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Is Gender Pee Pee?
Aug. 8th, 2025 11:03 pmI was pretty shellshocked when I saw this Murderbot TV show clip where the show-runners added a non-book character whose purpose seems to be to sexually objectify Murderbot by asking a member of the survey team Murderbot was hired to protect if it "has a pee pee".
As a reader of the Murderbot books, this scene was pretty surprising, not only because of the introduction of an OC, but because the dialogue addressed Murderbot's gender identity and physical make-up in a side character interaction of which Murderbot takes no part. The book addresses this pretty up-front in Murderbot exposition, where it explains to the reader that it thinks sex scenes are boring in TV shows because it thinks sex itself is boring and that it probably wouldn't change its mind about this opinion, even if it had organic sex parts, which it does not have or want to have.
The show already has Murderbot narration, so I don't know why they didn't just add this part of the book narration into the show narration and chose to have this uncomfortable interaction with an OC instead. I think they wanted to use the survey team's uncomfortable reaction to inform the audience that it was a bad question and to foreshadow the OC's secretly evil nature, but I don't think the audience has to witness an uncomfortable human interaction to grasp the concept of "organic/robot construct does not have gender and/or sex organs" and foreshadowing can be done in many ways.
Also, interesting that the OC defaulted to asking if Murderbot had male sex organs and only male sex organs. She didn't ask if Murderbot had a pee pee OR a hoo-ha. In my opinion, the actor who plays Murderbot is styled to appear pretty male-presenting in the show, but from this dialogue it's implied that the humans in-universe subconsciously associate Murderbot solely with male characteristics instead of male and female characteristics, or agender characteristics. I think this is a massive flaw in the script that undermines the entire concept of Murderbot's non-human nature, non-gendered nature. And why doesn't Murderbot get to tell the audience about their gender and physical make-up through narration, over which it would have agency in the telling?? Is it because the show wanted to objectify Murderbot and call it sexy without endorsing that position? Is it because the IRL actor is a man? Is it because the SecUnits take on the task of enforcing, fighting and violence, which are culturally male activities in the West? WHY??
This scene instantly gave me a flash-back to the Barbie movie where Barbie proudly states she and Ken don't have genitals when they're sexually harassed by construction workers, and Ken tries to walk back her statement and claim he does have genitals (when he definitely doesn't have them, haha hilarious). Why does being a sexless plastic toy make Ken feel emasculated? Why does he need to reassure men that he has male sex organs? Is gender boy? Is gender having pee pee? Later in the Barbie movie, Barbie becomes human and goes to the gynecologist, which serves to proudly announce to the audience that she's changed from sexless plastic toy into female with sex organs, despite identifying with women earlier in the film when she was still a sex organ-less doll. Is having sex organs gender? Is gender being person? Is being person hoo-ha?
As a reader of the Murderbot books, this scene was pretty surprising, not only because of the introduction of an OC, but because the dialogue addressed Murderbot's gender identity and physical make-up in a side character interaction of which Murderbot takes no part. The book addresses this pretty up-front in Murderbot exposition, where it explains to the reader that it thinks sex scenes are boring in TV shows because it thinks sex itself is boring and that it probably wouldn't change its mind about this opinion, even if it had organic sex parts, which it does not have or want to have.
The show already has Murderbot narration, so I don't know why they didn't just add this part of the book narration into the show narration and chose to have this uncomfortable interaction with an OC instead. I think they wanted to use the survey team's uncomfortable reaction to inform the audience that it was a bad question and to foreshadow the OC's secretly evil nature, but I don't think the audience has to witness an uncomfortable human interaction to grasp the concept of "organic/robot construct does not have gender and/or sex organs" and foreshadowing can be done in many ways.
Also, interesting that the OC defaulted to asking if Murderbot had male sex organs and only male sex organs. She didn't ask if Murderbot had a pee pee OR a hoo-ha. In my opinion, the actor who plays Murderbot is styled to appear pretty male-presenting in the show, but from this dialogue it's implied that the humans in-universe subconsciously associate Murderbot solely with male characteristics instead of male and female characteristics, or agender characteristics. I think this is a massive flaw in the script that undermines the entire concept of Murderbot's non-human nature, non-gendered nature. And why doesn't Murderbot get to tell the audience about their gender and physical make-up through narration, over which it would have agency in the telling?? Is it because the show wanted to objectify Murderbot and call it sexy without endorsing that position? Is it because the IRL actor is a man? Is it because the SecUnits take on the task of enforcing, fighting and violence, which are culturally male activities in the West? WHY??
This scene instantly gave me a flash-back to the Barbie movie where Barbie proudly states she and Ken don't have genitals when they're sexually harassed by construction workers, and Ken tries to walk back her statement and claim he does have genitals (when he definitely doesn't have them, haha hilarious). Why does being a sexless plastic toy make Ken feel emasculated? Why does he need to reassure men that he has male sex organs? Is gender boy? Is gender having pee pee? Later in the Barbie movie, Barbie becomes human and goes to the gynecologist, which serves to proudly announce to the audience that she's changed from sexless plastic toy into female with sex organs, despite identifying with women earlier in the film when she was still a sex organ-less doll. Is having sex organs gender? Is gender being person? Is being person hoo-ha?
