35

In Star Trek, nearly all the adult Borg we see appear to be male. While there might be some reason out of universe for this, in universe this doesn't make much sense. When a culture is assimilated all members of the population not killed in the attack are injected with nanites and sent to the assimilation chamber; men, women and children.

There have been a few exceptions on the shows and First Contact (most notably Seven and the Queen), but by and large this is how 98% of the Borg drones we see appear:

Borg from First Contact Borg from Unimatrix Zero

Does the Queen hoard all the female drones somewhere, or are they more valuable in some way that keeps them from being used as shock troops and front line workers? Or is there some other in universe explanation for why female drones are so rarely seen?

Xantec
  • 61,649
  • 46
  • 259
  • 438
  • 2
    Well even in insect colonies, traditionally drones are exclusively male. As to why the Borg appear to have adopted a similar structure, I have no clue. Good question. :) – Gabe Willard May 10 '12 at 21:04
  • 10
    @GabeWillard actually drones in an ant colony are almost exclusively female. – AncientSwordRage May 10 '12 at 21:09
  • 2
    @Pureferret These larger colonies consist mostly of sterile wingless females forming castes of "workers", "soldiers", or other specialised groups. Nearly all ant colonies also have some fertile males called "drones" and one or more fertile females called "queens". That's not what the article you linked to says. – Gabe Willard May 10 '12 at 21:12
  • Additionally, the article on Drone lists the etymology of the word as from the Old English 'dran or dræn' meaning 'male honeybee'. That would seem to indicate that the word itself carries a male connotation. Why the Borg adopted this is the real question. – Gabe Willard May 10 '12 at 21:15
  • 4
    @GabeWillard, read more of the article: Ant colonies can be long-lived. The queens can live for up to 30 years, and workers live from 1 to 3 years. Males, however, are more transitory, and survive only a few weeks. On further researching the males are drones, the workers (outnumbering the drones by the thousands) are female. My apologies. – AncientSwordRage May 10 '12 at 21:21
  • 2
    @Pureferret It's fine. We're all here to learn. :) – Gabe Willard May 10 '12 at 21:24
  • In your second picture, the far-right drone may well have been originally female (or at least it may be played by a female actor). Only the Queen and Seven are BLATANTLY female, but plenty of on-screen Borg have been played by female actresses. – Jeff Oct 20 '14 at 18:39
  • @GabeWillard "Drone" has different meanings. In the insect quote, that meaning is something like "male organism that exists to compete in order to fertilize a hive queen, but otherwise does no work for the hive" which is not what the Borg drones are. Another meaning of drone is something like "remote semi-autonomous robot directed by a central intelligence" which is both in line with the Borg of Star Trek and specialized sterile female workers serving as labor for insect hives. – Lexible Dec 02 '18 at 20:17
  • Perhaps the borg that display sexual characteristics were all assimilated as adults. Borg gestation and maturation might not waste resources on unnecessary traits. – Gaultheria Dec 02 '18 at 23:14
  • w/rt insects, the skewed sex ratios of Hymenoptera (ants, bees, wasps) have to do with their system of haplodiploidy for sex determination, wherein females have two parents but males only have a mother and no father. This means that the female workers are more closely related to the queen's other female children (their super-sisters) than they would be to their own female children. So long as the vast majority of the colony is female, this will spur altruism and eusociality. Males are for reproduction only, and must be limited in number to keep the system from descending into selfishness. – Kirt May 21 '23 at 16:24
  • None of those considerations should apply to the Borg, nor do they apply to termites (Isoptera), whose sex determination is XY (like mammals) and which have both male and female workers, soldiers, and reproductives. – Kirt May 21 '23 at 16:26

1 Answers1

42

"Interesting, isn't it? Not a he, not a she, not like anything you've ever seen before." - Q to Captain Jean-Luc Picard (TNG: "Q Who")

Technically speaking no Borg drone has a gender, this may be what makes it difficult to distinguish the former genders of the drones, but there are more drones that were once female than you think:

enter image description hereenter image description hereenter image description here

I could continue.

The middle one appears male but was played by an actress called Lynn Slater. This highlights the issue in trying to determine the gender of a Borg.

Regardless, after assimilation any physiological difference between the two genders would be nullified by the action of nanobots and implants equalling any differences in speed, strength endurance etc.

So yes, drones are de-sexed, with some overt sexual characteristics showing (face shapes etc) but other than that they are genderless.

AncientSwordRage
  • 81,809
  • 110
  • 444
  • 892
  • 1
    Interesting that your examples are all pre-First Contact. Any from the First Contact or Voyager era Borg? – Xantec May 10 '12 at 23:12
  • 4
    @Xantec: Here and here. From the Voyager era. – AncientSwordRage May 11 '12 at 08:28
  • 1
    Your answer would be better if you distinguished sex from gender. Borg don't do gender (other than the role of Queen), but this is a different question than what the biological sex of the assimilated species are (i.e. were the drone desexed?). – Lexible Dec 02 '18 at 20:19