where I included a bunch of random OCs I made up, but they are all male, and all bandits. And I've already posted the chapters on AO3, Wattpad and FanFiction, so I feel like I can't just change any of their genders now, since that would be bigger than just fixing typos or having written Skyquake instead of Dreadwing (which happens QUITE A LOT with me, actually lol). But... I dunno. There is at least one character I would like to go back and change his gender to female, since he's the only one who survived past his first appearance, and I'm not planning to kill him. I feel a bit apprehensible about killing females in my stories, for some reason, I don't know why. Maybe just because I still see female Transformers as rare compared to males, and I am hesitatant to kill or destroy rare things, coz rarity interests me. Then again, that story is set in Aligned where it is pretty much canon that females are rarer than males, so I guess I'm not wrong there... but it still feels wrong. I feel oblivious and inconsiderate now to not treat female Transformers in my stories as I would the males. Killing them off, make them jerks, describe them as ugly, make them stupid, it just feels wrong to do that with a female character as opposed to a male one. Which is wrong, of course, and I feel bad about it now. I do like RID 2015's idea of making ugly female characters, like the bestial Decepticons, maybe I shouldn't think so much about their genders anymore and just be like "this is this and that is that, they can behave however they like, whether they're this or that". Sorry for the long comment and contemplating my own stories here at the end. It just feels better and easier writing about it.

i see your point on the arcee comic to be censoreship of a different ponit of view that may spark discussion if we censore all bad works we may never learn from a persons mistakes

I mean, writing a backstory for Arcee isnt THAT hard... Just say that Cybertronians have a similar biological divergence as humans do (since yadda yadda yadda, entertain humans, human-like qualities, the usual), and that the fembots are better at non-combat roles and more empathetic. And as we all know how it is with the caste system, you KNOW some windbag up in the big ol' chairs is going to assign most of the fembots to non-combat jobs, and thus relegate them to duties that they probably dont want, or just shoehorning them in positions that leaves them wanting or unable to pursuit their want and needs. So, the majority of fembots leave Cybertron for the colonies, where the caste system and all its chicanery doesnt exists, while the few remaining ones on Cybertron are either truly satisfied with their lives, or are presented with no other options. So, with all of that said and done, we can simply make Arcee one of the first CYBERTRON-RESIDING fembots to break traditions when the war started, and since a good chunk of the franchise focus on the bruhaha stompy punchy shooty (not our fault or the writer's fault, its just the nature ofba war story), it makes sense that the one fembot we get to see most of the time is the moldbreaker and the first to take arms. That way, we have made Arcee a gender *empowering* figure, and making her existence and status make sens, not to mention adding a badass credential to her for being so active on so many fronts that she's usually the FIRST and ONLY female we see around many a times: she's just THAT badass and active. She isnt just a fembot who can fight, she is a fighting bot who just happens to be fem.

Excellent presentation and analysis. Thanks.

In latin langueages like Spanish, gender-neutral pronouns are usually the masculine pronouns, I briefly learned Spanish: Ellas means "those woman" or "they", Ellos means "Those men" or "they" but is also used to say "those people." The word man used to be genderneutral and refered to just humans, that's why a lot of fantasy stories refer to humanity as "man."

TFP Arcee is so much better than this Arcee. Because TFP Arcee had a story about her loss of the two partners she once had which caused her to have PTSD. Even if she wanted revenge, it wasn't her fault since Airachnid is the reason for Arcee's trauma which very understandable of the torture she suffered, become Jack's guardian and takes character development to realize that revenge is never the answer so instead of killing Airachnid, she gets her imprisoned in a stasis cell. This controversial comic book version of Arcee, however, doesn't have any potential traits as this Arcee was nothing more but a male in a fembot's body and only went psychotic because of having a feminine body which doesn't make sense.