rip in pieces bionicle tbh
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BTW in Magyar “Sex” only means… That kind of contact.
But in my opinion Bionicle is not sexist. I mean biomechanical beings don’t even have gender! ;D
Also, i loved how female characters can stand strong in some situation
Edited for double-post- Star
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The biggest issue was gender locked elements. Since within the toylines each color sort of fell into certain roles, the red one is typically the leader. So basically what it meant was, you would never see a female Toa in the spotlight in terms of the sets.
Obviously the story and sets don’t always line up. so while Bionicle did portray male and female characters well, there was a large Imbalance in terms of numbers. So I can see the argument.
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I have two things.
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Could you maybe change the title of this so that it shows you’re not just making some joke topic? Something like “BIONICLE and Sexism” would do.
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I do agree with you on several of the points you made, but I hardly think that the female characters fall into a sort of stereotypical mold. I would also argue the case with the other characters. I know that the theme was made for 8 year olds, but that doesn’t mean the characters were shallow and typical.
You listed Tahu as an example of male stereotyping, while if you had read the stories, he is really just as complex as you or me. He is usually cocky and overconfident, but he also is somebody weighed down by years of fighting and lost hopes. He learns as he goes from Mata Nui, to Spherus Magna, and everywhere in between. He, and the other Toa Mata grow as people and as characters.
It’s not only the Toa Mata, but almost every character. You can say that all of them are some archetypical representation of a personality, but they go much deeper than that in the story.
And as for the whole female character personality situation, (because I’ve heard arguments about how they are all basically the same) Like I’ve said, each female character is more diverse than there personality bio on BS01.
I’m just pointing this out because it sounded like you were saying that the characters in BIONICLE had no depth, and that’s simply not true. Some people might not have liked Farshtey as a writer, but he did make sure the characters were complex.
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Despite having a locked gender-element relationship, bionicle does not marginalize, objectify or degrade women. The Ga and Vo Matoran are just as capable as any other matoran. While each race has their advantages (eg. Po matoran being naturally strong), I don’t think Ga Matoran are ever implied to be inferior to any.
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I did a double-take when I realized you hadn’t actually named…the site you heavily implied. 
Yeah, the idea that Bionicle is sexist is absurd. It’s targeted at young boys, who are going to want male characters to relate to. Some people would say that boys will relate to female characters if those characters do cool fighting stuff…but that’s just making the female characters act more masculine, instead of representing the whole range of female personalities (which can include females who act masculine, just to be clear). And in the end, the gender ratio really doesn’t matter. They’ll tell you that it does, because women are “oppressed”…but in modern Western society, that’s really not true, at least not to any great extent.
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No. The only time I ever recall BIONICLE coming close to being “sexist” was the Toa Orde incident and that more due to a lack of foresight, not an actual misogynistic stance from Greg as the SJW make it out to be. The fact that a boys toyline got main female characters from the beginning seems good to me.
I do see where they are coming from. I don’t like the gender-locked element rule and I would like to see a stronger female presence in BIONICLE, maybe one third of characters being female. It would be cool to see both boys and girls playing with BIONICLE, but this won’t be happening for a while .LEGO sets are generally seen as boys toys and this isn’t as easy to fix as some people realize. I’m not saying this is the way it must always be, only that this is the reality of the situation.
Things are changing, though. While I have seen some people trash on LEGO Friends for being nothing but girl stereotypes, it is introducing more and girls to LEGO. Think of it as a gateway line aimed at girls. As the number of female consumers grow, maybe then we can get a larger female presence in BIONICLE. Until then, I think the way things are is fine.
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I think they could take a play from the Power Rangers playbook. They also have a 6 unit team, but 2 female members per team. I doubt it would happen, but it would make the gender ratio a bit more fair.
Did we just topic hop? I recall having an almost same discussion, with references to the same other site, with some of the same points earlier today on another topic.
We did topic hop.
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This confuses me. I’ve always viewed them as separate and everything I’ve seen says so too. As such, I’m curious as to this picture… (Topic Hop 2: Revenge of the Hop)
Eh, I’d say no. Gender locked elements were the extent of it, end technically we don’t have proof that all Vo-/Ga-Matoran are female. If you think about it, in the story, they never actually say that the elements are locked aside from Ce- class characters due to Orde messing up on his Zyglak mission. It’s just that all the characters we met were indeed matching of the rest of their element.
EXCEPT, for the Av-Matoran. All Av-Matoran were confined to the universe core, meaning that they were all in one spot. As we found out with Gavla, Av-Matoran can be either gender. We may not have known this had Av-Matoran been spread across the universe like the other Matoran types. For all we know, there ARE female Po-Matoran living somewhere. There’s just no way to tell. My own fanfic takes a note from this and has both male and female Anti-Matoran because they were all confined to one area, the Silver Peaks Antiworld pocket universe.
As for the sets…okay no. Just no. I would consider it to be discriminating against girls only if every single female Bionicle set was overly feminine, and with an audience of 8-14 year olds, they weren’t going to do that. I can’t remember the number of times I had to remind my parents that Hahli Mahri was a girl…
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If you think Hahli was bad, you should of seen my relative’s faces when I told them Gorast was a girl.
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TRUTH! To be fair though Gorast had a bit of an excuse. She WAS mutated into a bugshaped suit of armor inhabited by gas.
One interesting topic to open here is the Sisters of the Skrall, which showed in-story discrimination against females. I always liked the Skrall because of the darker, grittier, more realistic theme they brought with them.
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I agree!
Even when I look at that set I mistake it for a boy
Considering it started in 2001, was aimed at boys, and all the characters are, practically speaking, about as sexually dimorphic as the average rock, I’d say having a hard rule in place to at least make sure 1/6th of the characters were female was probably good for representation early on.
Though making the rule “at least this many females” instead of “the blue ones are female” would probably be better.
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I never thought it was. Every year, there seemed to be a female character that stood out. Characters like Gali, Nokama, and Hahli seemed to always play a major role in the team of the Toa. When the Toa where loosing, the female Toa seemed to always cheer them up and encourage them to “move along.”
Shoot, the main villain of 2005 was Roodaka, who did have some girly traits, but in reality, she could fend by herself and was a embodiment of pure evil.
Characters like Gali and the other Toa of Water always could defend themselves. Shoot, Macku was brave enough to leave Ga-Wahi when the waters had a Tarakava that could have killed her when she was on that boat. And it seemed she did the right thing, getting the attention of an Av-Matoran to help them, and eventually Toa Gali defeated the infected Tarakava, showing she had great fighting skill.
I’ve never seen any female character in BIONICLE be week or a damsel-in-distress. Shoot, Dalu was an aggressive Ga-Matoran who even fought of Avak to protect her friends!
Sure, there are less female characters, but that does not mean anything. Everyone remembers the characters, and all of them are distinguishable and overall lovable. Just look at how many people make pictures of Gali or Nokama?
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Warning: Long **** post incoming.
Well, firstly I don’t personally agree with gender and sex being the same thing, sex refers to physical traits whereas gender refers to mental.
As we know, BIONICLE characters do not have physical sex’s, as they do not actually reproduce. So when referring to sex, there is no difference between male or female. In which case, the difference between the two are rather superfluous in that regard. This is why I never understood the complaints regarding BIONICLE characters not looking “feminine” enough. Why should Gali look feminine? There’s no biological reason for her stature to be any different then Tahu’s because she does not possess the ability to mate or reproduce. Her sex is not female- she has no sex, just like the rest of the Toa.
So how can Gali be considered a girl if she doesn’t possess the parts that would make her one? Well, in my honest opinion it’s purely for marketing reasons. Children can easily identify with characters that feature traits they can relate with. Making Tahu a boy and Gali a girl reduces the complexity of their characters and makes promotion easier to understand. By having a female character present, a little sister doesn’t have to feel left out when playing with her brother’s toys because she has something to relate to. This way LEGO can market their toys to children of all ages and genders.
BUT, if we disregard the toy aspect and look at BIONICLE from a pure story point of view then things are a little different. As we know, BIONICLE characters don’t reproduce, so sex isn’t really a thing and there is no physical difference between male and female (at least within the Matoran Universe). So what makes Gali a girl? This is when we start to see the difference between gender and sex and get into the big discussion about gender identity.
Whether you believe gender identity is real or not, it definitely exists in the BIONICLE world purely by the fact that there is a notable difference between male and female counterparts within the BIONICLE lore, despite there being no physical difference. It’s worth noting that these characters are not confined by our way of thinking and their rules are vastly different from our own- so what they perceive as male and female could very well be entirely different then what we perceive. But if we’re going by this train of logic then the differences between male and female are… well, mental. There’s no reason for Gali to refer to herself as a female if there were no physical differences unless the difference was in her head.
In which case, what determines what is male and female is embedded deep within their personalities and perception.
Their identity.
Now, unfortunately I still hold the belief that BIONICLE characters aren’t as free willed as we might think. Their destinys are pre-written, along with their personalities and traits. This doesn’t mean it’s impossible to deviate, which has very clearly happened before (I doubt the Great Beings programmed villains to bring down Mata-Nui), but I think at their core they are still machines built to serve a purpose. This is somewhat evidenced by the fact that the entire psionics race was made female after Orde lost his temper. He deviated from his programmed path, so the Great Beings wrote a new personality to replace him, with which they referred to as “female”.
Which leads me to believe that, as stated before, in the matoran universe the perception of Female and Male is different than ours.
WHICH brings me to my final answer, no, I do not believe BIONICLE is sexist.
From a story aspect: No, purely from the fact that I do not believe the differences between male or female are comparable to human differences outside of it’s most basic form. What determines what is female and male is based around the wants and needs of the Great Beings, and, of those whom possess the female personality types; are not treated as lesser beings.
From a set aspect: No, there are no physical differences between the two, and the only reason they are referred as such is to sell toys.This way they open their marketing to other audiences without isolating their target audience (which are little boys). Perhaps you could argue this is sexist in a sense, but honestly all marketing is pretty sexist, just look at health products such as deodorant and body wash- the only way to change this is to change the way society portrays males and females.
Now if you’re REALLY reaching you could argue “Well Roodaka had female features!” but that isn’t really saying much, she was a completely different race then any of the other sets and the only one of her race we ever saw in an official capacity. For all we know the male Vortixx have rahkshi boobs too.
Also Pohatu had wider hips and a smaller frame then Gali, soooooo yeah.
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[quote=“IllustriousVar, post:20, topic:2783”]Why should Gali look feminine? There’s no biological reason for her stature to be any different then Tahu’s because she does not possess the ability to mate or reproduc
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Yes, thank you!
You just hit the nail on the head so well I smiled at the screen. I think this is a very logical (and non-sexist) way to explain the situation. Many people will immediately use this as the excuse for sexism BIONICLE, but I feel that the way you described genders here really eliminates any chance of logical argument against such.
Overall, I agree with pretty much everything Var states here 
In fact, I’m going to bookmark this post and use it’s content whenever the argument is brought up on other sites (other than BZP) - Varderan will be credited, of course.
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