Does Bowser scout female soldiers?

[Dorayaki]

Sometime ago I notice a comment say in Mario spinoffs, all the girls are on the hero side, that makes me wonder.... wait, can't a normal goomba be a girl?

Yes, in specific cases, some characters have extra gender traits so we can tell they're girls or boys. In mainline we have Koopalings who have obvious gender traits, and in other games, we've seen characters like Goombario and Kooper.

I think both the mainline and the party spinoffs rarely try to specifically hint on the gender of Bowser' minions, so I tend to assume they're genderless (could be either gender). But oldschool cartoon logic seems to believe that girls need makeup and ribbons to tell they're girls, while the plain ones must be dudes.

Also, it feels like most of the cartoon adaption (including the movie from last year) tend to give musculine voices to the primary soldiers.

So I'm curious what's everyone's thought. Do you usually assume a random minion to be an open gender, or they're all boys by default except for specific characters?

 

[SparksMarioWiki]

When playing these Mario spin-offs (Paper Mario, Mario & Luigi, Mario Party, etc.) I assume the generic minions are male. I do remember a Goomba in Super Mario RPG being female although she just looks like a typical Goomba without and distinguishing characteristics.

Usually they have the female characters have feminine traits (eyelashes, make-up, jewelry, hairstyles, clothing, things like that).

 

[Wintertime Peach]

Yeah, I just assumed that all of the generic baddies are male. I think most people do as well. I always see people use male pronouns when talking about these characters, and I've never seen anyone call Goomba a she.
Goombella, Goombetty (Mario Party Advance), and Goombette (Odyssey) are female, so there are female Goombas. But I think that the generic Goombas are male.

I do know that the twins refer to Boo as female because of its Japanese name being Teresa, but I don't see Boo being female. To me, Boo is male and the Pink Boo from past Mario Party games is female.
They also refer to Wiggler as female, and while I assume it's male, I like the idea of Wiggler being female.
I don't see Koopa or Paratroopa being female, either.

Why don't we use Peach's Heart Swing from Mario Super Sluggers to find out if these characters are male or not? If they're knocked out with love, then they're male.

 

[SMB Christmas Special]

Most official material that I can recall off the top of my head, such as manuals and in game text refers to the majority of generic enemies as if they were male or gender neutral, but I could easily be overlooking something. Cheep-cheep was the only enemy referred to as female in the manual to smb1 interestingly enough, but only in English.

Unofficially, I imagine that the various individuals within a species are more diverse than what we see in most games, since the sprites and in-game models just represent an "average" member of the species, but that's only my head-canon, and the simplest interpretation of the evidence is that Nintendo thinks of things more literally.

 

[LeftyGreenMario]

My interpretation of those minions is that overall they're gender ambiguous and I typically use they/them pronouns, outside my headcanon to prevent confusion, even if official material (to my distaste) refers to these as "he/him" for nearly every minion. I sometimes imagine *some* of the dialogue involved has a female voice pouring out of it but I think people in general just default to "he/him" without really thinking about it. It's the same case with whatever animal people see, even the ones that are sexually dimorphic ones. I've heard a couple times where people referred to a female mallard as he/him or a female house finch as so.

However in other cases when there are (seemingly) recurring individuals involved, I do have headcanons on the gender for these characters.

Piranha Plant, Dry Bones, Wiggler, red Paratroopa, red Koopa Troopa, Buzzy Beetle, Cheep Cheep, Stork, Conkdor, Penguin, Porcupuffer, Dorrie, and Boo are she/her

Hammer Bro., Shy Guy, Lakitu, Goomba, green Koopa Troopa, Thwomp, Whomp, green Paratroopa, Blooper, Bullet Bill, Spiny, Monty Mole, Spike are he/him

Bob-omb, Pokey, and Mini Mario go by it/its

Kamek is gender fluid and can go by he/him or she/her

Maybe Ninji is they/them

I also split colored yoshis by gender, buuut I notice lightness usually is a factor

She/her: Yellow, Pink, Light Blue, White, Purple
He/him: Green, Red, Dark Blue, Black, Orange

Why don't we use Peach's Heart Swing from Mario Super Sluggers to find out if these characters are male or not? If they're knocked out with love, then they're male.

Or... they're attracted to Peach...which doesn't really state their gender identity, only what they're attracted to. Lesbians, pan-romantic....

 

[Ray Trace]

Or... they're attracted to Peach...which doesn't really state their gender identity, only what they're attracted to. Lesbians, pan-romantic....

you know Baby Mario and Baby Luigi get affected by it which raises a lot of questions