Jaller was a bit sexist in one part of Mask of Light.
“Not too bad… For a Ga-Matoran.”
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Just sounds like a little boy. It is also just some banter between rivals.
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Yeah, or if you want to interpret it non-canonically, he was playfully teasing his girlfriend. Not sexist in my book.
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Honestly I think that classifies more towards racism then sexism 
(But yeah, it was just playful banter between two friends… plus I don’t think the movies are a great source of canon)
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Yeah, not a great source of canon, but they are entertaining, and it helps us understand the story that year a little better.
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Yet they skip movie plot in the comics.
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Look, I’m Asian American. You can kind of count on one hand the number of shows/movies/games that prominently feature a main Asian American supporting character, let alone a main character. (“One hand” isn’t exactly fair because I can name more than five, but you get my point). I do agree that it would be nice to see some more Asian American actors/characters in more things, but I honestly don’t think that the majority of American media is explicitly racist for not doing so.
I just want to see really good characters in Bionicle, male or female or otherwise. We need good characters that just so happen to be female, but I hate things that try to make a big deal about it. The whole “You can’t do this because you’re a girl!” deal just gets too Aesop-like. Treating something like it’s not a big deal can sometimes send the loudest message. Kick ■■■ 2 had a great thing about it in that Mother Russia and Hit Girl are both easily the most skilled and powerful characters in the movie…and the movie just accepted it. No pointing it out, no “girl power” mantras, it was just how it was. I just accepted it, and I think audiences did too. They didn’t need to go out of their way to make it a big deal; in fact, it was a big deal because they didn’t go out of their way to do it.
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I feel like a lot of that in terms of Asian American characters is due to casting. A lot of times an actor fits the role perfectly regardless of race. Such is the case of Morgan Freeman’s role in Shawshank Redemption, in the book it was a white Irishman.
So this doesn’t necessarily apply to Bionicle, but really the best way to got about it is to write good characters and let the genders sort themselves out. There’s no need to go out of your way to set a specific group of characters as female.
Would I like more female characters? Yes, but what I would rather see more, and I’m sure a few people will agree, is more diverse characters. Bionicle has so much untapped potential to make some truly great characters.
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While Bionicle certainly is guilty for having the smurfette principle, I really don’t see how Bionicle would be sexist.
As have already been pointed out, Bionicle is mainly marketed towards boys so naturally there are going to be mostly male characters so these boys can identify with the characters. And as Var as so perfectly described, these are after all a completely different kind of beings that most likely don’t have the same perceptions that we have about gender.
I think the only mistake they did though was locking the elements to a certain gender, but on the other hand it might not have made any difference really. Just look at the Glatorian set- and storyline, where the elements are not locked towards a gender but still there’s only one female character.
Again, Bionicle is only being guilty for the smurfette principle, but that’s about it really. Every single female character that I know of in Bionicle have always been strong characters, hell, sometimes even stronger than the male characters. Also on a more personal note, whenever I look at characters I tend to think that the characters gender is the least important thing to me, however with that being said I surely wouldn’t mind having more female characters.
But yeah, I don’t think Bionicle is sexist by any stretch of the imagination.
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Definitely. Not going to lie, if this is a reboot, I kind of hope they get rid of the gender locking. I feel it creates limitations and adds to the Smurfette syndrome you described. (Or they could just make them completely genderless)
Buuut, I guess we’ll see at Comic Con.
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Oh my, I just fainted over the sight of a… long… post. Guh! Reading, ew.
And might I say, who was the Toa who convinced Toa Ignika to sacrifice his body in the comics? Surely wasn’t Tahu.
I’ve been on the internet for some time, and I’ve realized people will add controversy to anything basically. It’s not a brand new concept, it’s basically for attention. They look at something and think of ways to screw with it to make it an attention getter. Now I have not seen the other side to this so I can’t say it’s that. But I have seen it before. While I’ll say personally, the strongest female toy based character I can think of right now is TF Prime Arcee, and she surpasses any characteristics then Gali or Nokama has, at least, from what I’ve seen. (Not promoting TF over a Bionicle discussion.)
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I may come back and make a full rant on this at some point, but for now I’ll stick with a quick summary of my thoughts.
Here’s the thing; Bionicle’s gender ratio doesn’t make it sexist per say, it just makes it a toy line marketed more towards boys than girls. I wouldn’t even say Bionicle historically used “girl” as a character type! Seems to me that(unlike Hero Factory) they averted the whole gender determines the character quite well. There were a few cases where they used archetypes (Gali, Roodaka, etc.), but there were alot of male characters that were debateably archetypes too!
In my opinion, controversy about sexism in Bionicle is just fans over thinking things. There are plenty of quirks here and there in the Bionicle story, but we’re the ones that exploit them and blow them up to be big issues which they really don’t need to be. Furthermore, we’re trying to apply real world issues to a made up world in which they are irrelevant. We’d be better off getting up in arms about the Boxor paradox!
Needless to say, no. I do not think Bionicle is sexist.
*looks back at first line
Whelp. So much for quick summary. ._.
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I’ve been thinking about it. Let’s say that the lack of representation of a group of people in a story is a form of prejudice, even if unintentional. However, there is one thing I would like to ask: Does a single, possible element of sexism in a story make the whole story sexist? If the answer is yes, then 90% of all stories ever made are sexist/racist/ageist/etc.
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Not 100% sure why this part was necessary, because it all its doing is making me wonder of you are slightly transphobic, or just a dictionary nerd 
Bionicle isn’t and never has been inherently sexist, but some fans make it come off as very sexist, so that can give a bad impression to people who are sensitive to topics like sexism, racism, and transphobia.
For example, I agreed with your points, but your execution put me off a little bit, the mocking tone used earlier for “evils of da patriarchy” (as much as I dislike the execution of some internet activists) and the oddly worded part about how gender and sex are the same thing to you, which, as a person who is coming to terms with gender dysphoria, makes me feel uncomfortable knowing where you are coming from with this argument, as compared to Var who worded things really well, explained in detail without mocking groups on the other side of the argument, and without alienating entire groups. Remember what I said about some fans making bionicle come off as sexist? Yeah.
Nothing against you, but understand that people base their ideas of fanbases off of what they experience. The fanbase at times has seemed very sexist, while not actually being sexist. Why? Their arguments were filled with put downs and indicators of bias, instead of information that would help someone understand what they mean.
To be honest, the side that argues a sexist bionicle also has its share of posts and arguments that are full of put downs and biases, which put a lot of people off of those ideas. This isn’t fair in that it doesn’t give people the opportunity to see both sides in a positive light before they decide which one they really believe. This creates this huge gap between certain fans, (who might get along under normal circumstances, if their idea group wasn’t targeted or mocked by the other) who basically end up doing things just to spite each other, like some of the posts to a BZP confession blog did awhile back.
Moral of the story: people are people, and do peopley things, and sometimes that can make groups look bad, which put people off from franchises that those groups are for (IE the negative conotations of “Brony” to some, and the darker side of the fandom that caused it it).
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Hey, why does everyone forget Lariska?
Also, female isn’t a character type? Kiina in TLR. Enough said.
Incidently, I don’t find the gender-locking restrictive at all. In one of my fanfics, 1/3 the bad guy cast was female. And I wasn’t even trying to balance the genders!
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I agree. There was never a lack of female characters, I thought. They weren’t stereotypical in any noticeable way, and they could hold their own against any of the other characters. If we could introduce more female Biotubers and MOCists into our community, then maybe this whole sexism idea will just die out.
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Not sure if this is racism…or sexism…
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[quote=“Rockho, post:40, topic:2783, full:true”]
Not sure if this is racism…or sexism…
[/quote]Both?
Also the subject of an inappropriate joke
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Bionicle needs less men and a lot more women taking the main roles.
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In G1 Bionicles were definitely sexless, in G2 well…we dont know, there are several instances where they indicate that there maybe sex of the okoto villagers.