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I think it’s a major flaw and is in fact killing the series and keeping it from being what it could be. This is because well rounded characters and varying personalities and perspectives gives stories depth, people complain about lack of love in 40k but how can you have love when every female character is a pious sexually repressed nun, a snobbish aristocrat, or a sex slave captured by the dark elder. Often those who make fun of the sisters of battle are accused of misogyny and often the accusation is correct but again what do you expect, they've been set up to be Sci-Fi snuff, with dd's and beads and a "device", that looks like a chastity belt around their crotches along with matt wards bizarre fantasies mixed in the sisters of battle are obviously not meant to be taken seriously and for the most part their not.

The Solution: Include normal female characters that aren't getting chopped up or sexually enslaved. I believe ADB has done a great job with this in his books particularly in Soul Hunter where he actually had a love story, and had female characters that played non sexual roles such as Octavia’s servants and female members of the bridge crew. I think Chaos would be the best place to start with this introduction, the Imperials have already been fleshed out pretty will and it’s easier to add new material than to change material already in existence. Where lacking fluff on the mortal servants of Chaos, this seems like a great place to add normal female characters, partisans and resistance leaders fighting the Imperium, or captains leading the warmasters ships(their not all commanded by Chaos Marines after all), maybe some that got tired of the old boys club in the Imperium and did'nt want to be either a nun or the wife/plaything of an Imperial officer/gangleader/noble. This is a blunt and honest post and I demand blunt and honest responses. No sugarcoating. I'm making a poll of whether you agree completely, somewhat, or disagree completely so I can gauge overall opinion.

ZSO, SAHAAL wrote:
they've been set up to be Sci-Fi snuff, with dd's and beads and a "device", that looks like a chastity belt around their crotches along with matt wards bizarre fantasies mixed in the sisters of battle are obviously not meant to be taken seriously and for the most part their not.

I think a lot of people get suckered into their own trap with this one. Space Marines are also sexually inactive and monastic in EXACTLY the same way that Sisters are... and I'm not seeing the chastity belt thing if I'm honest. So why is it ok for Marines to be repressed and not Sisters? Sexist. (I jest of course.)

Number two include normal female character that aren't getting chopped up or sexually enslaved.

Now THIS I can get behind. It would be nice to see more female models mixed in with males in normal units, and Dark Eldar (and to a lesser extent Craftworld Eldar) go some way to redressing this. Imperial Guard would be nice to have next. I think a big problem has been experience in modelling the female form, but there have been some great recent examples that indicate the skill is now there in GW's sculptors.

An extra point to make, too - I know 4 female gamers from my local store. And 3 of them, fickle as it may seem, pick their armies based on the models being female (my girlfriend for example collects Slaanesh Daemons and Dark Eldar). The remaining one paints her Space Wolves bright pink with rainbow logos.
There's a market here that GW might not crack with their more traditional marketing methods, but are certainly missing out on part of.

So my favourite book series are the Cain and Ghosts series, both of which have strong female characters. Similarly the Path series has a variety of decent eldar females and the Eisenhorn series is pretty good too. Not read much of the ravenor books but I imagine they 're pretty good too.

The over-sexualised side of 40k is there as it is in any sci-fi franchise, especially one that specifically targets teenage boys, but I think there is also a lot of good stuff too.

So why is it ok for Marines to be repressed and not Sisters?

I always found alot of the space marine fluff to be pretty wierd as well, like them being gay but macho self hating gay.

So write in a normal couple, problem solved.

There is alot of strong females in the cain and gaunt books.

I don't know I kind of like where women are in 40k, I mean whats the point of 40k if all women were like Ripley? We need moar hot women or else the series will fall apart

In most IG books I have read, there are mixed regiments. But they arn't the most common setup.

The Imperium takes the pragmatic stance that women are best left on the home planet to bear more children, who can then be recruited into the IG. Excess women get recruited into the IG as well when avaliable.

Cadia has 100% conscription rate regardless of sex. But reproduction is seen as a duty for everyone to maintain the population. And this is true for the Imperium as a whole and not just Cadia.


Is it Sexist? Yeah, but then again this is the Grimdarkness of the Far Future.





And I agree the models could use more diversity. Include a couple female heads on the IG sprues.

Of course this could backfire. GW has shown they have issues sculpting female bodies with the few they have done, and combine with an unflattering paintjob for extra stupidity.

Then, there is that if the Imperium is making one size fits all body armor you arn't going to be able to readily tell if a Guardsmen is male or female from a distance.

That guardsmen with the gas mask on could be a women for example.


And about body size, well, maybe the Imperium has a uniform fitness test for recruits that women are less likely to pass than men are. A man of average fitness can pass it, but a women would need above average fitness to pass. So most of the women in the force have larger than average muscle mass and bone structure.

This is not a subject that a simple poll is going to provide sufficient options for.

There are several female characters in the setting (several of the named characters of the Gaunt's Ghosts series are females, after all, including some of the unit's Scouts and Snipers). As mentioned in other threads, there's Inquisitor Amberly Vail. Shia Calpurnia, of the Enforcer series, is a female Arbiter, and the protagonist of the series. The Dark Heresy and Rogue Trader RPGs have plenty of female NPCs at all levels of society within the scope of each respective game.

The Ravenor and Eisenhorn series are filled with female characters, both protagonist and antagonist, as well as populating significant portions of the background. All of these characters are unique, separate, individual characters that are largely integral to the plot.

The Sisters of Battle? Yeah, they're an all-female religious order with gear that is reminiscent of various real-life examples of BDSM fetish-gear. Guess what? That real-life BDSM gear is reminiscent of religious attire, strongly centered around Catholicism. To accuse the SOB of being "leather nuns" is kind of putting the cart before the horse.

Remember that the Ecclesiarchy has female members on some worlds, and not on others. Not every woman in the Ecclesiarchy is a member of the Adeptus Sororitas. This is also true of the Imperial Guard, the Arbites, the Adeptus Mechanicus, the Adeptus Terra, and almost every other Imperial organization you can name, with the exception of the Adeptus Astartes and, it can be argued, the IST.

However, to flip the coin...

If a female character is depicted as being exactly as good as, in exactly the same ways as, a male character... what does the character's gender matter? Is something gained by the character having a pair of X chromosomes? Is this character not, really, just a male character "in drag"?

Why is it that male characters can get chopped up, but female characters cannot? That's a form of sexism in and of itself, though it can be in the other direction as well. I think you're overstating the case of Dark Eldar slave-victims, and missing the point of the Adeptus Sororitas entirely.

Good points

Hm. Looking at the original post, I see a few problems from a feminist perspective-- namely, the post seems to suggest that the only way to include women is to include them in love stories.

Why not include women in a way that passes the Bechdel test?

edit: The Bechdel Test:

1: Story has two women, preferably named women.
2: Have at least one conversation...
3: ... that doesn't involve a man or men, or the male population in general.

tl;dr, not everything a female character would talk about in 40k has to do with loving men.

Also, don't include female characters just because you feel you need to to be politically correct. Or go out of your way to try and make the story politically correct on this issue.

Many a good story has been ruined by that.

You might be surprised at how many stories fail this simple, easy to pass test.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Grey Templar wrote:
Many a good story has been ruined by that.

Not really. When the author tries to include women but can't write women worth a damn, THAT has ruined stories. But the solution is to encourage better writing and bring in more competent writers, not to exclude women.

Yeah, but I would say that most guys, and many girls, would not be interested in a story with 2 girls talking about work or something like that.

The consumer says what they want and votes with their pocket book.

 Grey Templar wrote:
Yeah, but I would say that most guys, and many girls, would not be interested in a story with 2 girls talking about work or something like that.

Load of crap, nothing more. The sample size of movies that pass the Bechdel test is so small as to be not a statistically relevant sample for the purposes of such a conclusion. You're working entirely off of the biases of an age of misogyny where it was viewed that women were worthless unless they were accompanied by / talking about / compared to a man. This is increasingly less and less the case.

So I ask you-- why would you be less interested in two wounded guardswomen talking about how war is hell compared to two wounded guardsmen talking about how war is hell? Hell, the original example of a movie that passed the Bechdel test is one of the most beloved movies in sci-fi history-- a little film we know as Alien. That it had two women talking to eachother about something other than men did not make it a lesser movie, and I defy your to claim otherwise.

What I never liked, was the fact that one in 1000 humans or something similar, are psyker's. And all of them, every single damn one, is male. Hell of a coincidence that.

I mean, I would absolutely adore, a special character for any imperial army whatsoever, who was a female psyker of such power, that they ignored their usual recruiment and rigorous bio-engineering traditions, in favour of harnessing the ability of said psyker.

But apparently, being able to shoot lightning from your hands on a whim, is something you need to be a tank of a man to do. Or, be an eldar, which in my mind, is just a cop-out. You would think the imperium would notice the eldar has a number of incredibly powerfull female psykers and think "Maybe we shouldn't kill every female psyker for having ladyparts.

Then again, I found a way round being a female gamer, with no cool character's (Without being an eldar in spandexarmour, or space-nun's in, again, spandex plate that is), and that was in playing an androginous/genderless race, in daemon's. Nurgle daemon's don't really have a gender, even if they were once men, such as in the case of plaguebearers, khorne stuff is just killy incarnate, gender doesn't come into it, tzeentch is made up of amorphous blob's of warpstuff, so again, genderless, and slaanesh stuff, is a different gender and appearance, depending on who is viewing them.

On a side note, I always wondered if sister's of battle fighting daemonettes, saw something along the lines of these guy's.

http://www.games-workshop.com/MEDIA_CustomProductCatalog/m2730082a_99120201016_WoCHellstriders01_873x627.jpg

 Melissia wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:
Yeah, but I would say that most guys, and many girls, would not be interested in a story with 2 girls talking about work or something like that.

Load of bullgak, nothing more. The sample size of movies that pass the Bechdel test is so small as to be not a statistically relevant sample for the purposes of such a conclusion. You're working entirely off of the biases of an age of misogyny where it was viewed that women were worthless unless they were accompanied by / talking about / compared to a man. This is increasingly less and less the case.

So I ask you-- why would you be less interested in two wounded guardswomen talking about how war is hell compared to two wounded guardsmen talking about how war is hell?

It entirely depends on how its done like you said.

Maybe it is an indicator that people can't write female characters for gak. But the fact that people keep buying stuff that doesn't pass the test is just confirmation for the producers that we, the consumers, really don't mind stuff that doesn't pass that test.


I really don't know or care much about this. Give me a good show/movie/book dammit. And don't include something you can't write well for the sake of including it.

Of course "normal women" are lacking in the 40k setting, but it goes WAY beyond that. Normal women are hard to find in almost any modern media, so its hard to be all that surprised that 40k is no different. Seriously, try to think of some leading female "heroine" type characters appear in a given form of media who are portrayed realistically (not idealized in personality, appearance, etc), completely non-sexually, strong willed, and capable of thoughts and actions independent of a male characters. It is an incredibly difficult. There are a few, of course - someone already said Ripley ( from Aliens) and I just finished watching Zero Dark Thirty, which also did a good job with Jessica Chastain's character - but they are so few and far between that it is quite frankly appalling. This isn't just something 40k needs to improve on, its our culture as a whole.

Edit:
Wow mega-ninja'd by Melissia while I was writing that, damn.

 Grey Templar wrote:
But the fact that people keep buying stuff that doesn't pass the test is just confirmation for the producers that we, the consumers, really don't mind stuff that doesn't pass that test.

No, it just means that this is all Hollywood is producing so that's all we have to buy . IT's the same in the gaming industry-- it's not that female characters are not popular, it's that the gaming industry as a general rule has convinced itself that games with female primary protagonists-- which on average receive 40% less marketing funding than ones with male-only primary protagonists-- aren't as popular as games which are male-only, and dismisses any exceptions as outliers to justify their own belief system.

Don't talk about this as if it exists in a vacuum. Hollywood has a lot of emotional baggage.

 Grey Templar wrote:
I really don't know or care much about this. Give me a good show/movie/book dammit. And don't include something you can't write well for the sake of including it.

If you don't care, perhaps you shouldn't be objecting as much as you are.

And I ask you, again, was Alien a bad movie because it had two women talking about something other than men?

I hate anything that includes anything that doesn't enhance the story because they wanted to be PC.

I also hate including something just for the heck of including it. Like the Princess in Braveheart or the completely unnecessary baby on a spike in Eragon.


And 2 women talking about something other than men is something I am ok with, but I am not ok with it if it does nothing to enhance the story. just like anything else that doesn't enhance the story.

 Grey Templar wrote:
I hate anything that includes anything that doesn't enhance the story because they wanted to be PC.

And you would say that including women is PC on the basis of it including women, because everyone defaults to male right? What a bizarre and disgusting double standard.

No, but including a women just for the sake of including a women is bad.

If being a women would make the character better and improve the story, hell yeah make the character a women.


Maybe because I've seen too many things where the writing and portrayel has been so bad I just cringe when it comes to female characters. Fear of bad writing I guess.

 Grey Templar wrote:
If being a women would make the character better and improve the story, hell yeah make the character a women.

This "All characters should be male unless otherwise needed" attitude of yours is WHY there's so much bad writing to begin with-- the writers with that attitude only consider women in terms of how they're different from men, instead of considering women as their own characters, as actual people, resulting in bland, unimaginative characters.

It's bizarre and circular logic that's best described as a self-fulfilling prophecy.

 Grey Templar wrote:
No, but including a women just for the sake of including a women is bad.

If being a women would make the character better and improve the story, hell yeah make the character a women.


Maybe because I've seen too many things where the writing and portrayel has been so bad I just cringe when it comes to female characters. Fear of bad writing I guess.

Wait what? You have to see the double standard in this statement. Apply the same rules to including men in a story, and you should quickly see your logical fallacy. It shouldn't be about what a man or woman has to offer to a story based on their gender alone, it should be what does that character or human being have to offer. A woman is capable of offering the same things to a story as a man because they're both people, capable of well thought out, unique personalities, with independent thoughts. So why is a man just the "default" person for any given story?

The terrifying implication of your attitude, and the attitude of most of those who create media these days, is that men are somehow inherently better, have more to offer, and count for more as people than women do.

Exalts headed your way Melissia.

 Grey Templar wrote:
No, but including a women just for the sake of including a women is bad.

If being a women would make the character better and improve the story, hell yeah make the character a women.


Maybe because I've seen too many things where the writing and portrayal has been so bad I just cringe when it comes to female characters. Fear of bad writing I guess.

The reason that I, and other's object to this argument, is the fact that it principally work's exactly the same the other way around, but it's never seen as that.


"If being a man would make the character better and improve the story, hell yeah make the character a man. Otherwise, just make it a woman and be done with it."

But this, would never happen, seeing as how the "Default" choice for everything in fiction, tend's to be a man. Which sucks.

Ninja'd by munky'z, almost exactly. Spooky.

But to enhance this argument, I will say, every single male character in 40k, could be made a woman with absolutely no change to the storyline, if only it was not for the "Only men can be space marines" Fluff line, which just seemed to be in there to simplify thing's for GW. There is no character in all the imperium, that is male due to anything to do with how being male improves their character. They are male, because it's default.

Now, I get the target audience thing, I really do. The vast majority of players of 40k, are male. But thing's might even out, if the 40k universe was not such a "boy's club."

You forgot somewhat disagree as a response if you want a reasonably unbiased poll you need the same number a weight positive and negative responses (and usually a neutral response for the people that just like to click things).

I do somewhat agree that women need to be brought to the forefront more. The IG would actually be the best place for this as there isn't actually any institutional bias toward either sex.

I cannot believe the word "normal" could even be applied to a follower of the chaos gods. Which god is the normal one?
Nurgle I just want to give you ___ plague/disease?
Slaanesh, yeah...that just gets us right back into the sex object racket.
Tzeench whose "normal" followers are insane gibbering maniacs with hideous mutations?
Or KHORNE, SKULLS FOR THE SKULL THRONE, BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD, ROAAAAAAR...yes normal person there.

Though the least sexist position in the entire galaxy would be a follower of nurgle or tzeench. I am not sure if they actually have sexual characteristics?

I do agree that the model range is somewhat biased and should probably include more variety (IG is probably the worst offender). However, you should really be polling then to see how many people would buy female models to determine if this is a smart business move. You should look at the dark eldar and eldar model ranges they have female farseers and banshees and the dark eldar come with large numbers of female parts so you can make them whatever you want (sex slave included if you are hung up on that).

BTW dark eldar are not really that into "sex" slaves they are much more into torture anything that can feel pain and see other species women as animals so it is not "rape" to them but rather "bestiality". They are however fairly equal opportunity about everything they do so rejoice they will accept all applicants for all forms of torture.

 Grey Templar wrote:
Also, don't include female characters just because you feel you need to to be politically correct. Or go out of your way to try and make the story politically correct on this issue.

Many a good story has been ruined by that.

I actually kind of favor including female charters just because. The brute force method I call it. If you where forced to make half of your named characters female, then by the odds at least a few will turn out good. In my option it's more annoying not to include women then to make bad women characters.

40k is so male centered that I think it's intentional. GW dosen't even use women in the character types that are dominated by women. Why don't we have a female farseer model? (Or do we, last i checked we didn't.)

 ansacs wrote:
Though the least sexist position in the entire galaxy would be a follower of nurgle or tzeench. I am not sure if they actually have sexual characteristics?

You've actually provided good arguments for why Chaos wouldn't be gender-discriminative.
Khorne cares not from whence the blood flows - case in point, Valkia from WHFB. Slaanesh cares not from whence the... well... you don't need me to finish that sentence for you. Suffice to say that a good deal of his(/her!) daemons are androgynous and/or can change or emphasize gender alongside other sexual characteristics to suit whoever they're trying to seduce.

Whew, hot topic.

My two bolt shells: The setting offers sufficient potential for powerful female characters. We've seen a number of them already, in the fluff, in the novels, and in the comics. But like ansacs pointed out, the model range has "suffered" from being almost exclusively male. And I will add that they could perhaps show up more often in the background, too, even if only as a minor detail. For example, whilst I have read about a number of famous IG officers in Codex fluff, none of them was a woman. And let's not even go into the artwork.

Oh, and I put the paranthesis there because it doesn't even attract much attention, it is just something people are used to / didn't really notice. Which is perhaps the real problem society has. Awareness. That, and the "who cares" attitude. Let's be honest, we're dicussing a bunch of plastic toys. So, I have to admit I don't really think much about it as well - it's just how things are. Only when I see threads like these do I stop for a minute and am like "yeah, that's probably a bit wrong".
And like the famous Professor Maximillian Arturo once said, the best way to judge a society is by looking at the toys it hands to its children.

Super Ready wrote:I think a lot of people get suckered into their own trap with this one. Space Marines are also sexually inactive and monastic in EXACTLY the same way that Sisters are... and I'm not seeing the chastity belt thing if I'm honest. So why is it ok for Marines to be repressed and not Sisters? Sexist. (I jest of course.)

Actually, I think you're on to something here. The Sisters are clearly meant to be the female equivalent to Marines, yet the application of double standards is evident in the amount of criticism leveled against them. Why is it okay for Blood Angels to have "nipple armour", but not for Battle Sisters to have "DDs" on their suits? Why does no one complain about Black Templars and their pain gloves, but whenever the topic of Repentia comes up people act like it's a fetish thing?
On some level it probably even is, but why is it that only one of these groups catches flak for that? Oh, I forgot, for the Marines this is "manly"...

Flinty wrote:So my favourite book series are the Cain and Ghosts series, both of which have strong female characters.

Tbh, whenever I read somebody mentioning the Cain novels, the first thing that springs to mind is the author creating a sexually repressed Battle Sister Vet who can't resist a good flirt.

Grey Templar wrote:The Imperium takes the pragmatic stance that women are best left on the home planet to bear more children, who can then be recruited into the IG.

I dunno about that - actually, I got the impression that the Imperium at large does not care about gender, seeing that we have female street gangs, female Arbites, female nobility, female Inquisitors or even female High Lords. And that's just looking at GW's own material - you will probably find even more examples once you delve into what other authors came up with.

Gender differences come into play locally, and based on an individual world's culture. The Imperium does not care whether a planet sends men or women or both to the Guard, as long as they fulfill the tithe. This may mean that some worlds' governors could implement policies relegating women to breeding machines - but an increase in population would probably only result in the tithe being raised in the next evaluation. Besides, from how the books made it sound like, most planets are overcrowded because of grimdark, so having his (or her!) subjects make even more babies prolly isn't too high on an Imperial Commander's agenda.
Come to think of it, the background of one of the Last Chancers characters even mentioned the "warrior women of Xenan", which sounds like a matriarchal society for a change.

Evileyes wrote:What I never liked, was the fact that one in 1000 humans or something similar, are psyker's. And all of them, every single damn one, is male. Hell of a coincidence that. I mean, I would absolutely adore, a special character for any imperial army whatsoever, who was a female psyker of such power, that they ignored their usual recruiment and rigorous bio-engineering traditions, in favour of harnessing the ability of said psyker.

Isn't that just the minis? Kind of like all Cadians are male, even though the fluff makes it obvious they also recruit girls.

nomotog wrote:I actually kind of favor including female charters just because. The brute force method I call it. If you where forced to make half of your named characters female, then by the odds at least a few will turn out good. In my option it's more annoying not to include women then to make bad women characters.

There's some truth to that. Society right now has a problem in that it's indecivise as to what role women should assume, or be allowed to assume. I think it may actually need a period of "brute forcing" female characters into media just so that people can get used to it, after centuries/millennia of it having been the other way around. The end result should be a sort of balance.
It's why I have no problem with positive discrimination in the real world in general, as long as it is a temporary measure. For people of a historically oppressed ethnicity or gender, making sure they spread through all facets of society will eventually create equality for all.

Ideally, for a story where the gender of a character does not play a role, I think people should just roll dice to have it determined randomly. And you could say the same for ethnicity.

The biggest hurdle is probably that there are still certain clichés that are fairly well established and, most of all, popular. Some, like the "30-something white male" are very obvious and have started to become stale and boring. Others are more subtle.

 Sille wrote:
There is alot of strong females in the cain and gaunt books.

Indeed - Cain might be a womaniser but most of the women in the novels are as or on occassion more capable than he is and are also not one of the tropes you mention. Hell the Cain novels even have women who prefer women (not that anyone "in universe cares", or even really notices, as long as they shoot the enemy and do their job - which is as it should be IMO). Some of them are less capable and thats good too and needed..............

Tbh, whenever I read somebody mentioning the Cain novels, the first thing that springs to mind is the author creating a sexually repressed Battle Sister Vet who can't resist a good flirt.

Ahh but thats one of so many good female characters:
The Commanding officer of Cain's Regiment is a very capable female
His sometime lover (and the one with very much all the control in the relationship) is Inquisitor Vail
Adeptus Mechancius Magos
Several planetary governors - of varying quality - usually better than the male ones to be fair, but thats not difficult in general.
Some of the best troopers are female
Several female Commissars - again of varying actual effectiveness
The various Sisters of Battle are stern, unwaving and effective in battle (no matter what Cain feels about them) (*)

One of the strengths is that no one seems to really care if they are female or not - on the rare occassions its an issue its part of the story rather than a natural reaction.
Of course they do tend to be good looking - at least at first, the Mechanicus Magos has changed quite a bit when he meets her some sixty years later

(*) even ignoring the Celestian which causes so much contraversory although she is extremely effective in battle - much more so than some other BL authors give the Sororitas credit for..............

Gaunts stories have strong female characters - yes some die - but lots of people do in his stories regardless of gender.

The recent Heresey novels have some interesting female characters - the female commander of Angrons flagship is a good example. Also check out Helsreach - the Commander of the Titan Demi- Legion is a very strong character and interesting contrast to the liasion office who has to deal with the fact that basically she is useless in the situation she find herself.

As to models - yeah GW is pretty rubbish at it - but thats why i am looking forward to Raging Heroes kickstarters and use other ranges in my armies.....