"Degenerate fans are ruining Transformers!" Imma hold your balls as I tell you this, but these "degenerates" (which, in this case, is often just used as a dog-whistle to refer to the queer community or horny people) are the ones RUNNING Transformers.
(Excuse the multi-colored format. It helps me not get overwhelmed as well as separate points. Also, working on this has now become a hobby, so expect edits and new things a lot, lol)
Update: This is now in Google docs form! Docs allows me to add more links without the fear of maxing out on links :)
One of the main illustrators for IDW Transformers, Alex Milne, made an art book series called "Hot Motor Oil", in which he draws softcore porn of the bots
The fandom term "interfacing" to refer to robot sex became so popular that TFP made it canon ( "Frankly, I find it repulsive. The idea of you fleshies... interfacing- EUgH" Knockout talking about two humans dating)
G1 had 2 episodes dedicated to human/cybertronian pairings bcuz robot-fucking is deeply ingrained in this franchise and fandom (link to ep, link to ep)
Transformers Prime knows this because they make a joke about June wanting to look good for Optimus
The Transformers being queer isn't a new thing. They've been like this since Energon in 2001 and IDW in 2005. (Technically, the 1990s as well, but the couple in Transformers Zone was between a human and a humanoid alien)
Brainstorm, Perceptor, Ratchet, Prowl, Chromedome, Rewind, Drift, Cyclonus, Tailgate, Blast Off, Crankcase, Ten, Onslaught, Swerve, and Pipes are gay in IDW
Arcee, Lug, Anode, Aileron, Jumpstream, Greenlight, Lancer, and Dust Up are lesbians in IDW
Windblade and Strongarm are lesbians in Shattered Glass
Skids, Roller, and Nickel are bisexual in IDW
Knockout is gay in Transformers Prime and in IDW
Breakdown is either bi or pan in Transformers Prime bcuz he's hinted at being more than just friends with Knockout and also says that he thinks Airachnid is attractive
Mirage is gay in Energon
Cyberverse designers decided to slap the gay pride flag on Hot Rod just because they could. "It might not have been purposful-" there are groups of people who work on designs, so at least ONE of them would've recognized it as the gay pride flag and would've said something. If they didn't want it to be the gay pride flag, they would've changed the colors, especially since the blues and whites clash against Hot Rod's red and orange color schemes. Plus, queer people were working on that show. It was definitely purposeful.
Sideburn in RID 2001 is HEAVILY implied to be pan, as he flirts with red sports cars no matter the gender, faction, or sentience. He even ends up flirting with Megatron when he disguised himself as a red sports car and, when he found out it was Megatron, he wasn't dissapointed that it was Megatron; he was disappointed that Megatron was ugly. Even then, he still proceeded to ask if Megatron kidnapping him would mean that their date was off (Robots in Disguise 2001, episode 7)
Arcee, Anode, Lug, and Howlback are all transgender in IDW
Arcee was supposed to be transgender in Earthspark but Hasbro wouldn't let them. Still, many of the writers headcanoned her as being trans
Airachidis is a trans man
Shredhead is nonbinary
Screwball in Beastwars Uprising uses neopronouns
Acid Storm is gender fluid in Cyberverse
Rodimus Prime, Whirl, Ultra Magnus, Megatron, Springarm, First Aid, Cerebros, Fortress Maximus, Tarantulas, Swerve, Proxima, and Dominus Ambus are all LGBT in IDW(not confirmed which specific sexuality, but they fall under that umbrella)
Correct me if I'm wrong, but from what I've seen, most of the canon romantic relationships in the comics are between two characters of the same gender. This is because art is an INCREDIBLY queer space, and if artists are given enough freedom, they WILL make everything gay.
It also makes sense lore-wise, too. 12/13 Cybertronians are male in canon, and a lot of their populations are heavily skewered to one gender (Cybertron being mostly male and Caminus being mostly female, as an example), so most end up dating and being attracted to bots of the same gender. Even if they're not gay, gender doesn't work the same way for them as it does humans and attraction isn't often tied to gender because 1) they're robots and 2) how can your sexuality be tied to gender if you had no idea there were other genders, or the other genders have been gone for so long that they're basically not relevant to your society? They don't think, "That's an attractive man/woman," but they do think "that's an attractive transformer" because the gender doesn't often matter to them. Hell, Cybertron has so little woman that most bots there assume everyone is male and still flirt with anyone regardless of gender bcuz they don't know women exist, and they don't have terms like "bisexual/gay" because gender hasn't even been a concept for most of them.
An example of their little care to gender when it comes to attraction would be Pipes, who talks about wanting to be in a relationship with someone on the ship and his type and how he wants them to have "a big chestplate." Haha, yes, we all make jokes about him being a titties guy, but Pipes is gay and said that on a of all male transformers because bots don't tend to have gender-specific attraction when it comes to physical appearances. Bcuz this can be difficult for some people to grasp, imagine this: humans have no sexual dimorphism. Men and women look the same no matter what, and the only way to tell is through pronouns. You couldn't look for gender specific things (like boobs) to be attracted to because no one has that, and everyone looks the same no matter the gender. Sure, some people are still gay or straight and prefer to be in relationships with specific genders, but the only way to tell someone's gender is if you ask. That's basically the Transformers.
Basically; the default sexuality for them is bisexual/omnisexual with no focus on gender whatsoever and, if they're not bisexual or omnisexual, than they're most often gay bcuz a very skewered gendered society is what they know and are used to. Sexuality isn't seen as an identity like it is for humans, but as a prefernce. Also, most of these comics were from 2005, 2008, 20014, and 20019. They've been like this FOREVER
Chromedome and Rewind are in a gay relationship (IDW)
Rewind was conjunxed (married) to Dominus Ambus before he met Chromedome
Chromedome and Prowl are exes (IDW)
Idk much about it bcuz I haven't reached that part yet, but Tarantulas was weirdly OBSESSED with Prowl and, from the panels I've seen, it looks like the most toxic + dubious + creepy yaoi I have ever seen (IDW)
Prowl formed a gestalt bond with the Constructicons, who are completely devoted to him, and they act like a polycuel (IDW)
Drift and Ratchet are in a gay relationship (IDW)
Blast-Off and Onslaught are in a gay relationship (IDW)
Rodimus Prime and Drift were confirmed to be "friends with benefits," and Rodimus was a tad jealous when Drift and Ratchet first got together (IDW)
Greenlight and Lancer are in a lesbian relationship (IDW)
Cyclonus and Tailgate are in a gay relationship. Whirl is there too, ig (IDW)
Anode and Lug are in an (absolutely adorable) lesbian and t4t relationship (t4t means both people in the relationship are transgender, if you are the homophobic or transphobic fan this was sent to btw (IDW)
Brainstorm was so down-bad for a guy that he invented time travel and almost got everyone killed just to stop his crush from dying (all this for a guy who didn't even like him back, btw đđ, (IDW)
Brainstorm had a crush on Perceptor throughout MTMTE, and the two ended up getting into a relationship
Knockout and Breakdown are in a gay relationship in IDW. You can also argue that they were more than just friends in Prime as well, but nothing has been confirmed
Dust-Up and Jumpstream are in a lesbian relationship (IDW)
Arcee and Greenlight are in a lesbian relationship (IDW g2)
Swerve has a celebrity crush on Blurr (IDW)
First Aid has a crush on Springer (IDW)
Cerebros, Fortress Maximus, and Red Alert were all confirmed to be in a poly relationship (IDW)
Ultra Magnus and Megatron had a ship tease in MTMTE, with Rodmimus even thinking that they're a couple (IDW)
Mirage had an unrequited crush on Galvatron in Energon
Windblade and Strongarm are in a lesbian relationship in Shattered Glass
The first on-screen mouth-to-mouth kiss in the Transformers franchise was between a transgender lesbian and her girlfriend (Arcee and Aileron)
In IDW, Rung got in trouble for getting with a patient as a doctor, and, at the time, the only known Cybertronians in the comic lore were male, meaning that he is queer, and if Rung is queer, that means PRIMUS HIMSELF is queer
EVERYONE has a crush on Thunderclash (IDW)
Pipes has flirted with Drift, has shown interest in Tailgate, and has a crush on Riptide
Skids flirted with Firestar, not realizing that "he" was actually a "she," but still showed interest in her even after finding out she was a girl (happy bisexual to Skids and Skids only)
Ten had a crush on Ultra Magnus
Proxima is married to a woman
Nickel had a girlfriend back on her planet
Scorponok got pregnant in IDW bcuz male pregnancy is a staple of fandom, I guess
They're not Transformers, but Cain and Akira from Transformers Zone are in a gay relationship
Blackairachnia's design in Beastwars was based off a stripper
Blackairachnia in the WFC trilogy talks about how she thinks Arcee looks cute and also flirts with Airazor
Blackairachnia could be her own category, honestly. Istg, every version of Blackairachnia I've seen had the goal of making her as horny and bisexual as possible
In Transformers Rescue Bots, Blades is shown to happily cross-dress when he switches bodies with Dani
There are two jokes about Mirage in ROTB describing sex-acts with Noah ("Work friends?! You've been inside me!" "Just don't ask what part of my body it came from...")
Wheeljack in TFP made a joke about fucking Ultra Magnus's ship (or, since some bots stay in alt mode to help out other bots, straight-up imply that he DID fuck his ship đ)
In Transformers Prime, Arcee makes a joke about Wheeljack being Bulkhead's boyfriend, to which Bulkhead just laughs and doesn't deny anything, which leaves them being in a relationship open to interpretation
In Transformers Prime, Wheeljack flirts with Ratchet and calls him "Sunshine"
Wheeljack in TFP seems like he was written by someone who either really wanted to fuck him or really wanted to have him fuck Ratchet and/or Bulkhead
In Transformer Prime, Knockout's first introduction to Team Prime was him cat-calling Optimus and complimenting him by saying he was "heavy duty" and then also calling Breakdown heavy duty. Not only was he calling Optimus and also said that Breakdown was hot in the same damn breath
In Transformers Prime, Knockout says that he admires Starscream's finish (basically calling him attractive), but says that "He's no Breakdown."
In Transformers Rescue Bots, Chase has to explain the concept of male and female to Blurr and Salvage, showing that gender is a choice for them and not defined by any sense of biological sex
In Transformers Rescue Bots, Blades is implied to have a bit (a lot) of a celebrity crush on Bumblebee; wanting to impress him, hugging him a lot, getting flustered around him, checking him out, and making his own goddamn team name, which is also happens to be their ship name. Bumblebee is pretty receptive towards it and even uses their ship name as well
Back to Cybetronians X Humans: When talking about Energon Eaters, Blades says that Energon Eaters are scarier than vampires because "They don't brood handsomely", which implies that he finds human men attractive
In Transformers Earthspark, one of the first things Hashtag did when she was born was think about yuri between her and Skywarp. She is also implied to have a crush on Elita 1 (staring at her when she works out, having the typical daydreamy voice and sighing as she tells Elita how cool she is) so she's probably into women
They had Chop Shop hump Elita's leg in Cyberworld (for some reason???)
An animator on the TFA animation team decided to make Bumblebee blush when Prowl was on top of him. It was notable enough for the director to try and find who did it, but since it didn't take away from the plot, they just decided to keep it
One guy on the Beast Wars animation team became so horny over a bot that he drew him with his spike out
The TFP designers all agreed that Knokout was "the sexiest bot they had ever seen" and then allowed him to try and seduce every damn mech on the show.
James Roberts, an author for IDW, wrote a 300 paged fanfiction of Soundwave getting pregnant
James Roberts in general. Seriously, his tweets about Transformers are batshit insane and I cannot POSSIBLY out everything he says on this post. I still recommend you read them though, they're funny
Mae Catt, a queer person who goes by she/her and they/them, wrote scripts for Cyberverse and Earthspark. She also referred to themselves as "THE GAY AGENDA" when describing their goals for Earthspark
Mae Catt kept saying Dead End x Perceptor ship bait during streams
Mae Catt said that she ships MegaOp
Travis Artz, the voice of Hot Rod in Transformers Cyberverse, ships Hot Rod and Soundwave (then again, who on that show didn't???). He also ships Bumblebee and Hot Rod on Cyberverse
Brian Tyree Henry, the voice of D-16/Megatron in Transformers One, talked about how hot he thought Megatron looked
When asked in an interview why Megatron's name was D-16, Brian Tyree Henry made a joke saying that there's a G-rated reason and an M-rated reason (implying that Megatron's dick is 16 inches)
John Cena, the actor who played Agent Burns in the Bumblebee movie, said that he thought both Blackairachnia and Tarantulas were hot
Rachel Stevens is a transgender lesbian who worked on the Lost Light comics as a consultant. She also contributes to the wiki a lot under the username "antimatter" :)
Evan Micheal Lee, the voice of Jazz in Transformers One, is a gay man
Sue Blu is a lesbian and voices Arcee, Marissa Faireborn, and Beta in g1, Arcee and Flareup in animated, and Transmute in Beast Wars. She was also a voice director in Transformers Prime (this woman is so iconic I love her sm)
Parvesh Cheena, the voice of Blades in Transformers Rescue Bots, is a gay man
Tiana Camacho, the voice of Frenzy in Transformers Earthspark, goes by she/they pronouns
Daran Norris, the voice of Knockout in Transformers Prime, is bisexual
George Takei, the voice of Master Yoketron in Transformers Animated and Alpha Trion in Transformers Prime, is a gay man (seeing old queer people makes me so happy đ)
Mairghead Scott, the writer for the IDW Windblade comic series, was the first woman to write an official Transformers comic book series. She was also a writer on Transformers Prime, Rescue Bots, and wrote an episode for Transformers Cyberverse. She is also bisexual
Erica Lindbeck, the voice of Windblade in season 3 of Robots In Disguise (2015) is bisexual (I KNEW I RECOGNIZED HER FROM SOMEWHERE! SHE ALSO VOICES LOONA IN HELLUVA BOSS AND EMIRA IN OWL HOUSE!)
Sam Maggs, the creator of the character known as "Gauge," a writer for Transformers: Galaxies and My Little Pony X Transformers, is a lesbian
Colman Domingo, the voice of Unicron in Rise of the Beasts, is a gay man
Michaela Jaé Rodriguez, the voice of Nightbird in Rise of the Beasts, is a transgender woman
Marc Swint, the voice of Soundwave in Cyberverse, is bisexual
Z Infante, the voice of Nightshade in Earthspark, is nonbinary
Jaime Lamchick, the voice of Arcee, Acid Storm, Chromia, Nightbird, and Alpha Strike in Cyberverse, is genderqueer and bisexual
Kei Zama, an artist for IDW who is known for their work on the Optimus Prime comic series, is nonbinary
Sara Pitre-Durocher, an illustrator and game concept artist who is known for her work on the Transformers Legends game and the "Till All Are One" series, is a queer transgender woman
Jack Lawrence, an artist for IDW, is a queer man
Saren Stone, an artist for IDW known for their cover illustrations, is nonbinary
When asked, "How many times have Rodimus and Drift slapped each other's asses?" JRO said that he couldn't answer that because he signed an NDA (implying that it was many times but Hasbro won't let him confirm)
The official Transformers Insta posted art of MegaOp
The team for the Prime Wars Trilogy decided to make a sexy poster to promote Titans Return
James Roberts has joked about Swerve dating Ryan Reynolds
Honestly, once you research how policing queer media and people's sexual expressions has been used to subjugate people and reinforce puritanical, misogynistic, homophobic, and transphobic beliefs for thousands of years, it's super hard NOT to be upset at policing of people's interests and fandoms. As long as no one is getting hurt (and no, kids seeing gay people holding hands or knowing about the existence of trans people doesn't count as getting hurt as there is no evidence to prove psychological damage, and most people who make art depicting sex actively discourage children interacting with the art and it is not the fault of the artist for children accidently seeing their art and policing art and sexuality does a lot more harm than good, and parents should just watch their damn kids if they don't want them exposed to sex at a young age) it's fine.
And believe me; no one is getting hurt because an alien robot goes by they/them pronouns or because a teenager on Twitter posted their drawing of Optimus and Megatron holding hands.Â
But BY ALL MEANS! Complain about Nightshade being nonbinary or people shipping Megatron and Optimus or fandoms "making everything gay >:(((" or people being horny over these bots đâïž
