tinpact

Well, taking Orde's backstory as a basis for the Great Beings' thoughts on "male" and "female," balance between personality and destructiveness seems to be a consideration...although this line of thought is questionable because Toa are supposed to be powerful, and Psionics are uniquely affected by the user's personality. The assumption is that female Toa are naturally calmer, but whether for narrative or other reasons, canon shows element is a better predictor of personality than gender (and still not perfectly reliable) - and this is disregarding members of other species. This said, it reads like a bit of quirky character information that wasn't meant to be read into too deeply. Regardless, I think it's a bit of a cop-out - while attributing male or female aspects to elements has a long history, any element can be presented in such a way that it appears more masculine or feminine. Surely it would have been better to program all future Ce-Matoran to be naturally gentle, no? The fact that the Great Beings' sweeping assumption isn't particularly true can lead to the conclusion that the Great Beings are space-sexist, which, while humorous, isn't particularly helpful. Gender being tied to element is another obfuscating factor - what difference would a female Ta-matoran make, given elemental tendencies? The Av-Matoran are the one exception to the rule, but again, element rather than gender seems to be the most important factor. Likewise, while Toa of Psionics are an example of explicit intervention by the Great Beings, the two examples of Toa of Lightning we have seem to have more in common with Toa of Fire or Air than Water, personality-wise. Another consideration is that unlike humans, Matoran were created with specific functions in mind. Looking at it like that, it might make more sense to treat each element like its own discrete "gender," but frankly I don't find this to be an appealing approach. Of course, the whole thing depends on gender being a meaningful category for Matoran/Toa/Turaga. It could be that gender is an simply an arbitrary category the Matoran accept, like hair color, since it doesn't seem to have an impact on their lives otherwise - at least not in any way that can be separated from their elemental affinity. Ultimately, I don't think there's really a good way to go about it using any in-universe logic; from a Doylist perspective, the element/gender ratio exists as a variation on the "5-man band plus girl" trope because of real-world considerations...but that's not as interesting.