Forum: scifi.stackexchange.com
Tags: <star-wars><droids>
Title: Is a droid a ‘he/she’ or an ‘it’?
Question: Inspired by  this  question.  Are droids in the  Star Wars  universe referred to with gendered pronouns (i.e. he or she), or are they referred to as objects (i.e. it)?

Answers:
sents: text: Droids have personality, and that personality can be masculine or feminine.
text: R2-D2
text: and C-3P0 have (arguably) masculine personalities, either because they developed that way or they were initially programmed that way.
text: Or, potentially, because I have a cultural bias that paints the actions of both as 'more male' than 'more female'.
text: Therefore it's not incorrect to apply gendered pronouns to them.
text: 'It', however, would also be accurate.
text: Some droids, rarely referenced, are more appropriate to be called 'male' or 'female' due to...
text: enhancements made to suit their primary purpose, but they are rarely touched upon even in the books.
text: There's more evidence that C-3P0 is male, quite famously.
text: As this NSFW photo attests to
answer_details: author: scifi.stackexchange.com/users/656/Jeff
score: 27
sents: text: According to the Star Wars: The Clone Wars Character Encyclopedia , droids can have programmed genders or no gender at all.
text: For example: (apologies for the poor image quality, no apologies for the free-hand red circles.)
text: Male: Female: None:
text: Varied:
text: Therefore, a droid should be referred to as "he," "she" or "it" based on what gender (if any) it had been programmed to have.
answer_details: author: scifi.stackexchange.com/users/51226/Rogue Jedi
score: 17
sents: text: The script refers to both R2-D2 and C-3PO as male, and although we don't know what R2 is saying in his dialogue, we do hear 3PO refer to R2 as a male on several occasions.
text: An explosion rocks the ship as two robots, Artoo-Detoo (R2-D2) and See-Threepio (C-3PO) struggle to make their way through the shaking, bouncing passageway.
text: Both robots are old and battered.
text: Artoo is a short, claw-armed tripod.
text: His face is a mass of computer lights surrounding a radar eye.
text: Threepio, on the other hand, is a tall, slender robot of human proportions.
text: He has a gleaming bronze-like metallic surface of an Art Deco design.
text: And later: THREEPIO
text: That malfunctioning little twerp.
text: This is all his fault!
text: He tricked me into going this way, but he'll do no better.
answer_details: author: scifi.stackexchange.com/users/44025/Wad Cheber stands with Monica
score: 12
sents: text: FLO (WA-7), the waitress droid from Dex's Diner in Attack of the Clones, was obviously intended to look and sound female.
answer_details: author: scifi.stackexchange.com/users/14851/Stephen
score: 8
sents: text: There are definitely droids that have an apparent gender.
text: There are definitely droids that have no gender as well.
text: Star wars.
text: I'd say a lot of the droids there have no personality, limited personality, or hidden personality.
text: Either way, they definitely look androgynous.
text: There's a cultural bias, that when a AI expresses a personality that has neither masculine or feminine traits, they are seen as masculine anyway.
text: See R2-D2.
answer_details: author: scifi.stackexchange.com/users/3754/Lee Louviere
score: 2
sents: text: The obviously female ones shouldn't be called 'droids' anyway, assuming that the term is a contraction of 'android'.
text: Strictly speaking 'androids' are male and 'gynoids' are female, so they'd be called 'noids'.
answer_details: author: scifi.stackexchange.com/users/3800/Alan B
score: 0

Summary of the answers:
The script refers to both R2-D2 and C-3PO as male, and we  hear 3PO refer to R2 as a male on several occasions. Some droids appear to have a gender, while others do not.
Droids can be programmed with genders and can ever be designed to lean towards a specific gender or they can have no gender at all. There are cases of C-3PO refering to R2-D2 with male pronouns on a number of occassions.