# Star Wars: Do droids have gender? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [September 12, 2021, 3:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/star-wars-do-droids-have-gender/950548 "2021-09-12T15:36:33Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Love\_Rhombus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/love_rhombus/32/10694_2.png) [@Love\_Rhombus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Love_Rhombus)\ **Post date:** [September 12, 2021, 3:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/star-wars-do-droids-have-gender/950548/1 "2021-09-12T15:36:33Z")
So I’m posting in a Star Wars online RP as a droid, but it’s occurred to me that I don’t know if droids have gender? Should I write “He walked forward through the hanger, considering his next move”? Or use “its”? Do they think of themselves as gendered? ---
**Author:** ![kenobi\_65](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kenobi_65/32/13178_2.png) [@kenobi\_65](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kenobi_65)\ **Post date:** [September 12, 2021, 3:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/star-wars-do-droids-have-gender/950548/2 "2021-09-12T15:46:17Z")
Most of the droids which appear as actual characters (and not just background) in the Star Wars movies and books get referred to as “he” or (more rarely) “she.” For example, in the original film, Threepio always refers to Artoo as “he”, rather than “it,” and Luke uses “he” in reference to both droids. Female-presenting droids are less common in the films and books, but a good example is L3-37 in _Solo: A Star Wars Story_, who is referred to as “she” by her partner, Lando (and is voiced by a female actor). ---
**Author:** ![Love\_Rhombus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/love_rhombus/32/10694_2.png) [@Love\_Rhombus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Love_Rhombus)\ **Post date:** [September 12, 2021, 3:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/star-wars-do-droids-have-gender/950548/3 "2021-09-12T15:49:50Z")
Thank you! So in internal dialogue they’d do the same, I gather. I guess I’ll go rewrite my first post, then.😄 I suppose it depends on the level of sophistication the droid has as well. ---
**Author:** ![kenobi\_65](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kenobi_65/32/13178_2.png) [@kenobi\_65](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kenobi_65)\ **Post date:** [September 12, 2021, 3:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/star-wars-do-droids-have-gender/950548/4 "2021-09-12T15:52:16Z")
> [@Love\_Rhombus](#): > > I suppose it depends on the level of sophistication the droid has as well. Possibly so; a relatively “dumb” droid might not have a gender identity, but most of the interesting droids we see in the movies likely have gone a long while without a memory wipe, and have developed full personalities. Also, a lot of people in the galaxy see droids as hardware and property, rather than free-willed individuals, and such people would potentially be more likely to refer to a droid as an “it”, regardless of whether or not the droid identifies as male or female. ---
**Author:** ![Love\_Rhombus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/love_rhombus/32/10694_2.png) [@Love\_Rhombus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Love_Rhombus)\ **Post date:** [September 12, 2021, 3:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/star-wars-do-droids-have-gender/950548/5 "2021-09-12T15:57:09Z")
Yes, that does make sense. Thank you again! My droid in the RP has “absorbed” a somewhat Bogart film noir personality, so I think he’d take umbrage at “it.” ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [September 12, 2021, 4:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/star-wars-do-droids-have-gender/950548/6 "2021-09-12T16:44:58Z")
[https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Category:Feminine\_programming](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Category:Feminine_programming) ---
**Author:** ![Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/13edae/32.png) [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stranger_On_A_Train)\ **Post date:** [September 12, 2021, 5:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/star-wars-do-droids-have-gender/950548/7 "2021-09-12T17:20:43Z")
> [@kenobi\_65](#): > > Female-presenting droids are less common in the films and books, but a good example is L3-37 in _Solo: A Star Wars Story_ , who is referred to as “she” by her partner, Lando (and is voiced by a female actor). Can we all just agree that _Solo: A Star Wars Story_ was just a fever dream that Luke had from inhaling the noxious vapors of a particularly fetid pool of anaerobically chemosynthesizing fungi, and not the completely unnecessary backstory of Han, serving entirely to explain questions nobody asked like how Han got his last name or why there is a gap in the front of the _Millennium Falcon_ and details nobody needed to know such as how you can do the “Kessel Run in less than twelve parsecs”, and then introduced new corundums such as the apparent fact that Chewbacca eats people and that Lando Calrissian, Master of the Smoove, is actually a droidophile who was once besotted with a sapient robot whose consciousness was uploaded to the Falcon, making the _Star Wars_ cinematic universe somehow even more incestuous than it (literally) already was. As for droid gender identity, given that they appear to have full sentience and at least human-like social intelligence (at least, the named ones) there is no reason they couldn’t identify with a particular gender even if they lack biological reproductive abilities. One may assume that given the diversity of sapient life forms in the _Star Wars_ universe that there may be a wide array of different genders and sexual practices which they could adopt. Even Jabba the Hut, who is basically a big slug-like worm, presumably gets on, so surely there is a little rose gold neural network relations droid that could have C-3PO’s number. Stranger ---
**Author:** ![kenobi\_65](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kenobi_65/32/13178_2.png) [@kenobi\_65](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kenobi_65)\ **Post date:** [September 12, 2021, 5:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/star-wars-do-droids-have-gender/950548/8 "2021-09-12T17:26:28Z")
> [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](#): > > Even Jabba the Hut, who is basically a big slug-like worm, presumably gets on Though it’s information from non-film sources (books, comics, video games, etc.), and thus, was removed from official “canon” when Disney bought Lucasfilm (and now considered to be “Legends” information), Hutts are hermaphroditic, and are capable of reproducing with another Hutt, or all on their own – in one of the novels, Jabba had a son, Rotta, whom Jabba had produced all on his own. > **[Hutt/Legends](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Hutt/Legends)** > > Would you like to discuss it with the Hutts? I'm sure they can settle this.Qui-Gon Jinn, to Watto The Hutts were a sentient species of large gastropods with short arms, wide cavernous mouths and huge eyes, who controlled a large space empire in Hutt... ---
**Author:** ![Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/13edae/32.png) [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stranger_On_A_Train)\ **Post date:** [September 12, 2021, 5:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/star-wars-do-droids-have-gender/950548/9 "2021-09-12T17:48:33Z")
I only accept my canon from the films…including, of course, _The Star Wars Holiday Special_, which explains how screwed up Chewbacca’s home life is that he prefers to be on the run with an inveterate prevaricator and inept smuggler who barely makes enough to keep his junky ship from falling apart despite the fact that it was in pristine shape only a few years prior. And really, we all know that it actually took Han _fifteen_ parsecs to make the Kessel Run; if he’d actually done it in twelve, he wouldn’t be hanging out in a crappy basement bar of a barely habitable desert planet on the ass end of space taking jobs from Cosplay Gandalf and some hick moisture farm boy with delusions of grandeur. Stranger ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [September 12, 2021, 5:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/star-wars-do-droids-have-gender/950548/10 "2021-09-12T17:51:13Z")
> [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](#): > > so surely there is a little rose gold neural network relations droid that could have C-3PO’s number. I think C-3PO had a thing for LE-914. > **[Star Wars (1977) 80](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Star_Wars_(1977)_80)** > > Star Wars 80: Ellie is the eightieth issue in Marvel's Star Wars series of comics. The search for Tay Vanis ends! C3PO \[sic\] finds true love at last—but there's a tragic twist! "Lady" written by Jo Duffy, pencilled by Ron Frenz and inked by Tom... And by “a thing” I mean this: > **[How the most explicit Star Wars photo of all time made it onto a trading card](https://www.polygon.com/2015/10/9/9486945/threepios-boner-topps-trading-card-star-wars-c-3po)** > > The final chapter in the story of the biggest boner in Topps' history. ---
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [September 12, 2021, 6:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/star-wars-do-droids-have-gender/950548/11 "2021-09-12T18:24:34Z")
> [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](#): > > Can we all just agree that _Solo: A Star Wars Story_ was just a fever dream… Nah. I rather liked it. ---
**Author:** ![Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/13edae/32.png) [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stranger_On_A_Train)\ **Post date:** [September 12, 2021, 6:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/star-wars-do-droids-have-gender/950548/12 "2021-09-12T18:38:57Z")
> [@Miller](#): > > Nah. I rather liked it. Really? Because of…Donald Glover? I mean, he’s perfect casting for Lando, but they’ve so ruined the character that there isn’t much more they can do with him. Stranger ---
**Author:** ![AK84](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/85e7bf/32.png) [@AK84](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AK84)\ **Post date:** [September 12, 2021, 6:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/star-wars-do-droids-have-gender/950548/13 "2021-09-12T18:44:43Z")
> [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](#): > > Can we all just agree that _Solo: A Star Wars Story_ was just a fever dream that Luke had from inhaling the noxious vapors of a particularly fetid pool of anaerobically chemosynthesizing fungi, It looked bad. But, to be fair, when I saw it in cinema it was in the middle of a Ramadan fast, while having bad acid reflux, so maybe I wasn’t well disposed to it. ---
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [September 12, 2021, 6:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/star-wars-do-droids-have-gender/950548/14 "2021-09-12T18:51:39Z")
I don’t really see how they “ruined” Lando’s character, but yeah, Donald Glover was great. The rest of the movie was decent, light weight fun. Some kind of stupid stuff, like the bit about Han’s last name, but those are pretty minor criticisms. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [September 12, 2021, 6:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/star-wars-do-droids-have-gender/950548/15 "2021-09-12T18:53:12Z")
I think that Jabba just has sexy dancers as a status symbol-- It’s not that e emself is attracted to them per se, but e knows that many other sophonts in the galaxy are attracted to them, and so by having them as slaves, he’s showing off his wealth, opulence, and dominance: “I have these, and you don’t, because they’re mine”. ---
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [September 12, 2021, 7:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/star-wars-do-droids-have-gender/950548/16 "2021-09-12T19:02:48Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > I think that Jabba just has sexy dancers as a status symbol This is, again, from the de-canonized “Legends” stuff, but it used to be that Jabba was considered a pervert by his own species because of the way he lusted after humanoid females. ---
**Author:** ![ekedolphin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ekedolphin/32/10003_2.png) [@ekedolphin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ekedolphin)\ **Post date:** [September 12, 2021, 7:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/star-wars-do-droids-have-gender/950548/17 "2021-09-12T19:19:19Z")
As far as I can remember, the most notable female droid in the Skywalker Saga was TC-14, the silver protocol droid who attended Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan onboard the Trade Federation vessel in _Episode I._ (I haven’t seen the sequel trilogy very much, though.) Incidentally, @Love_Rhombus, what Star Wars online RP are you involved in? I might be interested in joining, myself. ---
**Author:** ![Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/13edae/32.png) [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stranger_On_A_Train)\ **Post date:** [September 12, 2021, 7:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/star-wars-do-droids-have-gender/950548/18 "2021-09-12T19:24:27Z")
> [@Miller](#): > > I don’t really see how they “ruined” Lando’s character, but yeah, Donald Glover was great. The rest of the movie was decent, light weight fun. Some kind of stupid stuff, like the bit about Han’s last name, but those are pretty minor criticisms. Lando, as insinuated in _The Empire Strikes Back_, is some kind of slick operator who has a long and sordid history with Han Solo. This movie turns him into a gormless card cheat who is a simp for a particularly annoying droid as essentially his only two ncharacter traits, and then relegates him to non-essential NPC role who exists only to explain where Han got the _Millennium Falcon_ from, so it basically took the best retro casting they could possible expect and did fuck all with it. The rest of the movie is just a series of fan service wrapped around a heist plot taken directly from the _Firefly_ episode “The Train Job” that wasn’t particularly original back in 2002, and then Emilia Clarke thrown in because she was the It Girl of the moment even though her primary screen affect is charitably described as “flat”. For all that, it at least wasn’t the narrative shitshow that the JJ Abrams films were, although if you remove all of the pointless double crosses the film would have a hard time breaking eighty minutes. If this had been a film about the early exploits of Lando Calrissian with a cameo by Chewbacca and puckish young smuggler Han Solo recounting fabricated tales of his outlandish exploits with someone bragging about having done the Kessel Run in thirteen parsecs (“Yeah? Well, me and Chewy could do it in twelve!”) it could have been a much better movie. Instead, it existed purely to fill in “backstory” from a few bits of random dialogue in the then forty year old original film that were only thought out enough to make Han Solo seem like a cocky, full-of-himself fabulist, and then cast a competent actor who was predictably unable to make the younger Han feel like the likable scoundrel that was Harrison Ford’s inimitable portrayal. > [@Chronos](#): > > I think that Jabba just has sexy dancers as a status symbol-- It’s not that e emself is attracted to them per se, but e knows that many other sophonts in the galaxy are attracted to them, and so by having them as slaves, he’s showing off his wealth, opulence, and dominance: “I have these, and you don’t, because they’re mine”. He also owns a chain of dune-front hotel and casino resorts across Tattooine and offers a line of frozen Bantha steaks directly from “Sharper Simulacre” stores at all major starports, but unfortunately his alternative podracing league went defunct after only three parsecs. Stranger ---
**Author:** ![kenobi\_65](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kenobi_65/32/13178_2.png) [@kenobi\_65](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kenobi_65)\ **Post date:** [September 12, 2021, 7:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/star-wars-do-droids-have-gender/950548/19 "2021-09-12T19:24:29Z")
> [@ekedolphin](#): > > As far as I can remember, the most notable female droid in the Skywalker Saga was TC-14, the silver protocol droid who attended Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan onboard the Trade Federation vessel in _Episode I._ (I haven’t seen the sequel trilogy very much, though.) The other one which I can remember offhand is EV-9D9, the “torturer” droid in Jabba’s Palace in _Return of the Jedi_. Though, the voice was heavily modulated (and was apparently voiced by Richard Marquand, the movie’s director), the [“canon” part of the Star Wars Wiki](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/EV-9D9) refers to her as female. ---
**Author:** ![ekedolphin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ekedolphin/32/10003_2.png) [@ekedolphin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ekedolphin)\ **Post date:** [September 12, 2021, 7:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/star-wars-do-droids-have-gender/950548/20 "2021-09-12T19:26:50Z")
Quite; I forgot about her. Definitely female. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/star-wars-do-droids-have-gender/950548.md?page=2)