Well, afaik, GBX hasn’t included any transsexual, transgender, or asexual (as in, belonging to a traditionally heterosexual species but not interest and quite possibly squicked out by sex) individuals. They’ve been absolutely amazing about making homosexual and bisexual individuals completely and totally normal (e.g. there’s not a token gay in the cast). I can’t find it, but I remember during one of the borderlands AMAs, someone asked about why the BL games are so LGBT-friendly and the response was something like “You mean people actually cared about that stuff back in your time?” It really demonstrated GBX’s mentality behind it: in the future, even in a world of psychopathic violent murderhobos, no one will give the slightest ■■■■ whether you are straight, gay, or bi.
The first two I can understand to some extent because, while many people nowadays couldn’t give two ■■■■■ about which body parts a person has preference for, the idea that someone can change which parts they have or might want to have different parts is a whole different thing (personally, I think it has more to do with lingering homophobia in the sense that a hetero man might fight a woman attractive only to find out that she used to be male, triggering dissonant feelings of homosexuality, to which the only apparent coping mechanism is violent or hostile defensiveness).
(interestingly enough, on that topic, science has actually proven that trans individuals have the brain structure of the gender they identify as, not as the gender they were born with, via MRI and fMRI; when they say they feel like they’re a “man trapped in a woman’s body” or vice versa, they are, quite literally, telling the truth; SCIENCE)
The third, saying this as an asexual individual, is probably due to the fact that asexuals haven’t ever really been discriminated against and are pretty much ignored by society as a whole. Also, most of the people I’ve ever dealt with had a really hard time wrapping their heads about completely lacking any sexual drive or interest in sex whatsoever. It’s also hard to demonstrate asexuality without making it seem like apathy or disinterest rather than an actual orientation.
Going back to the topic, one thing I will say about BB is that, while they did a good job of making the female characters powerful, independent, and multidimensional (and how Mellka is the most obvious protagonist in a game with an ensemble cast; I’m also pretty sure that every single mission in BB passes the Bechdel Test, which is a pretty good indicator of gender equality), they’re all still thin, traditionally attractive women. BL had Ellie as kind of the token “not skinny/traditionally attractive character”, which is something, but all of the BB female characters follow a pretty similar body type: skinny and lean, but not muscular (even Galilea, who is covered up, doesn’t seem particularly bulky which one might expect from a sword swinging space paladin).
I’d like to see them take the same approach with the women as they did with the male character models: go for a larger variety of body types for the women. I’d like to see at least one great big bruiser that’s female (it’s also why I want the grenade chicken DLC char to be female since she’s short and stocky; also, the whole “eggs” thing fits perfectly for a grenadier).
I also think it’d be funny if the answer to the question of “what does a female Thrall look like” is “what do you mean? you’ve been fighting them the entire time; they’re called Bonecrushers and Enforcers”.
Also, not sure if you guys realized this, but, none of the tanks are female and all but one of the support characters are female (Miko definitely espoused more female traits than masculine traits and used a female voice actor); of the 11 female characters (Miko included), 4 of them are support. There’s definitely a “women are support and/or frail; men are tough/strong and protective” bias in the game.
Love Reyna. Though I´d need to wear a corset to have her waistline, I think she´s still a good example of a “not-thin-but-not-fat-and-definately-beautifull-as-she-is”-woman.