Transformers is actually the exact place we need good LGBTQIA+ representation *BECAUSE* it's a multi-generational toy and media platform that is aimed at children. Gay Kids EXIST. Trans Kids EXIST. They deserve to see themselves included in the media and toys targeted at them. https://twitter.com/WargodARTS2/status/1379909270154534912

Transformers has depicted explicitly cishetero-normative relationships since the beginning. Failing to represent LGBTQIA+ characters literally hurts LGBTQIA+ kids because we don't get to see ourselves in fiction. Excluding us teaches us that we aren't normal. That's violence.

Here is a personal story about why representation matters. I grew up on the G1 cartoon. But it took me years to except that I was trans and a lesbian. And part of that, I think, is because I didn't people like me in media that weren't shitty LGBTQIA+ tropes.

The first time I *REALLY* saw myself in media was the Legend of Korra in 2014. Seeing Korra & Asami get an explicit "happily ever after" left me in tears. At 33, it was first time I felt "seen" in media (even though neither was trans). I started transitioning a 18 months later.

The explicit LGBTQIA+ representation in Transformers comics in the mid-2010s were so important to me because Arcee & Aileron and Anode & Lug were these queer and trans characters that I could related too. THAT MATTERED TO ME (and so many others).

But I have always wondered what my life would have been like if the LGBTQIA+ representation we saw in TV and comics particularly from 2014 through 2019 had existed when I was a kid? I think it would've changed my life because I'd have come out sooner. I would have felt normal.

LGBTQIA+ kids and ESPECIALLY trans kids are under attack right now. We need to show them they belong and putting trans characters in Transformers (and other kid-oriented media) is EXACTLY how we do it.

To do less makes you a piece of shit and a bigot.