Not long after I posted my write-up of Nicee, and followed it up with my post about Femme-Bots generally and the fandom's reactions to Nicee in particular, I asked my girlfriend if she'd be willing to write an opinion piece of her own. Not that I felt my overtly positive impressions of the figure needed any kind of legitimising, but because I was genuinely interested in what she might have to say.
After all, this is someone who sees my collection - on display in closed, glass-doored cabinets in our lounge - as part of the scenery in our home, to the point where she barely notices it at all. I know she's aware of my appreciation for Femme-Bots, and I get the impression she's neither offended nor threatened by it... but, equally, it's not something that we really talk about in any great depth. I tend to show her any and all new purchases - including Big Firebird's most recent transforming Femme-Bot, Mooka - but I don't exactly expect a detailed and discerning assessment, because I know she's just not really that interested.
However, I did say that I was going to get her to offer her thoughts on the matter and, while they've taken a couple of years to coalesce, they arrived just in time for Valentine's Day, so here we go...
Mr HEXdidn't... and I have been together for just over ten years. Our relationship was, as they say, rooted in friendship - or, to be more precise, rooted in increasingly lengthy emails touching on a variety of topics from the ridiculously geeky to the sublimely geeky. We finally met after a year of going back and forth like this, quickly discovering that we were able to have similarly lengthy conversations in person. Some of these, naturally, are about TransFormers, and at least one of them was about Nicee, hence Gord asking me to write down some of my thoughts.
I’ll start by saying that I am not a TransFormers fan. Believe me, I’ve tried, but it’s just not my thing. I’m very happy for it to be Gord’s thing; it makes him happy, doesn’t cause any harm, and we have plenty of other interests in common. That’s not to say I don’t have opinions on particular TransFormers or the franchise as a whole though. When it comes to Nicee in particular, those opinions are definitely coloured by my own experiences as a woman and someone who used to be very involved in online activist spaces.
I’ll start by saying that Nicee is ridiculous. I don’t think that’s in question; she is a sexy robot lady who turns into a car. The question the TransFormers fandom seems to have been engaged with is whether this is a bad thing or not, and for me this question can be answered by addressing the following points.
Is Nicee being marketed to children? As far as I can tell, no. If she were, that would be entirely inappropriate. Since she’s a third-party toy, and a limited edition one at that, I don’t think she can even be considered emblematic of the TransFormers brand.
Is the existence of a sexy Femme-Bot toy causing real harm to women? I would argue no, because there is a difference between something being objectionable on an intellectual level and it causing true physical or psychological harm. Also, Nicee is clearly designed to be a sexy robot, which I find less objectionable than a Femme-Bot who is the peer of male robots but has to be set apart from them by being sexier, prettier, less substantial, or just painted pink. I think of Nicee as being like pin-up art, which is specifically designed to be sexy in a way that is apart from everyday depictions of women, versus things like beauty pageants, overtly sexual imagery in adverts, and images of topless models in mainstream newspapers.
Is Nicee an example of objectifying women? Again, I would argue no. The complex ethics around humanoid robots is beyond me, but Nicee specifically is clearly an object - yes, designed to look a bit like a woman, but not in fact a woman. You could argue that imagery like this contributes to objectification of real women in everyday life, but I do feel that’s a bit of a reach.
Is Nicee contributing to wider issues of sexism within the fandom? This is where I don’t feel especially qualified to talk, so won’t too much. However, I will say that I would not be surprised if some women felt unwelcome in the TransFormers fandom, simply because it does feel very male-oriented. I also know that some men in the fandom have reacted very strongly to objections about Nicee, and I understand why they might feel defensive, but treating people poorly because they have a different opinion is never acceptable.
Should we care about Nicee? To be clear, if you really care about Nicee and feel her existence says something significant about society then that’s fine - everyone has their opinion. Nicee is the sort of thing I would have cared deeply about a few years ago, and would have been very indignant at the idea of someone telling me it wasn’t important. I do think it is good to think critically in all aspects of life and worth trying to address even relatively small injustices. I’ll even admit there are things I care about a lot that aren’t that important, though at least I do acknowledge their relative insignificance.
That being said, these days there are some things I just can’t bring myself to care about because it feels like wasting a lot of energy on something that ultimately doesn’t matter. I think this happens a lot in online spaces particularly, and was especially prevalent during the pandemic when people were stuck at home spending way too much time on social media. There are feminists who would campaign about something like Nicee but have no quarrel with the porn industry, which even those in favour of sex work must see causes some degree of real harm to real people.
To summarise, I understand why people were bothered by Nicee, but I hope I’ve explained why I don’t feel she represents a huge threat to women’s rights. Online discourse is so polarised, it can be difficult to express an opinion that falls somewhere on a spectrum without being treated like it actually lies at one extreme or the other, and people tend to assume the worst however carefully you word things. Nevertheless, it’s been interesting for me to attempt to wrestle my thoughts about Nicee into words, so thanks to Gord for giving me the platform (and encouragement) to do so.
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