I had always wondered, that since gender in the MU is not based on physical traits (at least for Toa and Matoran), and for the most part male and female Toa don’t have obvious differences in body shape, why do they have genders at all? If the beings in the MU were never intended to be sentient, then it doesn’t make much sense for the inhabitants to have a gender, particularly when that gender is completely in their heads and has no relation to pre-determined physical traits. Arguably, the biggest physical traits between Toa and Matoran would be their elements.
I’ve just always found that odd, especially with the story of Orde, where at least one Great Being deliberately made other Toa of Psionics afterward female, a trait that only applies in their heads, which weren’t supposed to complex enough to comprehend a matter like gender in the first place.
So, why did beings in the MU have genders, or if there isn’t a good reason, how did accidental sentience affect it?
Sorry that this question is kind of vague, but it’s kind of an odd and specific issue that I’d like put to rest.
Well, I think the answer comes down to whether you believe gender starts and ends with the physical. If you don’t believe that, then having two genders makes perfect sense, because you get a balance. In BIONICLE, we have seen that the female Matoran tended to be scholars and the female Toa more inclined to be peacemakers, where some of the male Toa tended to be quicker to want to use violence to settle disputes.
I don’t see how 1 out of 6 elements being female gender is balance (and I am taking the classic six, not including Psionics and Lightning, and Shadow and Light already have both genders included). There’s so much more gender identities in our world that are not necessarily attached to physical traits, why do we have a need to boil it down to gender binary? I mean, I get it, it was a toy line for kids focused on boys, and it made perfect sense for you, the Bionicle team, and The Lego Group at the moment, but it’s not longer an issue since the toy line is closed.
But if they were never suposed to be sentient in the first place, what would be the need of peacekeepers, scholars, or warriors?
I can definitely believe that the Great Beings would use their perception of how gender affects the mind and personality for the Toa and others they created, but I still don’t see why non-sentient beings would be created with genders, nevermind personalities.
Perhaps it was an accidental bi-product of using biological components based off Agori templates. Physically there was little difference, and the gender concept didn’t manifest itself initially, but when sentience was bestowed on the denizens of the Matoran Universe, the concepts of male and female took root in their minds.
What’s more, Rahi are still capable of mating, so I’m sure races other than Matoran would have drawn their understanding of male and female from that.
Look at it as similar to the way humans do robotics. We give robots gender defining physical characteristics to mirror long held beliefs and viewpoints relating to the robot’s tasks. This may have been a similar case for the great beings.
I can definitely see that. I just wonder, if the Toa and other inhabitants of the MU didn’t get their accidental sentience, would they even know or care about these genders that the Great Beings had assigned them? I mean, I’d assume no, but in that case, their gender is purely due to the Great Beings thinking of these inhabitants as something more than just machines. Something important enough to give part of an identity to, even if these inhabitants would never be able to appreciate it (or so they thought). Kinda changes the way we look at the Great Beings, doesn’t it?
Food for thought. In any case, thank you very much for taking the time to be here on the Boards, Greg.
And thanks to the others in this topic for their thoughts, this was an enjoyable discussion.
I once jokingly pointed out that because most of the physical and mental differences between Toa and Matoran are determined by their element, you could argue that their element acts more like a gender than their gender does, giving them more than 10 different genders. I then realized how silly that sounded, since their element is more like culture than gender, to be fair.
Exactly. A gender identity is a whole complex of aspects, and often called a social construct (although I am used to hear this as a negative descriptor.) So “Every Element is its own gender” is a pretty appealing idea, although I am long since stopped thinking strictly within the canon boundaries (you can thank my 8+ year old ongoing AU project for that) and therefore believe that Matoran Universe inhabitants can express any gender identity they feel like.
Since this is very likely going (and beginning) to veer off into a discussion which may spawn arguments, and since the question has been answered, I’m going to close this down.
