As I recall, there weren't many droids in the OT or PT that associated themselves as female.

I'm interested in the thoughts of others-

Are droids assigned genders, or do droids gender associate upon activation? Do they "awaken" to a gender association as they begin to explore their surroundings, and is it/can it be influenced by external environmental norms such as being activated and spending a majority of its formative cycle in a matriarchal society? Is it possible for droids to experience gender association crisis?

Were any B-1 Battle Droids "female"? The protocol droid in Ep I- the one that served Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan tea before the gas attack- was that female gender association, or an effeminate male affectation? The droid that assisted in the births of Luke and Leia definitely sounded female.

Schizophrenia often results in an irrational fear and/or loathing of one gender or another, usually swinging dramatically to just one or the other. Could a droid exhibit the same behavior as a result of damaged data processors? A better question would be "Do droids develop mental (processing) and/or personality disorders?" And if yes, can these disorders be treated without replacing parts wholesale or deleting its sense and recognition of self?

I think I've gone a little left of the rails, toward 'I, Robot'...

I'm looking for more input than can be had from Wookiepedia- a mention of protocol droids possessing "in-depth personality matrices, allowing for a variety of different personalities", and some accidental personality virus in the EU. I think it's important to explore droids from their perspective, rather than ours (the human perspective). It would lend more weight to droid rights Obligations. It would deepen the RP experience beyond "I'm a contemporary human being playing a fictional robotic character. I don't eat, breathe, or sleep. Isn't that cool?" Sure, but what makes your character unique among droids?

TC-14 was a female gender droid that greeted Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan aboard the Trade Federation ship in Episode I. From my understanding of how these things, I would presume that droids are programmed with either feminine or masculine-leaning programming during the building process and then remain that way.

I've actually never seen anything in any source material that ever mentioned droids "switching" genders.

Plenty of programming quirks occur when a droid goes too long without a memory wipe. Although you may not need an explanation why a droid goes the programming equivalent of transgender, this is certainly an easily explainable one.

In TCW there are plenty of "Betty" droids, the BD-3000. Clearly female, with humungous Lara Croft breasts...I suppose they needed somewhere to put the sensors and processing units, since the torsos are wasp-thin

Anyway, I'd say for the most part the default is "just a machine", and any gender programming, if not part of the droid's functional purpose, is up to the whims of the manufacturing company and the client.

In TCW there are plenty of "Betty" droids, the BD-3000. Clearly female, with humungous Lara Croft breasts...I suppose they needed somewhere to put the sensors and processing units, since the torsos are wasp-thin

Anyway, I'd say for the most part the default is "just a machine", and any gender programming, if not part of the droid's functional purpose, is up to the whims of the manufacturing company and the client.

I looked the BD-3000 up on Wookiepedia...and I'm appalled. Maybe it's just me...

Yeah, first I saw them on TCW I couldn't quite believe it.

Our droid in the Krayt Dragons, BeeDee (the player's a big Mass Effect 3 fan) is a 'fully functional' prototype companion model. In mostly pink.

She's a shy librarian type, who repurposed herself as a technician. Definitely sees herself as female, and is a big droid rights advocate, believing all her brethren are capable of full sentience and self-awareness like she is.

Pictures and NSFW stuff at the usual DA account as Donovan warned.

There's also at least one example of an Astromech having feminine programming. QT-KT was an R2 unit assigned to Aalya Secura.

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/QT-KT

Again, mostly pink... but part of that was to visually distinguish her from R2-D2. The other Astromech droids in that episode arc were differently shaped.

I was gonna mention R2-KT, who was promoted to canon status in the intro movie for The Clone Wars TV series.

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/R2-KT

As far as "gender assignment," I think a lot of it depends on the class of droid and it's function. I could see protocol droids being more likely to have feminine programming as a default, even if they have a more sensible design than the BD-3000 droids. Conversely, astromechs and repair droids are more likely to be gender-neutral at first, and likely only picking one (if they do at all) after going without a memory wipe for a while. And then you've got combat droids and heavy labor droids, who are more likely masculine if they have a 'gender' at all.

There's also at least one example of an Astromech having feminine programming. QT-KT was an R2 unit assigned to Aalya Secura.

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/QT-KT

Again, mostly pink... but part of that was to visually distinguish her from R2-D2. The other Astromech droids in that episode arc were differently shaped.

Anybody else notice the name: QT-KT. Lucas' daughter's name is Katie Lucas. Clearly he told SW stories at home at bedtime, about a droid named "Cutey Katie"...

Hey everyone, thought I would make a comment here because I a know a lot about the plastic space people, the 501st and the R2builders club.

R2-KT is a real world built R2 replica "droid" RC unit. It was built for the founder of the 501st founder's daughter who was dying of brain cancer. He wanted to build one for her, but knew he did not have enough time. The R2builders got some people together, led by a master builder Jerry Greene and built R2-KT for her. I do believe his daughter got to see KT before she passed. KT is a staple at children's hospitals and charity events.

Lucas himself loves the 501st costuming group, and has a long relationship with them and respects their charity work. He named a in universe detachment of clone troopers after them, the 501st Vaders Fist. Lucas has also worked with the R2builders a lot, and has actually hired some of the droids and operators for tv commercials, and official events. So to pay homage to Katie Jhonson, Dave Filoni and the clone wars crew included her droid in the clone wars series. They wanted to use this droid in other episodes, but changed the name to QT-KT to avoid confusing watchers of R2-D2 and R2-KT.

Now you know, and knowing is half the battle!

Another female droid, from Dex's Diner, WA-7, the serving droid, She even has a name tag on that is in Aurebesh that spells FLO.

I'd say that gender assignments could be programmed into the droid's make up - after all, having a male or female companion can, to some people, matter, even if said companion is a droid.

Perhaps a droid without a gender designation chooses one for itself based upon attitudes or behaviours it notices and likes in each gender: a pacifistic droid might notice that a particular PC in the droid is more cautious and sensible, and thus begin mimicking. Alternatively, perhaps certain design qualities - like speech or stance, movement or physical appearance - cause the group to absent-mindedly refer to a sentient droid as a 'him' or 'her', causing the droid to adopt that gender designation for itself.

Do droids (who haven't had frequent memory wipes) learn so much that they actually forget some things? Do they experience processor degradation akin to Alzheimer's? Might one find a wandering droid who has no recollection of leaving it's owner's ship just ten minutes prior? Or what that ship looks like? Or who it's owner may be? Or if he/she were even owned rather than minnu...whatsit?

What would your characters do? Would they attempt to find the droid's rightful home, or abscond with a free droid under the false pretense of good will?

What would it have been like for Threepio to know that his maker was Darth Vader?

Do droids (who haven't had frequent memory wipes) learn so much that they actually forget some things? Do they experience processor degradation akin to Alzheimer's? Might one find a wandering droid who has no recollection of leaving it's owner's ship just ten minutes prior? Or what that ship looks like? Or who it's owner may be? Or if he/she were even owned rather than minnu...whatsit?

What would your characters do? Would they attempt to find the droid's rightful home, or abscond with a free droid under the false pretense of good will?

Mind Wipes certainly are important. Especially when you use Protocol droids for business. Who knows what 3P0 could have blabbed on about hearing his masters say to other people? Hell, 3P0 could easily have told Luke,

"Master Luke? Oh, I knew a Skywalker on Tatooine before, he was a Slave and built me out of so that I may help his mother. Unfortunately as he grew up he went crazy with being a Jedi and murdered children any chance he got. Hopefully you're not related to him, his name was Anakin and I think he killed your mother."

All from 3P0 being a spineless, cowardly idiot. As a protocol droid he is made for diplomacy, peaceful services. He's not used to war, so his self preservation programming would most likely cause him, especially after experiencing lots of battles, to become a coward. He was shown in the OT to blab on when nobody wanted him to speak after all.

As for gender/robotics. It's possible that using a 'simplistic' viewpoint, more traditionally feminine rolls for robots were given feminine voices/pronouns. While the war focussed robots had masculine voices. But hey, this is Star Wars after all, where in the first film there was like 2 females the entire film, Beru and Leia. It was only when RotJ came around that women started appearing a bit more frequently, with Mon Motha, the slave girls in Jabba's palace and a few other extras here and there.

Of course, this campaign allows for anything. I think that a robot that reprograms itself to have a feminine voice/speach patterns would make for an excellent assassin droid. Kind of like how in Episode 1 that female sounding robot served drinks before Qui-Gon was gassed. Hell, that tea she served COULD have had poison and they would have been none the wiser. You can't read a robot's intent to murder as they are immune to such force scans.

They would have been dead in the gutter, because they trusted a feminine droid serving tea.

For droids having gender, my first question is what purpose a machine would have for that kind of distinction? I mean, in the digital realm, there could just be one gender or an infinite number. Since it's not necessary for their reproduction -- two "male" droids could build a new droid just as easily as two "female" droids or one of each -- it would have more to do with self-identification. That leads me to conclude that the idea of gender for droids is just their way of making it easier to interact with other creatures, make them more at ease dealing with this mechanical being.

It's kind of supported by the various bits of canon. For one, none of the assassin or killer droids seem concerned -- they all have very robotic voices, such as Battle Droids and the HK-series, devoid of the usual indicators of sex, or like IG-88 they're just silent, having no desire to communicate in a way biological beings would understand.

(NOTE: I realize IG-88 could probably talk, but I never saw it, so.)

As for memory problems, I think it'd be an issue, and for that I draw a page from Halo's playbook. In it, "smart" AIs have a shelf life of seven years, because their artificial brains never stop developing new pathways. Eventually, the strain becomes too much for their systems and they start to break down, essentially thinking themselves to death -- one character likened it to thinking so much that your involuntary nervous system forgets to send the command to keep your heart beating. This reliably happens around seven years after they're brought online, but the AI might linger for a while afterwards; however, they're usually retired before then, since their final moment might also wipe out a ship's computer systems and put human lives in danger.

Something similar could be the case for droids, since they don't necessarily forget things but have limited space and processing power to deal with all those memories. One solution is regular memory wipes, which also eliminates any burgeoning personality. However, I feel like a droid who has gone the extra step and developed her own personality would probably have the cognitive capability to come up with a solution. One possibility is to perform maintenance, much like when we're asleep: our brains selectively compress or outright delete memories that our subconscious doesn't think will be useful. A droid could either program their own such process or hire someone to make one, with a simple purpose of prioritizing memories for immediate or prolonged recall, or else eliminating it as pointless.

They could even, if necessary, delay said process for years so they can recall certain conversations and facts with perfect clarity, then either delete them, compress them, or dump them into external storage.

I think the only purpose for distinction has more to do with relating to other species. R2-D2 was perceived to have a male persona, but the only thing to suggest male was blue markings, which is distinctly a human and likely cultural perception placed on him. QT-KT was pink, but sound wise wasn't all that distinct from R2. C-3PO on the other hand had a male persona, but one that was not overly masculine, so as to not be threatening. He was capable of charming effectively, but intimidate? He needed a Jedi nearby to help with that.

Yeah, the genderification of droids is all about sex-crazed humans and the importance of gender in their social relations. A species that wasn't in heat all the time wouldn't worry about it so much.

Yeah, the genderification of droids is all about sex-crazed humans and the importance of gender in their social relations. A species that wasn't in heat all the time wouldn't worry about it so much.

This definitely made me chuckle.

And the scary part is... you're right.

I'm reminded of a line from The Dresden Files novel Turn Coat, when Harry is talking with Bob about the skinchanger/nagoloshi that he'd just had a run-in with. After taking a verbal potshot at his 'boss', Bob then goes on to say that gender really isn't much of an issue for most supernatural beings, since they don't have to worry about recombining DNA to make more of their own kind.

I think droids would mostly be programmed neuter as a default OR according to a particular buyer's specifications (most likely for more advanced droids that interact with sentients because I can't see a spaceport caring how their heavy lifters "identify"...or, for that matter, a hospital with surgery droids, etc). The specific eccentricities associated with the unique droid learning matrix and the ubiquitous virus that allows for development of personality would probably facilitate more intense gender association as time goes on

I think the only purpose for distinction has more to do with relating to other species. R2-D2 was perceived to have a male persona, but the only thing to suggest male was blue markings, which is distinctly a human and likely cultural perception placed on him.

Indeed. It wasn't so long ago that blue was culturally for girls and pink for boys in the West. R2's markings are more closely associated with predominant Western gendered attitudes than anything that is likely in-setting. At the same time, depictions of humans in-setting trend toward Western genderization because that was the primary audience for the film and it's important for moviegoers to relate to characters for the film to be commercially successful.

Humans also assign gender to certain things. Ships for instance are almost always referred to in the feminine.. "she may not look like much, but she's got it where it counts, kid"

But we have mother russia, the fatherland etc.

Yup and that's not even considering how other species assign gender to droids and inanimate objects--think of those species with more than 2 sexes, let alone genders.

Yup and that's not even considering how other species assign gender to droids and inanimate objects--think of those species with more than 2 sexes, let alone genders.

Can: open. Worms: everywhere.