The last post being on the subject of heroic self-sacrifice, I think the transition into talking about Optimus Prime is seamless, here.
I realized the other day while watching Transformers 3 two things: One, the Transformers movies are kind of a lot sexist. As in, kind of a lot actually - particularly the third movie, whose two only female characters delivered an incredibly blunt message: Eye candy girlfriend is useless except as eye candy, also women in charge are terrible and need to get sexed up - preferably by the worthless comedy relief character, because, y'know. Women.
The other thing I realized, however, was a more profound insight. There's something I've always found kinda cool about the Transformers: They're a sexless species. They don't have genders. In fact, their reproduction works in an entirely different way from most species on Earth. We refer to most of the Transformers as male, because... well to be honest, kinda just because men are the default sex in our culture. I thought that perhaps it's because most of the Transformers look male, but actually... not really. They look so different from humans that there's no real way of telling what sex they would be if they had them. Yes, the voice actors in the cartoon are men, but I read the comics so the cartoon voices aren't really "canon" to me - and besides, female bears don't exactly sound anything like female humans, but they're still she-bears.
And then it struck me: Not that human terms really apply to the Transformers, but if we desperately wanted to assign them sexes... wouldn't it make the most sense to refer to Optimus as a woman? After all, Optimus Prime has the Creation Matrix - Optimus is the one who creates new life. The creation of life has, on Earth, in most cultures, been viewed as pretty much the definition of being female.
Optimus Prime is really only set apart from the other Transformers because she can give birth. She is also the one who nurtures, teaches and heals the other Transformers using the Matrix. It marks whoever bears it as a leader, but are we going to call Optimus Prime a man simply because she's in charge?
Optimus Prime is, of course, neither man nor woman because the terms don't apply to Transformers. But if we're going to go with one of them... wouldn't woman be the most logical choice, given the biological functions of Earth females?
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Our language is, for understandable reasons, completely incapable with dealing with inhuman species, which is very frustrating.
But I have also been wondering about alien species where genders work entirely differently. What is the ultimate definition of gender and sex really?
Dictionary.com says:
SEX:
1.either the male or female division of a species, especially as differentiated with reference to the reproductive functions.
2.
the sum of the structural and functional differences by which the male and female are distinguished, or the phenomena or behavior dependent on these differences.
3.
the instinct or attraction drawing one sex toward another, or its manifestation in life and conduct.
FEMALE
1.
a person bearing two X chromosomes in the cell nuclei and normally having a vagina, a uterus and ovaries, and developing at puberty a relatively rounded body and enlarged breasts, and retaining a beardless face; a girl or woman.
2.
an organism of the sex or sexual phase that normally produces egg cells.
MALE
1.
a person bearing an X and Y chromosome pair in the cell nuclei and normally having a penis, scrotum, and testicles, and developing hair on the face at adolescence; a boy or man.
2.
an organism of the sex or sexual phase that normally produces a sperm cell or male gamete.
And then in machinery, the ends/sockets of a plug that has a hole or a sticking out part.
Completely incapable :(
On a different note, are Transformers supposed to be called "persons"? A "people" of sentient machines?
While I see your point in choosing the capacity of creating new life as defining a female, I think this is philosophically wrong: a woman provides the environment in which life grows, much like a garden, but it is the combined effort of the egg and the sperm that triggers the cell growth and steers the development of the child. In non-mammals, the egg provides that environment decreasing the woman's involvement even more. Men and women are equally involved in creating life - I would rather then say that women sustain it, but that is also a rough estimate since ideally the man is supposed to help once the child is born, and if not the man, then at least the community. This idea that "women give life" is a naive and sexist thought that should have been banished with the scientific understanding of eggs and sperm. A woman's role would be "nurturing" if anything, but this is not true for all species of animals.
Speaking of Transformers then, since men are the standard, they bear no marks that we identify as female: no breasts, no round hips, no ovaries, no hormones. They don't have sex; they are therefore sexless. Calling Optimus female is only a shallow victory; the true victory would be to call them what they really are: not she, not he. That elusive, neutral word.
Heh. About a hundred years ago, it was argued that the idea of a woman as "a garden in which life grows" was a sexist idea, and that it would be more right to refer to them as "life-givers"; of course, two wrongs don't make a right, and it is - as you say - a team effort to create life.
On an unrelated note - in El Goonish Shive, there's as species wherein up to 16 individuals can mingle their DNA to create a new child. That's also a very interesting idea, which plays _complete_ merry hell with our idea of sexes.
Sentient nonhumans is a very fascinating idea on so many levels. Which traits are necessary for sentience, and which traits are merely necessary for "humanity"? It's hard to say.
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