just shut up. You know that's not a proper argument.
Any other slippery slopes you want to go on.
Well that doesn’t sound very tolerant. You had the opportunity to express your opinion and I’m just doing the same. I just disagree with you. Telling me to shut up isn’t very convincing.
I agree. How would you even introduce female marines into the fluff at this point? Could you imagine Rowboat having a conversation about the sexist policies of the Imperium? He almost got overthrown due to the indomitus crusade and that didn’t even involve meaningful change of the generally crappy society that is the imperium.
"Hey, Cawl."
"Yes, Primarch Guilliman?"
"Why are there only male SM?"
"Well Primarch Guilliman, I posit that the Emperor was not as good a genetic scientist as He thought and since I am better, I shall improve upon His work yet again. Also, make me Fabricator General."
"Ok do the upgrade thing but no you aren't getting to be Fabricator General."
"*sadface.exe"
Well that doesn’t sound very tolerant. You had the opportunity to express your opinion and I’m just doing the same. I just disagree with you. Telling me to shut up isn’t very convincing.
I don't have to be tolerant of nonsense arguments made in bad faith. That's the beauty of all of this, I get to pick and choose which things I will actually answer.
Andykp wrote: If a new player was to come in to the game now, is there anything in print that states that marines have to be men?
In print? Not that I'm sure, aside from gendered pronouns?
In practice, all the Marines we see are male, all the options for bare heads are masculine-presenting, and there's a decent chance that if you put a female-presenting head on your model, someone will shoot it down for being "non-canon" or "trying to make 40k political".
That is all true. But it kind of ends the debate that the lore must be adhered too, the last mention of this was 19 years ago, before that maybe 32 years ago. Couldn’t possibly change that.
No, it was was re-printed in White Dwarf in 2017 and updated to include some lore on Primaris Marines. It's not something that was posted once about 20 years ago and then not heard of again since.
Kurotenshi wrote:How would you even introduce female marines into the fluff at this point?
I'd advocate for:
"They were always around, we just never mentioned them" - like GW did with Centurions, Stormravens, Stormtalons, Stalkers, grav-guns, etc etc
or
"hi Guilliman, while I, the great Belisarius Cawl, was improving on Amar Astarte's Space Marine design, I worked out how we could solve that issue with women rejecting the (totally made up) gene seed problem. I've provided all Chapters with a guidebook how to introduce the enhancements to non-male inductees, that should give your new Imperium many more recruits and soldiers to bolster our Space Marine cohorts. You're welcome." - like GW did with the Primaris.
Again - from what we see of the Imperium, it's not generally sexist. It's so utterly uncaring of gender that anyone can go and die in the Imperial Guard. If women could be made Space Marines, there's no reason they shouldn't. If any Chapters rejected that, they'd do so along the same lines that they might be hesitant about Primaris - but ultimately, when it came to Primaris, most Chapters chose self-preservation and continued relevance in the Imperium than death. I see no reason the same wouldn't happen with women recruits, but I would have no issue if GW said, "some Chapters, like the Black Templars and Marines Malevolent, continue to reject the use of female aspirants, but most Chapters were happy for the new recruits, and some new Chapters sprang into life who recruits exclusively from the female populations of their world".
I don't have to be tolerant of nonsense arguments made in bad faith. That's the beauty of all of this, I get to pick and choose which things I will actually answer.
Ok. I guess we’ll just agree to disagree, but I remain unconvinced and I don’t see GW printing any female marines based on your arguments.
Andykp wrote: If a new player was to come in to the game now, is there anything in print that states that marines have to be men?
In print? Not that I'm sure, aside from gendered pronouns?
In practice, all the Marines we see are male, all the options for bare heads are masculine-presenting, and there's a decent chance that if you put a female-presenting head on your model, someone will shoot it down for being "non-canon" or "trying to make 40k political".
That is all true. But it kind of ends the debate that the lore must be adhered too, the last mention of this was 19 years ago, before that maybe 32 years ago. Couldn’t possibly change that.
No, it was was re-printed in White Dwarf in 2017 and updated to include some lore on Primaris Marines. It's not something that was posted once about 20 years ago and then not heard of again since.
But is it included in the Codexes? Is it plastered all over their lore from front to back, like how it is with the Sisters of Battle? I'm not aware that it is - so why is it so important? If it were so important, I'd have expected that it would be put in the Codexes.
Why is it so critically important to their identity that something not mentioned in their Codexes be preserved?
Andykp wrote: If a new player was to come in to the game now, is there anything in print that states that marines have to be men?
In print? Not that I'm sure, aside from gendered pronouns?
In practice, all the Marines we see are male, all the options for bare heads are masculine-presenting, and there's a decent chance that if you put a female-presenting head on your model, someone will shoot it down for being "non-canon" or "trying to make 40k political".
That is all true. But it kind of ends the debate that the lore must be adhered too, the last mention of this was 19 years ago, before that maybe 32 years ago. Couldn’t possibly change that.
No, it was was re-printed in White Dwarf in 2017 and updated to include some lore on Primaris Marines. It's not something that was posted once about 20 years ago and then not heard of again since.
But is it included in the Codexes? Is it plastered all over their lore from front to back, like how it is with the Sisters of Battle? I'm not aware that it is - so why is it so important? If it were so important, I'd have expected that it would be put in the Codexes.
Why is it so critically important to their identity that something not mentioned in their Codexes be preserved?
But it is brought out every 15 years or so so it’s the most important thing about marines. But it’s not in the current publications at all. But it’s “LORE!” You cannot change it. If you do you will break the entire game.
Andykp wrote: If a new player was to come in to the game now, is there anything in print that states that marines have to be men?
In print? Not that I'm sure, aside from gendered pronouns?
In practice, all the Marines we see are male, all the options for bare heads are masculine-presenting, and there's a decent chance that if you put a female-presenting head on your model, someone will shoot it down for being "non-canon" or "trying to make 40k political".
That is all true. But it kind of ends the debate that the lore must be adhered too, the last mention of this was 19 years ago, before that maybe 32 years ago. Couldn’t possibly change that.
No, it was was re-printed in White Dwarf in 2017 and updated to include some lore on Primaris Marines. It's not something that was posted once about 20 years ago and then not heard of again since.
But is it included in the Codexes? Is it plastered all over their lore from front to back, like how it is with the Sisters of Battle? I'm not aware that it is - so why is it so important? If it were so important, I'd have expected that it would be put in the Codexes.
Why is it so critically important to their identity that something not mentioned in their Codexes be preserved?
It's simply that it's something that's a part of the Space Marines and has been so for decades, it's how they were created and changing that for the sake of it does not seem like a good idea at all. They're an order of superhuman warrior monks, there doesn't need to be any specific justification or reason to let them be what they are. The idea that a line of lore and how often that appears is the thing needed to keep them as they're portrayed seems somewhat irrelevant as that isn't the important part, it's that a faction should be allowed to have its own identity and theming and in the case of Space Marines, it's warrior monks. Would you apply this same argument to the Adepta Sororitas or Sisters of Silence - should a relatively small part of their lore stop them from being inclusive and having male members too? Why shouldn't they just change that lore for them too? Why is it so important that they keep their theming?
Mentlegen324 wrote:It's simply that it's something that's a part of the Space Marines
But is it? Like, really?
and has been so for decades
Like Guilliman being in stasis?
it's how they were created and changing that for the sake of it does not seem like a good idea at all.
It's not changing it for the sake of changing it. It's changing it because it's an outdated relic of exclusionism masquerading as pseudo-scientific jargon.
It had no reason to exist at the time, and has even less now. It's not relevant to modern SM design, it actively works against the current design philosophy, and represents existing exclusionary attitude towards *real human beings*.
And I hasten to add, the only reason they didn't have women in the first place was also "for the sake of it" - so I don't exactly think it's on strong footing.
They're an order of superhuman warrior monks
Citation needed. *Some* Space Marines are. Some Chapters are. But not all of them - case in point, the Space Wolves. What's "monk-ly" about them?
there doesn't need to be any specific justification or reason to let them be what they are.
There kinda is, actually. It's called critical reflection and good design. You don't just chuck things in there as an artist without questioning if it's actually essential or beneficial to your design. And, even if it was, let's apply this the other way around - why did Space Marines need to be exclusive in the first place?
The idea that a line of lore and how often that appears is the thing needed to keep them as they're portrayed seems somewhat irrelevant as that isn't the important part, it's that a faction should be allowed to have its own identity and theming and in the case of Space Marines, it's warrior monks.
Except it isn't. Space Wolves aren't warrior monks. Iron Hands are techno-monks, but by that logic, the Mechanicus should be all-male. Raptors are more like modern spec-ops than monks. Carcharadons are as far from monks as you can get. Minotaurs aren't religious. The Ultramarines are more like Romans or Greeks than Christian monks. And that's before I get into things like the Traitor Legions, who had absolutely no "monk" aspects to them at all, save perhaps for the Word Bearers, and so their lack of women would reflect a massive plot hole.
Face it - the whole "warrior monk" design philosophy died out years ago. Space Marines are most defined by their customisation and player freedom - not "monks in spaaaaaaaace".
Would you apply this same argument to the Adepta Sororitas or Sisters of Silence - should a relatively small part of their lore stop them from being inclusive and having male members too?
I've actually answered this repeatedly, if you bothered to read my comments.
1. The faction design of the Sisters of Battle is so much more closely linked to "nun" imagery it's not even close. The (massively flawed) argument you trot out for Space Marines needing to be male because of their faction design doesn't apply to Space Marines, because they don't have that design philosophy any more - but it's perfect for why Sisters are all women.
2. Sisters of Battle feature explanations as for why they're all women from an in-universe perspective in all the media they're in. Space Marines don't even feature theirs in their Codex.
3. Sisters of Battle aren't Space Marines - and this ranges from their different design philosophies (Space Marines are exemplified by their player freedom and customisation, Sisters of Battle are forced into a very specific aesthetic design and culture) to impact on the wider world (Space Marines are the flagship faction and massively recognisable - Sisters of Battle aren't).
4. The Sisters of Battle faction already includes men. Space Marines don't.
5. I don't even care about Sisters having male members (heh) that much.
7. You'll have noticed that I never mentioned Sisters of Silence here. Why? Because they're barely a faction, and my mentioning them here is more attention than GW gave them this whole year. Sisters of Silence aren't even worth bringing up in this discussion because they're not a faction, they're a single model kit.
8. You'll also have noticed that I didn't include a number 6. Pulled a sneaky on y'all there.
Why shouldn't they just change that lore for them too? Why is it so important that they keep their theming?
I mean, go look back at point 2 - much as the lore isn't permanent, if something is consistently mentioned and placed at the forefront, I think I get the impression that it's seen as somewhat important by GW. And if they wanna change that, they have every right to.
But let's not act like 13 words of lore that don't even show up in the Codex are anywhere close to the same as multiple paragraphs of history fleshing out the history and nature of the setting which are repeated time and time again in the publications of the Sororitas.
But hey - you know what, I'm cool changing that lore too, if it gets us women Space Marines. I don't think it's quite the gotcha you expected.
Gert wrote: People keep rolling out how SM are "Warrior Monks". Show me how SM are monks.
That they tend to be a heavily religious brotherhood who's daily life is very stoic and involves a strict routine of activities relating to combat/training and prayer or worship, who are overall quite seclusive and ascetic as individuals, and who's main base tends to be a Fortress Monastery? If you don't consider them monastic than just what do you think counts?
"this is my super space soldier future sci fi setting, the super space soldiers only take male recruits and women arent allowed because sexism" would be inserting the modern day political discussions surrounding women in the military into 40k.
I agree. How would you even introduce female marines into the fluff at this point? Could you imagine Rowboat having a conversation about the sexist policies of the Imperium? He almost got overthrown due to the indomitus crusade and that didn’t even involve meaningful change of the generally crappy society that is the imperium.
....They make it 'because Science'...and then just have Cawl solve the problem and incorporate female astartes into the next batch of primaris models that were going to be released anyway.
You've even got the setup of, Vahl is a high lord now.
1) set up a plot where some thing - lets say an Ork Waaaagh of beast boyz orks - is threatening some chapter of space marines, and they almost totally wipe out their original members. Lets say the Raven Guard.
2) Guilliman is all like 'oh man, we are running low on the recruits from the initial crusade of primaris, what are we going to do???'
3) Cawl is like 'oh thats a real shame, because I've got all these cool weapons and equipment designed for primaris marines, and we just can't produce recruits fast enough!'
4) Vahl says 'you put me on the council of high lords. The leader of the sisters of battle. You know, that order of extremely potent elite female warriors, who has a school where they harshly train children almost from birth to be fanatically devoted to the imperium, to know how to use bolters and chainswords, and how to wear power armor.
The top of the class at the schola progenum is...right over here, ready to go. Those fancy primaris jump packs, chainswords and lightning claws you've designed for Primaris Marines to match Shrike's set, we could try to make these girls and boys primaris marines and give these to them."
That they tend to be a heavily religious brotherhood who's daily life is very stoic and involves a strict routine of activities relating to combat/training and prayer or worship, who are overall quite seclusive and ascetic as individuals, and who's main base tends to be a Fortress Monastery? If you don't consider them monastic than just what do you think counts?
I mean they aren't religious, in fact, the Codex makes a point of the fact most SM view the Ecclesiarchy as dangerous zealots and only tolerate their existence. Chaplains look after the spiritual and mental wellbeing of a chapter, and while they are technically representative of the Ecclesiarchy, being a Chaplain isn't about being a preacher.
Asceticism is a choice, a choice SM don't make and it isn't present across all the chapters. The poster boy faction, the Ultramarines, aren't even particularly ascetic in their lifestyle as Guilliman encouraged his Astartes to become masters of more than just war.
An Imperial Guardsman will live their life to a strict routine, does that make them all monks?
As for their solitary nature, when you have been mentally stripped of the capability to feel most base human emotions and genetically altered to live far beyond the natural lifespan of a mortal, is it really a surprise that SM are seen as solitary beings?
If I bought a monastery and lived in it would I be a monk too?
They wear robes when not in armour but so does like 90% of the Imperium. Robes are just stylish.
Actually, most Chapters don't worship the Emperor. Many will have their own Chapter cults (like Promethean Cult of the Salamanders), but cults aren't what we associate with Christian monks, are they?
who's daily life is very stoic and involves a strict routine of activities relating to combat/training and prayer or worship, who are overall quite seclusive and ascetic as individuals
The Space Wolves laugh over their mjod at that.
and who's main base tends to be a Fortress Monastery?
And are Stormravens also giant flying birds? And what about Chapters who have fleet bases, and no Fortress-Monastery?
If you don't consider them monastic than just what do you think counts?
I'm curious how you think the Space Wolves exhibit any of those traits, for a start.
I consider those as *some* of the features that make *some* Space Marines what they are, but they don't cover every Chapter, or even the majority of modern Space Marine design.
Again, I reference how their treatment from GW in both the actual models, their aesthetic, their marketing, and their lore, points to the primary design of modern Space Marines being player freedom and customisation. Their monk design is not relevant any more and hasn't been for years, judging from GW's own attitude towards them.
I agree. How would you even introduce female marines into the fluff at this point? Could you imagine Rowboat having a conversation about the sexist policies of the Imperium? He almost got overthrown due to the indomitus crusade and that didn’t even involve meaningful change of the generally crappy society that is the imperium.
I think one of the easiest ways would be to suggest women have been made into space marines all along. In the transhumanization process, the hormones and chemicals that perform the transformation largely erase most residual outwardly visible difference between what was once discernable as a woman or man. Space Marines don't really consider themselves human anyway. A story could explore the sacrifice a woman gives up leaving one future as a human female, to become a transhuman space marine. That would be an interesting story.
I am gonna go out on a limb and say the new poster korenteshi is a new account created today, with the express purpose of putting out bad faith arguments for the opposing side of this. The account was created literally today. And has only posted in this forum. I smell Fish.
RegularGuy wrote:I think one of the easiest ways would be to suggest women have been made into space marines all along. In the transhumanization process, the hormones and chemicals that perform the transformation largely erase most residual outwardly visible difference between what was once discernable as a woman or man. Space Marines don't really consider themselves human anyway. A story could explore the sacrifice a woman gives up leaving one future as a human female, to become a transhuman space marine. That would be an interesting story.
I'm entirely on board with that, hell, I've already suggested this earlier in the thread - but then, I'd want the same to apply for male recruits too. A story wherein a batch of both male and female recruits undergo the procedures together, and can barely recognise eachother having come out the other side, having lost both "male" and "female" identities in service of their Chapter.
But, this would also require either removing the male pronouns of modern Space Marines (unreasonably impractical) and making any heads on the sprue gender-neutral in an androgynous way (also fine, but again, *super* impractical), or we just add women, and say that they can look like women just as much as the male recruits look like men. End of the day, as long as whatever happens to one happens to the other, I'm chill with it. As I said - representation is nothing without visibility. And if we want to represent that Space Marines sacrifice all trappings of gender to become "Astartes", then this needs visibly representing, not just "well, they all look like men now".
As an addendum to the whole "Space Marines don't consider themselves human", I agree - which is why their weird design choice to not include women is so, well, weird. I mean, what is it - is the Imperium obsessed with gender to the point where they exclude women aspirants (illogical because of their inclusion of guardswomen), or are they inhuman killing machines detached from the concept of gender (in which case, there should be both ex-men and ex-women in their ranks).
FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:I am gonna go out on a limb and say the new poster korenteshi is a new account created today, with the express purpose of putting out bad faith arguments for the opposing side of this. The account was created literally today. And has only posted in this forum. I smell Fish.
I'm not going to dispute if this account is genuine or not. It's not my place to say. While their arguments have many holes in them, mostly the monk one, they've not been as bad faith as many other arguments made, so I'm not suspicious, or otherwise bothered. I'll call out bad faith in the arguments I see, but I'm not going to try and delegitimise what may be a perfectly human account.
And now we are back round to “how would they introduce it in the fluff”.
As I said, nothing in print now says you can’t have women. So just make some. In a story, in a model. No new sprue just the next marine kit.
The fluff for my marines is that they didn’t get the memo about it being men only and made women ones and it worked. Other chapters were like, “huh, cool, let’s try it.” Bingo! Women marines. I’ve thrown in a comment about the emperor possibly being gay to really upset the nay sayers too.
Sadly we still live in a world where people thinks it’s ok to make death threats for making a wizard in a children’s book gay or sticking a female looking head on a marine model. But if GW have printed a story 3 times in 30 years, once with a note on it saying not all this is still true by the way, then how the hell can we change something as core as that???
This is why these conversations often end up in name calling, because it’s so ludicrous a stance to take, that the lore cannot change, that to those of us asking for change, we can only assume there’s a hidden agenda. It’s impossible to believe that people actually feel that way about a dozen words that are no longer in print and have only been 3 or 4 times out of hundreds of texts, when every other asp3ct of the lore is open to change and contradiction. (Not saying anyone on here is a bigot btw).
Andykp wrote: And now we are back round to “how would they introduce it in the fluff”.
As I said, nothing in print now says you can’t have women. So just make some. In a story, in a model. No new sprue just the next marine kit.
The fluff for my marines is that they didn’t get the memo about it being men only and made women ones and it worked. Other chapters were like, “huh, cool, let’s try it.” Bingo! Women marines. I’ve thrown in a comment about the emperor possibly being gay to really upset the nay sayers too.
Sadly we still live in a world where people thinks it’s ok to make death threats for making a wizard in a children’s book gay or sticking a female looking head on a marine model. But if GW have printed a story 3 times in 30 years, once with a note on it saying not all this is still true by the way, then how the hell can we change something as core as that???
This is why these conversations often end up in name calling, because it’s so ludicrous a stance to take, that the lore cannot change, that to those of us asking for change, we can only assume there’s a hidden agenda. It’s impossible to believe that people actually feel that way about a dozen words that are no longer in print and have only been 3 or 4 times out of hundreds of texts, when every other asp3ct of the lore is open to change and contradiction. (Not saying anyone on here is a bigot btw).
This is like Groundhog day. Except the nightmare is continually knocking down the same arguments 5 times a page.
Andykp wrote: And now we are back round to “how would they introduce it in the fluff”.
As I said, nothing in print now says you can’t have women. So just make some. In a story, in a model. No new sprue just the next marine kit.
The fluff for my marines is that they didn’t get the memo about it being men only and made women ones and it worked. Other chapters were like, “huh, cool, let’s try it.” Bingo! Women marines. I’ve thrown in a comment about the emperor possibly being gay to really upset the nay sayers too.
Sadly we still live in a world where people thinks it’s ok to make death threats for making a wizard in a children’s book gay or sticking a female looking head on a marine model. But if GW have printed a story 3 times in 30 years, once with a note on it saying not all this is still true by the way, then how the hell can we change something as core as that???
This is why these conversations often end up in name calling, because it’s so ludicrous a stance to take, that the lore cannot change, that to those of us asking for change, we can only assume there’s a hidden agenda. It’s impossible to believe that people actually feel that way about a dozen words that are no longer in print and have only been 3 or 4 times out of hundreds of texts, when every other asp3ct of the lore is open to change and contradiction. (Not saying anyone on here is a bigot btw).
This is like Groundhog day. Except the nightmare is continually knocking down the same arguments 5 times a page.
That they tend to be a heavily religious brotherhood who's daily life is very stoic and involves a strict routine of activities relating to combat/training and prayer or worship, who are overall quite seclusive and ascetic as individuals, and who's main base tends to be a Fortress Monastery? If you don't consider them monastic than just what do you think counts?
Space Marines for the most part aren't particularly religious. There are exceptions, like Black Templars, bit most have a more pragmatic view of the Emperor.
And here's the thing - The main reason Nuns and Monks were separate orders was that sex was bad, and having people of the opposite gender around would be distracting. That's not an issue for Space Marines, who aren't functional in that department and have no interest in it (something explored briefly in the HH books when the Emperor's Children started feeling all tingly and resorted to extreme violence to sort it out, that being the only functional outlet for them).
So even if we do consider Space Marines to be monk analogues, there's no particular reason for their faith to require segregation of the sexes.
Mentlegen324 wrote:It's simply that it's something that's a part of the Space Marines
But is it? Like, really?
and has been so for decades
Like Guilliman being in stasis?
it's how they were created and changing that for the sake of it does not seem like a good idea at all.
It's not changing it for the sake of changing it. It's changing it because it's an outdated relic of exclusionism masquerading as pseudo-scientific jargon.
It had no reason to exist at the time, and has even less now. It's not relevant to modern SM design, it actively works against the current design philosophy, and represents existing exclusionary attitude towards *real human beings*.
And I hasten to add, the only reason they didn't have women in the first place was also "for the sake of it" - so I don't exactly think it's on strong footing.
They're an order of superhuman warrior monks
Citation needed. *Some* Space Marines are. Some Chapters are. But not all of them - case in point, the Space Wolves. What's "monk-ly" about them?
Funny you should say that. Space Wolves were the 'typical chapter' outlined in the Rogue Trader rulebook, with the Fang detailed as a sample Fortress-Monastery with dedicated prayer spaces and etc.
But then... GW nixed that and retconned them into what people now think of as Space Wolves today. (Around the same time Ultramarines went from a sketchy probationary chapter that had just proven themselves in the m41 Battle of Macragge to the posterboys)
Despite what people want to believe, it turns out background changes really are just that easy.
Sgt_Smudge 798058 11152976 wrote:
Actually, most Chapters don't worship the Emperor. Many will have their own Chapter cults (like Promethean Cult of the Salamanders), but cults aren't what we associate with Christian monks, are they?.
They revere him. Splitting hairs. In practice, they still pray.
And yes, would associate cult quite strongly, actuslly. Might use different names here and there and plenty organisations can be called cults from the outside. Opus dei. Knights of st. Columbanus. Etc. Theres plenty groups, organisations etc within the faith. Plenty heresies too.
And Christian monks aren't the only monks. Don't be so snide.
Sgt_Smudge 798058 11152976 wrote:
The Space Wolves laugh over their mjod at that.
Dunno. Monasteries have a strong drinking and brewing culture. Speak to the German and Scottish friars if you don't believe. Buckfast is one of thr five a day here. I also strongly doubt there's never been monks that drank their own beers, played drinking games, pranked each other with juvenile humour, scuffles etc within the faith or monks that have been more or less irreverent or religious than their peers - the amount of malarkey in the book of Kells for one is extraordinary. One monk wrote a poem about his cat in the margins of a holy text.
Monks are hilariously varied. There's a lot of cool anf over the top stuff there. Especially in a historical context. And monks fought historically. Quite a bit, actually. They were brawlers when they had to be and had no problems throwing down with the best of them (Irish monks in particular) when the clan next door kept stealing their cattle. Then there's monks of the far Eastern variety who practically invented martial arts. Diddling monks were a violent pain in thr side of the daimyo reuniting feudal Japan as well.
And also, on a point of order, in the Space Wolf novels, ragnar spent a hell of a lot of time praying to the Emperor.
Sounds like a lot more of thr monk aesthetics applies to space marines than you want to give credit for.
I'll assume you are simply unaware and doing that unintentional thing again where you jusy dismiss peoplrs arguments out of hand because you don't want to accept them.
Sgt_Smudge 798058 11152976 wrote:
And are Stormravens also giant flying birds? And what about Chapters who have fleet bases, and no Fortress-Monastery?
.
Stormravens as giant flying birbs? And that's your point? Jesus chrsit, Come on, dont be pedantic to the point of farce Smudge. You're doing that thing again of looking for a cheap shot.
As to mobile fleets, like the Daedalus Krata of thr minotaurs? These ships are often individually described as 'Flagships' of their fleets and the usual term ive seen used for for their "command role" in fleet based marines is 'mobile fortress monastery".
The 'warrior monk' thing counts for more than you want to give credit for.
Sgt_Smudge 798058 11152976 wrote:
I'm curious how you think the Space Wolves exhibit any of those traits, for a start.
Quite a few. See above. Thr amount ragnar literally prayed in all of his books shouts down a lot of the 'lol they're nothing like monks' chat. Also the references already put forward - brotherhood etc etc. And the strong elements of priesthood within the chapter is another indicator - iron priest, wolf priest, rune priest suggests a strong religious/spiritual world view which again strongly reinforces the religious brotherhood aesthetics. 'Monk' isn't just a clean, properly enunciated franciscan doing a chant. Monks can be rather varied. I mean, a clean shaven friar will look askance at a space wolf. He's loud. He's smelly. Hew wearing furs.He's probably still drunk. Maybe more so than Klaus even. His command of the prayers themselves might be.. questionable. Someone from a monastery in dark age norway on the other hand might simply mistake him for his mate Ivor and see absolutely nothing amiss. But outside of the dressing, a lot of it is still quite in keeping. Plus, knowing some of the histories of some of the orders- yeah, I can see it.
Sgt_Smudge 798058 11152976 wrote:
I consider those as *some* of the features that make *some* Space Marines what they are, but they don't cover every Chapter, or even the majority of modern Space Marine design.
Again, I reference how their treatment from GW in both the actual models, their aesthetic, their marketing, and their lore, points to the primary design of modern Space Marines being player freedom and customisation. Their monk design is not relevant any more and hasn't been for years, judging from GW's own attitude towards them.
Disagree. Monk design is still a strong fundamental design element of space marines in general. . Regardless, Its still relevant and its still maintained. Traditional, like it or not, still has some importance. Regardless of modern additions, and your world view/aspirations, this is still a game rooted in 80s references and 80s pist thatcherite culture and with a retro/regressive future that draws far stronger on historical archetypes than modern sensibilities and/or hopes, aspirations and optimisms.
And I'd argue player freedom and customisation have always been a thing. And I disagree that sms are the 'blank slate faction" ,any more than they've previously been where 'write your own lore and come up with your own paint sheme' was always a given fundamental. I think you are projecting more than a little bit here because its what you want them to be, not that that's wrong, by the way.
Id also queation the argument around 'player freedom and customisation', In a lot of ways, player freedom and customisation are pushed less now than it was, especially in terms of the models themselves. There only bring rules for released models now and squad upgrades being based on what's in thr box strongly hints at a more wmh approach (this is the model...this is what it has...and that's it...) than the freewheeling, far more open ended free-form of yesteryear. With the new single dynamic poses there are fewer and fewer easier ways of mixing bits and making your models 'yours'.
They might encourage you to write your own story but there's still lines to colour within though.
Andykp wrote: And now we are back round to “how would they introduce it in the fluff”.
[Snipped sensible reasoning]
You know what? I tend to I share your sentiment. It's not cool that people are attacked for stepping outside of the lines.with respect attacks are on both sides though. There was a guy savaged earlier on in the thread (like p25 i think...) for basically saying 'I'm white, I'm straight, I was bullied and I empathise and agree that representations important and so I support femarines'. He got savaged by someone else on the same side of the argument for daring to do this, that he had no right to talk about his negative experiences or to feel victimised or to empathise. His experiences were devalued and delegitimized and was told to literally 'feth right off' and it really stuck with me how out of line and frankly, disgusting it really was. Then there was thr poster saying how he was a part of an inclusive group, and the response from someone on the femarine side was essentially he was the provlem in the group and reason women didn't come forward with issues was because of him. Some really disgusting insinuations.
Truth is we can all be better.
Bear in mind, there is no hidden agenda for me at least. I have no objections to the setting staying as it is, for the simple reason I think writers shouldn't be policed, or told/suggested strongly what to write and who to write for/shamed if they don't, and if that's the story they want to tell, they should be allowed to tell it. While, admittedly its not entirely the same thing, I'm similarly wary of rewriting the 'classics' or 'books from another time' or burning them/censoring them/forbidding their reading because they include things you wouldn't get away with these days or because they don't fit with our modern expression of culture etc.
That said I think this change opens some interesting doors. So long as it's done well. Ironically on self reflection, I lean towards the 'homebrew/tweak rules' school of thought and frown on the absolutism of the cult of officialdom. Who am I to them complain if someone steps out of the 'lore of officialdom'?
As you ask, How to do it?
Multi pronged and multi-stage approach.
Get rid of the 'thirteen words'. Stick with Gender neutral language - aspirant, neophyte etc. If asked, 'it's old lore, no longer relevant'. If pressed 'does this mean girl marines' answer with 'gw has no officisl.stance on this. your models, do as you will. This is something we've talked about in house and we're going to leave it up to the players'. Soft squat. As a start. I'd also expand the sisters range and more new/mixed guard at this point. Push other factions other than the marines. Marine fatigue.
Assuming the world then doesn't end (pretty sure it wont), write it in properly. In terms of 'How"? Let's not 'primaris' it. Let's have some decent lore. I think 'thry were always there's is cheap.
Primarchs were whisked into the void. The Emperor needed soldiers desperately, he's lost most of his data, he had to make do with what was available. Astartes. Male only because of reasons. But it was never the final plan or the complete intent. The astartes project was unfinished and only rushed into production put of desperation as slanesh was about ti be rubbed out by the eldar. The work was unfinished. He thought I'll conquer the galaxy, then do it. Nope. Heresy erupted just as he'd started the work and we all knew what happened then. Loyalist primarchs afterwards decide to complete his project and give it to cawl, simce the imperium is buggered and they need every advantage. but without the emperors genius, it takes him.10k years to finish the job and make marines how they should have always been.
Introduce valkyries (seriously want those not-reivers!) via the space wolves who explain some of this and then via the rest if the aatartes. Maybe a few names characters with at least 1 model.
Old lore is respected. New lore tastefully introduced. And it still allows those who wish to 'maintain their traditions' to do so, while I go and buy all the not-reivers.
Actually, you know what? Even if gw never writes it, that's now my head canon.
The monks stereotypes applies partially to the Marine and only to some chapters. And the militant order or warriors isn't exclusively male (think about the Amazons, or the Valkyries).
There's another tropes however much more constant specifically when people that never sees one before see a marine: they're consistently presented as "angel".
There's a saying about discussion to determine the sex of angels.
Also, expectations are a funny thing. I've recovered both the Index Astartes 1 and 2. I was pretty sure somewhere a mention to the Marine gender would appear. Guess what? Wasn't there.
I always implied it, but in the entire two book there isn't a single mention to the fact that Marine are male (aside from some gendered pronouns). Reading all the 19 steps of the implantation process and the implications of that makes even clearer that neither the sex or the gender of the candidate have any bearing.
Finally, if we're talking about lore and consistency, There something else that I notice that irks me more: the genetic lineage aspect.
The progenoids requires combat experience to mature, and the genetic material may wary.
But as far as I'm aware the "lineage" of the progenoids is never mentioned as important: the two direct genetic descendants of Calgar, or the Emperor Champion, or other famous Marine Heros are faceless recruits....
That flys in the face of all the genetic obsession that otherwise Marine have in tracking their descendancy, their purity and their Primarchs and ancestors.
Also, expectations are a funny thing. I've recovered both the Index Astartes 1 and 2. I was pretty sure somewhere a mention to the Marine gender would appear. Guess what? Wasn't there.
I always implied it, but in the entire two book there isn't a single mention to the fact that Marine are male (aside from some gendered pronouns). Reading all the 19 steps of the implantation process and the implications of that makes even clearer that neither the sex or the gender of the candidate have any bearing.
'These considerations mean that only a small proportion of people can become Space Marines. They must be male because zygotes are keyed to male hormones and tissue types, hence the need for tissue tests and psychological screening.' 'Rites of Initiation: The Creation of a Space Marine' in Index Astartes Volume I, pg.7 (my emphasis)
The thing is that SM still don't view the Emperor as a God, and their prayers are not meant as such. You can still worship something if you aren't religious, the concepts aren't exclusive.
And again, if I live in a monastery with my friends, are we all monks because of that?
As for SM being the most customisable and blank slate army, the majority of the range comes with no inbuilt iconography or design cues that hobbyists are restricted by when making "Their Dudes".
The models are generally larger allowing for more space to apply customisation.
By having the largest range SM have the most bits to draw upon when making custom minis while the lack of inbuilt detail means that detailing can be added through choice.
SM have no design cues they must abide by when making a custom army. They don't need to follow in their parent chapters footsteps as seen with chapters like the Emperors Spears and Black Templars. You can go from post-apocalyptic survivors with scrapped armour to gilded Knights in shining armour and it's all 100% ok and doable in universe.
Sgt_Smudge wrote:Actually, most Chapters don't worship the Emperor. Many will have their own Chapter cults (like Promethean Cult of the Salamanders), but cults aren't what we associate with Christian monks, are they?.
They revere him. Splitting hairs. In practice, they still pray.
Revering him as a man is different to as a god. No, they explicitly *don't* follow the Imperial Cult, save for a selected few Chapters. Sorry, but no, it's not the same thing.
And yes, would associate cult quite strongly, actuslly. Might use different names here and there and plenty organisations can be called cults from the outside. Opus dei. Knights of st. Columbanus. Etc. Theres plenty groups, organisations etc within the faith. Plenty heresies too.
And Christian monks aren't the only monks. Don't be so snide.
You know exactly what this about though - this is about the stereotypical depiction of ascetic, cloistered Christian monks, who coop up in monasteries away from all the scary nuns. That's why gender came into this - because apparently they're themed off of monks, so that's why they don't have women. Very clearly, they're referring to Christian monks.
Also, while you bring in how you could associate "cults" with "monks", I'd also like to say that cults aren't always mono-gender, and are more often mixed gender. So, in a discussion about how being religious is an excuse to segregate on gender, that's not a point in your favour.
Sgt_Smudge wrote: The Space Wolves laugh over their mjod at that.
Dunno. Monasteries have a strong drinking and brewing culture.
Brewing culture? Yes.
Getting absolutely blasted on high strength incredibly toxic booze so potent that even Space Marines get drunk on it? Hahaha, no.
And again - look at the context. Their comments were about how Space Marines were isolated, individual, and ascetic - not carousing over mjod and mead halls. They very clearly weren't talking about perhaps the reality of monks (who almost certainly weren't as virginous as they claimed), but the pop culture icon of them being these hooded, pious, prim and proper religious servants. And, if you are claiming that Space Marines getting blasted on grain alcohol+ is totally fitting with their monk depiction, why don't other Chapters do it?
Monks are hilariously varied. There's a lot of cool anf over the top stuff there. Especially in a historical context. And monks fought historically. Quite a bit, actually. They were brawlers when they had to be and had no problems throwing down with the best of them (Irish monks in particular) when the clan next door kept stealing their cattle. Then there's monks of the far Eastern variety who practically invented martial arts. Diddling monks were a violent pain in thr side of the daimyo reuniting feudal Japan as well.
Absolutely right. But that's not what was just claimed by Mentlegen324, who said they were: "overall quite seclusive and ascetic as individuals" So which one is it? Plus, not all monks are men. So, if you wanna go claiming that monks can be totally varied, and don't fit that initial description, I'll also mention that not all monks are men - which is the ultimate issue here.
And also, on a point of order, in the Space Wolf novels, ragnar spent a hell of a lot of time praying to the Emperor.
So do the Imperial Guard. Are they all men too?
I think I should also mention that the Ragnar series is rather old, is it not? I could be mistaken, but I seem to be under the impression it's in the much older category of BL works, pre-Thunderwolves and Murderfangs and Helfrost weapons?
Sounds like a lot more of thr monk aesthetics applies to space marines than you want to give credit for.
No, it's that monks just happen to be incredibly varied - varied to the point that there are women monk orders out there.
What you're missing is that Mentlegen was not referring to those varied orders of monks, but to the stereotypical hooded robe, Latin chanting, cloistered in a dark library scribing books and forever eschewing the company of women monk - and not all Chapters follow that stereotype.
Sgt_Smudge wrote: And are Stormravens also giant flying birds? And what about Chapters who have fleet bases, and no Fortress-Monastery?
Stormravens as giant flying birbs? And that's your point? Jesus chrsit, Come on, dont be pedantic to the point of farce Smudge. You're doing that thing again of looking for a cheap shot.
On the contrary, I'd have called "see, they're called fortress-monasteries, that's proof they're all monks!!" as a weak point, because naming can be done for evocative reasons, or simply because they sound cool. Again, it overlooks all the other context of Space Marines not exactly following a monk's code of conduct. As mentioned just earlier, the Space Wolves were once much more "monk-like" in their fortress-monastery - and then their lore changed, rendering that detail now at odds.
As to mobile fleets, like the Daedalus Krata of thr minotaurs? These ships are often individually described as 'Flagships' of their fleets and the usual term ive seen used for for their "command role" in fleet based marines is 'mobile fortress monastery".
Yeah, flagships, but I don't see "mobile fortress-monastery" thrown around nearly as much. Flagship is the more common phrase by far.
The 'warrior monk' thing counts for more than you want to give credit for.
I disagree, considering the context of what's being said about their ties to being a monk - most notably this line: "overall quite seclusive and ascetic as individuals". That's not what all Space Marines are.
Sgt_Smudge wrote:I'm curious how you think the Space Wolves exhibit any of those traits, for a start.
Quite a few. See above. Thr amount ragnar literally prayed in all of his books shouts down a lot of the 'lol they're nothing like monks' chat. Also the references already put forward - brotherhood etc etc. And the strong elements of priesthood within the chapter is another indicator - iron priest, wolf priest, rune priest suggests a strong religious/spiritual world view which again strongly reinforces the religious brotherhood aesthetics. 'Monk' isn't just a clean, properly enunciated franciscan doing a chant. Monks can be rather varied. I mean, a clean shaven friar will look askance at a space wolf. He's loud. He's smelly. Hew wearing furs.He's probably still drunk. Maybe more so than Klaus even. His command of the prayers themselves might be.. questionable. Someone from a monastery in dark age norway on the other hand might simply mistake him for his mate Ivor and see absolutely nothing amiss. But outside of the dressing, a lot of it is still quite in keeping. Plus, knowing some of the histories of some of the orders- yeah, I can see it.
Now, you're absolutely right. Not all monks were the clean franciscans.
You might want to tell Mentlegen that though, because they claimed that Space Marines were monks because they were "overall quite seclusive and ascetic as individuals" - so clearly, either Mentlegen is only basing off the stereotype of monks (which Space Marines aren't), or they're actually referring to the wide and varied orders of monks... some of which include women. And when considering that this whole thing is about "should Space Marines be allowed women", the existence of women monks in less stereotypical monasteries would actually work in favour of women being part of the Chapters.
So which is it? Are Space Marines stereotypical monks, or not? Because that's the impression I think Mentlegen is working towards, but you're not - which one is it?
Sgt_Smudge wrote:I consider those as *some* of the features that make *some* Space Marines what they are, but they don't cover every Chapter, or even the majority of modern Space Marine design.
Again, I reference how their treatment from GW in both the actual models, their aesthetic, their marketing, and their lore, points to the primary design of modern Space Marines being player freedom and customisation. Their monk design is not relevant any more and hasn't been for years, judging from GW's own attitude towards them.
Disagree. Monk design is still a strong fundamental design element of space marines in general.
Disagree - GW have long since moved past it, and it is more of a background remnant than any actual design currently strived towards. Some Chapters still bear the trappings of the monk design, but most have moved closer to knights or soldiers, both modern and historical.
...modern sensibilities and/or hopes, aspirations and optimisms.
Including women isn't "modern sensibilities" any more so than including non-white characters is a modern sensibility.
And I'd argue player freedom and customisation have always been a thing.
So why can't I take women Space Marines? Why am I explicitly discouraged from taking them?
And I disagree that sms are the 'blank slate faction" ,any more than they've previously been where 'write your own lore and come up with your own paint sheme' was always a given fundamental.
Yeah - exactly. Space Marines have always been the "write your own lore and colour scheme" faction, and GW have only gone and leaned harder and harder into it. Some of the most detailed rules for custom Chapter creation compared to the other "create a subfaction" tables, countless examples of new Chapters being made up in each new publication, guides from GW how to design your own Chapters, easily convertible models, massive aesthetic difference encouraged between different Chapters, GW releasing unpainted funko pops and poseable Space Marines for people to paint in their own Chapters' colours - they're easily the blank slate faction first and foremost.
So why the limitation on gender?
I think you are projecting more than a little bit here because its what you want them to be, not that that's wrong, by the way.
And I'd think that the people clinging to them needing to be male because they're monks are similarly projecting a long-abandoned design feature onto a faction that has moved away from those aspects.
Id also queation the argument around 'player freedom and customisation', In a lot of ways, player freedom and customisation are pushed less now than it was, especially in terms of the models themselves. There only bring rules for released models now and squad upgrades being based on what's in thr box strongly hints at a more wmh approach (this is the model...this is what it has...and that's it...) than the freewheeling, far more open ended free-form of yesteryear. With the new single dynamic poses there are fewer and fewer easier ways of mixing bits and making your models 'yours'.
Making models "yours" isn't about how different they are from everyone else's. It's about how much you can put what you want into them, and if I wanted women Space Marines... well, then I'm kinda out of luck.
Plus, Space Marines still have more options than basically every other faction out there anyways.
They might encourage you to write your own story but there's still lines to colour within though.
Of course there's still lines. I just wonder why the line is drawn below the waist. That's all it really is.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Gert wrote:SM have no design cues they must abide by when making a custom army. They don't need to follow in their parent chapters footsteps as seen with chapters like the Emperors Spears and Black Templars. You can go from post-apocalyptic survivors with scrapped armour to gilded Knights in shining armour and it's all 100% ok and doable in universe.
Pretty much this.
The sheer variety of what a Space Marine can be is enormous. You can have the super religious Black Templars, or you can go for the Marines Malevolent and their scrapping, stealing, scavenging ways. You can go for the Mongolian themed White Scars, to the Roman themed Ultramarines, to the Viking themed Space Wolves. Your Space Marines can follow the Codex, or they might not. They can worship the Emperor, or they might not. They might be Primaris, they might not. They might be loyalist to the core, or they might flirt with a little bit of a rebellious streak.
All these choices, but women are still off the list? Why?
Is anyone still clinging to the fluff being a reason not to change to allowing female marines? Even after it’s been shown to be a line of text printed 4 times over 30 years and isn’t in any of the current lore and hasn’t been printed for 4 years.
Andykp wrote: Is anyone still clinging to the fluff being a reason not to change to allowing female marines? Even after it’s been shown to be a line of text printed 4 times over 30 years and isn’t in any of the current lore and hasn’t been printed for 4 years.
So we've now had the goalposts shifted around between "It is old lore from 20 years ago, it's non-canon now as it's not been seen since" and "it's not said often so its not important" and "it was re-printed 4 years ago, it's still not current" and "It's just fluff so they should just get rid of it"?
Andykp wrote: Is anyone still clinging to the fluff being a reason not to change to allowing female marines? Even after it’s been shown to be a line of text printed 4 times over 30 years and isn’t in any of the current lore and hasn’t been printed for 4 years.
So we've now had the goalposts shifted around between "It is old lore from 20 years ago, it's non-canon now as it's not been seen since" and "it's not said often so its not important" and "it was re-printed 4 years ago, it's still not current" and "It's just fluff so they should just get rid of it"?
I don't think the goalposts have shifted at all from "this lore isn't considered relevant by GW because they haven't emphasised it's importance in the faction's design for decades", which has been my stance.
The points here are that: 1. Space Marines being inspired by monks isn't accurate any more (even if we step away from your stereotypical monk, that opens up the possibility of female monks) in a factional design sense
2. The piece of lore that dictates why Space Marines can't be women is barely referenced by GW, and certainly not treated with the same weight that is afforded to the Sisters of Battle (evidenced by its lack of appearance in Codexes, unlike the explanation given to Sisters of Battle)
3. The lore that dictates why Space Marines can't be women is entirely arbitrary, and has no logical reason to exist
4. Space Marines are now defined by their freedom and customisation, which the restriction on gender only stands in the face of the current design philosophy
And that's just on why the lore has no right to be what it is, let alone why the lore is even a valid excuse in the first place.
Being a monk means dedicating one's life to a religious or spiritual purpose. It means living some sort of ascetic lifestyle to not get distracted by "earthly matters." It doesn't even mean living as a community; the monastic orders are more well known, but some monks were hermits and sometimes went to impressive lengths to isolate themselves.
Space marines really aren't monks. Their purpose is to fight, not to achieve enlightenment. If you want to compare them to something real, look at crusades-era militant orders like the Knights Templar or Knights Hospitaller. They took vows and lived somewhat like monks, but their "job" was to protect pilgrims and holy sites. They were knights, not monks.
I already found the reference you mention. And thanks so I have it on English too (my Index Astartes is translated).
I'll reiterate: there is no reason why female space marine are not possible. The "lore" mention male tissues and hormones as limit. Unfortunately the only (very weak) explanation that could have had some consistency would have been the Y chromosome (even there twenty pages ago we made a reference of man with XX and female with XY so, even this don't make sense)... But the genetic of the candidate is really an afterthought for a Marine candidates: genetic material is provided by progenoids and bedded in the new organs: indoctrination, willpower, chemical treatment and determination are much more important in the process.
But even ignoring that, guess what? "Male" tissue and "male" hormones do not exist. All hormones and tissue are present in both male and women, their balance is what change (yeah, exactly what the initiation process alter radically).
And not, you can't call some bs like "in the 40k the distinction is real". Biology in 40k is the same we have, expect for those thing that do not exist (yet). The simplest and more consistent interpretation to save every interpretation (that should be a priority: a setting subservant of its fans, not the opposite) is that the Imperium is simply ignorant, they always had the option for female marine but never realize that.
Primaris are also possibly female, and with a very short story arc we only need to show how the Imperium realizes that (and even more important how do they manage to tell this to their own extremely close-minded population).
No retcon, no changes to the lore, people can legitimately have their Marine female both as Firstborns and Primaris without having to suffer some idiot that pretend to determine how other should play with their toys... and a much more coherent and consistent background, both towards the past grimdark (damn: the Imperium really don't even know how their own Marine works) and also to the current more enlightening fluff (Guilliman is a pragmatic, and this is a pragmatic decision, nothing more).
If instead you're sure that the lore of a monastic order is really important to Marine, let me point you towards the Shaolin. Don't you think the Shaolin warrior order is a perfectly fine representation of Marine lifestyle and philosophy?
Guess what? Female Shaolin are accepted there since... Well, since forever really, they've never been excluded in the first place.
I really don't get how people can behave masochistically and avoid a clear win-win.
Last, but not least, you should be careful when you approach a "lore" with acritical thinking: if you do, you're not allowed to build any hypothetical or any conclusion from the lore itself.
Lore and narrative is an incomplete description by definition... It's a basic concept of text interpretation: one of it's more evident example is the war wound of Doctor Watson on Doyle's Sherlock Holmes.
You can either use the lore, or you can only care about what is explicitly stated (so, I suppose we should have lost you at Centurions, right?). You can't do both at your choice, because then everything you says is without meaning.
Andykp wrote: Is anyone still clinging to the fluff being a reason not to change to allowing female marines? Even after it’s been shown to be a line of text printed 4 times over 30 years and isn’t in any of the current lore and hasn’t been printed for 4 years.
So we've now had the goalposts shifted around between "It is old lore from 20 years ago, it's non-canon now as it's not been seen since" and "it's not said often so its not important" and "it was re-printed 4 years ago, it's still not current" and "It's just fluff so they should just get rid of it"?
The lore or fluff as I call it, it’s all the same, has never been a reason to maintain the status quo. That is not moving as a goal post. I will spell it out one more time as to why; the lore always changes and always has, nothing in inviolate. Marines have changed and evolved, the emperor has the whole setting has. The actual bit of fluff that people who don’t want female marines cling to so desperately was 13 words first printed in 1989. In the last few pages we have taken a look at how current that is and if it is still “canon” (another word I hate using because it relies on a non dictionary definition so is ambiguous).
We have all found that the same 13 words were reprinted, pretty much exact reprint of the 1989 article in 2002. Then again in 2017. And once online with disclaimer saying much of the “lore” or fluff has changed. That’s it. No goal posts moved at all. We are looking at how relevant and how vital to the setting this line of text is. It is not currently in print in any of the background or rules books published as far as anyone can tell and hasn’t featured in any of the codexs or rule books ever. It has only appeared in white dwarf, collections of white dwarf articles and once on warhammer community.
Now the goal posts are exactly where they always were, the goal is, is this line of text a good reason not to change the rules and allow female marines? I say categorically, NO. if it was such a vital faction defining piece of information it would be in their codex or at least in print somewhere, anywhere. It isn’t and has never been in their codex. 8 editions of codex and it has been omitted every time. Further more if you were a new person to the game then you would have no idea from the current line of books available that women could not be made into space marines.
Goal posts exactly where they were. If you think something published 4 times in 32 years and neve in a core text, when they have had every opportunity to have it published in every edition and every spacemarine background bit of info, is so vital to the faction that to change would destroy their identity then I would say to you that you are wrong. There’s my evidence against the fluff/lore argument. Prove me wrong. Show me how these 13 words of text matter so much to the identity of spacemarines as a faction.
PS. I am an old git. When I started playing lore was called fluff. So I call it that. I’ve used lore more in this thread because people get upset when I call it fluff. The two terms to me are entirely interchangeable. Don’t read anymore into it than that.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Cybtroll wrote: I already found the reference you mention. And thanks so I have it on English too (my Index Astartes is translated).
I'll reiterate: there is no reason why female space marine are not possible. The "lore" mention male tissues and hormones as limit. Unfortunately the only (very weak) explanation that could have had some consistency would have been the Y chromosome (even there twenty pages ago we made a reference of man with XX and female with XY so, even this don't make sense)... But the genetic of the candidate is really an afterthought for a Marine candidates: genetic material is provided by progenoids and bedded in the new organs: indoctrination, willpower, chemical treatment and determination are much more important in the process.
But even ignoring that, guess what? "Male" tissue and "male" hormones do not exist. All hormones and tissue are present in both male and women, their balance is what change (yeah, exactly what the initiation process alter radically).
And not, you can't call some bs like "in the 40k the distinction is real". Biology in 40k is the same we have, expect for those thing that do not exist (yet). The simplest and more consistent interpretation to save every interpretation (that should be a priority: a setting subservant of its fans, not the opposite) is that the Imperium is simply ignorant, they always had the option for female marine but never realize that.
Primaris are also possibly female, and with a very short story arc we only need to show how the Imperium realizes that (and even more important how do they manage to tell this to their own extremely close-minded population).
No retcon, no changes to the lore, people can legitimately have their Marine female both as Firstborns and Primaris without having to suffer some idiot that pretend to determine how other should play with their toys... and a much more coherent and consistent background, both towards the past grimdark (damn: the Imperium really don't even know how their own Marine works) and also to the current more enlightening fluff (Guilliman is a pragmatic, and this is a pragmatic decision, nothing more).
If instead you're sure that the lore of a monastic order is really important to Marine, let me point you towards the Shaolin. Don't you think the Shaolin warrior order is a perfectly fine representation of Marine lifestyle and philosophy?
Guess what? Female Shaolin are accepted there since... Well, since forever really, they've never been excluded in the first place.
I really don't get how people can behave masochistically and avoid a clear win-win.
Last, but not least, you should be careful when you approach a "lore" with acritical thinking: if you do, you're not allowed to build any hypothetical or any conclusion from the lore itself.
Lore and narrative is an incomplete description by definition... It's a basic concept of text interpretation: one of it's more evident example is the war wound of Doctor Watson on Doyle's Sherlock Holmes.
You can either use the lore, or you can only care about what is explicitly stated (so, I suppose we should have lost you at Centurions, right?). You can't do both at your choice, because then everything you says is without meaning.
I have another example to illustrate why the lore take at face value irks me (because I think that many don't get it, without any necessary malice attached).
How would you react if the selection process of a Space Marine would be based on astrology?
Like, only a Gemini can become a White Scar, while only a Sagittarius can become a Dark Angel? And let me be clear: I don not intend "in the faulty Apothecary ideas" (that would be fine and consistent with the lore).
I mean in a really limiting and pseudo-scientific way, like "only those born under the Gemini have the biochemistry needed for the implants". Zodiac sign applied to people of other world that don't even have the same sky.
Won't it drastically degrade the lore of Marines? I think it will: lore need to be internally consistent and have a verisimilitude.
I see the current lore explanation for female marine exactly in the exact same way: a problem the cheapens the lore and damage the setting overall for no gain at all.
Andykp wrote: PS. I am an old git. When I started playing lore was called fluff. So I call it that. I’ve used lore more in this thread because people get upset when I call it fluff. The two terms to me are entirely interchangeable. Don’t read anymore into it than that.
Being also an early adopter of 40k (Hardback RT, and photocopied chits stuck onto cereal box cardboard Battle for the Farm early - I actually made one of those deodorant stick and zoid parts tanks early - *Rippyfish* early ) I find "fluff" a bit dismissive and "lore" kinda pretentious. Background has served me well down the years
Andykp wrote: PS. I am an old git. When I started playing lore was called fluff. So I call it that. I’ve used lore more in this thread because people get upset when I call it fluff. The two terms to me are entirely interchangeable. Don’t read anymore into it than that.
Being also an early adopter of 40k (Hardback RT, and photocopied chits stuck onto cereal box cardboard Battle for the Farm early - I actually made one of those deodorant stick and zip parts tanks early - *Rippyfish* early ) I find "fluff" a bit dismissive and "lore" kinda pretentious. Background has served me well down the years.
I can work with that. Love battle of the farm. Replayed it in 8th edition rules with the same numbers of models. It was over very quick. Games much more Killy now.
Andykp wrote: Is anyone still clinging to the fluff being a reason not to change to allowing female marines? Even after it’s been shown to be a line of text printed 4 times over 30 years and isn’t in any of the current lore and hasn’t been printed for 4 years.
So we've now had the goalposts shifted around between "It is old lore from 20 years ago, it's non-canon now as it's not been seen since" and "it's not said often so its not important" and "it was re-printed 4 years ago, it's still not current" and "It's just fluff so they should just get rid of it"?
Andykp wrote: Is anyone still clinging to the fluff being a reason not to change to allowing female marines? Even after it’s been shown to be a line of text printed 4 times over 30 years and isn’t in any of the current lore and hasn’t been printed for 4 years.
So we've now had the goalposts shifted around between "It is old lore from 20 years ago, it's non-canon now as it's not been seen since" and "it's not said often so its not important" and "it was re-printed 4 years ago, it's still not current" and "It's just fluff so they should just get rid of it"?
No we have not.
Want to try a different lie to reframe things?
Just what are you accusing of being a "lie"? Something analogous to all of those things have been said over the past few pages.
GW is less respectful of its fluff than most posters here are it seems.
There were never sanguinary guard - until GW invented them
orks grew in marsupial pouches - until GW decided dirt foetus was better than green vaginas
There were never space marine fighter jets - until GW decided to invent them
The c'tan enslaved the necrons and used them as a force to harvest the galaxy - until GW decided that the necrons actually overthrew them
Marines were T3 and 4+ sv - until GW decided they shouldn't be
All imperials were exectuted on seeing chaos - until GW decided to dial it back
Hover sleds pulled by wolves never existed - until GW decided Grimnar should have one
The list is endless until you get to the one most closely related to this conversation:
Marines had a set number of organs and physiological features along with the same holy equipment for 10,000 years - until GW decided their geneseed could be changed and the imperium could invent whole new swathes of weapons.
It really doesn't matter how justified people arguing in favor of male only marines feel they are - GW changes the lore to suit their business model constantly. If they believe that female heads on the marine sprue will boost their sales, then they will appear. And it will all be very briefly explained with 'Cawl's discovery of a genetic switch that his new organs can turn off to allow for women's bodies to accept the geneseed' or something similar.
The only sacred cow in 40k that you could use to defend your position - the inviolability of the emperor's holy geneseed - has been clearly and definitively killed by GW. They violated it with all the glee of a company for whom fluff is not a sacred text, but a commodity to be exploited and mined for new ways to increase profit.
FezzikDaBullgryn wrote: Sorry, I had a weekend with the family, and I missed about 2 pages it seems. After 48 hours, any new arguments or just the same?
Same old stuff. Being accused of moving the goal posts on what counts as current, because we decided to look in to when the men only but was last published. I think the accusation comes from the fact it was ages ago and isn’t in print now and barely ever has been so the “ lore” is even less defensible now.
FezzikDaBullgryn wrote: Sorry, I had a weekend with the family, and I missed about 2 pages it seems. After 48 hours, any new arguments or just the same?
I've just caught up on about 8 pages and honestly the last 2-3 have gotten much more caught up on whether space marines are "warrior monks" or not, which seems somewhat unrelated to the topic at hand!
As for the rest of it, there was a reasonable point that women might object to being told that they have changed the game just so that they can play - reinforcing the idea that all-male models actually means women are excluded and that adding female heads is further reinforcing this as truth rather than debunking it and throwing off the idea that the gender of your small plastic models matters at all. This will do doubt be rebuffed by someone saying that women want it.
The lore has been looked over with a fine tooth comb and it has become clear that the whole "it can't work on women" thing is so antiquated that it's only hanging on by the slimmest of fingertips, and that only because they have ignored it rather than adding the words "it can work on boys and girls". So the lore is basically open, and the only thing keeping it male is the pronouns they use.
Smudge came up with an excellent suggestion to roll them in with the primaris changes, with a great lore-reason for doubling recruits. A much better reason to do it than "so women can play".
Honestly, I think with the last 2 pages of people arguing about if marines are monks, the lore reasons for keeping it all male having basically vanished and me feeling appeased that we can write it in with some sensitivity and not just make it "token women so women can play too", most people seem to be in agreement at this point!
Hellebore wrote:GW is less respectful of its fluff than most posters here are it seems.
Pretty much. Lore can be changed. Lore *is* changed. Using lore to defend why something should be kept doesn't work if you can't defend why the lore exists in the first place.
some bloke wrote:I've just caught up on about 8 pages and honestly the last 2-3 have gotten much more caught up on whether space marines are "warrior monks" or not, which seems somewhat unrelated to the topic at hand!
I believe the monk stuff is due to some users claiming that Space Marines don't have women because they're meant to be evocative of warrior monks, which apparently means that they'd all be men. The problem with this is that Space Marines aren't very evocative of monks any more, at least, certainly not your stereotypical monk, and if we're throwing in atypical monks, then many of them can be women.
It's not a particularly solid point.
As for the rest of it, there was a reasonable point that women might object to being told that they have changed the game just so that they can play - reinforcing the idea that all-male models actually means women are excluded and that adding female heads is further reinforcing this as truth rather than debunking it and throwing off the idea that the gender of your small plastic models matters at all.
No-one said it was "just so they can play".
What was said was "to break the all-boys mentality" which is very much pervasive in the hobby.
Small anecdote, relevant to this, actually, but an anecdote no less: catching up with some friends last night, and one brings up how a lot of people they know play Warhammer (referring to 40k), and that they don't really know what's going on, but they smile and nod anyways. The one thing she *did* say she noticed? "Where's the women?"
Even amongst non-players, the all-boys image is very strong - and while I showed them my own Sisters of Battle project, it didn't change that they weren't even aware of Sisters, but were very much aware of all the rest. My point? The most iconic 40k factions are predominantly male, and this creates a "male only" impression to observers. That's not a good look.
As for "reinforcing that the gender of your models matters at all" - no, the people making sure that stays reinforced are the ones crying and screaming when someone puts a woman's head on a Space Marine. And while I'm aware that people in this thread have said "but I wouldn't do that!!", that doesn't really mean anything when other people do.
This will do doubt be rebuffed by someone saying that women want it.
Uh, yeah. Because they do?
I'm not sure if it's just a text thing, but it really does sound like you're erasing or underplaying that aspect, and I'm not sure why. If a sizable portion of the women hobbyist community are saying "hey, we'd like this", I'm not sure why we should be listening to people saying "but I don't think that women *really* want that"?
I'm not sure if it's just a text thing, but it really does sound like you're erasing or underplaying that aspect, and I'm not sure why. If a sizable portion of the women hobbyist community are saying "hey, we'd like this", I'm not sure why we should be listening to people saying "but I don't think that women *really* want that"?
I am taking it as anecdotal at best, thus far I've only seen vague references to it. I've not seen evidence of "a sizeable portion of the women hobbyist community" requesting it.
"I know some women who want this" is as valid as when we were saying "the lore says...". It's anecdotal at best, and at least that dodgy bit of lore was written down somewhere along the line. I could say "I know a hundred women who love space marines the way they are". Without evidence, anecdotes hold very little weight.
Plus, I am also skeptical about changing something because of an outspoken community, because these things never take into account all the people quietly enjoying things the way they are. Lucozade caved to people requesting that they reduce the sugar content, and now it tastes horrible. They didn't notice all the people quietly enjoying it the way it is because nobody makes signs and marches up and down shouting about how good things are right now! (Not saying anyone's doing this, btw, it's just a passing comment).
Ultimately, if 100,000 people think something's fine but don't say anything and 200 people think it's not fine and are outspoken about it, then people start saying things like "most people want this!", because you have 200 people saying they want it and nobody saying they don't. 100,000 people actually either don't want it or don't care either way, but they aren't shouting about it so they get overlooked.
Adding female marines so marines get an in-lore boost to their recruitment, plus some cool new models, perhaps even a new unit about how the gene-seed reacts with certain women to make them even more dangerous soldiers than normal marines, making an elite CC unit with lore to back it up, and that sort of thing is 100% an awesome route to go down. But doing it because some people said they wanted it, not because it's an awesome thing but because they wanted to feel included, is the wrong reason to do it.
I guess I just feel that if you change things to "add female models to make women feel included", then you're reinforcing the idea that they are not included because the models aren't female. You're feeding the "boys get action man and girls get barbies" mentality which makes the problems in the first place. You're treating the symptoms whilst strengthening the actual reason for them.
Don't add girls to things to let girls play. Instead make the shops and such more welcoming to them, and stop reinforcing the idea that "you can't play with those because they are for boys". There is no reason why women can't play with space marines as they are. Nobody is telling them they can't use them, and most people don't think that women shouldn't play (excluding the donkeycaves of the world). The only reasons for people to not do something because they "don't feel represented" is a fundamental issue with society and the conditioning that people have received, and instead of tearing it down people build around it and then wonder why it's still there afterwards.
Saying "women don't feel represented by men, so we added women" does nothing to solve the actual problem, which is "women don't feel represented by men" - it only reinforces it. Saying "it's okay, you can come in, we have female models for you" is reinforcing the idea that they couldn't before, because of the models being male. People need to stop separating themselves into groups and then complaining that their group isn't represented. I've never watched an advert that featured a woman and thought "I can't buy this toothpaste because it was a woman on the advert". I consider "people" to represent me, and then make logical deductions that some product aren't relevant to me. In the same way as when I see adverts which clearly picked out actors to represent every race they could think of I think "wow, that was a racist way to cast that advert", I see people saying "we need to add women so that women feel like they can play" as sexist, and fundamentally more so than "why are marines all men in the first place". Marines were all men because those were the models and they couldn't afford to make women too, and then they added some lore to make that canon, and then the lore got (rightly) buried. The decisions were made for non-sexist reasons - so they didn't need to make more models for the same range, rather than "so they can all be men". Choosing to add female models so that women will like them is a fundamentally sexist decision to make. Adding female marines because they would be awesome is not.
So, once again to summarize:
"Yes" to female marines, add to the lore and get them added because that would be cool as hell and makes sense.
"No" to doing it just so that women feel like they can play the game.
"No" to doing it just so that women feel like they can play the game.
And herein lies the problem.
Saying "women don't feel represented by men, so we added women" does nothing to solve the actual problem, which is "women don't feel represented by men" - it only reinforces it.
What? So the problem that you'd like to solve is that women don't feel represented by men? So you want women to feel represented by men? Why?
There is no reason why women can't play with space marines as they are.
Right. Everybody is aware of that. They just don't want to play with space marines as they are. They want to play with space marines with female head swaps.
If having barbies is a problem, I don't see how forcing girls to play with GI Joes is a solution to that problem. (not that female space marines are in any way comparable to barbie, nor are they even a "girl's toy for girls")
"No" to doing it just so that women feel like they can play the game.
And herein lies the problem.
Saying "women don't feel represented by men, so we added women" does nothing to solve the actual problem, which is "women don't feel represented by men" - it only reinforces it.
What? So the problem that you'd like to solve is that women don't feel represented by men? So you want women to feel represented by men? Why?
There is no reason why women can't play with space marines as they are.
Right. Everybody is aware of that. They just don't want to play with space marines as they are. They want to play with space marines with female head swaps.
I feel like I've steered this into somewhat more political waters than it needed to be, apologies.
1: Not sure why changing things to improve them instead of to pander to the outspoken few is a problem.
2: Why shouldn't women feel represented by men? Why should there be that wall there between them? Why should a woman look at a space marine and judge the model and the game as a whole based on the gender of said plastic model?
3: "I don't like this, you have to change it" is not a behaviour that should be met with positive reinforcement.
There have been a huge amount of very good reasons for changing marines to include females. this includes:
• Doubling recruitment thanks to the work done creating primaris marines, which can be expanded to also work on women, huzzah!
• They would be cool models
• There's not any real reason why there aren't any any more, as the old lore is basically forgotten.
There is also one bad reason which people keep carping on about as if it's the only reason that matters:
• So that women can play the game
Now, I don't doubt that by adding female marines because it makes sense to and they would be cool models would have positive effects for the gaming community regarding the amount of women who are interested in the hobby. But I do feel very strongly that this should not be the driving reason why the change is made. Not least because GW has already made it clear they are trying to avoid politics in their games.
I feel like I've steered this into somewhat more political waters than it needed to be, apologies.
1: Not sure why changing things to improve them instead of to pander to the outspoken few is a problem.
Who are the "outspoken few" are you talking about here? We've established already that women are a minority in the 40k hobby so are you implying that the majority, i.e. hobbyists who are men, should not take their opinions into account because there are fewer of them?
Spoiler:
2: Why shouldn't women feel represented by men? Why should there be that wall there between them? Why should a woman look at a space marine and judge the model and the game as a whole based on the gender of said plastic model?
The same reason a PoC isn't going to feel represented by a white person. It's pretty simple and I'm 100% sure you know why representation matters to people but are choosing to be difficult instead.
Spoiler:
3: "I don't like this, you have to change it" is not a behaviour that should be met with positive reinforcement.
Except this isn't that. This is "The hobby has a very boys-only mentality that has created an uncomfortable/hostile environment for women hobbyists and the crux of the boys-only mentality is the male-exclusive nature of the flagship faction that has poor background reasoning for why it is male-exclusive". Of course, if you'd actually read and understood the arguments that have been presented you'd know that.
Spoiler:
There have been a huge amount of very good reasons for changing marines to include females. this includes:
• Doubling recruitment thanks to the work done creating primaris marines, which can be expanded to also work on women, huzzah!
• They would be cool models
• There's not any real reason why there aren't any any more, as the old lore is basically forgotten.
There is also one bad reason which people keep carping on about as if it's the only reason that matters:
• So that women can play the game
The background reasons are justification for the IRL reason. You can't have one without the other.
Spoiler:
Now, I don't doubt that by adding female marines because it makes sense to and they would be cool models would have positive effects for the gaming community regarding the amount of women who are interested in the hobby. But I do feel very strongly that this should not be the driving reason why the change is made. Not least because GW has already made it clear they are trying to avoid politics in their games.
Representation isn't politics, just like addressing racism/sexism/homophobia/transphobia/bigotry isn't politics.
And just so we are 100% clear on whether 40k is political or not, it absolutely is and always has been a mockery of religious dogmatism, fascism, and militarism.
Who are the "outspoken few" are you talking about here? We've established already that women are a minority in the 40k hobby so are you implying that the majority, i.e. hobbyists who are men, should not take their opinions into account because there are fewer of them?
Not at all. I am simply explaining how one person shouting has more voice than a thousand staying quiet.
The same reason a PoC isn't going to feel represented by a white person. It's pretty simple and I'm 100% sure you know why representation matters to people but are choosing to be difficult instead.
And I see this as an issue in that a PoC feels like anyone of a different race to them is not representative of them. That is, fundamentally, racism. "I can't do this because there's no PoC in the advert" is racist, because it involves making a decision based on race. If you stop seeing everything as groups of race, gender etc. Then you'll find that you don't have a thousand boxes to tick just to make sure that everyone is represented. "People" should be enough.
Except this isn't that. This is "The hobby has a very boys-only mentality that has created an uncomfortable/hostile environment for women hobbyists and the crux of the boys-only mentality is the male-exclusive nature of the flagship faction that has poor background reasoning for why it is male-exclusive". Of course, if you'd actually read and understood the arguments that have been presented you'd know that.
Setting aside the needless dig at the end of your comment in the pile of "not worth rising to", Yes, I agree that 40k is a very male-oriented hobby and that it is uncomfortable or hostile for women. But I also don't think that the problem there is in the gender of the models, it's in the social skills (or lack thereof) of the common fanbase. And yes, I agree that marines have basically nothing tying them to being all male, and that they should be made all female - as you would know if you had read or understood any of my previous posts (dammit I rose to it...).
The background reasons are justification for the IRL reason. You can't have one without the other.
I'd say you're wrong there.
The grimness and darkness of 40k has notably reduced over time. The lore has changed, without clear reasons, because they had IRL reasons for making it more family friendly. That's IRL reasons and no lore reasons.
Similarly, if someone said "Hey ,why don't we make a faction of marines who are vikings and ride wolves and other awesome things", there's no IRL reason for that except "That would be so awesome". There's no agenda to make 40k more representative to vikings when they made space wolves. They did it because it was awesome. Lore reasons happened to justify the chapter, and they made it happen. That's what they need to to for female marines. There should be no political agenda driving changes to a game set in a fictional universe. And yes, adding female marines to increase representation is political. Adding them because they'd be awesome is not. I hope that difference isn't lost on anyone.
Representation isn't politics, just like addressing racism/sexism/homophobia/transphobia/bigotry isn't politics.
And just so we are 100% clear on whether 40k is political or not, it absolutely is and always has been a mockery of religious dogmatism, fascism, and militarism.
Anything which is done to further a specific way of thinking externally to 40k is political. It is real-world issues becoming problems for the game to solve. If the Nazis had won and every race was changed to be aryan, that would be political. Perhaps people are so used to politicians being self-serving lying hot-air machines stealing oxygen from the average person that they can't distinguish the phrase "it's not political" from "it's not a bad thing".
Just because it improves things by our current standards does not mean it isn't political.
adjective
relating to the government or the public affairs of a country.
Saying women should be more represented in a hobby does not meet the definition of Political. Please refrain from trying to use incorrect definitions of common words to fit your argument.
adjective
relating to the government or the public affairs of a country.
Saying women should be more represented in a hobby does not meet the definition of Political. Please refrain from trying to use incorrect definitions of common words to fit your argument.
Fair enough, I stand corrected on the definition of political, though I daresay that there is a much more colloquially used aspect of it which does relate to the whole "political correctness" thing.
Nevertheless, yes let's make female marines, so they can be awesome.
adjective
relating to the government or the public affairs of a country.
Saying women should be more represented in a hobby does not meet the definition of Political. Please refrain from trying to use incorrect definitions of common words to fit your argument.
po·lit·i·cal | \ pə-ˈli-ti-kəl
Definition of political
1a : of or relating to government, a government, or the conduct of government
b : of, relating to, or concerned with the making as distinguished from the administration of governmental policy
2 : of, relating to, involving, or involved in politics and especially party politics 3 : organized in governmental terms political units
4 : involving or charged or concerned with acts against a government or a political system political prisoners
Stop being a dishonest pedant.
And if you're next argument is "Women aren't political" have a cookie, you're right! Because that's not what's being claimed and you know it.
Representation is very much the party politics of the moment with Right leaning figures railing against Critical Theory and equity initiatives while the Left is championing Anti-Structural Racism and progressive initiatives.
The idea of calling for representational equity edits on a piece of fiction very much echos the political zeitgeist of the moment...
Not at all. I am simply explaining how one person shouting has more voice than a thousand staying quiet.
If you don't care enough to get involved in the conversation then your opinion doesn't get considered. The "silent majority" doesn't matter because they are silent.
Spoiler:
And I see this as an issue in that a PoC feels like anyone of a different race to them is not representative of them. That is, fundamentally, racism. "I can't do this because there's no PoC in the advert" is racist, because it involves making a decision based on race. If you stop seeing everything as groups of race, gender etc. Then you'll find that you don't have a thousand boxes to tick just to make sure that everyone is represented. "People" should be enough.
Yeah, that ain't what I said chief but go off on how PoC are racist for wanting to see themselves represented in media.
Spoiler:
Setting aside the needless dig at the end of your comment in the pile of "not worth rising to", Yes, I agree that 40k is a very male-oriented hobby and that it is uncomfortable or hostile for women. But I also don't think that the problem there is in the gender of the models, it's in the social skills (or lack thereof) of the common fanbase. And yes, I agree that marines have basically nothing tying them to being all male, and that they should be made all female - as you would know if you had read or understood any of my previous posts (dammit I rose to it...).
If you agree that there should be female SM then why are you still arguing about it?
Spoiler:
I'd say you're wrong there.
The grimness and darkness of 40k has notably reduced over time. The lore has changed, without clear reasons, because they had IRL reasons for making it more family friendly. That's IRL reasons and no lore reasons.
Similarly, if someone said "Hey ,why don't we make a faction of marines who are vikings and ride wolves and other awesome things", there's no IRL reason for that except "That would be so awesome". There's no agenda to make 40k more representative to vikings when they made space wolves. They did it because it was awesome. Lore reasons happened to justify the chapter, and they made it happen. That's what they need to to for female marines. There should be no political agenda driving changes to a game set in a fictional universe. And yes, adding female marines to increase representation is political. Adding them because they'd be awesome is not. I hope that difference isn't lost on anyone.
How are those things not connected? Representation is good and you think female SM are awesome. Problem solved.
As for SW being changed because "it was awesome", I can 100% guarantee that "more Space Marine equal more money" was the driving factor there.
Spoiler:
Anything which is done to further a specific way of thinking externally to 40k is political. It is real-world issues becoming problems for the game to solve. If the Nazis had won and every race was changed to be aryan, that would be political. Perhaps people are so used to politicians being self-serving lying hot-air machines stealing oxygen from the average person that they can't distinguish the phrase "it's not political" from "it's not a bad thing".
Just because it improves things by our current standards does not mean it isn't political.
po·lit·i·cal | \ pə-ˈli-ti-kəl
Definition of political
1a : of or relating to government, a government, or the conduct of government
b : of, relating to, or concerned with the making as distinguished from the administration of governmental policy
2 : of, relating to, involving, or involved in politics and especially party politics 3 : organized in governmental terms political units
4 : involving or charged or concerned with acts against a government or a political system political prisoners
Stop being a dishonest pedant.
And if you're next argument is "Women aren't political" have a cookie, you're right! Because that's not what's being claimed and you know it.
Representation is very much the party politics of the moment with Right leaning figures railing against Critical Theory and equity initiatives while the Left is championing Anti-Structural Racism and progressive initiatives.
The idea of calling for representational equity edits on a piece of fiction very much echos the political zeitgeist of the moment...
The thing is chief, anything can be made "political" at any time. Whenever someone says "keep politics out of the hobby", they never mean "I don't want to talk about the latest General Election", they mean "I don't want to hear people's problems with the hobby because then I have to look at my own biases and prejudices to analyse if I am a bad person".
The "Warhammer is for Everyone" message wasn't aimed at anyone on the political axis yet the people who took umbrage with it were overwhelming right-wing or held exclusionary (read racist/sexist/homophobic/transphobic) tendencies.
I'm not sure if it's just a text thing, but it really does sound like you're erasing or underplaying that aspect, and I'm not sure why. If a sizable portion of the women hobbyist community are saying "hey, we'd like this", I'm not sure why we should be listening to people saying "but I don't think that women *really* want that"?
I am taking it as anecdotal at best, thus far I've only seen vague references to it. I've not seen evidence of "a sizeable portion of the women hobbyist community" requesting it.
Nearly every woman hobbyist I've seen and interacted with has echoed support of this. And I know I fair amount of women hobbyists. I know comparatively few who don't.
Sure, it's anecdotal, but people have been linking repeatedly in this thread to women-led projects or statements echoing exactly what we've been saying - that the hobby as it is right now is not representative, and that adding representative figures would be really nice.
What do you say about those comments? Do you sweep them under the rug? Do you dismiss them as "the loud vocal minority"? What stops me from dismissing anyone's comments as just "the loud vocal minority, not to be taken seriously"?
"I know some women who want this" is as valid as when we were saying "the lore says...". It's anecdotal at best, and at least that dodgy bit of lore was written down somewhere along the line.
Because real people wanting something is exactly the same as "made up book says no", right?
This is exactly what I mean about reducing the impact of female voices - you're dismissing them out of hand without even listening.
I could say "I know a hundred women who love space marines the way they are".
Any evidence of women saying that?
Without evidence, anecdotes hold very little weight.
Good thing we've been pointing in this thread to evidence of women saying that. Hell, just go have a look on Twitter - you'll find plenty of them.
Plus, I am also skeptical about changing something because of an outspoken community
Who says it's outspoken? Gonna need some sources on that one.
because these things never take into account all the people quietly enjoying things the way they are.
That all depends who's enjoying it.
If it's men quietly enjoying women not getting representation, that's not really that fair, is it?
Ultimately, if 100,000 people think something's fine but don't say anything and 200 people think it's not fine and are outspoken about it, then people start saying things like "most people want this!", because you have 200 people saying they want it and nobody saying they don't. 100,000 people actually either don't want it or don't care either way, but they aren't shouting about it so they get overlooked.
Sure - but if 200 people think it's a problem, and they get ignored because of a silent 100,000 that might not actually exist, but *might* exist, that's a problem because their issue has just been shot down because someone invented an imaginary "silent majority" to discredit their argument.
End of the day, we have actual proof that there are many women calling for this. And unless you can prove that there's a sizeable silent majority who aren't just indifferent, but actively prefer how things are, all you're doing is inventing a problem.
But doing it because some people said they wanted it, not because it's an awesome thing but because they wanted to feel included, is the wrong reason to do it.
I disagree, I think that's entirely the *right* reason to do something - because what's the point of doing something if no-one wants it?
And I especially don't like this pervasive "doing things to feel included is bad" tone I'm getting from your comments. Why is wanting to be included bad? Don't we want everyone to feel welcome? Isn't that why we came to this community - to feel a sense of being welcomed?
I guess I just feel that if you change things to "add female models to make women feel included", then you're reinforcing the idea that they are not included because the models aren't female. You're feeding the "boys get action man and girls get barbies" mentality which makes the problems in the first place. You're treating the symptoms whilst strengthening the actual reason for them.
Except that's exactly the opposite of what's happening, regarding action men and barbie dolls, because they're marketed and treated in very different ways! A female action man is not a barbie doll, because they're marketed different, they have different design, aesthetic functions, and roles - a female action man is the equivalent to a woman Space Marine. The barbie doll is the Sisters of Battle mentality, where women need a whole unique aesthetic and design function and role to exist - by feeding the whole "if women want a strong woman, they can have Sisters of Battle, but you're not allowed to touch the Space Marines", you're adding to that sense of distinction and difference!
You want women to feel like they're naturally part of 40k? Get rid of the unnatural restrictions - such as "no women Space Marines". The symptom of women's exclusion isn't "women aren't represented", the symptom is "women don't feel welcome in 40k" - the reason is because of a lack of fair and even-handed representation.
Don't add girls to things to let girls play.
That's not what anyone's saying. Read my arguments.
Instead make the shops and such more welcoming to them
Yes, by making women more visible in them, and removing arbitrary limitations. Gee, almost like that was my point all along.
and stop reinforcing the idea that "you can't play with those because they are for boys".
Yes, by removing the idea that there are "boys toys" in the first place by including women in them.
There is no reason why women can't play with space marines as they are.
Except that they simply don't want to, because they don't want to play as a faction that contributes to the whole "all-male" issue.
You say "there's no reason", but we've been telling you what the reason is. You just don't feel that same reason yourself.
Nobody is telling them they can't use them
Overtly, no - but you'd be foolish to think that by including all men and no women that it wouldn't have some effect in distancing women from the faction.
The only reasons for people to not do something because they "don't feel represented" is a fundamental issue with society and the conditioning that people have received, and instead of tearing it down people build around it and then wonder why it's still there afterwards.
And you know how to deal with those fundamental issues in society? You hear them out, and act on them, instead of dismissing them because you personally don't feel it.
If people don't like it because they feel unrepresented, that's an entirely valid reason, and I don't know why you're so hellbent on erasing it.
Saying "women don't feel represented by men, so we added women" does nothing to solve the actual problem, which is "women don't feel represented by men" - it only reinforces it.
So you think women should be represented by men?
Why *shouldn't* women be represented by women? Why do women need to settle with being represented by men when there's no real reason they need to be represented by men in the first damn place?
That's the crux of the issue - you're acting like women *should* be settling for being represented by men - I'm asking why they needed to be represented by men in the first place. Because as we've agreed, the lore is arbitrary, so there's no real reason we couldn't have had men and women representing, well, men and women.
Saying "it's okay, you can come in, we have female models for you" is reinforcing the idea that they couldn't before, because of the models being male.
Well yeah - when people are literally saying that's why they didn't, I think the correct thing to do is to act on that, instead of ignoring them and telling them their feelings aren't valid.
People need to stop separating themselves into groups and then complaining that their group isn't represented.
Oh, shouldn't they now?
Why?
I've never watched an advert that featured a woman and thought "I can't buy this toothpaste because it was a woman on the advert".
A toothpaste advert isn't the same thing, and you know it.
I consider "people" to represent me, and then make logical deductions that some product aren't relevant to me.
Oh, such as the logical deduction of "there's an explicit rule saying that women aren't welcome in this faction, and there's an awful lot of people IRL giving people grief if they include women in this faction. Maybe I, as a woman, might not be welcome here, because of the explicit signs that I am different, and to be excluded".
I notice that you bring up "we shouldn't be looking to promote ideas of different between men and women" - so why are you defending the lore that does the same?
Marines were all men because those were the models and they couldn't afford to make women too, and then they added some lore to make that canon, and then the lore got (rightly) buried. The decisions were made for non-sexist reasons - so they didn't need to make more models for the same range, rather than "so they can all be men".
Non-sexist reasons or not, it's still exclusionary, and that's the bottom line - it didn't have to be.
Choosing to add female models so that women will like them is a fundamentally sexist decision to make.
I really think your definition of sexist needs work, because that ain't it.
Including women for fair representation is entirely the opposite of sexism.
So, once again to summarize:
"Yes" to female marines, add to the lore and get them added because that would be cool as hell and makes sense.
"No" to doing it just so that women feel like they can play the game.
So, basically, screw women's feelings if what they suggest isn't "cool as hell"? How charming.
I'll tell you what "makes sense" - getting rid of exclusionary lore so that everyone feels welcome.
some bloke wrote:1: Not sure why changing things to improve them instead of to pander to the outspoken few is a problem.
Nothing's wrong with changing things to improve them. The issue is that you're dismissing pretty valid criticisms as "the outspoken few" and listening to them is "pandering" - as well as being unable to accept that improving representation *is* "improving" things.
2: Why shouldn't women feel represented by men?
Why should they need to in the first place?
Why should there be that wall there between them? Why should a woman look at a space marine and judge the model and the game as a whole based on the gender of said plastic model?
Why should the plastic models need arbitrary rules on who can and can't wear certain types of power armour? That's the only wall I see.
3: "I don't like this, you have to change it" is not a behaviour that should be met with positive reinforcement.
And likewise, "I don't feel underrepresented, so if you have representation issues, sucks to be you, I guess!" isn't a good behaviour either.
There is also one bad reason which people keep carping on about as if it's the only reason that matters:
• So that women can play the game
No-one gave that reason though. It's a ridiculously reductive and false reading into a much more complex set of issues and complaints. The fact you keep being so reductive of it is hardly fair on your part.
But I do feel very strongly that this should not be the driving reason why the change is made. Not least because GW has already made it clear they are trying to avoid politics in their games.
Including women isn't political. End of story.
Jack Flask wrote:And if you're next argument is "Women aren't political" have a cookie, you're right! Because that's not what's being claimed and you know it.
Great. So let's stop claiming this is political, and keep on topic, which is "why can't we have women Space Marines", instead of all this jumping at "Critical Theory" and "Anti-Structural Racism" which you saw fit to mention.
The idea of calling for representational equity edits on a piece of fiction very much echos the political zeitgeist of the moment...
Or, alternatively, representation is just a good thing to have, and isn't politically motivated beyond "hey, shouldn't everyone feel welcome here"?
Removed - BrookM
the_scotsman wrote:I think there may be some underlying issues you yourself have to work through rather than there being any truth to these frankly wild claims you're making here.
Echoed. I don't think that women Space Marines is the real issue at hand here.
Anything which is done to further a specific way of thinking externally to 40k is political. It is real-world issues becoming problems for the game to solve. If the Nazis had won and every race was changed to be aryan, that would be political. Perhaps people are so used to politicians being self-serving lying hot-air machines stealing oxygen from the average person that they can't distinguish the phrase "it's not political" from "it's not a bad thing".
Just because it improves things by our current standards does not mean it isn't political.
I'm not even sure what you're trying to say here.
I feel like it's pretty clear what he's trying to say, but here goes...
If the underlying reason for wanting a change is because of your personal beliefs on this change being "correct/good for society" as it aligns with your real world views rather than is informed by the logic of the fiction then that is political.
Now of course, nearly every piece of fiction is born under the influence of it's authors beliefs reflecting their norms/politics/ect. The thing with a fiction like 40k is that after literal decades of having many authors add to it's canon and as the politics of the real world changed, the initial political ideals of the original authors has slowly washed away and been supplanted with a in own set of logic, norms, etc. This is largely what people are talking about when they complain that "the humor/satire is gone from 40k" because it's no longer actually parodying anything, the setting has in a sense come to it's own life. Declaring people heretics and exterminatus-ing planets is no longer a commentary on Cold War era Red Scare witch hunts or the callous disregard of the government for it's citizens lives, it is the authentic internal reality by which the 41st Millennium operates in the imagination of it's fans.
The reason this topic (female space marines) always becomes so nasty is because it collides one groups feelings about personal authorship against another groups feelings of that fiction should be allowed to operate outside the concerns of the real world. Particularly when there are other ways of increasing female representation that don't clash with the canon (adding more female models to almost every other faction) the demand for female space marines feels incredibly politically motivated especially in the current era of equity discourse.
po·lit·i·cal | \ pə-ˈli-ti-kəl
Definition of political
1a : of or relating to government, a government, or the conduct of government
b : of, relating to, or concerned with the making as distinguished from the administration of governmental policy
2 : of, relating to, involving, or involved in politics and especially party politics 3 : organized in governmental terms political units
4 : involving or charged or concerned with acts against a government or a political system political prisoners
Stop being a dishonest pedant.
And if you're next argument is "Women aren't political" have a cookie, you're right! Because that's not what's being claimed and you know it.
Representation is very much the party politics of the moment with Right leaning figures railing against Critical Theory and equity initiatives while the Left is championing Anti-Structural Racism and progressive initiatives.
The idea of calling for representational equity edits on a piece of fiction very much echos the political zeitgeist of the moment...
The thing is chief, anything can be made "political" at any time. Whenever someone says "keep politics out of the hobby", they never mean "I don't want to talk about the latest General Election", they mean "I don't want to hear people's problems with the hobby because then I have to look at my own biases and prejudices to analyse if I am a bad person".
The "Warhammer is for Everyone" message wasn't aimed at anyone on the political axis yet the people who took umbrage with it were overwhelming right-wing or held exclusionary (read racist/sexist/homophobic/transphobic) tendencies.
The fact that you think someone wanting to preserve the state of a fiction they enjoy is them "trying to avoid their own biases and prejudices" and that this by default outs them as a "bad person", is very much operating in bad faith.
I'm not against female representation on the whole or increasing it within 40k. I'm not against fostering a welcome environment for new players regardless of gender or race. The vast majority of people who have disagreed with you have echoed those same points. But the fundamental point that you and others refuse to acknowledge is that achieving that does not in any way require female space marines, yet you insist on fighting over this specific hill.
Even a hypothetical scenario where space marines are pushed in line with every other faction and every non-space marine range gets equal representation of female models was declared to be still unequal by Sgt. Smudge because "it'll never happen and also it has to be space marines because they are the most popular".
Anything anyone says to you will be dismissed offhand regardless of the reasoning because you've already decided that they're lesser than you and a "bad person". You just keep building strawmen, nitpicking technicalities, and then sprinkling in accusations of bigotry where you can. And what strikes me the most is that were this conversation about anything other than gender representation it would have never passed GO. If this was a "I don't like that Tau look like anime robots" thread everyone would just reply either "you don't have to play Tau" or "then convert them to match your vision", conversation over.
But the second it's about gender it becomes a game of "you must agree with me or you're a sexist" which feels pretty IRL political when that line of thought seemingly has no relation to the internal workings of 40k itself.
If the underlying reason for wanting a change is because of your personal beliefs on this change being "correct/good for society" as it aligns with your real world views rather than is informed by the logic of the fiction then that is political.
Now of course, nearly every piece of fiction is born under the influence of it's authors beliefs reflecting their norms/politics/ect. The thing with a fiction like 40k is that after literal decades of having many authors add to it's canon and as the politics of the real world changed, the initial political ideals of the original authors has slowly washed away and been supplanted with a in own set of logic, norms, etc. This is largely what people are talking about when they complain that "the humor/satire is gone from 40k" because it's no longer actually parodying anything, the setting has in a sense come to it's own life. Declaring people heretics and exterminatus-ing planets is no longer a commentary on Cold War era Red Scare witch hunts or the callous disregard of the government for it's citizens lives, it is the authentic internal reality by which the 41st Millennium operates in the imagination of it's fans.
Within the canon of warhammer 40,000, the presence of females within:
-the highest ranks of the ecclesiarchy
-the high lords of terra
-the inquisition
Indicates that there is essentially no sexism present within the the Imperium as we understand it today.
The canon has already established that:
-The limitation that marines can only be made from male stock is a primarily technological one
and
-The technology surrounding the creation of marines can be both understood and altered by multiple individuals within the canon of warhammer 40,000 (Cawl, Bile, Rakarth at least)
Purely removing any considerations from our current world, and looking only at the canon of the fictional world of warhammer 40,000, it appears to me that there's nothing to stop the company that creates the warhammer canon from deciding with any given Primaris Space Marine release "and Cawl also figured out how to alter the creation process to allow for female stock" any more than they might decide "And Cawl designed the Primaris Space Marines a floating grav-tank" or "And Cawl designed the Primaris Space Marines with another, special organ to do XYZ"
And as for things on the chaos side of the fence...a person looking solely at the canon can really only make the assumption that there are female chaos marines. There are chaos marines with bat wings and bid heads and squid tentacles and horns. They obviously and self-evidently don't adhere to the same physiological limitations of imperial space marines, you'd need to have some kind of canonical reference as to why somehow the magic of the warp that can take a space marine and create a gibbering pile of maws and tendrils can't take a space marine and tranform one set of body parts into a different set of body parts.
So if peoples reasoning that female space marines should be introduced is exterior to canon and, therefore, political, why is the stance that female space marines should not be introduced not also exterior to canon and, therefore, political?
We're working from the exact same canon here, aren't we? With the exact same recent events? We recently had the lore bit posted recently that indicated that at least some high-ranked members of Space Marine chapters would be receptive to being able to use female recruits - have you ever seen any fluff that indicated that certain space marine leaders would NOT be receptive to female recruits? Given GW's usual attempts to remain apolitical, I'd be fairly surprised.
I feel like it's pretty clear what he's trying to say, but here goes...
If the underlying reason for wanting a change is because of your personal beliefs on this change being "correct/good for society" as it aligns with your real world views rather than is informed by the logic of the fiction then that is political.
Now of course, nearly every piece of fiction is born under the influence of it's authors beliefs reflecting their norms/politics/ect. The thing with a fiction like 40k is that after literal decades of having many authors add to it's canon and as the politics of the real world changed, the initial political ideals of the original authors has slowly washed away and been supplanted with a in own set of logic, norms, etc. This is largely what people are talking about when they complain that "the humor/satire is gone from 40k" because it's no longer actually parodying anything, the setting has in a sense come to it's own life. Declaring people heretics and exterminatus-ing planets is no longer a commentary on Cold War era Red Scare witch hunts or the callous disregard of the government for it's citizens lives, it is the authentic internal reality by which the 41st Millennium operates in the imagination of it's fans.
The reason this topic (female space marines) always becomes so nasty is because it collides one groups feelings about personal authorship against another groups feelings of that fiction should be allowed to operate outside the concerns of the real world. Particularly when there are other ways of increasing female representation that don't clash with the canon (adding more female models to almost every other faction) the demand for female space marines feels incredibly politically motivated especially in the current era of equity discourse.
The problem with your argument is that people are using a piece of lore to actively cause harm/distress to others within the hobby. So your point about people wanting the setting to be separate from reality falls apart when people use that setting as an excuse to present their exclusionary views as acceptable. If someone were to complain about being told a gay person can't play SM because the lore doesn't have gay SM, would you tell them to leave their "politics" out of the hobby?
The lore people keep saying is infallible and immutable is pseudo-scientific wish wash that gets changed as frequently as people change their t-shirts. We've had new things added in as "they've always been there" and others as "these are new developments". There are so many in-universe reasons to add female SM to the setting and they are all just as valid as things like Primaris or Centurion suits.
I also want to say, why is inclusion so bad? Why are inclusion and representation only acceptable if it's for "lore" reasons rather than what you call "political" ones? Who decides which is which?
Spoiler:
The fact that you think someone wanting to preserve the state of a fiction they enjoy is them "trying to avoid their own biases and prejudices" and that this by default outs them as a "bad person", is very much operating in bad faith.
I'm not against female representation on the whole or increasing it within 40k. I'm not against fostering a welcome environment for new players regardless of gender or race. The vast majority of people who have disagreed with you have echoed those same points. But the fundamental point that you and others refuse to acknowledge is that achieving that does not in any way require female space marines, yet you insist on fighting over this specific hill.
Even a hypothetical scenario where space marines are pushed in line with every other faction and every non-space marine range gets equal representation of female models was declared to be still unequal by Sgt. Smudge because "it'll never happen and also it has to be space marines because they are the most popular".
Anything anyone says to you will be dismissed offhand regardless of the reasoning because you've already decided that they're lesser than you and a "bad person". You just keep building strawmen, nitpicking technicalities, and then sprinkling in accusations of bigotry where you can. And what strikes me the most is that were this conversation about anything other than gender representation it would have never passed GO. If this was a "I don't like that Tau look like anime robots" thread everyone would just reply either "you don't have to play Tau" or "then convert them to match your vision", conversation over.
But the second it's about gender it becomes a game of "you must agree with me or you're a sexist" which feels pretty IRL political when that line of thought seemingly has no relation to the internal workings of 40k itself.
There is a difference between "preserving fiction" and using that fiction to promote exclusionary and harmful ideas. I'm not saying every single person who doesn't want to talk about real-world issues while in a hobby space is a bad person but the majority of those who do use "keep politics out of the hobby" do it to stifle discussion about genuine issues such as racism/sexism/etc.
The problem with the supposedly perfect hypothetical situation people keep bringing up is that not only is it hypothetical, but it's also utterly unrealistic. GW would more likely make the Emperor an anime Cat-girl than take SM away from their flagship product position, so suggesting it as a solution is completely meaningless. It's not a good scenario because it doesn't take a single fact of reality into account, it's not a hypothetical it's a fantasy.
At what point did I say anyone that disagreed with me was "lesser" or a bad person? Unless someone has said something that is overtly sexist/exclusionary, which BTW there are instances of in this thread, I've been fairly tolerant with my posts. Have you considered that more than a month on from this thread's beginning, I'm simply sick of seeing the exact same arguments trotted out week after week?
The discussion in this thread has shown that people are more willing to cause harm/distress to others than change a tiny part of the SM background that hasn't been featured in any meaningful way since the early 2000s. People already convert their SM to have female heads and write their own stories for them and these hobbyists are routinely harassed/threatened for it. Nobody is harassing people for not playing T'au.
Spoiler:
While I agree that there are a lot of guys with a wide range of social issues, many of whom who have suffered all sorts of social abuse and bullying, I strongly disagree with the idea that new people should be discouraged from joining or pushed out of the hobby.
The part that irritates me the most about threads like these especially is that it usually isn't even women demanding this. Certainly their are some women who feel it should be changed but usually it is this handful of people and a very vocal group of male allies that claim to speak for all women rather than just for themselves. Which both robs other female hobbyists of their own voices and forces them into a conflict they might want nothing to do with.
Have you considered that there aren't women posting on this forum because of posters like Matt who are overtly hostile to their presence in the hobby?
Jack Flask wrote:If the underlying reason for wanting a change is because of your personal beliefs on this change being "correct/good for society" as it aligns with your real world views rather than is informed by the logic of the fiction then that is political.
But what happens when we consider that the fiction has no immutable logic, or that its logic is entirely arbitrary?
Similarly, not wanting a change is equally political, no? Neutrality and status quo are political positions too, yes?
The reason this topic (female space marines) always becomes so nasty is because it collides one groups feelings about personal authorship against another groups feelings of that fiction should be allowed to operate outside the concerns of the real world.
The problem is, even stepping away from how including women isn't political, you've already just stated that 40k is not fiction that operated outside the concerns of the real world.
Similarly, I also have to reinforce that while 40k "lore" might not be part of the real world, the moment that it becomes part of a real world hobby where real people can be excluded from real communities, I don't think that we can pretend that it's that divorced from reality.
Particularly when there are other ways of increasing female representation that don't clash with the canon
Why are we concerned about clashing with the canon? The canon's as solid as air: there's nothing to clash with.
the demand for female space marines feels incredibly politically motivated especially in the current era of equity discourse.
Or, as I say again - featuring women where there's no reason not to have them isn't political - it's just fair.
The fact that you think someone wanting to preserve the state of a fiction they enjoy
Why do they enjoy the fiction that excludes women though?
We're not asking to change every piece. It's 13 words. Do people love those 13 words that much? Would they not enjoy 40k if those 13 words were removed? Why so?
I'm not against female representation on the whole or increasing it within 40k. I'm not against fostering a welcome environment for new players regardless of gender or race. The vast majority of people who have disagreed with you have echoed those same points. But the fundamental point that you and others refuse to acknowledge is that achieving that does not in any way require female space marines, yet you insist on fighting over this specific hill.
And I've illustrated exactly why it does require women Astartes, and why it's ultimately fruitless even calling for the status quo to be maintained if people can't defend why Space Marines need to be male in the first place.
Even a hypothetical scenario where space marines are pushed in line with every other faction and every non-space marine range gets equal representation of female models was declared to be still unequal by Sgt. Smudge because "it'll never happen and also it has to be space marines because they are the most popular".
Because your hypothetical scenario is as realistic or practical as "everyone holds hands spontaneously and no-one acts like a chud or tries to exclude women because of **Totally Valid Reasons TM**".
It's unequal because you are proposing an entirely unrealistic solution to a problem that has no reason to exist in the first place, and could be solved with an embarrassingly easy solution.
So, forgive my bluntness when you're dancing around a pretty simple fix to a problem that has no reason exist by proposing entirely unrealistic solutions.
And what strikes me the most is that were this conversation about anything other than gender representation it would have never passed GO. If this was a "I don't like that Tau look like anime robots" thread everyone would just reply either "you don't have to play Tau" or "then convert them to match your vision", conversation over.
T'au having that particular aesthetic is intentionally built into their core aesthetic design, and always has been. It serves a very specific purpose, and at current, could not be fulfilled by any other faction.
On the other hand, Space Marines not including women serves no purpose (or rather, actively hinders what Space Marines currently are), and the whole "all male" trope is already done better by other factions.
They ain't the same thing.
But the second it's about gender it becomes a game of "you must agree with me or you're a sexist" which feels pretty IRL political when that line of thought seemingly has no relation to the internal workings of 40k itself.
Or rather, I have to wonder why people go to such lengths to defend something which serves no purpose other than to exclude people. And while I'm *sure* that most people are fine, when you see people defending exclusionary content so doggedly and making the kinds of comments that can only be interpreted as flat out gatekeeping, I have to wonder why it's women Space Marines that have so many people so ardently defending such an arbitrary and minor lore point. Especially when they accuse people of being part of some conspiracy, or that it's all just political grandstanding, or that it's to gain some kind of nebulous power.
While I agree that there are a lot of guys with a wide range of social issues, many of whom who have suffered all sorts of social abuse and bullying, I strongly disagree with the idea that new people should be discouraged from joining or pushed out of the hobby.
Very much agreed.
The part that irritates me the most about threads like these especially is that it usually isn't even women demanding this.
Actually, it's usually women commenting elsewhere, and their comments being picked up and repeated in male-dominated places like here.
And then those women's comments being ignored as part of the "vocal minority". So, perhaps you can wonder why women don't often make those comments in these spaces.
Certainly their are some women who feel it should be changed but usually it is this handful of people and a very vocal group of male allies that claim to speak for all women rather than just for themselves. Which both robs other female hobbyists of their own voices and forces them into a conflict they might want nothing to do with.
Again with these women hobbyists and their voices - women hobbyists *are* using their own voices. Conspicuously, they just all *happen* to be this "vocal minority". Or, perhaps you just don't like hearing them, and are convinced that there's this secret hidden majority who support and agree with you.
If so, where are they? If all you're hearing is "we'd like representation", have you considered that maybe that's what you should be listening to?
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Gert wrote: The problem with your argument is that people are using a piece of lore to actively cause harm/distress to others within the hobby. So your point about people wanting the setting to be separate from reality falls apart when people use that setting as an excuse to present their exclusionary views as acceptable.
Exactly. The fiction can't stay divorced from reality because the fiction is used to inform what people do with their real models - and the real comments that get levelled at those real people when their real models don't match the fictional reality of the fictional lore.
I looked through some of the earlier posts but hadn't seen this mentioned, I haven't been keeping up with the BLHH series since 2010 so I don't know what recent canonical evidence has changed; but remember when the Primachs wanted their best buddies from their adopted homeworlds to become marines, but many of them were too old to receive the geneseed proper? So instead they were afforded good enough genetic transmutation to become MEQs: such as Luther, friends of Russ, and later that bodyguard to Horus's remembrancer, etc. Other than Angron I don't know if any primarchs had female bffs, granted the one mentioned died with all his other slave freinds in their last stand when Big E stole him away. Anyways.
Was it ever established whether that was limited to guys?
Even before Primaris coming out of nowhere, marines would get fluff-additions because GW wanted to sell new models, often presented as chapter X found DAoT, but admechs finally gave the stamp of approval for mass distribution/fabrication.
The genetic-tinkering of the 13th Founding was a thing and has created some interesting chapters.
Primaris were shoehorned into the lore and have proven popular, the scope and scale of Sisters of battle have changed in recent years.
Would it be so weird to have MEQ via Heresy-era transhumanist augmentation?
Where they fit in the lore either as elite-sisters of battle, inquisition agents, more of Cawl-approved experimental chapters, Battletech/Kerensky style-lost Primarch coming from the fringes of known space in humanity's hour of need, etc.
And chaos is going to chaos. There was a bit more flexibility in the older editions when human champions could be elevated to daemon princes, and Fabius Bile is always mucking around. In my own headcanon there's a scout-equivalent tier of modified humans that traitor legions employ to keep lowly rabble in line while marines have better things to do.
It's not like there haven't been precedence in lore and general game evolution that would hinder introducing female M(EQ)s...
It's not like there haven't been precedence in lore and general game evolution that would hinder introducing female M(EQ)s...
I mean no. We did just like, last week see the introduction of a Sisters of Battle mobile infantry suit more powerful than a custode, let alone a space marine. "Les Tueurs Cylindres" if you will.
As far as lore, the best way to handle is simply not to make a thing of it. Just include a few female head options on the sprue; they can put a couple bodies in slightly redesigned armor if they like, but its hardly necessary. It just doesn't need a fluff justification, it can just be.
Hey guys, some posts, quotes, or replies to said quote have been removed because, because YIKES, that was something else that served no purpose to this topic, other than stirring up gak for no good reason. Many thanks to those who have reported this mess and many thanks to all for keeping things civil, the offending poster has been dealt with.
LunarSol wrote: As far as lore, the best way to handle is simply not to make a thing of it. Just include a few female head options on the sprue; they can put a couple bodies in slightly redesigned armor if they like, but its hardly necessary. It just doesn't need a fluff justification, it can just be.
Are you talking about an upgrade sprue?
In all honesty I think the brass at GW would 100% love this. If GW ever go down this road, they will do it to the full fanfare of marketing and whole new range of marines.
'That's genius Johnson! That's what 40k lacks.. More marines! Why didn't I think of that!? This time with women heads!'
But - I just don't see GW stepping into this quagmire. You can yell about how this is not political till you blue in the face but will significant amount of customers see it that way?
I don't see them taking a potentially huge risk with their brand or their top selling product range. Ideology and peoples wants aside... By all the SM fanboys account SM range is outselling all of creation which is why they get to have all the fun toys.. It appears they are doing something right.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
BrookM wrote: Hey guys, some posts, quotes, or replies to said quote have been removed because, because YIKES, that was something else that served no purpose to this topic, other than stirring up gak for no good reason. Many thanks to those who have reported this mess and many thanks to all for keeping things civil, the offending poster has been dealt with.
"dealt with" ? Did somebody get banned for this thread?
BrookM wrote: Hey guys, some posts, quotes, or replies to said quote have been removed because, because YIKES, that was something else that served no purpose to this topic, other than stirring up gak for no good reason. Many thanks to those who have reported this mess and many thanks to all for keeping things civil, the offending poster has been dealt with.
Didn’t see what was said but I even consider this progress. Couple of years ago the whole thread should have been this with in hours. One bad egg and them not being able to shut down the thread gives me hope. Thanks for letting it run and thanks again to all for conducting yourselves as you have.
BrookM wrote: Hey guys, some posts, quotes, or replies to said quote have been removed because, because YIKES, that was something else that served no purpose to this topic, other than stirring up gak for no good reason. Many thanks to those who have reported this mess and many thanks to all for keeping things civil, the offending poster has been dealt with.
Didn’t see what was said but I even consider this progress. Couple of years ago the whole thread should have been this with in hours. One bad egg and them not being able to shut down the thread gives me hope. Thanks for letting it run and thanks again to all for conducting yourselves as you have.
Somebody posted an incel screed. It was pathetic and rightfully called out for what it was. We don't need that rubbish in our community and it would surprise me were he to rejoin us after that nonsense. There's disagreement and then there's stark, outright misogyny which that was. Honestly, thanks to moderation on that one.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Argive wrote: "dealt with" ? Did somebody get banned for this thread?
Jack Flask wrote: If this was a "I don't like that Tau look like anime robots" thread everyone would just reply either "you don't have to play Tau" or "then convert them to match your vision", conversation over.
I feel like you maybe weren't around when Tau were introduced to the game... There was plenty of discussion back then about their obvious anime influences and whether or not that was appropriate to the setting, and you (generic you, obviously not you personally) still come across the odd discussion about whether or not they belong in the game.
PondaNagura wrote: And chaos is going to chaos. There was a bit more flexibility in the older editions when human champions could be elevated to daemon princes, and Fabius Bile is always mucking around.
Indeed. There's even been at least one example in a Black Library publication (I want to say Storm of Iron, but can't remember for sure) of a woman enslaved by a World Eater champion killing him and taking his armour and position as a Champion of Chaos.
It was indeed Storm of Iron and her last thought before being overtaken by the Deamon within the armour was that she had made a horrific mistake. Very Chaos.
LunarSol wrote: As far as lore, the best way to handle is simply not to make a thing of it. Just include a few female head options on the sprue; they can put a couple bodies in slightly redesigned armor if they like, but its hardly necessary. It just doesn't need a fluff justification, it can just be.
Are you talking about an upgrade sprue?
In all honesty I think the brass at GW would 100% love this.
I'm sure they would: they already do it with Chapter upgrade kits.
But - I just don't see GW stepping into this quagmire.
They were more than happy to create women Stormcast, who fill a largely similar role to Space Marines in AoS. I'll be honest, I could see them quite literally using Stormcast as a testing ground for Space Marines: take the risks on your newly created faction in your second largest game, and if they pay off, try it on the mainline faction.
You can yell about how this is not political till you blue in the face but will significant amount of customers see it that way?
That doesn't mean the significant amount of customers are still right.
I don't see them taking a potentially huge risk with their brand or their top selling product range. Ideology and peoples wants aside...
And that's why I think all these posts about "just make someone else the poster boy" doesn't work - because GW won't jeopardise Space Marines. However, I see them using Stormcast as a testing bed for Space Marines - and considering that Stormcast having women is generally well received...
Again, all I'm saying is that they're more than happy to change the Space Marine identity - and if it becomes economically expedient to add women (as so many companies are realising that the women's market is fairly lucrative for pop culture), you bet they'll do it.
By all the SM fanboys account SM range is outselling all of creation which is why they get to have all the fun toys.. It appears they are doing something right.
And is that anything to do with them being all men, and being exclusively so? I don't think so.
Unless you're implying that apparently people seem to love Space Marines primarily because they exclude women?
Plus, you hit on a great point - "Space Marines get to have all the fun toys" - maybe women want to feel involved in those fun toys too, hence why they don't want to pick up a different faction?
"dealt with" ? Did somebody get banned for this thread?
Without repeating their comment, because it's been deleted for a reason, it was frankly disgusting, exclusionary, and, dare I say, incredibly sexist.
I'll have it filed under what I mean about this hobby maybe not being that welcoming and inclusive. I'm very glad that the mods acted on it.
LunarSol wrote: As far as lore, the best way to handle is simply not to make a thing of it. Just include a few female head options on the sprue; they can put a couple bodies in slightly redesigned armor if they like, but its hardly necessary. It just doesn't need a fluff justification, it can just be.
Are you talking about an upgrade sprue?
In all honesty I think the brass at GW would 100% love this.
I'm sure they would: they already do it with Chapter upgrade kits.
Im not sure.. To me its like:
Nothing says inclusion and representation like charging for inclusion and representation...
I think his solution would likely backfire. Also it means more SM stuff.. Proof would have to be in the proverbial pudding though.
But - I just don't see GW stepping into this quagmire.
They were more than happy to create women Stormcast, who fill a largely similar role to Space Marines in AoS. I'll be honest, I could see them quite literally using Stormcast as a testing ground for Space Marines: take the risks on your newly created faction in your second largest game, and if they pay off, try it on the mainline faction.
Yeeaaaah..... after they destroyed the game called WHFB in order to make room for AOS/storm casts.
You can yell about how this is not political till you blue in the face but will significant amount of customers see it that way?
That doesn't mean the significant amount of customers are still right.
And what if they are right? Who gets to decide.
I don't see them taking a potentially huge risk with their brand or their top selling product range. Ideology and peoples wants aside...
And that's why I think all these posts about "just make someone else the poster boy" doesn't work - because GW won't jeopardise Space Marines. However, I see them using Stormcast as a testing bed for Space Marines - and considering that Stormcast having women is generally well received...
Generally well received? I thought everyone loved storm casts in AOS.. (not an AOS player no idea) How are giving more stuff to other armies jeopardise SM? SM are still there unchanged in this paradigm. We just get more of other stuff on top.. It means perhaps eroding the hegemony of SM which would be awesome.
Spoiler:
Again, all I'm saying is that they're more than happy to change the Space Marine identity - and if it becomes economically expedient to add women (as so many companies are realising that the women's market is fairly lucrative for pop culture), you bet they'll do it.
Market citations needed. I can give you plenty examples of stuff gunning for representation at the cost of all else because of pressure (bit like this thread is trying to do).
There are a few things on that list I actually liked. Dark tower being chief amongst them. Fragging love that film.
When companies get confused about what their purpose and mission statement and go off doing something else they tend to loose money. This is an observation. Not an endorsement of anything.
There are awesome franchises and things where you have women as main protagonists. Like SOB in 40k. Why cant we elevate those and bring about organic change without burning everything to the ground? Bringing up AOS storm cast as an example is really not a good play.. it was built on the ashes of WHFB and a lot of people lost their game. I'd rather this not happen to 40k.
By all the SM fanboys account SM range is outselling all of creation which is why they get to have all the fun toys.. It appears they are doing something right.
And is that anything to do with them being all men, and being exclusively so? I don't think so.
Unless you're implying that apparently people seem to love Space Marines primarily because they exclude women?
Not what I said. Don't put words in my mouth.
I just observed SM+40k are selling really really well and GW is doing really well as a company. GW profits statement support this. Ask them why that is. Citation needed to prove otherwise.
Plus, you hit on a great point - "Space Marines get to have all the fun toys" - maybe women want to feel involved in those fun toys too, hence why they don't want to pick up a different faction?
Well sheeet maybe men who don't want to play SM want to have those toys too? What's being a woman has to do with anything? I don't want to play Warhammer space marine. Do you ?
Its of paramount importance more factions get more stuff and toys for longevity of the game. The fact you dislike SOB does not mean women wont like SOB... SOB should get all the same toys. Dragon SOB, Spiky SOB, Wolfy SOB etc the works! The sprinkle some for TAU and Eldar.
Rehashing SM with new heads and potentially boob plate is just lame IMO
I missed the exchange and bunch of the thread tbh.. . Not really a lot of time these days. It certainly is not encouraging...
I note how fast you abandoned talking about the absolutely awful take Matt Swain put up on your side of this argument. Then you doubled down on some facetious nonsense around boobplate that literally nobody has advocated for
Why do you feel the need to construct these flimsy pretences masquerading as an actual stance?
Catulle wrote: I note how fast you abandoned talking about the absolutely awful take Matt Swain put up on your side of this argument. Then you doubled down on some facetious nonsense around boobplate that literally nobody has advocated for
Why do you feel the need to construct these flimsy pretences masquerading as an actual stance?
Why?
What are you on about ? I was genuinely curius what happened. How can I know what he said if its removed? I'm not glued to my computer or this forum..
I'm arguing purely from my own perspective. The fact you think there are some lines drawn suggest this is a highly popularized polarized political topic.. But I am repeatedly told it isn't.
Do you want me to go back and find quotes where people said "I guess they would need to have slightly different armour like AOS females" this is basically some version of boob plate. I also said "potential" Its not facesticious. I think you are perhaps being facesticious... and misrepresenting what I am saying.
If you don't like the thread or the conversation you are welcome to leave.
Re: Whether women as Marines, would increase sales:
Anecdotally, I do know at least one middle-aged gamer who happens to be female and genuinely would make more purchases if female marines were an option; She has worked together fluff for her all-female all-Primaris Raven Guard successor, and doesn't quite have the time to learn how to 3d resin print her own female Marines. Guess I'll just have to print 'em for her and mail them if GW won't step up.
Re: The thread in general:
I stepped away from this for a weekend, but clearly I missed something unexpectedly horrific. So while this has been one of the most positive and productive things I've seen generated by Dakka community discussion. I've always been for female Space Marines, but this thread has advanced my understanding of the argument and given me an entire rebuttal munitions depot the next time I hear or see an argument against their inclusion, and it would be a shame to see it derailed. While I think the thread seems steady enough for the moment, I just want to be sure I get out a few words of praise, so if you'll indulge me a moment:
@Sgt. Smudge:
I can't let this thread reach a terminus without thanking you for your utterly indefatigable commitment to fairness and equality in this thread. You have the patience of a Necron saint and enough dogged perseverance to see these arguments through no matter how many times you've had to repeat yourself - even to the same people sometimes.
@The_Scotsman:
I've always thought you were the cleverest bastard on these boards. That impression has only been reinforced.
I'm going to find a place to put this utterly goddamn brilliant quote somewhere.
Spoiler:
the_scotsman wrote: "here's this faction that we've turned into a gigantic uber-customizable metagolem of infinite customizability, you can have them in a car on the ground in a plane, in every conceivable playstyle that exists in the game, every single represented aesthetic, ninety-trillion different armor marks and styles, historical inspirations, every color in the rainbow, every race and culture of humanity...
...but you CANT make them ladies. that is the sacred line across which we must throw our bodies and souls! Space Marines can be every conceivable configuration of 'your dudes' imaginable, SO LONG AS YOU DO NOT IMAGINE THEM AS YOUR DUDETTES!
@Macluvin:
Somehow possessing enough mystical ancient message-board-fu to start a thread on women as space marines and not have it locked. It is pretty awesome to see this much commitment to this dialogue in perhaps one of the few kinds of places it could happen - a place large enough to reach a decent number of ears, but not so large and loud that the voices all drown each other out before coherent thoughts can form.
@Insaniak:
Thank you for not only your measured contributions to the thread, but for not locking it.
@Gert, Andykp, Fezzik, other regular contributors I know I'm forgetting:
I know I've disagreed with at least one of you on something in 40K General, but to know we're together on this is more than enough; The way you guys have collectively stood up to every argument against inclusiveness has been gratifying to see in the Dakka community.
All this might sound a little cheesy and self-congratulatory, so in the interest of being slightly less self-congratulatory - Thanks to everyone on either side who's been willing to engage with the topic in good faith, because without the disagreement or questioning this would be three pages of people agreeing and then it would stop, and we wouldn't be able to present or advance the finer points of these arguments.
I think the three things I'm most struggling to understand is:
1: That space marines being all male and being the flagship product due to a popularity borne from reasons not related to gender is somehow causing people harm. It has come up repeatedly that this is causing people harm or distress, and I fail to see how.
Don't get me wrong, I can see how women not being represented in the game is problematic, and doesn't align with the current views, but I fail to see how it can actively harm someone that these little pieces of plastic have male heads and call each other "brother".
2: I don't see how the gender of small pieces of plastic makes the blindest odds when the stores where they would buy & play are dominated by predominantly socially awkward men who act as if they've never seen a woman up-close before.
3: I don't see "Representation" as a positive step. You can't stop discrimination (by race/gender/whatever) by saying "It's okay, we have a (race/gender/whatever) in our group!". People have been split into these groups - arranged by gender, skin colour, sexual orientation - and then instead of saying "no, we're all equal so stop putting us in boxes", we decided to instead refuse to engage with anything which doesn't represent our box, and lobby for change so our box is included in everything. Racism, Sexism and Homophobia all involve making decisions based on peoples race, gender and sexual orientation, and yet people still seem to think that if they are the ones making these decisions then they are not _ist. The walls of these boxes are self imposed, and instead of reminding people that they are there, we should be trying to make people forget that they ever were. Then perhaps we can end up somewhere where there are no walls separating people in our minds, instead of somewhere where the walls are so reinforced by good intentions that they are never coming down.
That ended up very preachy. I'll go back to the topic at hand.
Yeah sure, go for female marines, for whatever reasons you like.
And to build on CEO Kasen's post of appreciation, I'd like to say thanks to the people I've been arguing with, as for the most part It's been civil, and I have been corrected politely several times and do appreciate the politeness with which we have been disagreeing!
Some Bloke: I asked my wife about this. To your point 1: She says that the presentation of Space Marines, their hyper masculine nature, the absence of women from the artwork, broadcasts clearly to her that this game is Not For Her. She does not feel like she'd be particularly welcome in the space. Is this a major harm? No. But it is a minor one.
To point 2: The issue you're talking about here is reinforced and in some ways created by the point above - why is the space like that, why is it dominated by one group so much? Because other groups don't feel particularly welcomed or like it is For Them.
To point 3: I dunno man, I think a lot of people who get representation feel like it matters A LOT to them. When you're already represented really well in media and so on then it probably seems like it's not a big deal, but when you're not and then you finally get some representation, yeah, it does feel like a big deal. Can't you see how that would work?
As to female space marines, I really like the point that we have Werewolf Marines, Vampire Marines, Roman Marines, Cyborg Marines, Knight Marines, Mongol Biker Marines, Teacher Marines, Ninja Marines, Monster Hunter Marines, Paladin Marines, Super Marines, Edgy Marines, Bad Marines, Evil Batman Marines, Egyptian Terracotta Army Marines, Zombie Marines, Berserker Marines, Cultist Marines, Evil Cyborg Marines, Heavy Metal Guitar Marines but we can't have Lady Marines, it's a step too far and would make a mockery of the background. (Also, did I leave any marine flavours out?)
Yes you forgot the Ghost Rider Marines (Legion of the Damned) and the Dragon Marines (Black Dragon - a 13th founding) and the Freemason Marine (maybe that's debatable, but Dark Angel fit the bill in my opinion).
Da Boss wrote: Some Bloke: I asked my wife about this. To your point 1: She says that the presentation of Space Marines, their hyper masculine nature, the absence of women from the artwork, broadcasts clearly to her that this game is Not For Her. She does not feel like she'd be particularly welcome in the space. Is this a major harm? No. But it is a minor one.
To point 2: The issue you're talking about here is reinforced and in some ways created by the point above - why is the space like that, why is it dominated by one group so much? Because other groups don't feel particularly welcomed or like it is For Them.
To point 3: I dunno man, I think a lot of people who get representation feel like it matters A LOT to them. When you're already represented really well in media and so on then it probably seems like it's not a big deal, but when you're not and then you finally get some representation, yeah, it does feel like a big deal. Can't you see how that would work?
As to female space marines, I really like the point that we have Werewolf Marines, Vampire Marines, Roman Marines, Cyborg Marines, Knight Marines, Mongol Biker Marines, Teacher Marines, Ninja Marines, Monster Hunter Marines, Paladin Marines, Super Marines, Edgy Marines, Bad Marines, Evil Batman Marines, Egyptian Terracotta Army Marines, Zombie Marines, Berserker Marines, Cultist Marines, Evil Cyborg Marines, Heavy Metal Guitar Marines but we can't have Lady Marines, it's a step too far and would make a mockery of the background. (Also, did I leave any marine flavours out?)
To point one, I would be interested to know whether the reason that the game comes across this way is because of the lack of female marines doing all the same things as regular marines, or because the things that marines are doing don't appeal to her? (this is meant genuinely and not as a "throwing it back at you", it's very hard to get that across in typing format!).
On point 2, I can kind of see how that might work, but I honestly don't think that space marines being masculine warriors and very popular is the reason why the people in GW are, most of the time, socially limited men who don't seem to know how to interact with a woman without her feeling incredibly awkward. The communities tend to grow through word of mouth and recommendations - my cousin introduced me to 40k, then my friends and I picked it up when I recommended it to them. I don't think any of us were influenced by the space marines being masculine heroes. None of us even played marines.
On point 3, I can understand what you're saying, but I feel the problem is deeper rooted than this. Someone said "We have put men on the podium!" and instead of asking "why the hell is there a podium anyway?" people are asking "why can't I be on the podium?" "you haven't got a woman on the podium, there should be one." "You haven't got a PoC on the podium, there should be one." and people have responded to being sorted into boxed by their birth and beliefs, not by saying "why the hell have you put me in this box" but by saying "their box has a window to let people look in, we want a window too!", and then defending their boxes viciously when they are threatened to be removed.
I feel like this is something of a "have your cake and eat it" thing, where people are saying "I refuse to let myself be represented by anyone who doesn't look like me!" and then saying i nthe same breath "Why do people make decisions about me based on what I look like?".
It's two sides of the _ist coin, IMHO. But I do understand - I just think that people being elated by being "included" in something which had no agenda to exclude them in the first place is a sad thing, not a happy one. The wall keeping women away from marines was put there by the people, because of the way they have been brought up to think, and not by the marines. The people in the shop thinking that because they are men they are boys toys, and the women outside thinking the same. The problem is the way people think - marines can be all male if people stop thinking that this is the problem and focus on the real problem.
But, GW ain't about to change society itself, and female marines will help, and won't hinder people changing their views if it ever does happen, so yeah, we should go for it.
Also a cracking summary of all the marine types there!
So my wife's impression is just a general one: "Oh, this is a male space, if I try to get involved some guy is gonna come over and take over and boss me around and try to do everything for me".
This is based on her long experience of being a nerdy woman and an engineer and having guys assume she doesn't know anything and try to take over. Whether that was roleplaying games in Uni where she was given the healer and then the guys in the group tried to tell her what action to take every turn (a behaviour I see in my own D&D group which is 4 women and 2 men, it's only the men backseat gaming for the women, and actually mostly one guy in particular).
Or when she was at a party with a bunch of engineers and there was a scalextrics track. She'd always been interested in them but never had one as a kid, so she was queueing up excited to take her turn and as soon as she got there the guy running the thing tried to take the controller off her to show her "how to do it properly" and telling her what to do, which no, he absolutely hadn't been doing to anyone else (all male) who'd taken their turn.
Or in her workplace when people assume she's a PA or secretary rather than a project manager.
So she just assumes if she went into GW it'd be another male dominated space where she'd be treated as an outsider and patronized, even if it was well meaning she wouldn't be treated like the other gamers there, and she just doesn't engage because she's had enough of that crap.
LunarSol wrote: As far as lore, the best way to handle is simply not to make a thing of it. Just include a few female head options on the sprue; they can put a couple bodies in slightly redesigned armor if they like, but its hardly necessary. It just doesn't need a fluff justification, it can just be.
Are you talking about an upgrade sprue?
In all honesty I think the brass at GW would 100% love this.
I'm sure they would: they already do it with Chapter upgrade kits.
Im not sure.. To me its like:
Nothing says inclusion and representation like charging for inclusion and representation...
I think his solution would likely backfire. Also it means more SM stuff..
Proof would have to be in the proverbial pudding though.
But - I just don't see GW stepping into this quagmire.
They were more than happy to create women Stormcast, who fill a largely similar role to Space Marines in AoS. I'll be honest, I could see them quite literally using Stormcast as a testing ground for Space Marines: take the risks on your newly created faction in your second largest game, and if they pay off, try it on the mainline faction.
Yeeaaaah..... after they destroyed the game called WHFB in order to make room for AOS/storm casts.
You can yell about how this is not political till you blue in the face but will significant amount of customers see it that way?
That doesn't mean the significant amount of customers are still right.
And what if they are right? Who gets to decide.
I don't see them taking a potentially huge risk with their brand or their top selling product range. Ideology and peoples wants aside...
And that's why I think all these posts about "just make someone else the poster boy" doesn't work - because GW won't jeopardise Space Marines. However, I see them using Stormcast as a testing bed for Space Marines - and considering that Stormcast having women is generally well received...
Generally well received? I thought everyone loved storm casts in AOS.. (not an AOS player no idea)
How are giving more stuff to other armies jeopardise SM? SM are still there unchanged in this paradigm. We just get more of other stuff on top.. It means perhaps eroding the hegemony of SM which would be awesome.
Spoiler:
Again, all I'm saying is that they're more than happy to change the Space Marine identity - and if it becomes economically expedient to add women (as so many companies are realising that the women's market is fairly lucrative for pop culture), you bet they'll do it.
Market citations needed.
I can give you plenty examples of stuff gunning for representation at the cost of all else because of pressure (bit like this thread is trying to do).
There are a few things on that list I actually liked.
Dark tower being chief amongst them. Fragging love that film.
When companies get confused about what their purpose and mission statement and go off doing something else they tend to loose money.
This is an observation. Not an endorsement of anything.
It never fails to amaze me how people who generally call themselves "Rational Skeptics" turn around and support ridiculously, massively irrational reasons for the failure of something. The procedure for 'proving' that something 'got woke and went broke' is literally
1) Sort by: Failed Media Enterprise
2) Find: ANY EXAMPLE within failed media enterprise that can be construed as "Woke."
3) Proclaim that Media Enterprprise "Got woke" and therefore "Went Broke."
Annihilation is on that list - the reasoning for how it "Got Woke" was by having the principal characters be four women.
You know.
Like they were in the fething source novel. By NOT CHANGING THE CANON TO INCLUDE MORE DUDES, the film "got woke" and that is the reason for its failure.
Or another entry on that list: Mass Effect Andromeda.
Mass Effect 2, everyone's favorite Mass Effect game, massive commercial smash hit, included gay romance, numerous new quirky ethnic minority characters, hashtag girlboss strong female protagonist with hashtag girlboss strong female protagonist moments like walking in a room where a bad alien does a sexism at you so you pull out your gun and point it at him....but that game didn't "get woke" obviously, because it was a massive success. Nooooo, it was Mass Effect Andromeda that 'got woke" because....um....um... this one time, if you walk up to a character who's not in your squad, and is basically just a WoW quest giver person, she says something like "time to start my new life...as Samantha!" and the people who are just DESPERATE to declare that something went broke got woke decided that that meant the game was PANDERING TO THE TRANSGENDERS instead of the other possible interpretation of this lady just having assumed a new identity or something.
And the game certainly didn't fail because of the bad graphics, or the not as good writing, or the fact that they tried to take an open world exploration billions of quest markers and tasks and gak video game and slap it on to a franchise that's historically been about keeping track of dozens of named characters in a fairly intricate plot and maybe there's a reason successful open world games usually have main storylines like "you gotta get the four things" or "you gotta kill the guys to rescue your friends" because there's something about spending nineteen hours scanning gak and climbing up mountains by spamming the jump button that makes you forget who Astralogictor Arlamedes is and why she needs to Contrapulate the Mystic Va'arlon, and there's a reason that a tight linear shooter game that constantly reminds you what you're supposed to be doing works better with that kind of structure.
No, that couldn't be it! Ignore every time some thing included stuff that can be considered woke and succeeded, and ignore everything that failed that didn't get woke!
On point 3, I can understand what you're saying, but I feel the problem is deeper rooted than this. Someone said "We have put men on the podium!" and instead of asking "why the hell is there a podium anyway?" people are asking "why can't I be on the podium?" "you haven't got a woman on the podium, there should be one." "You haven't got a PoC on the podium, there should be one." and people have responded to being sorted into boxed by their birth and beliefs, not by saying "why the hell have you put me in this box" but by saying "their box has a window to let people look in, we want a window too!", and then defending their boxes viciously when they are threatened to be removed.
In your analogy pro-female SMare saying "why is there a podium?", you just aren't reading what people are writing. Even if they were saying "why isn't X on the same podium", if everyone is on the same podium then there is no one thing being raised above the others.
Spoiler:
I feel like this is something of a "have your cake and eat it" thing, where people are saying "I refuse to let myself be represented by anyone who doesn't look like me!" and then saying i nthe same breath "Why do people make decisions about me based on what I look like?".
That saying doesn't apply here. It's actually this:
"My sex makes up roughly 50% of the entire human race, this product makes up roughly 50% of the entire range, there isn't a single option to represent me in this product, when I try to make my own I am harassed and threatened online and potentially in person."
Kinda seems like your saying that if people want to be represented in media they should also have to take abuse about themselves.
People aren't forcing you to make yourSM representative of them, they just want the ability to make themselves into mini form, which BTW is one of the pillars of the hobby.
Spoiler:
It's two sides of the _ist coin, IMHO. But I do understand - I just think that people being elated by being "included" in something which had no agenda to exclude them in the first place is a sad thing, not a happy one. The wall keeping women away from marines was put there by the people, because of the way they have been brought up to think, and not by the marines. The people in the shop thinking that because they are men they are boys toys, and the women outside thinking the same. The problem is the way people think - marines can be all male if people stop thinking that this is the problem and focus on the real problem.
But, GW ain't about to change society itself, and female marines will help, and won't hinder people changing their views if it ever does happen, so yeah, we should go for it.
Also a cracking summary of all the marine types there!
Yes SM didn't put up any walls, they're inanimate products and can't actually do anything. GW put up the barriers because it helped their sales in the 1980s but as society has begun to move past the "X is for boys, Y is for girls" mentality for most products.
Yes this is a wider societal issue but at the same time why not try to solve what we know is a problem in this small slice of life?
Da Boss wrote: So my wife's impression is just a general one: "Oh, this is a male space, if I try to get involved some guy is gonna come over and take over and boss me around and try to do everything for me".
This is based on her long experience of being a nerdy woman and an engineer and having guys assume she doesn't know anything and try to take over. Whether that was roleplaying games in Uni where she was given the healer and then the guys in the group tried to tell her what action to take every turn (a behaviour I see in my own D&D group which is 4 women and 2 men, it's only the men backseat gaming for the women, and actually mostly one guy in particular).
Or when she was at a party with a bunch of engineers and there was a scalextrics track. She'd always been interested in them but never had one as a kid, so she was queueing up excited to take her turn and as soon as she got there the guy running the thing tried to take the controller off her to show her "how to do it properly" and telling her what to do, which no, he absolutely hadn't been doing to anyone else (all male) who'd taken their turn.
Or in her workplace when people assume she's a PA or secretary rather than a project manager.
So she just assumes if she went into GW it'd be another male dominated space where she'd be treated as an outsider and patronized, even if it was well meaning she wouldn't be treated like the other gamers there, and she just doesn't engage because she's had enough of that crap.
Yeah, I have seen that sort of behaviour myself. It speaks to me of a far deeper rooted problem than whether marines have female heads or not. Does she assume that it's male dominated because of space marines, or because all the people in the shop are usually male?
The whole "male dominated space" thing is what needs to change to make the game open to women, not the heads of the models. By all means, change the heads of the models - I'm on board with it. But don't think it'll make much difference to the sorts of behaviours described above - that will take time and general no-being-a-donkeycave-ness attitudes. I expect that a really balanced shop owner will make a big difference, who doesn't patronize people or assume how little they know. If scalextrics kits were horse racing instead of cars, the guy running it would still assume he needed to show her how to run it properly. That's the problem.
I think if there were prominent female characters doing cool stuff in the artwork it would make a difference to my wife. But the other factors would still be there, she'd just be slightly more interested.
Market citations needed.
I can give you plenty examples of stuff gunning for representation at the cost of all else because of pressure (bit like this thread is trying to do).
There are a few things on that list I actually liked.
Dark tower being chief amongst them. Fragging love that film.
When companies get confused about what their purpose and mission statement and go off doing something else they tend to loose money.
This is an observation. Not an endorsement of anything.
There are awesome franchises and things where you have women as main protagonists. Like SOB in 40k. Why cant we elevate those and bring about organic change without burning everything to the ground? Bringing up AOS storm cast as an example is really not a good play.. it was built on the ashes of WHFB and a lot of people lost their game. I'd rather this not happen to 40k.
Ahahahahha. Oh wait you're serious. Let me laugh even harder. Hahahhhahaha.
First off that link doesn't even seem to work or lead to the article. Nice one.
And secondly, seriously? You're going to still go for "Go Woke, Go Broke"? OK bud. Weird that Marvel, DC, and a bunch of other companies are still pumping out content despite being "woke".
As to female space marines, I really like the point that we have Werewolf Marines, Vampire Marines, Roman Marines, Cyborg Marines, Knight Marines, Mongol Biker Marines, Teacher Marines, Ninja Marines, Monster Hunter Marines, Paladin Marines, Super Marines, Edgy Marines, Bad Marines, Evil Batman Marines, Egyptian Terracotta Army Marines, Zombie Marines, Berserker Marines, Cultist Marines, Evil Cyborg Marines, Heavy Metal Guitar Marines but we can't have Lady Marines, it's a step too far and would make a mockery of the background. (Also, did I leave any marine flavours out?)
I'd argue we don't need Lady Marines. We need Lady Werewolf Marines, Lady Vampire Marines, Lady Roman Marines, Lady Cyborg Marines, Lady Knight Marines, Lady Mongol Biker Marines, Lady Teacher Marines, Lady Ninja Marines, Lady Monster Hunter Marines, Lady Paladin Marines, Lady Super Marines, Lady Edgy Marines, Lady Bad Marines, Lady Evil Batman Marines, Lady Egyptian Terracotta Army Marines, Lady Zombie Marines, Lady Berserker Marines, Lady Cultist Marines, Lady Evil Cyborg Marines, Lady Heavy Metal Guitar Marines, etc.
So just so I'm clear, calling them lady marines is sexist right? Because it otherizes them? I just want to make sure, because what I thought was just calling them Astartes was good enough. Calling them Lady marines makes their gender first before their calling. It robs them of their importance. It's why "actress" is a dying term. Because it makes the issue about gender rather than skill/talent/profession.
FezzikDaBullgryn wrote: Marvel makes about the GDP of a small 1st world country, PER movie. So yeah, go woke, become the single most successful franchise in film history.
I wouldn't call Marvel movies "woke", they are absurdly safe. I mean, it is good that they have minorities and women protagonists, but congratulations that is decades behind the curve. I mean remember Alien (1979)? now that is a super feminist movie. The first black superhero movie isn't Black Panther, it was Blade in 1998.
This is specially hilarious when compared to the source material. I mean: "oh no, Marvel made a female super hero movie based on a character that debuted on comics in 1967". What's next? "oh no, Marvel made political commentary like that time Captain America punched Hitler in 1941 (America entered WW2 until a year later in 1942)". And lets not even talk about all the LGBT characters in the comics that Disney is blatantly ignoring to avoid offending the Russian and Chinese market.
If your concept of "woke" is Disney Marvel and Disney Star Wars, then I guess you have been living under a rock for the last half century.
I was going to make that point TBH but didn't want to push into a different topic accidentally.
All the companies who make changes to their product or add to it that are decried as "woke", at best pay lip service and at worst are doing it to fill quotas set out by the money people.
I think 44 pages in, we've reached the point where the arguments on the anti-female SM side have lost steam or have become problematic. It seems that most posters have agreed that the addition of female SM would both be a good addition to the setting and help to promote inclusivity and reduce the prominence of toxic elements within the community. A win for the modelers, the story writers, and those seeking a more welcoming hobby.
No one remembers the dust up when Heimdall became black? Or the whole internet rage about the "She's got back up" girl scene in Infinity wars? The trogs out there have been decrying the (Vomit) "wokeness" (Vomit again) of Marvel for years. Because they had the temerity to make Heimdall black. Now interestingly, there is not a single lesbian centered big box office film in existence. There are dozens of gay male focused tv shows and movies; There is broke Back Mountain, and mid night cowboy, and even The Bird Cage, but Hollywood/Capitalism does not cater or find interest in the Female Gaze. Like, at all. So yeah, when Marvel made 1.2 billion dollars off of Captain Marvel, their first full forwards female driven superhero movie, it was a big deal. What sucks is when Black widow tanks (Covid has ruined theater films) the Les Grossman's of the world will just kill it off for another decade, because "Female gaze doesn't sell", which is a giant lie.
We've seen the same argument used countless times in this thread. People feel it's ok to attack this idea on the merit's that it doesn't make financial sense for GW to do this, as if that is some how related?
Da Boss wrote: So my wife's impression is just a general one: "Oh, this is a male space, if I try to get involved some guy is gonna come over and take over and boss me around and try to do everything for me".
This is based on her long experience of being a nerdy woman and an engineer and having guys assume she doesn't know anything and try to take over. Whether that was roleplaying games in Uni where she was given the healer and then the guys in the group tried to tell her what action to take every turn (a behaviour I see in my own D&D group which is 4 women and 2 men, it's only the men backseat gaming for the women, and actually mostly one guy in particular).
Or when she was at a party with a bunch of engineers and there was a scalextrics track. She'd always been interested in them but never had one as a kid, so she was queueing up excited to take her turn and as soon as she got there the guy running the thing tried to take the controller off her to show her "how to do it properly" and telling her what to do, which no, he absolutely hadn't been doing to anyone else (all male) who'd taken their turn.
Or in her workplace when people assume she's a PA or secretary rather than a project manager.
So she just assumes if she went into GW it'd be another male dominated space where she'd be treated as an outsider and patronized, even if it was well meaning she wouldn't be treated like the other gamers there, and she just doesn't engage because she's had enough of that crap.
Yeah, I have seen that sort of behaviour myself. It speaks to me of a far deeper rooted problem than whether marines have female heads or not. Does she assume that it's male dominated because of space marines, or because all the people in the shop are usually male?
The whole "male dominated space" thing is what needs to change to make the game open to women, not the heads of the models. By all means, change the heads of the models - I'm on board with it. But don't think it'll make much difference to the sorts of behaviours described above - that will take time and general no-being-a-donkeycave-ness attitudes. I expect that a really balanced shop owner will make a big difference, who doesn't patronize people or assume how little they know. If scalextrics kits were horse racing instead of cars, the guy running it would still assume he needed to show her how to run it properly. That's the problem.
Yep, agreed. typically if a field is dominated by one gender or the other, the barrier in place is just a general institutional attitude. A man who wants to become a kindergarten teacher in america is generally going to be viewed with distrust and is just...unlikely to bother when he can simply pursue a slightly different job within the same category like being a middle school teacher and face none of the same barriers. A friend of mine wanted to get into medicine, and pursued a nursing degree rather than a med school degree for financial reasons, but ended up feeling artificially limited to being a prison nurse or surgical nurse as those are the only categories that aren't something like 90% women and really difficult to break into as a man.
People hearing of, or having had experience with a man in those roles is the #1 thing that changes peoples' attitudes and makes them willing to be more trusting of seeing people in that role. The real thing that will actually help to get more people into warhammer is just...momentum. But the thing that fueled for example the great broadening of people getting into DnD 5e or comic books was just...those things becoming normal and acceptable for people other than young white men to be into. Representation of fictional characters is just a signal and a symbol, it's not the real first step and it's not the real thing that detractors are actually afraid of - it's the elements of their hobby that they like that they know other people do not like and will try to change if the thing becomes more popular.
If you grow up the sole demographic of a type of media, and every story told within that media is specifically the type of story you like to read with either characters who are like you (or start out like you) or characters you like to imagine yourself being like, and you believe that your thing becoming more popular means that you will have less of the types of stories and characters you like to read or watch or listen to, then your type of media becoming more popular is a thing you don't want. When your little niche group of 5 people who are really into the thing you like wish that more people were into the thing you like, you don't actually want a larger group of people different from you to get into the thing you like, you want to clone the people like you and just make it so there's more of you. Not different, just more.
I can empathize with the feeling. I just don't think it's good. I think there is an inherent value improvement of a category of art overall when many different people from many different walks of like bring their particular take and interpretation of the art category to the table rather than just telling infinite variations on the same exact few stories.
As to female space marines, I really like the point that we have Werewolf Marines, Vampire Marines, Roman Marines, Cyborg Marines, Knight Marines, Mongol Biker Marines, Teacher Marines, Ninja Marines, Monster Hunter Marines, Paladin Marines, Super Marines, Edgy Marines, Bad Marines, Evil Batman Marines, Egyptian Terracotta Army Marines, Zombie Marines, Berserker Marines, Cultist Marines, Evil Cyborg Marines, Heavy Metal Guitar Marines but we can't have Lady Marines, it's a step too far and would make a mockery of the background. (Also, did I leave any marine flavours out?)
The difference is those are all external theming placed ontop of the core aspects of a Space Marine, whereas this would be something that's a change to those core aspects of the Space Marines themselves.
Whats so interesting, generally, about where this intersects with nerdy/geeky media pursuits is that all of our art forms tend to be very...permutational?
We love taking a thing we know, and are familiar with, and know the references and factoids and previous permutations of, and exploring a bit of new territory by spinning them off or mashing them up or retooling and re-imagining them, but there's always certain particular sub-categories that cause discomfort and predictable outrage every time.
What if Batman was young? What if batman was old? What if batman was dark and gritty and grounded and modern? What if batman was in the future? what if batman did kill people? What if batman was a zombie? What if batman was in this team or worked with this hero or fought this other hero's villain? What if batman was ga-NOPE, STOP, STOP RIGHT THERE, IF YOU DO THAT YOU HAVE TO INVENT YOUR OWN, NEW, WHOLLY DIFFERENT, DISTINCT PROPERTY TOTALLY UNCONNECTED TO THE ONE I LIKE THAT IS MINE AND CANNOT BE CHANGED IN THAT WAY SPECIFICALLY!
As to female space marines, I really like the point that we have Werewolf Marines, Vampire Marines, Roman Marines, Cyborg Marines, Knight Marines, Mongol Biker Marines, Teacher Marines, Ninja Marines, Monster Hunter Marines, Paladin Marines, Super Marines, Edgy Marines, Bad Marines, Evil Batman Marines, Egyptian Terracotta Army Marines, Zombie Marines, Berserker Marines, Cultist Marines, Evil Cyborg Marines, Heavy Metal Guitar Marines but we can't have Lady Marines, it's a step too far and would make a mockery of the background. (Also, did I leave any marine flavours out?)
The difference is those are all external theming placed ontop of the core aspects of a Space Marine, whereas this would be something that's a change to those core aspects of the Space Marines themselves.
In what way would making a space marine a woman be more of a core change to the identity of a space marine than:
-Good guy space marines who are mutated by the Warp (Space Wolves)
-Good guy space marines who do not adhere to the normal chapter structure (various)
-Space Marines who are not living, thinking humans with bodies at all (Thousand Sons)
-Space Marines who use new, advanced technology instead of ill-understood technology from ye dark ages (primaris)
etc, etc, etc, down to all the various permutations of space marines that currently exist.
Da Boss wrote: Some Bloke: I asked my wife about this. To your point 1: She says that the presentation of Space Marines, their hyper masculine nature, the absence of women from the artwork, broadcasts clearly to her that this game is Not For Her. She does not feel like she'd be particularly welcome in the space. Is this a major harm? No. But it is a minor one.
To point 2: The issue you're talking about here is reinforced and in some ways created by the point above - why is the space like that, why is it dominated by one group so much? Because other groups don't feel particularly welcomed or like it is For Them.
To point 3: I dunno man, I think a lot of people who get representation feel like it matters A LOT to them. When you're already represented really well in media and so on then it probably seems like it's not a big deal, but when you're not and then you finally get some representation, yeah, it does feel like a big deal. Can't you see how that would work?
As to female space marines, I really like the point that we have Werewolf Marines, Vampire Marines, Roman Marines, Cyborg Marines, Knight Marines, Mongol Biker Marines, Teacher Marines, Ninja Marines, Monster Hunter Marines, Paladin Marines, Super Marines, Edgy Marines, Bad Marines, Evil Batman Marines, Egyptian Terracotta Army Marines, Zombie Marines, Berserker Marines, Cultist Marines, Evil Cyborg Marines, Heavy Metal Guitar Marines but we can't have Lady Marines, it's a step too far and would make a mockery of the background. (Also, did I leave any marine flavours out?)
My wife plays AoS and Warcry with me. She's played some of the box games as well - Spacehulk, Silvertower, etc. She is not at all interested in building, painting, or collecting. She only plays with the miniatures that I own. Contrary to your point my wife refuses to play with any female miniatures and will only play with the biggest hammer-wielding Stormcast. Preferably riding on dragons. I ignorantly bought some female Stormcasts - assembled and painted them for her and in her words - 'why would I play with the weaker smaller Stormcasts riding on ugly cats when I can play with my hammer guys riding dragons?'
Honestly I don't care if GW makes female space marines. Its a fictional universe they own and they can do whatever they want. I'm going to assume their target customer base/audience is male 12+; so does it really make sense to expend resources or energy trying to target outside that customer base. I have yet to see anything supporting the notion that they will increase sales if they go this route.
the_scotsman wrote: What if batman was ga-NOPE, STOP, STOP RIGHT THERE, IF YOU DO THAT YOU HAVE TO INVENT YOUR OWN, NEW, WHOLLY DIFFERENT, DISTINCT PROPERTY TOTALLY UNCONNECTED TO THE ONE I LIKE THAT IS MINE AND CANNOT BE CHANGED IN THAT WAY SPECIFICALLY!
.
Its truly ironic, really. Especially considering a lot of the early depictions of batman and Robin.
And for the record, I am extremely supportive of better and proper lbgtq representation in media.
The difference is those are all external theming placed ontop of the core aspects of a Space Marine, whereas this would be something that's a change to those core aspects of the Space Marines themselves.
That core must be weaker than mine if GW doesn't count it as one of the defining features of SM.
The core aspects of SM are:
A - Super-soldiers in PA.
B - Have the most customisation options due to the blank slate design of the models and extremely flexible and mutable lore.
C - They are the propaganda poster faction of both the game and the in-universe Imperium.
Da Boss wrote: Some Bloke: I asked my wife about this. To your point 1: She says that the presentation of Space Marines, their hyper masculine nature, the absence of women from the artwork, broadcasts clearly to her that this game is Not For Her. She does not feel like she'd be particularly welcome in the space. Is this a major harm? No. But it is a minor one.
To point 2: The issue you're talking about here is reinforced and in some ways created by the point above - why is the space like that, why is it dominated by one group so much? Because other groups don't feel particularly welcomed or like it is For Them.
To point 3: I dunno man, I think a lot of people who get representation feel like it matters A LOT to them. When you're already represented really well in media and so on then it probably seems like it's not a big deal, but when you're not and then you finally get some representation, yeah, it does feel like a big deal. Can't you see how that would work?
As to female space marines, I really like the point that we have Werewolf Marines, Vampire Marines, Roman Marines, Cyborg Marines, Knight Marines, Mongol Biker Marines, Teacher Marines, Ninja Marines, Monster Hunter Marines, Paladin Marines, Super Marines, Edgy Marines, Bad Marines, Evil Batman Marines, Egyptian Terracotta Army Marines, Zombie Marines, Berserker Marines, Cultist Marines, Evil Cyborg Marines, Heavy Metal Guitar Marines but we can't have Lady Marines, it's a step too far and would make a mockery of the background. (Also, did I leave any marine flavours out?)
Honestly I don't care if GW makes female space marines. Its a fictional universe they own and they can do whatever they want. I'm going to assume their target customer base/audience is male 12+; so does it really make sense to expend resources or energy trying to target outside that customer base. I have yet to see anything supporting the notion that they will increase sales if they go this route.
The answer, for most properties that people love to get mad about, is $.
For some weird reason, some bizarre esoteric mystery the potential causes and roots of which shall not be discussed here lest we violate the sacred barrier of no political discussion, that classic demographic of 'young white boys with middle class disposable income and time to expend on leisure activities' has shrunk.
Dramatically.
In one single generation, the fraction of wealth in america tied to the youngest spending demographic has been reduced by nearly 80%. In general, the types of people who have money to spend are trending older (say, you ever notice a lot of entertainment properties might be designed specifically to appeal to people who were kids in, oh, I don't know, the 1980s?) and trending....again, politics...hmm....."Denser"? "Fewer"? Any industry that relies on a larger amount of people consuming a relatively inexpensive product is having to grapple with the reality of a situation where eight people have half of what there is, in terms of the money that exists to spend and buy things.
So far, the shifting in GW's target market has primarily just gone from teenage boys, to.... those same teenage boys but 20-30 years later. The settings have gotten simultaneously more serious, gritty, dark, etc, but also they've abandoned the things that typically only teenage boys are unselfconscious enough to consume without embarrassment, like some of the super over the top cartoony stuff, or the 1980s Hawt Behbs With Behg Bewbiez (see Sisters Repentia for an example).
But they know people don't live forever, and they know that the narrow demographic of teenaged boys that were previously their entry level demographic has a fraction of the disposable wealth it used to have.
In my eyes, Age of Sigmar is the property that they're currently using as an experiment. Does this work? Is this anything? We've got Nostalgia stuff you remember from Fantasy, we've got stuff designed to hit on broad cultural appeal (It is not a mistake that the new line of Hobgoblins kinda sorta resembles a line of LOTR orks that GW doesn't have to pay sky-high royalties for), we've got gender representation, we've got some weird out there experimental stuff, we've got cute stuff we've got serious stuff what are people currently outside our main demographic looking for?
Everything else is hard-locked into their current purely nostalgia-based, super safe demo. As safe as they possibly can be. We're getting remakes of classic units, we're getting stuff you recognize from classic novels and other fluff, we're getting really minor variations on things we know like Orks and marines and sisters.
As to female space marines, I really like the point that we have Werewolf Marines, Vampire Marines, Roman Marines, Cyborg Marines, Knight Marines, Mongol Biker Marines, Teacher Marines, Ninja Marines, Monster Hunter Marines, Paladin Marines, Super Marines, Edgy Marines, Bad Marines, Evil Batman Marines, Egyptian Terracotta Army Marines, Zombie Marines, Berserker Marines, Cultist Marines, Evil Cyborg Marines, Heavy Metal Guitar Marines but we can't have Lady Marines, it's a step too far and would make a mockery of the background. (Also, did I leave any marine flavours out?)
The difference is those are all external theming placed ontop of the core aspects of a Space Marine, whereas this would be something that's a change to those core aspects of the Space Marines themselves.
So core it isn’t in any of their codexs EVER. Isn’t in print at all now and hasn’t been published for 4 years. Hardly a defining feature.
Anyone else at all surprised at the amount of times the mods have had to step in and clean up a post made in a hateful and violent manner? Because I am not. This is exactly the thing this thread is helping us to point out and stop. There is a sickness in our community and it revolves around gatekeeping.
People are still asking for proof of hate in the community. I wish we could just link to all the times the mod team has stepped in and helped us today as proof. I'd say I was shocked but this is exactly what GW was talking about with "you will not be missed".
As to female space marines, I really like the point that we have Werewolf Marines, Vampire Marines, Roman Marines, Cyborg Marines, Knight Marines, Mongol Biker Marines, Teacher Marines, Ninja Marines, Monster Hunter Marines, Paladin Marines, Super Marines, Edgy Marines, Bad Marines, Evil Batman Marines, Egyptian Terracotta Army Marines, Zombie Marines, Berserker Marines, Cultist Marines, Evil Cyborg Marines, Heavy Metal Guitar Marines but we can't have Lady Marines, it's a step too far and would make a mockery of the background. (Also, did I leave any marine flavours out?)
The difference is those are all external theming placed ontop of the core aspects of a Space Marine, whereas this would be something that's a change to those core aspects of the Space Marines themselves.
So core it isn’t in any of their codexs EVER. Isn’t in print at all now and hasn’t been published for 4 years. Hardly a defining feature.
It isn't just about that specific piece of lore in the first place, they're themed like that way even without that - you can't really say that they haven't been depicted and shown as an all-male brotherhood for years and years, otherwise there would be little point to this topic. Just because that particular lore originated from a non-codex book and then wasn't in a codex doesn't they haven't been portrayed like that for the past 2 decades or that it isn't something GW wants them to have as part of them, the fact that they deicded to keep and update that lore around 17 years after it was published (although there's also the other occasional mentions of similar stuff in the Horus Heresy novels, from what I remember) indicates that it not being printed in a codex was quite irrelevant as to whether they wanted it as part of their lore or not. It being 'missing' for so long did not mean they didn't want that lore still.
But the cultural aspect isn't what people are saying GW isn't talking about are they. It's the pseudoscience "it has to be a male child cos zygotes" bit.
And yes while they haven't mentioned it in a main Codex for (and I'm pretty sure my maths is right) about half the lifetime of the entire hobby, that doesn't mean they don't want to use it in the future. It just means they haven't wanted to use it for nearly two decades.
Oh wait. Yeah I'm gonna say GW doesn't want to use that bit of background.
GW change and add and remove stuff from the background all the time. In the end it's not an argument about whether it's part of the background or not, but why this change in particular is the sticking point.
As to female space marines, I really like the point that we have Werewolf Marines, Vampire Marines, Roman Marines, Cyborg Marines, Knight Marines, Mongol Biker Marines, Teacher Marines, Ninja Marines, Monster Hunter Marines, Paladin Marines, Super Marines, Edgy Marines, Bad Marines, Evil Batman Marines, Egyptian Terracotta Army Marines, Zombie Marines, Berserker Marines, Cultist Marines, Evil Cyborg Marines, Heavy Metal Guitar Marines but we can't have Lady Marines, it's a step too far and would make a mockery of the background. (Also, did I leave any marine flavours out?)
The difference is those are all external theming placed ontop of the core aspects of a Space Marine, whereas this would be something that's a change to those core aspects of the Space Marines themselves.
So core it isn’t in any of their codexs EVER. Isn’t in print at all now and hasn’t been published for 4 years. Hardly a defining feature.
It isn't just about that specific piece of lore in the first place, they're themed like that way even without that - you can't really say that they haven't been depicted and shown as an all-male brotherhood for years and years
Like how Militarum Tempestus are only shown with male troopers, Imperial Guard have only been shown with male troopers prior to a couple weeks ago, Tau were shown with only male troopers, GSC were only shown with male troopers, Custodes have been shown as all-male....etc, etc?
Loyalist Space Marines are the ONLY group portrayed that way that have ever had any explicit in-universe justification for why they MUST be all male. The fact that they have historically been portrayed that way for X amount of time has no bearing because it is more of an exception rather than a rule when GW does NOT portray a group as an all-male brotherhood. Take any random group within 40k and fantasy, and there's a higher chance that looking at their models you'd consider them to be portrayed as an all-male brotherhood than not.
It's almost like, rather than being a thing that by default 1/2 of a given population should probably be, female-ness has been treated as an attribute. After all, what are the different types of animals portrayed by Eldar Aspect Warriors?
-hawks
-scorpions
-dragons
-ghosts
-bigly revenge guys
-da red ones hunt fasta
-rocket hat skull fellows
-shrill women
-boy howdy this narrative theming kind of falls apart fast when you think about it, at least stereotypical Kung Fu styles mostly stick to animals huh
As to female space marines, I really like the point that we have Werewolf Marines, Vampire Marines, Roman Marines, Cyborg Marines, Knight Marines, Mongol Biker Marines, Teacher Marines, Ninja Marines, Monster Hunter Marines, Paladin Marines, Super Marines, Edgy Marines, Bad Marines, Evil Batman Marines, Egyptian Terracotta Army Marines, Zombie Marines, Berserker Marines, Cultist Marines, Evil Cyborg Marines, Heavy Metal Guitar Marines but we can't have Lady Marines, it's a step too far and would make a mockery of the background. (Also, did I leave any marine flavours out?)
The difference is those are all external theming placed ontop of the core aspects of a Space Marine, whereas this would be something that's a change to those core aspects of the Space Marines themselves.
So core it isn’t in any of their codexs EVER. Isn’t in print at all now and hasn’t been published for 4 years. Hardly a defining feature.
It isn't just about that specific piece of lore in the first place, they're themed like that way even without that - you can't really say that they haven't been depicted and shown as an all-male brotherhood for years and years, otherwise there would be little point to this topic. Just because that particular lore originated from a non-codex book and then wasn't in a codex doesn't they haven't been portrayed like that for the past 2 decades or that it isn't something GW wants them to have as part of them, the fact that they deicded to keep and update that lore around 17 years after it was published (although there's also the other occasional mentions of similar stuff in the Horus Heresy novels, from what I remember) indicates that it not being printed in a codex was quite irrelevant as to whether they wanted it as part of their lore or not. It being 'missing' for so long did not mean they didn't want that lore still.
A bit of lore said it so they’ve been all male, when ever it’s been brought up there has a Been hate thrown at anyone who suggest we change it, so they continue to be portrayed as all male all the time. The fact they have been all male isn’t isn’t reason to keep it that way, it’s the problem.
The primarchs were originally mates and fellow generals. All this father son, brother vs brother stuff is relatively new and been massively over played by the heresy books (but that’s a separate thread all together). They did have a little nudge toward a Christian monastic style round 4th edition ish but have since moved away from that. I think if the “brotherhood” is so important to you as a core marine trait, that’s something you have read in to the text. I don’t believe it’s their intention. I have read the same stuff as you and don’t get that feeling at all from it. It’s just the choice of all male pronouns that leans that way to me. They are no more a “band of brothers” than a mixed sex group of guard to me.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
FezzikDaBullgryn wrote: Anyone else at all surprised at the amount of times the mods have had to step in and clean up a post made in a hateful and violent manner? Because I am not. This is exactly the thing this thread is helping us to point out and stop. There is a sickness in our community and it revolves around gatekeeping.
People are still asking for proof of hate in the community. I wish we could just link to all the times the mod team has stepped in and helped us today as proof. I'd say I was shocked but this is exactly what GW was talking about with "you will not be missed".
It has been less common than I expected. Thankfully. But it does feel like some have been trying to argue it and when their weak reasons get picked apart their true colours come out. Not all though which is progress.
Da Boss wrote: As to female space marines, I really like the point that we have Werewolf Marines, Vampire Marines, Roman Marines, Cyborg Marines, Knight Marines, Mongol Biker Marines, Teacher Marines, Ninja Marines, Monster Hunter Marines, Paladin Marines, Super Marines, Edgy Marines, Bad Marines, Evil Batman Marines, Egyptian Terracotta Army Marines, Zombie Marines, Berserker Marines, Cultist Marines, Evil Cyborg Marines, Heavy Metal Guitar Marines but we can't have Lady Marines, it's a step too far and would make a mockery of the background. (Also, did I leave any marine flavours out?)
It occurs to me that anyone suggesting that introducing female space marines would in some way spoil the sanctity of the background material just needs to be presented with the list of Primarch names. This background was never particularly sancty to begin with, people. (Yes, that's a word now, hush)
...why she needs to Contrapulate the Mystic Va'arlon
FezzikDaBullgryn wrote: Anyone else at all surprised at the amount of times the mods have had to step in and clean up a post made in a hateful and violent manner? Because I am not. This is exactly the thing this thread is helping us to point out and stop. There is a sickness in our community and it revolves around gatekeeping.
Honestly, I'm surprised it took this long.
If it revolves around gatekeeping, it might not just be a gender issue, though - I've had a friend with one of the most gender-inclusive mindsets I can imagine just completely lose their gak when someone I was at the time trying to introduce to the beginning of 9th came up with a concept for a Chaos Knight J-pop-idol band because "I don't know what you're playing, but it's not 40K," and the aftershocks of the shouting match that ensued pretty much destroyed 40K within that group over the next couple months.
FezzikDaBullgryn wrote: People are still asking for proof of hate in the community. I wish we could just link to all the times the mod team has stepped in and helped us today as proof. I'd say I was shocked but this is exactly what GW was talking about with "you will not be missed".
Hecaton wrote: Are we allowed to disagree with the premise that female Astartes would make the setting worse?
...As neutrally as I can put this, double check that - Are you sure that came out how you were intending? Because there seems to be no small amount of agreement that they'd do absolutely nothing to make the setting worse.
Fundamentally, though, you're allowed to disagree with anything you like, as long as you're willing to put up with people telling you you're wrong.
Hecaton wrote: Are we allowed to disagree with the premise that female Astartes would make the setting worse?
...As neutrally as I can put this, double check that - Are you sure that came out how you were intending? Because there seems to be no small amount of agreement that they'd do absolutely nothing to make the setting worse.
Fundamentally, though, you're allowed to disagree with anything you like, as long as you're willing to put up with people telling you you're wrong.
I was asking the modding staff, who deleted a post on the topic with no explanation.
Hecaton wrote: Are we allowed to disagree with the premise that female Astartes would make the setting worse?
...As neutrally as I can put this, double check that - Are you sure that came out how you were intending? Because there seems to be no small amount of agreement that they'd do absolutely nothing to make the setting worse.
Fundamentally, though, you're allowed to disagree with anything you like, as long as you're willing to put up with people telling you you're wrong.
I was asking the modding staff, who deleted a post on the topic with no explanation.
I believe that the posts were generally removed because they strayed into genuinely offensive or hateful discussions and not in keeping with what has been thus far a heated but generally civil discussion!
If you feel like you have something to add on the topic of adding female space marines and feel like you can offer justifications to your thoughts (IE offer reasoning for your opinions, not just the opinions) then this is the right thread to be discussing this in!
Hecaton wrote: Are we allowed to disagree with the premise that female Astartes would make the setting worse?
...As neutrally as I can put this, double check that - Are you sure that came out how you were intending? Because there seems to be no small amount of agreement that they'd do absolutely nothing to make the setting worse.
Fundamentally, though, you're allowed to disagree with anything you like, as long as you're willing to put up with people telling you you're wrong.
I was asking the modding staff, who deleted a post on the topic with no explanation.
I believe that the posts were generally removed because they strayed into genuinely offensive or hateful discussions and not in keeping with what has been thus far a heated but generally civil discussion!
If you feel like you have something to add on the topic of adding female space marines and feel like you can offer justifications to your thoughts (IE offer reasoning for your opinions, not just the opinions) then this is the right thread to be discussing this in!
Or just the opinions. I think what Kasen was mentioning is that it seemed like the commenter probably meant to say "would make the setting worse" or something to that effect, but ended up voicing it as an opinion that female astartes would be a generally value-neutral aesthetic distinction that would do nothing to the setting overall.
This is purely conjecture based on the fact that the follow up post seemed to be seeking oppression points from internet moderators enforcing basic TOS policies.
Is there any value or way that we have missed, in which adding female astartes would IMPROVE the lore/game/hobby? Other than what has already been described...
For instance, would we go the "Rogue Trooper" route and say female astartes are more naturally gifted strategists and make better tactical decision makers, or more gifted snipers?
Or just make all things equal? I see possible negatives going down the ALL THINGS EQUAL route, because then there is no individualism.
EDIT: rephrased badly written sentence and grammar.
FezzikDaBullgryn wrote: Is there any value or way that we have missed, in which adding female astartes would IMPROVE the lore/game/hobby? Other than what has already been described...
For instance, would we go the "Rogue Trooper" route and say female astartes are more naturally gifted strategists and make better tactical decision makers, or more gifted snipers?
Or just make all things equal? I see possible negatives going down the ALL THINGS EQUAL route, because then there is no individualism.
EDIT: rephrased badly written sentence and grammar.
Not really. I'm just being honest, I view it as a largely aesthetic, basically symbolic thing that just allows for more people to feel free to make their stuff look the way they want it to and takes the excuse of 'officialdom' away from gatekeepers that like to wield it as a cudgel.
GW "officially recognizing" female astartes only matters if you're the kind of person that values official recognition from a completely arbitrary and imaginary authority.
Also, saying 'female marines are better at this' does not institute individualism at all. It does the opposite, just, in a positive way. Saying 'well of course asians are better at math' to an individual who worked many more hours than his peers on his math assignments to maintain a perfect 4.0 GPA while happening to be of asian descent diminishes his individual accomplishment and the work he put in as deriving from some nebulous perceived biological factor.
If they want to create a female astartes named character who is the best at tactics or a good sniper, that would be individualism.
FezzikDaBullgryn wrote: Is there any value or way that we have missed, in which adding female astartes would IMPROVE the lore/game/hobby? Other than what has already been described...
For instance, would we go the "Rogue Trooper" route and say female astartes are more naturally gifted strategists and make better tactical decision makers, or more gifted snipers?
Or just make all things equal? I see possible negatives going down the ALL THINGS EQUAL route, because then there is no individualism.
EDIT: rephrased badly written sentence and grammar.
All things equal is the only way to do this properly.
For starters, flip the argument and see if it sounds problematic. If GW said "yes there are female astartes, but they are better at supporting roles whilst the male astartes are better as the shooting and chopping" then people will, rightly, ask why they are being assigned roles based on their genders.
Individualism comes from special characters. All the other units are, by definition, made up of run-of-the-mill troopers who are nameless and whose job it is to be murdered every game. You don't get individualism in the ranks of grunts in a wargame, you get it in the characters.
So by all means, have a character who is brilliant at tactical decisions or sniping, but leave their gender out of the decision making process! (I'll be honest, after the massive flare-up you gave me for discussing differences in men & women, I'm surprised you're suggesting that they treat men and women as if they are different!)
FezzikDaBullgryn wrote: Is there any value or way that we have missed, in which adding female astartes would IMPROVE the lore/game/hobby? Other than what has already been described...
For instance, would we go the "Rogue Trooper" route and say female astartes are more naturally gifted strategists and make better tactical decision makers, or more gifted snipers?
Or just make all things equal? I see possible negatives going down the ALL THINGS EQUAL route, because then there is no individualism.
EDIT: rephrased badly written sentence and grammar.
Not really. I'm just being honest, I view it as a largely aesthetic, basically symbolic thing that just allows for more people to feel free to make their stuff look the way they want it to and takes the excuse of 'officialdom' away from gatekeepers that like to wield it as a cudgel.
GW "officially recognizing" female astartes only matters if you're the kind of person that values official recognition from a completely arbitrary and imaginary authority.
Also, saying 'female marines are better at this' does not institute individualism at all. It does the opposite, just, in a positive way. Saying 'well of course asians are better at math' to an individual who worked many more hours than his peers on his math assignments to maintain a perfect 4.0 GPA while happening to be of asian descent diminishes his individual accomplishment and the work he put in as deriving from some nebulous perceived biological factor.
If they want to create a female astartes named character who is the best at tactics or a good sniper, that would be individualism.
Great points. So if we make these purely aesthetic changes, do we need to even consult the lore at all? I know I am doing a bad thing here and arguing out of both sides of my mouth now, but do we need new lore at all? Is there any rule against just putting female heads on space marine bodies, and calling it a day? Or is this generally about changing the lore?
Great points. So if we make these purely aesthetic changes, do we need to even consult the lore at all? I know I am doing a bad thing here and arguing out of both sides of my mouth now, but do we need new lore at all? Is there any rule against just putting female heads on space marine bodies, and calling it a day? Or is this generally about changing the lore?
I don't think we would need a lore change for it, per se, but I think that people are familiar with malemarines and it would feel sloppy perhaps not to give some lore to back it up.
Just something like Sgt Smudge suggested (I think it was them?) about how when primaris marines were made they found it works for female children as well, so they now have twice the recruitment pool. It gives a nod to there having been a time period when there were only male marines, but smoothly says "but that's not how it is any more", i nthe same way as they added primaris marines rather than outright replacing the old marines models with newer, bigger ones. They could have said "they have always been this big" but instead they added and expanded the lore, and I think it's that much richer for it.
FezzikDaBullgryn wrote: Is there any value or way that we have missed, in which adding female astartes would IMPROVE the lore/game/hobby? Other than what has already been described...
For instance, would we go the "Rogue Trooper" route and say female astartes are more naturally gifted strategists and make better tactical decision makers, or more gifted snipers?
Or just make all things equal? I see possible negatives going down the ALL THINGS EQUAL route, because then there is no individualism.
EDIT: rephrased badly written sentence and grammar.
Not really. I'm just being honest, I view it as a largely aesthetic, basically symbolic thing that just allows for more people to feel free to make their stuff look the way they want it to and takes the excuse of 'officialdom' away from gatekeepers that like to wield it as a cudgel.
GW "officially recognizing" female astartes only matters if you're the kind of person that values official recognition from a completely arbitrary and imaginary authority.
Also, saying 'female marines are better at this' does not institute individualism at all. It does the opposite, just, in a positive way. Saying 'well of course asians are better at math' to an individual who worked many more hours than his peers on his math assignments to maintain a perfect 4.0 GPA while happening to be of asian descent diminishes his individual accomplishment and the work he put in as deriving from some nebulous perceived biological factor.
If they want to create a female astartes named character who is the best at tactics or a good sniper, that would be individualism.
Great points. So if we make these purely aesthetic changes, do we need to even consult the lore at all? I know I am doing a bad thing here and arguing out of both sides of my mouth now, but do we need new lore at all? Is there any rule against just putting female heads on space marine bodies, and calling it a day? Or is this generally about changing the lore?
Well, no, GW wouldn't need to explicitly change lore, but if they started adding female heads to Space Marine sprues it would implicitly change lore (at least in some people's minds).
As has been argued back and forth, GW doesn't really play up the "only males" thing in the text these days, so they could continue just not doing that, add female heads, and let us figure it out on our own. Would love to see the 4 dozen threads on dakka with people posting pictures of their new sprues and being confused/angry about it.
Hecaton wrote: Are we allowed to disagree with the premise that female Astartes would make the setting worse?
...As neutrally as I can put this, double check that - Are you sure that came out how you were intending? Because there seems to be no small amount of agreement that they'd do absolutely nothing to make the setting worse.
Fundamentally, though, you're allowed to disagree with anything you like, as long as you're willing to put up with people telling you you're wrong.
In what way would it make the setting better, though? I can understand the real-world reasons for wanting this - the customization/modelling side and the desire for more diversity overall, especially as Space Marines are the poster faction - but haven't really seen any improvements mentioned in terms of the setting itself, just basically "the lore is silly so should be changed" which is something that's very subjective.
Andykp wrote: I think again stormcast are the model here. There’s no distinction at all between male and female roles. They both just exist and do the same thing.
I don’t think female armour should look any different from the current though.
Agreed on both counts. Stormcast are (IIRC) hand-made by some god or something, so it makes a bit more sense for them to have more tailored armor as opposed to astartes being 'there's the power armor, hop in.'
It's not like power armor isn't self-evidently extremely roomy given how teeny the heads of primaris marines look in relation to their suits. Even fairly obese astartes like Guy Fieri - sorry, Tor Garadon - are able to fit in and take the enemies of the emperor to flavortown.
Hecaton wrote: Are we allowed to disagree with the premise that female Astartes would make the setting worse?
...As neutrally as I can put this, double check that - Are you sure that came out how you were intending? Because there seems to be no small amount of agreement that they'd do absolutely nothing to make the setting worse.
Fundamentally, though, you're allowed to disagree with anything you like, as long as you're willing to put up with people telling you you're wrong.
In what way would it make the setting better, though? I can understand the real-world reasons for wanting this - the customization/modelling side and the desire for more diversity overall, especially as Space Marines are the poster faction - but haven't really seen any improvements mentioned in terms of the setting itself, just basically "the lore is silly so should be changed" which is something that's very subjective.
In terms of fluff, I would consider one of the biggest advancements in how interesting the astartes are has been thru the diverse range of personalities of the Primarchs in 30k as opposed to the blandly 'generically heroic' personalities displayed by most of the preceding 40k-era astartes characters.
Most of them just followed the formula of "Generic HQ Type, But The Generic HQ Type-Iest!" for their chapter, with a couple of exceptions that had an actual divergent personality like Lukas. It was like if every single member of the justice league was just a clone of superman with a different wardrobe and maybe a hair color swap.
I'm under no delusion that GW is interested in telling fewer stories about Astartes. It is in my interest to want canonical changes that make Astartes feel more like actual distinct, different individuals rather than identical, unrelatable generic aliens.
It's actually why, from the fluff I've read, I prefer the Stormcast to 40k-era astartes. They're still people. They've got distinct personalities and have lived a full, complete life prior to their storm...casting... in various locations and they've got the memories that go with that. They're essentially slaves to a godlike and distant authority figure, the same as Astartes, but they're more like the Primarchs in that they actually think about that and consider their situation as individuals.
Funny thing about females in space marine armor, there are plenty of examples of it being done with zero modifications to the "roomyness".
Amberly in the Ciaphas Cain series wears power armor a lot. As do many female inquisitors in the comics, like that old one serving with GK, who tries to accuse the Captain of Heresy, and gets a Storm Bolter to the face for her accusation.
Actually that's it. The inquistion females in power armor, is all I can think of. Zero mods.
In terms of fluff, I would consider one of the biggest advancements in how interesting the astartes are has been thru the diverse range of personalities of the Primarchs in 30k as opposed to the blandly 'generically heroic' personalities displayed by most of the preceding 40k-era astartes characters.
Most of them just followed the formula of "Generic HQ Type, But The Generic HQ Type-Iest!" for their chapter, with a couple of exceptions that had an actual divergent personality like Lukas. It was like if every single member of the justice league was just a clone of superman with a different wardrobe and maybe a hair color swap.
I'm under no delusion that GW is interested in telling fewer stories about Astartes. It is in my interest to want canonical changes that make Astartes feel more like actual distinct, different individuals rather than identical, unrelatable generic aliens.
It's actually why, from the fluff I've read, I prefer the Stormcast to 40k-era astartes. They're still people. They've got distinct personalities and have lived a full, complete life prior to their storm...casting... in various locations and they've got the memories that go with that. They're essentially slaves to a godlike and distant authority figure, the same as Astartes, but they're more like the Primarchs in that they actually think about that and consider their situation as individuals.
Isn't this a problem quite irrelevant to this idea though? That sounds like something that is just to do with how they're written, If you don't like the personality type characters usually have with and want them to be a bit more unique, surely that's just something that could be addressed just by taking characters in a different direction regardless of there being female Space Marine or not? Female Space Marines would likely still be written along the same lines as other Space Marines anyway, I don't see why that would drastically change because of it.
In what way would it make the setting better, though? I can understand the real-world reasons for wanting this - the customization/modelling side and the desire for more diversity overall, especially as Space Marines are the poster faction - but haven't really seen any improvements mentioned in terms of the setting itself, just basically "the lore is silly so should be changed" which is something that's very subjective.
Improvement is subjective and some people view getting rid of silly arbitrary piece of lore that causes real life problems as a way to improve the setting.
What people don't seem to be able to answer is why should that lore stay? GW hasn't been featuring it in primary publication (Codexes), Space Marines as a faction don't follow religious or cultural rules that state Astartes have to be created from male, and its used as a instrument of harm in the community. So what purpose does it actually serve?
In terms of fluff, I would consider one of the biggest advancements in how interesting the astartes are has been thru the diverse range of personalities of the Primarchs in 30k as opposed to the blandly 'generically heroic' personalities displayed by most of the preceding 40k-era astartes characters.
Most of them just followed the formula of "Generic HQ Type, But The Generic HQ Type-Iest!" for their chapter, with a couple of exceptions that had an actual divergent personality like Lukas. It was like if every single member of the justice league was just a clone of superman with a different wardrobe and maybe a hair color swap.
I'm under no delusion that GW is interested in telling fewer stories about Astartes. It is in my interest to want canonical changes that make Astartes feel more like actual distinct, different individuals rather than identical, unrelatable generic aliens.
It's actually why, from the fluff I've read, I prefer the Stormcast to 40k-era astartes. They're still people. They've got distinct personalities and have lived a full, complete life prior to their storm...casting... in various locations and they've got the memories that go with that. They're essentially slaves to a godlike and distant authority figure, the same as Astartes, but they're more like the Primarchs in that they actually think about that and consider their situation as individuals.
Isn't this a problem quite irrelevant to this idea though? That sounds like something that is just to do with how they're written, If you don't like the personality type characters usually have with and want them to be a bit more unique, surely that's just something that could be addressed just by taking characters in a different direction regardless of there being female Space Marine or not? Female Space Marines would likely still be written along the same lines as other Space Marines anyway, I don't see why that would drastically change because of it.
Just adds a different type of person for GW's writers to work with. Sure, they could make a female character completely identical to a male character, but the last time they added a suite of characters with a variety of different backgrounds, motivations, etc it resulted in a better result narratively than most of the preceding content did.
It isn't much, but then again, you're literally giving nothing up by adding them into a kit that was already being put out.
What does adding any space marine head with a different appearance add to the game? What is actually gained by "the setting' by having any space marine head bit besides just the exact same helmet exactly duplicated?
That is why I asked. If this is purely asthetic, we can just skip the lore entirely, as it has no bearing on the reality that women can be space marines. If it's a lore argument, then we may want to give them some form of difference, otherwise the lore breaks down.
Frankly, I'm entirely on side gimme those awesome models of female reavers, damn the lore. The lore just gets in the way of having fun.
Argive wrote:Nothing says inclusion and representation like charging for inclusion and representation...
I think his solution would likely backfire. Also it means more SM stuff..
Proof would have to be in the proverbial pudding though.
Proof would have to be in the pudding, yes. So perhaps the whole "but I'd have to pay extra!!" is an entirely fabricated concern, and not guaranteed to be a problem.
As I've said - GW have been happy to make upgrade sprues without forcibly including them into kits. I see no reason this would have to be different.
They were more than happy to create women Stormcast, who fill a largely similar role to Space Marines in AoS. I'll be honest, I could see them quite literally using Stormcast as a testing ground for Space Marines: take the risks on your newly created faction in your second largest game, and if they pay off, try it on the mainline faction.
Yeeaaaah..... after they destroyed the game called WHFB in order to make room for AOS/storm casts.
And? How is this related to the inclusion of women?
I'm also fairly sure they didn't just nuke WHFB just for Stormcast - most likely, it was to break away from a setting that was perhaps a little too stagnant and creatively stifling - because they've certainly been flexing their creative muscles with AoS.
You can yell about how this is not political till you blue in the face but will significant amount of customers see it that way?
That doesn't mean the significant amount of customers are still right.
And what if they are right? Who gets to decide.
I think it's pretty simple, really - can anyone tell me why women existing is political? How someone's very life is somehow a political topic? If so, isn't everyone's life political?
And that's why I think all these posts about "just make someone else the poster boy" doesn't work - because GW won't jeopardise Space Marines. However, I see them using Stormcast as a testing bed for Space Marines - and considering that Stormcast having women is generally well received...
Generally well received? I thought everyone loved storm casts in AOS.. (not an AOS player no idea)
Well, I don't see thread after thread in AoS topics about how women Stormcast ruins the setting.
How are giving more stuff to other armies jeopardise SM? SM are still there unchanged in this paradigm. We just get more of other stuff on top.. It means perhaps eroding the hegemony of SM which would be awesome.
Exactly - eroding the hegemony of Space Marines.
Now, don't take that to mean that I *want* Space Marines to have a hegemony. I'm simply saying that GW do, and by making other factions the posterboys, they're devaluing their existing cash cow by creating competition.
If GW want to keep Space Marines as iconic as they are, they're better off leaving them as the poster boys, and not potentially causing competition from their own IP.
Again, not defending GW's decisions to do so, but simply being realistic about it.
Again, all I'm saying is that they're more than happy to change the Space Marine identity - and if it becomes economically expedient to add women (as so many companies are realising that the women's market is fairly lucrative for pop culture), you bet they'll do it.
Market citations needed.
The RPG scene, Dungeons and Dragons 5th edition especially.
I also point towards the clothing industry, which was more tailored (ha!) towards men for the longest time. Similarly, the video game market is diversifying it's reach to more than it's previous demographics, and the industry is only growing.
When companies get confused about what their purpose and mission statement and go off doing something else they tend to loose money.
This is an observation. Not an endorsement of anything.
A company's purpose, primarily, is nearly always profit. Not "we don't pander to women here".
Companies lose profit when they make certain business decisions that hurt their ability to deliver on the service/product they sell.
There are awesome franchises and things where you have women as main protagonists. Like SOB in 40k. Why cant we elevate those and bring about organic change without burning everything to the ground?
Sisters aren't protagonists in 40k though, not in the broader sense. Sisters can be protagonists in their own books, sure, but they're not the "protagonist" faction plastered at the face of the company. Guess who are?
Oh yeah - the Space Marines.
Plus, why is including women Space Marines "burning everything to the ground"? Why the extreme language?
Bringing up AOS storm cast as an example is really not a good play.. it was built on the ashes of WHFB and a lot of people lost their game. I'd rather this not happen to 40k.
Again, why would including women Space Marines be even close to equivalent to the setting shift that was WHFB/AoS? Rather an extreme reaction, don't you think?
By all the SM fanboys account SM range is outselling all of creation which is why they get to have all the fun toys.. It appears they are doing something right.
And is that anything to do with them being all men, and being exclusively so? I don't think so.
Unless you're implying that apparently people seem to love Space Marines primarily because they exclude women?
Not what I said. Don't put words in my mouth.
I just observed SM+40k are selling really really well and GW is doing really well as a company.
You're absolutely right. I fail to see what that has to do with including women Space Marines though. Would you care to elaborate on that? Because I fail to understand why you'd mention how Space Marines are popular because they're "doing something right" when my point is about how they're excluding women.
Is excluding women the "something right" in this equation? Why else was it mentioned?
Plus, you hit on a great point - "Space Marines get to have all the fun toys" - maybe women want to feel involved in those fun toys too, hence why they don't want to pick up a different faction?
Well sheeet maybe men who don't want to play SM want to have those toys too? What's being a woman has to do with anything?
Because the man is deciding he doesn't want to play *Space Marines*, but at least has the option for that representation. A woman doesn't even have the option of a woman getting those fun toys.
I don't want to play Warhammer space marine. Do you ?
I mean, I play every Imperial faction. So, I don't exactly fit your example.
Its of paramount importance more factions get more stuff and toys for longevity of the game. The fact you dislike SOB does not mean women wont like SOB... SOB should get all the same toys. Dragon SOB, Spiky SOB, Wolfy SOB etc the works! The sprinkle some for TAU and Eldar.
First, I don't dislike Sisters of Battle. I collect an army of them, for god's sake.
But your comment is exactly what I mean - you imply that Sisters of Battle are the "woman" faction. By my saying that I want women Space Marines, you take that as an attack on the Designated Woman Faction - when in reality, I'm simply saying that Sisters of Battle aren't equal to what Space Marines offer, from both a creative space, and a model range one too.
You say "we should have dragon SOB, spikey SOB, wolfy SOB" - but that's precisely the issue! The actual faction design of what Sisters of Battle are doesn't fit that kind of design. Sisters of Battle have a very strong faction design and culture - the Catholic nun trope, taken to the extreme, is integral to their design and aesthetic. By having "dragon SOB, spikey SOB wolfy SOB", you're actively compromising an *explicit* feature of their design. If you make wolfy SOB, you're needing to compromise on that very detailed Catholic nun design, and by doing so, you're harming their factional identity.
The same can't be said of Space Marines, whose faction design is centred on customisation and player freedoms. Their armour is neutral and blank for the most part, they're supplied with easy to convert upgrade sprues and sculpts. There is a wealth of different cultures and traditions reflected in the myriad Chapters, and GW are happy to encourage people to expand in weird and wacky ways. Space Marines are defined by their easy flavouring and ability to be defined as "spikey Marines, wolfy Marines, dragon Marines, Roman Marines, edgy Marines, etc etc" - Sisters aren't.
So either you're calling to massively overhaul the design of Sisters of Battle (not very lore friendly of you?), or we simply ignore 13 words of non-core lore, and add women Space Marines. I think one of these is much easier than the other.
Rehashing SM with new heads and potentially boob plate is just lame IMO
No-one called for boobplate, for a start. But why is it lame? What's the problem?
And you can call it lame, but it's no different than the upgrade sprue kits for the different Chapters, or GW "rehashing" Guardsmen with new heads.
some bloke wrote:I think the three things I'm most struggling to understand is:
1: That space marines being all male and being the flagship product due to a popularity borne from reasons not related to gender is somehow causing people harm. It has come up repeatedly that this is causing people harm or distress, and I fail to see how.
Don't get me wrong, I can see how women not being represented in the game is problematic, and doesn't align with the current views, but I fail to see how it can actively harm someone that these little pieces of plastic have male heads and call each other "brother".
It's not the little pieces of plastic that's the problem. It's the people who use those little pieces of plastic to assert that this is a boys only space, and why, for whatever reason, they react so harshly when someone changes the male piece of plastic for a female piece. Ultimately, it comes down to *people* being the problem, but using the problematic elements in the representation department to justify and reinforce their views.
By removing those problematic elements and flipping them on their head, you're delegitimising their exclusionary views, and instead promoting inclusionary ones.
2: I don't see how the gender of small pieces of plastic makes the blindest odds when the stores where they would buy & play are dominated by predominantly socially awkward men who act as if they've never seen a woman up-close before.
Because by making those steps towards inclusion and visibly making clear that "we're trying to avoid the boys-only-club style", hopefully we'd see a change in the demographics of those stores. If women are included in the front and centre lineup of Space Marines, that makes women less of an "Othered" group, like they kind of are with Sisters of Battle, and more of a "we're here, we exist, this is normal" sort of thing.
3: I don't see "Representation" as a positive step. You can't stop discrimination (by race/gender/whatever) by saying "It's okay, we have a (race/gender/whatever) in our group!". People have been split into these groups - arranged by gender, skin colour, sexual orientation - and then instead of saying "no, we're all equal so stop putting us in boxes", we decided to instead refuse to engage with anything which doesn't represent our box, and lobby for change so our box is included in everything. Racism, Sexism and Homophobia all involve making decisions based on peoples race, gender and sexual orientation, and yet people still seem to think that if they are the ones making these decisions then they are not _ist. The walls of these boxes are self imposed, and instead of reminding people that they are there, we should be trying to make people forget that they ever were. Then perhaps we can end up somewhere where there are no walls separating people in our minds, instead of somewhere where the walls are so reinforced by good intentions that they are never coming down.
The thing is, it's GW who created this "gender matters, for some reason" idea when they said that women couldn't be Space Marines.
There was absolutely no reason why women couldn't have been Space Marines in the first place, but arbitrarily, GW did. They brought gender in the equation - by asking for *fair representation*, I'm trying to remove it.
You can say as much as you like how you don't understand the effects of representation, and how you don't see how it has a positive impact on people, but all I can say is that there's many many many people who do feel positive effects from representation, and I think their feelings are entirely valid. I don't see representation as "putting people in boxes" or "reducing them to *insert category here*" - I, and others like me, see it as affirming and normalising our existence in media. Instead of having to assume that people like me exist, I can see it explicitly. Some people don't want to forget the categories and labels they define their own existence with, and some people want to celebrate those things - and why are they wrong to do so? Not all boxes are bad - so long as people aren't being forced into them if they don't want to be. I'm proud of the labels I live by - and having those labels which, for me, have taken many years to come to terms with erased because "you don't need labels, if you label yourself you're inadvertently being -ist" is honestly a little devaluing, saying that how I have identified myself isn't important and that my own self-perception is worthless.
If you don't use labels to identify yourself, that's great, it really is - but some people find strength in labels and identities, and that's great too.
Including women Space Marines doesn't force women into a box - just as including women in general doesn't force women into a box.
Mentlegen324 wrote:
Da Boss wrote: As to female space marines, I really like the point that we have Werewolf Marines, Vampire Marines, Roman Marines, Cyborg Marines, Knight Marines, Mongol Biker Marines, Teacher Marines, Ninja Marines, Monster Hunter Marines, Paladin Marines, Super Marines, Edgy Marines, Bad Marines, Evil Batman Marines, Egyptian Terracotta Army Marines, Zombie Marines, Berserker Marines, Cultist Marines, Evil Cyborg Marines, Heavy Metal Guitar Marines but we can't have Lady Marines, it's a step too far and would make a mockery of the background. (Also, did I leave any marine flavours out?)
The difference is those are all external theming placed ontop of the core aspects of a Space Marine, whereas this would be something that's a change to those core aspects of the Space Marines themselves.
The core aspect which isn't mentioned in the Codexes?
Strange that such a core, key feature would be so neglected like that - almost like it's not a core feature?
Yet again, I would also ask why is it so important that "we exclude women" is a core feature of the Space Marines? Don't Custodes do that too? Why does that need to be a thing for the Space Marines specifically?
Mentlegen324 wrote: It isn't just about that specific piece of lore in the first place, they're themed like that way even without that - you can't really say that they haven't been depicted and shown as an all-male brotherhood for years and years, otherwise there would be little point to this topic.
In the same way that Guardsmen were depicted as basically all-male? T'au? Genestealer Cults?
In terms of what we're "shown", most factions are overwhelming male, and have been for years and years. Does that mean they all need to be all-male too, because they're "themed like that way", even without "specific pieces of lore"?
Just because that particular lore originated from a non-codex book and then wasn't in a codex doesn't they haven't been portrayed like that for the past 2 decades
But that's not the point being raised here. The point being raised is that you claimed it's a "core aspect". If something's a "core aspect", I would expect to see it in the core Codexes for that faction, because that's where the most important stuff goes - you know, the things that outline the basic **core** features to the player, the stuff that you'd expect everyone who had an interest in that faction to know.
Or are we saying that "core aspects" of factions should be scattered wildly over out-of-print books and exclusive documents? That sounds like a strange way to inform your player base as to the seemingly integral and core aspects of your factions.
Can you think of any other examples of "core aspects" of factions which aren't mentioned at all in their Codexes?
FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:Is there any value or way that we have missed, in which adding female astartes would IMPROVE the lore/game/hobby? Other than what has already been described...
For instance, would we go the "Rogue Trooper" route and say female astartes are more naturally gifted strategists and make better tactical decision makers, or more gifted snipers?
Or just make all things equal? I see possible negatives going down the ALL THINGS EQUAL route, because then there is no individualism.
As other users have said, I definitely don't want to go down the "women Space Marines are better at XYZ" at all. Purely equal treatment, as far as I'm concerned, is the proper way to go here, with that largely being my reasoning behind having women Astartes in the first place.
If we're after individualism, it certainly shouldn't be delineated in terms of gender.
the_scotsman wrote:Not really. I'm just being honest, I view it as a largely aesthetic, basically symbolic thing that just allows for more people to feel free to make their stuff look the way they want it to and takes the excuse of 'officialdom' away from gatekeepers that like to wield it as a cudgel.
GW "officially recognizing" female astartes only matters if you're the kind of person that values official recognition from a completely arbitrary and imaginary authority.
Also, saying 'female marines are better at this' does not institute individualism at all. It does the opposite, just, in a positive way. Saying 'well of course asians are better at math' to an individual who worked many more hours than his peers on his math assignments to maintain a perfect 4.0 GPA while happening to be of asian descent diminishes his individual accomplishment and the work he put in as deriving from some nebulous perceived biological factor.
If they want to create a female astartes named character who is the best at tactics or a good sniper, that would be individualism.
All agreed with. GW making women Astartes is, more than anything else, simply stating "yes, women are welcome here, and screw all of you who kick up a fuss when someone walks in with women Space Marines". It's removing the ammunition from the loaded gun, so to speak, and removing any sense of legitimacy from those who use the lore as, how the_scotsman put it, a cudgel.
And also agreed on the issue of individualism. If we're after individual characters/personalities, it certainly shouldn't be tied to gender, and I'd almost prefer to avoid the trope of the first women Space Marine character being a good tactician or sniper, purely to avoid that trope. If I were tasked with making a women Space Marine special character, I'd be making a Space Wolves valkyrie styled character, and make her an absolute melee machine.
FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:Great points. So if we make these purely aesthetic changes, do we need to even consult the lore at all? I know I am doing a bad thing here and arguing out of both sides of my mouth now, but do we need new lore at all? Is there any rule against just putting female heads on space marine bodies, and calling it a day? Or is this generally about changing the lore?
The reason for changing the lore is twofold:
1. It legitimises and recognises that women Astartes exist, and aren't just someone's headcanon. That seal of officialdom doesn't matter to some people, but at least giving it that is a sense of legitimacy and influence, so that people who would normally say "but it's not canon, so I don't care" don't have that defence.
2. There wasn't ever really a reason to exclude women in the first place. By changing it to a more inclusive state, it sets a tone of "hey, we know we done goofed, but we recognise that and have had changes moving away from that".
some bloke wrote:Just something like Sgt Smudge suggested (I think it was them?) about how when primaris marines were made they found it works for female children as well, so they now have twice the recruitment pool. It gives a nod to there having been a time period when there were only male marines, but smoothly says "but that's not how it is any more", i nthe same way as they added primaris marines rather than outright replacing the old marines models with newer, bigger ones. They could have said "they have always been this big" but instead they added and expanded the lore, and I think it's that much richer for it.
I believe I may have suggested something like that, yeah. It doesn't quite fix my issues with the core idea that women couldn't be Space Marines in the first place, because of an arbitrary reason (and also bars women Space Marines from the whole 30k scene), but if we had to keep that for whatever reason, the "Cawl found a way to implant women recruits" option is viable.
Mentlegen324 wrote:In what way would it make the setting better, though? I can understand the real-world reasons for wanting this - the customization/modelling side and the desire for more diversity overall, especially as Space Marines are the poster faction - but haven't really seen any improvements mentioned in terms of the setting itself, just basically "the lore is silly so should be changed" which is something that's very subjective.
My thoughts:
1. It was entirely arbitrary in the first place, especially with the in-setting reasoning - it had no reason to be the way it was, and was just as logical as "Space Marines only recruit from people with a cleft in their chin".
2. It no longer matches the design ethos of what Space Marines are, that of them being incredibly diverse and customisable, with a vast range of designs and cultural inspiration.
3. By having mixed-gender recruits, it further emphasises the dehumanising and ruthless nature of the Imperial war machine - gender doesn't matter, if you're a suitable recruit, you'll be stripped of your humanity and built up for a life of unending war.
4. The setting is ultimately less important than real people in the real world.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Mentlegen324 wrote:Isn't this a problem quite irrelevant to this idea though? That sounds like something that is just to do with how they're written, If you don't like the personality type characters usually have with and want them to be a bit more unique, surely that's just something that could be addressed just by taking characters in a different direction regardless of there being female Space Marine or not? Female Space Marines would likely still be written along the same lines as other Space Marines anyway, I don't see why that would drastically change because of it.
Yes, without overhauling how Space Marines are written overall (and that's something that needs changing too, just on a quality of writing level), women Space Marines would be written exactly the same as male Space Marines.
I don't see why that is a problem inherently.
People aren't asking for women Space Marines because they'll be more rounded characters naturally, or even much different in personality. Simply that they offer an opportunity to explore the dehumanising nature of Space Marines through a female lens, and further embody the dehumanising nature of the Imperium moreover. People are asking for women Space Marines because there's no reason there shouldn't be in the first place, and that representation in the flagship faction is important to them.
Argive wrote:If you are talking about representation, do women represent any particular values they would need/want represented? Or is this a purely asthetics?
I don't exactly believe that there are "particular values" that women have a monopoly on. Representation isn't about representing a specific value held by those being represented - it's about simply visibility and normalisation.
I, and others like me, see it as affirming and normalising our existence in media. Instead of having to assume that people like me exist, I can see it explicitly.
This made me get it. Sorry that it took me so long! I still feel like people are too quick to label themselves and restrict themselves to things, but I get it.
I believe I may have suggested something like that, yeah. It doesn't quite fix my issues with the core idea that women couldn't be Space Marines in the first place, because of an arbitrary reason (and also bars women Space Marines from the whole 30k scene), but if we had to keep that for whatever reason, the "Cawl found a way to implant women recruits" option is viable.
This is like a (heavily watered down) version of when people were pulling down statues of people who did great things but also did some bad things (or things like "but their ancestors had slaves" as if that has any bearing on their character). You shouldn't erase the past, even if it was a bad place, otherwise people won't be able to learn from it. We should remember that marines were limited to males only, and add onto the story to say that this is no longer a problem thanks to >insert 13 words of arbitrary story here<. The event "Women have gained the vote" would have been seriously belittled if everyone said "well, of course they always could vote, they just never did...".
I, and others like me, see it as affirming and normalising our existence in media. Instead of having to assume that people like me exist, I can see it explicitly.
This made me get it. Sorry that it took me so long! I still feel like people are too quick to label themselves and restrict themselves to things, but I get it.
I believe I may have suggested something like that, yeah. It doesn't quite fix my issues with the core idea that women couldn't be Space Marines in the first place, because of an arbitrary reason (and also bars women Space Marines from the whole 30k scene), but if we had to keep that for whatever reason, the "Cawl found a way to implant women recruits" option is viable.
This is like a (heavily watered down) version of when people were pulling down statues of people who did great things but also did some bad things (or things like "but their ancestors had slaves" as if that has any bearing on their character). You shouldn't erase the past, even if it was a bad place, otherwise people won't be able to learn from it. We should remember that marines were limited to males only, and add onto the story to say that this is no longer a problem thanks to >insert 13 words of arbitrary story here<. The event "Women have gained the vote" would have been seriously belittled if everyone said "well, of course they always could vote, they just never did...".
I think you might be slightly straw-manning the arguments of people in favor of removing statues of historical personalities in terms of the 'slaves' question - at least, around here, it's more likely if someone wants to rename a building or remove a statue it's more like 'this is named after this dude because of the slave market he owned, right here, in this location, and that's why it was constructed and named after him.' You also don't usually learn bad things about people by looking at statues, at least my general assumption upon seeing a statue is, by default 'gosh, must have been a good/heroic/in some way inspirational dude or group of people this statue is representing.'
but anyway, that definitely strays into political territory real fast.
I'm uncertain if you've noticed though, but the thing about 40k's history is um, it's all just made up. And a lot of it, fairly recently. After all, prior to 30k officially existing and 40k forgetting that it is a satirical work, the fact that the primarchs and the emperor had lore like "AND THEY WERE FIFTEEN FEET TALL!" and "and the primarch of the blood angels was named haemoglobin blooderson angelius, he was a gigantic angel with literal angel wings who flew around on them" were probably, and I'm not a GW lore designer here but I'm going to go out on a limb and say probably, originally intended as an indication that the history of the setting itself was something of an unreliable narrator. You, the reader, were supposed to read those lore details and think "hmm, i've also read about societies like the one presented here in 40k and how their leaders are mystical godmen who never take dumps and who score perfect 18s the first time they try golf, I think this lore snippet is probably intended to convey that the history of this setting is somewhat colorfully embellished for propaganda purposes."
But then 30k happened and people at GW said 'nope, that's literally all true, in the middle of a massive, 10000 year dark age, humanity kept basically exactly perfect historical records just like we have basically exactly perfect historical records of things that happened 100 years ago.'
Hecaton wrote: Are we allowed to disagree with the premise that female Astartes would make the setting worse?
...As neutrally as I can put this, double check that - Are you sure that came out how you were intending? Because there seems to be no small amount of agreement that they'd do absolutely nothing to make the setting worse.
Fundamentally, though, you're allowed to disagree with anything you like, as long as you're willing to put up with people telling you you're wrong.
I was asking the modding staff, who deleted a post on the topic with no explanation.
I believe that the posts were generally removed because they strayed into genuinely offensive or hateful discussions and not in keeping with what has been thus far a heated but generally civil discussion!
If you feel like you have something to add on the topic of adding female space marines and feel like you can offer justifications to your thoughts (IE offer reasoning for your opinions, not just the opinions) then this is the right thread to be discussing this in!
Or just the opinions. I think what Kasen was mentioning is that it seemed like the commenter probably meant to say "would make the setting worse" or something to that effect, but ended up voicing it as an opinion that female astartes would be a generally value-neutral aesthetic distinction that would do nothing to the setting overall.
This is purely conjecture based on the fact that the follow up post seemed to be seeking oppression points from internet moderators enforcing basic TOS policies.
Nah, not at all.
To be frank, also, the idea that there should he female Astartes seems to be overwhelmingly pushed by men who claim to speak on behalf of women, not women themselves, which is of course ironic.
The setting is supposed to be dystopian. The more fethed up it is the better.
I, and others like me, see it as affirming and normalising our existence in media. Instead of having to assume that people like me exist, I can see it explicitly.
This made me get it. Sorry that it took me so long! I still feel like people are too quick to label themselves and restrict themselves to things, but I get it.
I'm thankful that you understand that now at least - my apologies if I could have made it clearer earlier.
I believe I may have suggested something like that, yeah. It doesn't quite fix my issues with the core idea that women couldn't be Space Marines in the first place, because of an arbitrary reason (and also bars women Space Marines from the whole 30k scene), but if we had to keep that for whatever reason, the "Cawl found a way to implant women recruits" option is viable.
This is like a (heavily watered down) version of when people were pulling down statues of people who did great things but also did some bad things (or things like "but their ancestors had slaves" as if that has any bearing on their character). You shouldn't erase the past, even if it was a bad place, otherwise people won't be able to learn from it. We should remember that marines were limited to males only, and add onto the story to say that this is no longer a problem thanks to >insert 13 words of arbitrary story here<. The event "Women have gained the vote" would have been seriously belittled if everyone said "well, of course they always could vote, they just never did...".
I think the difference here is that we're talking about made-up lore here, and not real world atrocities/injustices, like your "women could always vote" example. I have no objection to GW, say, reposting that old "Creation of a Space Marine" thing as a "look how far we've come, we used to say that Space Marines couldn't be women! How silly we were!", but in terms of in-setting stuff, there's no reason that there even needs to be a legacy of having no women Space Marines.
After all, we don't keep around old lore in setting about how Leman Russ just used to be a regular army commander, and not a Primarch - why should this be any different?
I'll also say as well, if I may get slightly close to the real world, statues are rarely used to commemorate bad people for bad deeds. Statues primarily exist to celebrate heroes or people who exemplified "good" traits of the society they were erected in - they're a sign of commemoration and of virtue first and foremost. We don't create statues of indisputable villains like Hitler so that we remember what they did, do we?
I'll leave that issue at that, for worries of getting off topic.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Hecaton wrote: The setting is supposed to be dystopian. The more fethed up it is the better.
So why are Guardsmen mixed gender then?
I've never quite gotten this point. The Imperium *isn't* sexist. It's actually incredibly gender-neutral. Civilians aren't, for the most part, segregated by gender. Anyone can join the Imperial Guard. The High Lords include many ladies in their number. The in-setting reason for no women Space Marines, according to the (non-core) Creation of a Space Marine article, is nothing to do with any intention exclusion, but is apparently a made-up biological flaw.
But if we *are* saying that the Imperium is sexist and horrible (by the way, dystopian doesn't mean sexist - you can have dystopian settings that are gender-neutral), and that actually Space Marines exclude women because they're sexist, and women aren't deemed fit to serve - why do they serve in the Imperial Guard?
The 30k Black Books are written close to the events they portray. When it comes down to it people even in m.33 aren't 100% sure what happened and the "modern" Imperium did all it could to relegate the Heresy to legend and myth. Its sort of like how the Jedi are shown pre-Order 66 vs how they are talked about post-Order 66.
I think the thing is that the lore doesn't have to be retconned for this to be included, and I personally dislike it when the lore is changed in a "actually c'tan were beaten by the necrons and their old lore never happened" sort of way. I'd have been much happier if they had just said, for example, that more necron stuff awoke and that included some c'tan which were defeated, and that the nightbringer and deceiver held no feelings for them so don't care that they are using them as weapons of war. That would have sat better with me than just rewriting the whole thing.
And whilst it is all made up, it's always better to keep what you can than keep changing things around, it leaves people like me feeling a bit lost. Maybe that's why Orks appeals to me so much, because Ghazzie isn't being retconned all the time, he genuinely is getting bigger and badder every time. No-one's going around changing it so ghazzie was always this big.
My comment on statues was from people who were defacing statues because the person's grandparents had been involved in the slave trade, as if that held any sway over what the person did. Destroying history is universally worse than just remembering it and moving on. I'd prefer to see the same treatment of 40k lore, rather than having to tell all the people who have played for years that the lore they know is wrong, it's better to tell them it's out of date. It makes it seem like a colossal waste of time to have read enough of it to remember it, only to have it changed retrospectively.
To be frank, also, the idea that there should he female Astartes seems to be overwhelmingly pushed by men who claim to speak on behalf of women, not women themselves, which is of course ironic.
The setting is supposed to be dystopian. The more fethed up it is the better.
Up to you if you want to ignore the specific examples that have been given in this thread chief.
And considering some of the rhetoric seen in this thread and the internet in general, why would someone not choose anonymity for safety?
As for your last point:
1 - Language.
2 - When the setting is used to cause real harm to real people then it isn't a good setting.
My comment on statues was from people who were defacing statues because the person's grandparents had been involved in the slave trade, as if that held any sway over what the person did. Destroying history is universally worse than just remembering it and moving on. I'd prefer to see the same treatment of 40k lore, rather than having to tell all the people who have played for years that the lore they know is wrong, it's better to tell them it's out of date. It makes it seem like a colossal waste of time to have read enough of it to remember it, only to have it changed retrospectively.
I don't think you should have included it at all because it has no bearing on this discussion and is a very sensitive issue that people have a multitude of reasons for supporting/opposing.
I will say that there is a huge difference in a private company removing or replacing things within their creation, and a public monument dedicated to an individual who thought it was OK to own another person being removed from its pedestal.
I'm going to need you to back up "the idea that there should he female Astartes seems to be overwhelmingly pushed by men who claim to speak on behalf of women, not women themselves, which is of course ironic."
Speaking strictly for myself, I don't claim to speak on behalf of "women" or any gender. What I and others, claim to speak for, is a setting of inclusivity and non-bias. Which is also firmly backed by, you guessed it, GW.
I think you may notice at times people like Smudge, Gert, Scotsman, and others go out of their way to speak in a genderless or claimless style. They advocate for change, but they don't demand it or state that it is mandatory.
They state they would like to see more inclusivity in the hobby, but they don't say we only want WOMYN to play.
Above all they have sought to enlighten, educate, and illustrate their points by example and intelligence.
some bloke wrote: I think the thing is that the lore doesn't have to be retconned for this to be included, and I personally dislike it when the lore is changed in a "actually c'tan were beaten by the necrons and their old lore never happened" sort of way. I'd have been much happier if they had just said, for example, that more necron stuff awoke and that included some c'tan which were defeated, and that the nightbringer and deceiver held no feelings for them so don't care that they are using them as weapons of war. That would have sat better with me than just rewriting the whole thing.
It doesn't have to be retconned, but I don't see why it shouldn't be retconned in the first place. Why does it need to stay as a monument to that? Do you have a problem that Leman Russ was retconned from being an army commander to a Primarch? Should GW be making some kind of lore that explains how that works?
And whilst it is all made up, it's always better to keep what you can than keep changing things around, it leaves people like me feeling a bit lost.
But what is there to cause people to be lost? It's literally just as simple as "women Space Marines exist, and always did". If that would get you lost, then surely changing the setting by advancing it forwards in time would also cause that feeling of being lost?
This isn't changing the entire dynamics of a faction and how they relate on a cosmic power scale with the rest of the galaxy. It's not even as drastic as Primaris Marines, or even Space Marines getting their own jet fighters. It's simply just "we have women Space Marines".
Then, regarding the whole "leaves people feeling lost" - that's not exactly dissimilar from the people feeling lost and excluded because there's lore explicitly excluding them, is it?
Spoiler:
My comment on statues was from people who were defacing statues because the person's grandparents had been involved in the slave trade, as if that held any sway over what the person did.
Strange - most of the examples I see are defacing statues of *actual slavers*, and who got the wealth which made them so """worthy""" of having a statue via that slave trade.
Destroying history is universally worse than just remembering it and moving on.
Destroying a statue isn't forgetting history, and a statue isn't necessarily "historical" in it's own right (example - many of the statues of slavers in the UK were erected centuries after their deaths, in the Victorian period. They're not ancient historical relics, they're commemorations of slavers).
All the same, probably best to leave this here, yes? Getting a little off topic.
I'd prefer to see the same treatment of 40k lore, rather than having to tell all the people who have played for years that the lore they know is wrong, it's better to tell them it's out of date.
Firstly, 40k lore isn't real. It's not even close to the same relevance, or importance, as real world statues of slavers.
Secondly, the lore has changed and retconned and evolved countless times. Why is women Space Marines the hurdle we need to stop at?
There's nothing wrong with telling them that it's out of date, but that doesn't mean that we can't do that in the way I described above - GW can just repost the original "Creation of a Space Marine" article, and then throw in a footnote saying "yeah, this used to be canon, but we dropped it". There we go, history preserved, and setting moved on.
It makes it seem like a colossal waste of time to have read enough of it to remember it, only to have it changed retrospectively.
So what - you're saying that here's where we draw the line in the earth, no more retcons, no more lore developments, because if we add more, it's just a waste of time on the old stuff?
Why now? Why women Space Marines? Why is that the hurdle that's so difficult to jump?
FezzikDaBullgryn wrote: I'm going to need you to back up "the idea that there should he female Astartes seems to be overwhelmingly pushed by men who claim to speak on behalf of women, not women themselves, which is of course ironic."
I mean people in this thread are saying the lack of female Astartes is the reason for less women in this hobby.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Also, for those of you claiming that the setting material saying that Astartes can only be made from boys and not girls is "non-core," that's ridiculous. It's just you inventing the idea that it's some lower tier of canon so it can be ignored.
FezzikDaBullgryn wrote: I'm going to need you to back up "the idea that there should he female Astartes seems to be overwhelmingly pushed by men who claim to speak on behalf of women, not women themselves, which is of course ironic."
I mean people in this thread are saying the lack of female Astartes is the reason for less women in this hobby.
I mean, if you squint and really ignore a lot of the comments made, I suppose you could reach that conclusion.
Is it a massive oversimplification and missing out on a lot of the detail and nuance of the point? Yes, that too.
Also, for those of you claiming that the setting material saying that Astartes can only be made from boys and not girls is "non-core," that's ridiculous. It's just you inventing the idea that it's some lower tier of canon so it can be ignored.
Define "core" for me?
Is everything considered core canon? Is some stuff more or less important than others? If so, we have it "in canon" that Leman Russ is a human Imperial Army commander, and not a Primarch. Is that core canon still? If not, what an absolutely tragedy!! 40k is ruined, burnt to ashes, all because Leman Russ is now a Primarch, and not some random army commander! /s
40k canon is not all created equal. This much is obvious. And when a certain piece of very old lore, which barely surfaces in secondary publications, let alone in the *actual Codexes* is being touted as "core canon", I'm more than a little doubtful as to the validity of that claim.
Is everything considered core canon? Is some stuff more or less important than others? If so, we have it "in canon" that Leman Russ is a human Imperial Army commander, and not a Primarch. Is that core canon still? If not, what an absolutely tragedy!! 40k is ruined, burnt to ashes, all because Leman Russ is now a Primarch, and not some random army commander! /s
That argument fails because that lore has been explicitly superceded. I'd say nice try, but...
40k canon is not all created equal. This much is obvious. And when a certain piece of very old lore, which barely surfaces in secondary publications, let alone in the *actual Codexes* is being touted as "core canon", I'm more than a little doubtful as to the validity of that claim.
It's also supported because there's literally no example of a female human undergoing the process to become an Astartes. The intent when the process was first described was for the Astartes to be all-male, and nowhere has that been contradicted, no matter how many guys wish it so.
Do you maybe feel like you're looking for an argument that's easier to defend, and you've picked "in current canon, there are female loyalist astartes" instead of what is actually being discussed in the thread, "current canon that there can only be male loyalist astartes is unimportant and as a restriction doesn't add anything meaningful"
To me, "astartes must be all male" is a piece of canon sort of analogous to "space marines don't have antigrav technology save for the Land Speeder STC"
It was definitely canon, and it was definitely a thing GW decided to change with the primaris stuff. As to the "Why"...I can't really say? As to what it adds or detracts from the setting...I don't know, I don't much like the primaris vehicles from a design perspective, I think they're pointlessly busy and kind of look like GI Joe toys, but I've always hated the fact that marine vehicles are just boring dull boxes, theyve never been something I've been actually excited for so my opinion hasn't really changed. But conceptually given that marines are supposed to be this "lightning strike force" having vehicles that hover and can traverse any terrain more quickly than the slower, tracked vehicles the IG and Sisters use makes sense.
It's just kind of a neutral change for the most part. You have to really think to come up with arguments and for the most part...I'm gonna suspect most detraction from them is just a rationalization of "I think it's ugly/new thing bad."
I'm not arguing that that's the case. Show me any example of a female human undergoing the process that turns someone into an Astartes.
You're arguing it's a "core" piece of background, if it's so central to the idea of SM then why is it not present in recent publications of the primary source of faction lore, the SM Codex?
People were saying that upthread. Go see.
Which people? From what I've seen you have massively oversimplified the arguments put across and boiled it down to "no female SM means no women hobbyists", which isn't what posters are saying.
Why don't you? You're the one claiming that certain aetting background is "non-core."
You defined it as a "core" piece of background, it is literally on you to define that.
It's also supported because there's literally no example of a female human undergoing the process to become an Astartes. The intent when the process was first described was for the Astartes to be all-male, and nowhere has that been contradicted, no matter how many guys wish it so.
Again, while an Astartes may be male it does not preclude the potential for forced sex change. It's horrible and I wouldn't want it in official background but some people like "dark" things like that in 40k. Just because it hasn't been contradicted doesn't mean its been supported either.
I don't think that the older stuff should be changed to be "there have always been female Astartes". Not because I believe in the "sanctity of the background" but because it follows the same process as Primaris did. New Thing happens, Old Guard isn't 100% sure of New Thing, New Thing turns out to be necessary and vitally needed, Old Guard grumbles a bit but get on with the problems at hand i.e. staving off annihilation.
Would 40k have been better if there had always been female Astartes? Yes, I think it would suffer less from certain groups and people.
the_scotsman wrote: Do you maybe feel like you're looking for an argument that's easier to defend, and you've picked "in current canon, there are female loyalist astartes" instead of what is actually being discussed in the thread, "current canon that there can only be male loyalist astartes is unimportant and as a restriction doesn't add anything meaningful"
People are arguing against that viewpoint, though, so it's worth defending.
It actually does add something meaningful, though, which is that Astartes cannot leave humanity behind, since Astartes essentially need baseline humans to reproduce. I also fail to see anything meaningful *gained* by changing the setting so that there are female Astartes. Women still feel comfortable with fantastical settings where women are overwhelmingly not in martial roles (ASOIAF/GoT, for example), so I don't think the "representation" angle holds water.
Gert wrote: Show me in any of the recent Codexes where it says SM must be created using male aspirants.
I'm not arguing that that's the case. Show me any example of a female human undergoing the process that turns someone into an Astartes.
Show me the cold hard science that says they can't.
Not this "male hormones and tissue types", the *actual* science, please.
We're dealing with a fictional universe here. There's no reason they shouldn't be able to.
Sgt_Smudge wrote: I mean, if you squint and really ignore a lot of the comments made, I suppose you could reach that conclusion.
Is it a massive oversimplification and missing out on a lot of the detail and nuance of the point? Yes, that too.
People were saying that upthread. Go see.
In an abridged comment, or one taken out of context?
As I've said repeatedly in this thread (if you'd care to read it), you're correct, but only when you strip away all of the details and stages.
Why don't you? You're the one claiming that certain aetting background is "non-core."
Sure. Core content is stuff that is repeatedly stated as intrinsic to the faction and how it is described. These are things echoed in GW's content written on the product pages online, or the stuff in the Codexes and rulebook.
If it's stuff that I can find without any sort of digging beyond GW's core product line to play the game, it's core content.
This would mean that Black Library publications are not core content. Campaign books are not core content for a faction. Secondary articles on WarCom are not core content. Lexicanum data is not core content.
Is everything considered core canon? Is some stuff more or less important than others? If so, we have it "in canon" that Leman Russ is a human Imperial Army commander, and not a Primarch. Is that core canon still? If not, what an absolutely tragedy!! 40k is ruined, burnt to ashes, all because Leman Russ is now a Primarch, and not some random army commander! /s
That argument fails because that lore has been explicitly superceded. I'd say nice try, but...
Sure. Let's try backflipping Terminators, and Dark Eldar being in thrall to Slaanesh (C.S. Goto, for both) - neither are explicitly decanonised. Are they also core canon?
40k canon is not all created equal. This much is obvious. And when a certain piece of very old lore, which barely surfaces in secondary publications, let alone in the *actual Codexes* is being touted as "core canon", I'm more than a little doubtful as to the validity of that claim.
It's also supported because there's literally no example of a female human undergoing the process to become an Astartes.
There was also no canon example of non-white Ultramarines until the Dawn of Fire books. Absence of example doesn't necessarily prohibit it from being possible.
The intent when the process was first described was for the Astartes to be all-male
First described, yes. And now, that intent is rather outdated, both in real life, and in how Space Marines are marketed and designed from a faction perspective.
and nowhere has that been contradicted
As said, from a factional design perspective and shift away from those monkly traits they attempted to emulate, it has implicitly changed course to a point now where them being all-male is no longer both an integral part of their design, but actively detrimental to their current marketed design - that being a highly customisable, player-dominated canvas for creative freedom.
I frankly don't care what Space Marines were 40 years ago, because it's not 40 years ago now. Space Marines have changed in their design ethos and philosophy, as well as their marketing power, and those two things combined put them in a position where including women Space Marines (where they were previously excluded for arbitrary reasons) is an entirely sensible choice.
People are arguing against that viewpoint, though, so it's worth defending.
It actually does add something meaningful, though, which is that Astartes cannot leave humanity behind, since Astartes essentially need baseline humans to reproduce. I also fail to see anything meaningful *gained* by changing the setting so that there are female Astartes. Women still feel comfortable with fantastical settings where women are overwhelmingly not in martial roles (ASOIAF/GoT, for example), so I don't think the "representation" angle holds water.
And they would still need baseline humans to reproduce because the Astartes process makes them incapable of reproduction. Astartes aren't human anymore, they don't get all the human features.
As for women feeling comfortable with a fantasy setting (you mention GoT) from my personal experience that is a lie, and the overwhelming majority of fantasy, and indeed GoT fans, are men.
For specific examples, my immediate women family members think it's far too flippant with certain topics and the female characters aren't good.
The "strong female characters" of GoT are almost without fail, all victims of *not nice things* which from my perspective, tells women that to be in a fantasy setting they have to suffer from these *not nice things* in order to be a "strong female character".
If we go into things like Star Wars or Star Trek, characters like Rey or Burnham are decried as Mary Sue's because they do the exact same things that male characters can/have done in the series. Rey, Luke, and even Anakin are all exactly the same in terms of character development.
You're arguing it's a "core" piece of background, if it's so central to the idea of SM then why is it not present in recent publications of the primary source of faction lore, the SM Codex?
Your side used the word "core," not me.
Again, can you show me an example of a female human undergoing the process to turn into an Astartes? You can't. So it's very much still part of the setting, if not for technical reasons, than for cultural ones. Either way.
Which people? From what I've seen you have massively oversimplified the arguments put across and boiled it down to "no female SM means no women hobbyists", which isn't what posters are saying.
I didn't say that. I'm not responding to this lart as you're misrepresenting my point. Rephrase it more respectfully if you want to engage with me.
Again, while an Astartes may be male it does not preclude the potential for forced sex change. It's horrible and I wouldn't want it in official background but some people like "dark" things like that in 40k. Just because it hasn't been contradicted doesn't mean its been supported either.
You misunderstand me. I'm asking for an example of a human who was female before the process undergoing it - it doesn't exist, and there's no reason to think that the process would cause a sex change.
I don't think that the older stuff should be changed to be "there have always been female Astartes". Not because I believe in the "sanctity of the background" but because it follows the same process as Primaris did. New Thing happens, Old Guard aren't 100% sure of New Thing, New Thing turns out to be necessery and vitally needed, Old Guard grumble a bit but get on with the problems at hand i.e. staving off annihilation.
And Primaris were a bad idea as they turned the Imperium from a decaying, backwards society into one that was progressing. Gender-equal space fascism isn't a good thing.
the_scotsman wrote:To me, "astartes must be all male" is a piece of canon sort of analogous to "space marines don't have antigrav technology save for the Land Speeder STC"
It was definitely canon, and it was definitely a thing GW decided to change with the primaris stuff. As to the "Why"...I can't really say? As to what it adds or detracts from the setting...I don't know, I don't much like the primaris vehicles from a design perspective, I think they're pointlessly busy and kind of look like GI Joe toys, but I've always hated the fact that marine vehicles are just boring dull boxes, theyve never been something I've been actually excited for so my opinion hasn't really changed. But conceptually given that marines are supposed to be this "lightning strike force" having vehicles that hover and can traverse any terrain more quickly than the slower, tracked vehicles the IG and Sisters use makes sense.
Yeah, while I do like the iconic Predator and Vindicator, I won't lie, having these fast moving heavily armed and armoured transports with the capacity to actually fit the bill of a "lightning strike force" feels so much better than chugging along on Rhinos.
Again - feels better. Much like how having women Astartes would feel much better than clinging to some pretty antiquated lore using sketchy arbitrary reasons for why women aren't allowed in the Elite Secret Super Soldier Club.
Hecaton wrote:
the_scotsman wrote: Do you maybe feel like you're looking for an argument that's easier to defend, and you've picked "in current canon, there are female loyalist astartes" instead of what is actually being discussed in the thread, "current canon that there can only be male loyalist astartes is unimportant and as a restriction doesn't add anything meaningful"
People are arguing against that viewpoint, though, so it's worth defending.
Against which viewpoint?
It actually does add something meaningful, though, which is that Astartes cannot leave humanity behind, since Astartes essentially need baseline humans to reproduce.
Adding women Astartes doesn't mean that they'd suddenly be able to reproduce.
While not explicitly mentioned, I believe I have seen it expressed that Space Marines are infertile anyway. And is it not reasonable to assume that Space Marines at current are chemically castrated, or otherwise infertile? Especially seeing as most recruits are pre-pubescent.
Adding women Astartes wouldn't make them suddenly baby makers, and honestly, I really don't appreciate the implication that women=pregnancies.
I also fail to see anything meaningful *gained* by changing the setting so that there are female Astartes.
Emphasising the Imperium's pragmatism and focus on war over any sort of gender segregating, for one.
On another note, I think representation is perfectly meaningful, more so than any justification I can give. But you disagree - why is representation so meaningless to you?
Women still feel comfortable with fantastical settings where women are overwhelmingly not in martial roles (ASOIAF/GoT, for example), so I don't think the "representation" angle holds water.
Have you considered that Brienne of Tarth literally exists to fill that gap? Brienne *is* the representative aspect of that.
Probably the worst example you could have thought of to defend the whole "women like settings where there are no women fighters", considering the amount of formidable female combatants in that series.
You're arguing it's a "core" piece of background, if it's so central to the idea of SM then why is it not present in recent publications of the primary source of faction lore, the SM Codex?
Your side used the word "core," not me.
Actually "our side" didn't. It was Mentlegen324 who used it first, I believe.* They claimed that Space Marines being all male was a "core aspect".
Might want to consider re-reading the thread.
*EDIT: Yes, it was Mentlegen324 - I've linked it in these spoilers for your convenience:
Spoiler:
Mentlegen324 wrote: The difference is those are all external theming placed ontop of the core aspects of a Space Marine, whereas this would be something that's a change to those core aspects of the Space Marines themselves.
Again, can you show me an example of a female human undergoing the process to turn into an Astartes? You can't.
Can you show me a real life human undergoing the process? You can't. It's fictional.
And Primaris were a bad idea as they turned the Imperium from a decaying, backwards society into one that was progressing.
Aw jeez. Shame.
Guess that canon's really sacred though still, right?
Gender-equal space fascism isn't a good thing.
Sorry to burst your bubble, but the Imperium was always gender-equal. Guardsmen are mixed gender, the High Lords are mixed gender, the Inquisition is mixed gender, the Admech barely *have* gender, the Assassinorum are mixed gender, the Navigators are mixed gender, the Navy are mixed gender, the PDF are mixed gender, etc etc
But why aren't Space Marines? After all - the Imperium clearly isn't institutionally sexist, unless you want to change that sacred sacred lore?
Also, for those of you claiming that the setting material saying that Astartes can only be made from boys and not girls is "non-core," that's ridiculous. It's just you inventing the idea that it's some lower tier of canon so it can be ignored.
You've said the idea that it's "non-core" is ridiculous. Ok, explain how it's a "core" part of the background.
Again, can you show me an example of a female human undergoing the process to turn into an Astartes? You can't. So it's very much still part of the setting, if not for technical reasons, than for cultural ones. Either way.
What technical reasons? The made-up science that for some reason excludes female candidates from the process?
I didn't say that. I'm not responding to this lart as you're misrepresenting my point. Rephrase it more respectfully if you want to engage with me.
Show me the quote where a poster on the pro-female SM side of the discussion said that no-female SM is a direct cause of a lack of women hobbyists.
No I did not. Again, stop misrepresenting my words. Everyone else can read the thread and see you're wrong.
See my above point.
You misunderstand me. I'm asking for an example of a human who was female before the process undergoing it - it doesn't exist, and there's no reason to think that the process would cause a sex change.
Why is there no reason to think that? Do you know the intricate details of the creation of a SM? Considering not even GW knows for sure because it's made up pseudoscience, explain how you know this.
And Primaris were a bad idea as they turned the Imperium from a decaying, backwards society into one that was progressing. Gender-equal space fascism isn't a good thing.
That's an opinion chief, I personally like the Primaris. They better fit my view of a SM both aesthetically and narratively. Besides, nearly every single Imperial institution is gender-equal, GW just does a terrible job at making a good showing of female models for those lines.
And BTW, fascism is bad but nobody is advocating for it so why don't you make a proper argument?
Sgt_Smudge wrote: Show me the cold hard science that says they can't.
Not this "male hormones and tissue types", the *actual* science, please.
We're dealing with a fictional universe here. There's no reason they shouldn't be able to.
It's a fictional process that stretches the bounds of believability in parts. The guys who wrote it weren't biologists, so they didn't go into the science of it to a realistic degree. As a biologist myself, I can think of a few ways one could implement those kinds of changes where it would only work on someone with a y chromosome, so it's not like it's *implausible* that the process only works on boys. And the people who wrote it said it does.
In an abridged comment, or one taken out of context?
As I've said repeatedly in this thread (if you'd care to read it), you're correct, but only when you strip away all of the details and stages.
I believe it was Sgt Smudge saying that anecdotal evidence of blogs and so on was enough.
Other miniature games that approach gender parity in depictions of characters in-game (like Infinity) do not have markedly less male-dominated fanbases, so I don't think that adding female Astartes is going to make women feel more comfortable participating in the hobby.
Sure. Core content is stuff that is repeatedly stated as intrinsic to the faction and how it is described. These are things echoed in GW's content written on the product pages online, or the stuff in the Codexes and rulebook.
If it's stuff that I can find without any sort of digging beyond GW's core product line to play the game, it's core content.
This would mean that Black Library publications are not core content. Campaign books are not core content for a faction. Secondary articles on WarCom are not core content. Lexicanum data is not core content.
Is that agreeable? If not, why so?
I find that delineation to be meaningless. Moreover, let's be clear - there's nothing in any of this material that says that female humans can be made into Astartes, and the lack of any of them at all in the setting implies that while the restriction isn't explicitly stated, it's very much there.
Sure. Let's try backflipping Terminators, and Dark Eldar being in thrall to Slaanesh (C.S. Goto, for both) - neither are explicitly decanonised. Are they also core canon?
The difference is that these are contradicted by setting information that is both more recent and that GW has a more direct hand in. Nowhere has GW said "female Astartes are possible."
There was also no canon example of non-white Ultramarines until the Dawn of Fire books. Absence of example doesn't necessarily prohibit it from being possible.
And if it had previously been stated that all Ultramarines were white, it would be a change. It wasn't.
First described, yes. And now, that intent is rather outdated, both in real life, and in how Space Marines are marketed and designed from a faction perspective.
How it is outdated? It's an artistic choice. Space Marines are still marketed as a right-wing male power fantasy, just less ironically than they used to be.
As said, from a factional design perspective and shift away from those monkly traits they attempted to emulate, it has implicitly changed course to a point now where them being all-male is no longer both an integral part of their design, but actively detrimental to their current marketed design - that being a highly customisable, player-dominated canvas for creative freedom.
I disagree that that is or should be how Astartes are portrayed and marketed.
I frankly don't care what Space Marines were 40 years ago, because it's not 40 years ago now. Space Marines have changed in their design ethos and philosophy, as well as their marketing power, and those two things combined put them in a position where including women Space Marines (where they were previously excluded for arbitrary reasons) is an entirely sensible choice.
Well, I'm not on GW's marketing team, and I don't find it to be a sensible choice from the perspective of making the setting interesting. If your goal is to make the setting as bland and meaningless as possible, like World of Warcraft in space, go ahead, but that ain't me.
It does not and the problem is that it has been mentioned in the Heresy books at one point, I think by Loken, so it's a side publication written by one author. It's sort of heavily implied that SM can't reproduce, especially with baseline humans but if female SM were introduced it could easily be said that the indoctrination and surgery remove any chance of two Astartes reproducing.
The very same books also state how utterly repulsive an Astartes actually is outside of the whole "they are the angels of the Emperor" dealio.
Loken is being watched while training by his personal Remembrancer and she notes that while he is a big sweaty beefcake man during said training, the way he smells is disgusting to the point that any sort of physical attraction is immediately gone.
Gert wrote: And they would still need baseline humans to reproduce because the Astartes process makes them incapable of reproduction.
Does it say that in the current codex?
Very true! It absolutely doesn't go into the details of if Space Marines are castrated or not - I would have to argue that the reason for this is because it's not relevant to the immediate wargame.
However, I would argue that, if we're to assume that Space Marines are built solely for war, and they are conditioned to the point where such mortal pleasures don't interest them, I think it's safe to say sex is off the table, perhaps?
Hecaton wrote:
Sgt_Smudge wrote: Show me the cold hard science that says they can't. Not this "male hormones and tissue types", the *actual* science, please.
We're dealing with a fictional universe here. There's no reason they shouldn't be able to.
It's a fictional process that stretches the bounds of believability in parts. The guys who wrote it weren't biologists, so they didn't go into the science of it to a realistic degree. As a biologist myself, I can think of a few ways one could implement those kinds of changes where it would only work on someone with a y chromosome, so it's not like it's *implausible* that the process only works on boys.
But ultimately entirely arbitrary, and based off of no actual real world science that would swing it one way or another - thank you for proving my point.
There is no reason that the Magic Super Soldier Serum Juice shouldn't also work on women. So why doesn't it?
And the people who wrote it said it does.
And? It's an entirely arbitrary decision 40 years ago. Why does that matter?
In an abridged comment, or one taken out of context? As I've said repeatedly in this thread (if you'd care to read it), you're correct, but only when you strip away all of the details and stages.
I believe it was Sgt Smudge saying that anecdotal evidence of blogs and so on was enough.
No, it wasn't. I suggest you read with a little more detail please.
Other miniature games that approach gender parity in depictions of characters in-game (like Infinity) do not have markedly less male-dominated fanbases, so I don't think that adding female Astartes is going to make women feel more comfortable participating in the hobby.
Counterpoint, AoS has a much larger women population than 40k does, as many users in this thread on both sides have alluded to.
Gert wrote: Sure. Core content is stuff that is repeatedly stated as intrinsic to the faction and how it is described. These are things echoed in GW's content written on the product pages online, or the stuff in the Codexes and rulebook.
If it's stuff that I can find without any sort of digging beyond GW's core product line to play the game, it's core content.
This would mean that Black Library publications are not core content. Campaign books are not core content for a faction. Secondary articles on WarCom are not core content. Lexicanum data is not core content.
Is that agreeable? If not, why so?
I find that delineation to be meaningless.
Please elaborate.
Moreover, let's be clear - there's nothing in any of this material that says that female humans can be made into Astartes, and the lack of any of them at all in the setting implies that while the restriction isn't explicitly stated, it's very much there.
Sure, and the lack of black Ultramarines prior to the cover of Dawn of Fire implied that only white dudes could be Ultramarines.
Absence of evidence isn't proof of impossibility in a fictional setting.
Gert wrote: Sure. Let's try backflipping Terminators, and Dark Eldar being in thrall to Slaanesh (C.S. Goto, for both) - neither are explicitly decanonised. Are they also core canon?
The difference is that these are contradicted by setting information that is both more recent and that GW has a more direct hand in.
Really? Show me what contradicted backflipping Terminators?
Nowhere has GW said "female Astartes are possible."
No-one's saying they are possible - only that the evidence against is both hamfisted, and not included in core content.
There was also no canon example of non-white Ultramarines until the Dawn of Fire books. Absence of example doesn't necessarily prohibit it from being possible.
And if it had previously been stated that all Ultramarines were white, it would be a change. It wasn't.
But you're claiming about how we apparently need to show an example of a woman Space Marine as proof - you're implying that we need to show something existing for it to be canon in the first place.
First described, yes. And now, that intent is rather outdated, both in real life, and in how Space Marines are marketed and designed from a faction perspective.
How it is outdated?
Ridiculous pseudoscience and exclusionary content from 40 years ago? Pretty outdated to me.
It's an artistic choice.
Which doesn't make it exempt from artistic criticism.
Space Marines are still marketed as a right-wing male power fantasy, just less ironically than they used to be.
Not from GW, at least - if you're reading any wings into this, have you considered that you're not looking at GW's marketing of them, but rather the right-wing's appropriation of them?
In terms of GW's marketing of them, it varies between cute little funko pops, to the fearsome killing machines of the books. I wouldn't call the funko pop a "rightwing male power fantasy", would you?
Gert wrote: As said, from a factional design perspective and shift away from those monkly traits they attempted to emulate, it has implicitly changed course to a point now where them being all-male is no longer both an integral part of their design, but actively detrimental to their current marketed design - that being a highly customisable, player-dominated canvas for creative freedom.
I disagree that that is or should be how Astartes are portrayed and marketed.
You can disagree, but you're not right. Seriously, look at how they're displayed by GW - "build your own Primaris Chapter" guides, easily convertible models, unpainted Bandai and Funko Pop minis - they're a vessel for creative expression.
Gert wrote: I frankly don't care what Space Marines were 40 years ago, because it's not 40 years ago now. Space Marines have changed in their design ethos and philosophy, as well as their marketing power, and those two things combined put them in a position where including women Space Marines (where they were previously excluded for arbitrary reasons) is an entirely sensible choice.
Well, I'm not on GW's marketing team, and I don't find it to be a sensible choice from the perspective of making the setting interesting.
Why not?
If your goal is to make the setting as bland and meaningless as possible, like World of Warcraft in space, go ahead, but that ain't me.
Why does adding women make a setting bland? Why is the existence of women in a fantasy setting an issue for you?
Also, no idea why you've been tagging Gert in these comments, because they were my points, not theirs. My apologies to Gert for the confusion.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Gert wrote: It does not and the problem is that it has been mentioned in the Heresy books at one point, I think by Loken, so it's a side publication written by one author. It's sort of heavily implied that SM can't reproduce, especially with baseline humans but if female SM were introduced it could easily be said that the indoctrination and surgery remove any chance of two Astartes reproducing. The very same books also state how utterly repulsive an Astartes actually is outside of the whole "they are the angels of the Emperor" dealio. Loken is being watched while training by his personal Remembrancer and she notes that while he is a big sweaty beefcake man during said training, the way he smells is disgusting to the point that any sort of physical attraction is immediately gone.
Ah, I had forgotten about that!
So yes, while absolutely not core content, there's definitely reason that Astartes are infertile/sexless anyway.
Again, not that I particularly appreciate the connotation that the previously sexless Space Marines are only sexless because there's no women around, and the moment women put on the power armour, the women Astartes are suddenly being turned into breeding machines - seems awfully reductive of the "role" of women.
Also, I think we are drastically underestimating the sinister nature of FunkoPops. Where is the line drawn? Must all of reality become FunkoPops before they stop?
Shows what I get for posting a reply then going to sleep. Yes, my initial note about Hecaton's post that I responded to on the beginning of the last page was that the double negative resulted in a meaning to the sentence that didn't seem to mesh with the aggrieved tone that seemed to be present in the post.
To be frank, also, the idea that there should he female Astartes seems to be overwhelmingly pushed by men who claim to speak on behalf of women, not women themselves, which is of course ironic.
Gert and Smudge have responded far more completely to this topic than I can, except to add that I guarantee you that there are people - not necessarily you, mind - who would dismiss womens' opinions on this topic because they see it as an outsider perspective, and those people should have their lore cudgels taken away.
If it helps any, I'm much more non-binary than the days when I came up with CEO Kasen - My honest response to 'what gender are you' is to make a noise like a squig headbutting peanut butter and go "I don't even friggin' know."
The setting is supposed to be dystopian. The more fethed up it is the better.
This is to my mind the one valid lore argument for retaining these sorts of divisions and the only disadvantage of allowing female Astartes - It makes the Imperium seem slightly less of a feudal, backwards hellhole if they have an unexpectedly enlightened view of gender equality. But If you're going to do this, you have to point out, explicitly and clearly, that this institutionalized sexism is a bad thing and that the Imperium is backwards for doing this.
GW does not do this. GW is increasingly positioning the Imperium as a tragic protagonist rather than a farcically awful satire so it can't be taken as a given that a thing must be dystopian just because they're doing it. Additionally, nowhere else are they even doing it lorewise - women can canonically rise to be Guard officers, Inquisitors, and High Lords of Terra; In no other place than Marines, Custodes, and in reverse, Sisters of Battle, is there institutionalized sexism in the Imperium.
So the one 'lore benefit' seems to run counter to the way GW is running the Imperium these days - but even if it hadn't, it hardly outweighs the benefits to the community for allowing women - as Smudge frequently points out, actual, living female-identifying sapient beings - to represent themselves and participate in the power-armor steroid club. There is no good reason for this prohibition to exist any longer, nothing of value to be broken in seeking inclusiveness, and an excellent opportunity to rectify the situation in Primaris.
The thing with SoB is that they specifically exist to cheat Imperial law and their entire reason for being is to give the Ecclesiarchy a standing army they aren't supposed to have.
The Decree Passive disallows the Church to maintain men under arms. This was made after Goge Vandire gave himself a huge army and basically did a Heresy 2.0. The architect of the Decree kept Vandire's Brides of the Emperor and turned them into the Adeptus Sororitas both to be in line with having no "men" under arms and to give the Ecclesiarchy actual weight and power when it came to defending its interests. They fit perfectly into the dumb things the Imperium does without it being exclusionary.
Yeah, the Sisters existing the way they do is entirely based on the manipulation of someone in the Imperium not using gender-neutral pronouns, and finding a loophole within that.
Them being women in setting isn't anything to do with the Imperium saying "the only way women can wear power armour is when they join the Sororitas", it's "aw jeez, someone took RAW way too literally".
It's a great piece of worldbuilding, and honestly kind of amusing, as well as being completely ridiculous - which makes it perfectly fitting for 40k.
Space Marines just not having women just feels spiteful, more than anything else, either as an arbitrary "our biology says no", or a "haha, no women allowed here, sucks to be you" (even though such blatant gender segregation doesn't really exist anywhere in the Imperium as a whole). There's no worldbuilding it contributes to, no aesthetic benefit or wider thematic point, and just seems more like a slap in the face than an organic, natural piece of worldbuilding.
Not that a fictional world should come before real world people feeling excluded in the first place, I may add.
And they would still need baseline humans to reproduce because the Astartes process makes them incapable of reproduction. Astartes aren't human anymore, they don't get all the human features.
It doesn't have to make them incapable of reproduction.
Gert wrote: As for women feeling comfortable with a fantasy setting (you mention GoT) from my personal experience that is a lie, and the overwhelming majority of fantasy, and indeed GoT fans, are men.
Whatever. My point is that there are a higher percentage of female GoT/ASOIAF fans than female Warhammer 40k fans.
Gert wrote: For specific examples, my immediate women family members think it's far too flippant with certain topics and the female characters aren't good.
The "strong female characters" of GoT are almost without fail, all victims of *not nice things* which from my perspective, tells women that to be in a fantasy setting they have to suffer from these *not nice things* in order to be a "strong female character".
If we go into things like Star Wars or Star Trek, characters like Rey or Burnham are decried as Mary Sue's because they do the exact same things that male characters can/have done in the series. Rey, Luke, and even Anakin are all exactly the same in terms of character development.
Sorry, heroism requires going through rough gak. If you find that unacceptable, you don't want your characters to be heroes. That's why Rey's story fails as a heroic journey, and it's why Brienne's works.
The viewpoint that the current fluff, as it is, forbids female Astartes.
Sgt_Smudge wrote: While not explicitly mentioned, I believe I have seen it expressed that Space Marines are infertile anyway. And is it not reasonable to assume that Space Marines at current are chemically castrated, or otherwise infertile? Especially seeing as most recruits are pre-pubescent.
Maybe they're hyper-fertile, with all those hormones pumped into them.
Sgt_Smudge wrote: Adding women Astartes wouldn't make them suddenly baby makers, and honestly, I really don't appreciate the implication that women=pregnancies.
There was no such implication. You're faking offense on behalf of women to seem more right; your argument is still bankrupt and it's honestly embarrassing on your part. Are you really so dense that you don't understand that it takes males *and* females for sexual reproduction to occur in mammals? That's what I was talking about, and the fact that you deceptively tried to spin it as sexism on my part just makes you look like a charlatan trying to score white knight points.
Sgt_Smudge wrote: Emphasising the Imperium's pragmatism and focus on war over any sort of gender segregating, for one.
The Imperium is not pragmatic; it is needlessly cruel and self-degrading.
Sgt_Smudge wrote: Have you considered that Brienne of Tarth literally exists to fill that gap? Brienne *is* the representative aspect of that.
Probably the worst example you could have thought of to defend the whole "women like settings where there are no women fighters", considering the amount of formidable female combatants in that series.
Brienne is pretty much the only Westerosi woman in that series who's good at fighting, and the series draws heavily from the actual sexism of historical medieval Europe in its depiction of the state of women. Brienne's situation is presented as unique within the setting - her being a warrior woman is almost unheard of in her society. Somehow women seem to like this book series and television adaptation more than Warhammer 40k.
No one is saying “Women space marines already exist.”
What’s being said is “Women space marines SHOULD exist.”
You’re asking us to prove something we haven’t stated or even implied.
Edit: Exceptions for the earliest days of 40k, before much modern fluff was established. There were some women marines then, so I’ve been told, but no women marines exist in modern 40k.
And they would still need baseline humans to reproduce because the Astartes process makes them incapable of reproduction. Astartes aren't human anymore, they don't get all the human features.
It doesn't have to make them incapable of reproduction.
Gert wrote: As for women feeling comfortable with a fantasy setting (you mention GoT) from my personal experience that is a lie, and the overwhelming majority of fantasy, and indeed GoT fans, are men.
Whatever. My point is that there are a higher percentage of female GoT/ASOIAF fans than female Warhammer 40k fans.
Gert wrote: For specific examples, my immediate women family members think it's far too flippant with certain topics and the female characters aren't good.
The "strong female characters" of GoT are almost without fail, all victims of *not nice things* which from my perspective, tells women that to be in a fantasy setting they have to suffer from these *not nice things* in order to be a "strong female character".
If we go into things like Star Wars or Star Trek, characters like Rey or Burnham are decried as Mary Sue's because they do the exact same things that male characters can/have done in the series. Rey, Luke, and even Anakin are all exactly the same in terms of character development.
Sorry, heroism requires going through rough gak. If you find that unacceptable, you don't want your characters to be heroes. That's why Rey's story fails as a heroic journey, and it's why Brienne's works.
Sgt_Smudge wrote:Can you show me a real life human undergoing the process? You can't. It's fictional.
Of course. But that statement doesn't detract from the fact that the process of creating an Astartes has never been shown working on a female human, and it has been outright stated to not do so.
Sgt_Smudge wrote: Aw jeez. Shame.
Guess that canon's really sacred though still, right?
I don't want to see the setting turned into homogenized media trash *even more*.
Sgt_Smudge wrote: Sorry to burst your bubble, but the Imperium was always gender-equal. Guardsmen are mixed gender, the High Lords are mixed gender, the Inquisition is mixed gender, the Admech barely *have* gender, the Assassinorum are mixed gender, the Navigators are mixed gender, the Navy are mixed gender, the PDF are mixed gender, etc etc
But why aren't Space Marines? After all - the Imperium clearly isn't institutionally sexist, unless you want to change that sacred sacred lore?
Neither are Custodes. It's just a conceit of the setting, you're gonna have to learn to live with it.
You’re asking us to prove something we haven’t stated or even implied.
And I disagree.
JNAProductions wrote: Edit: Exceptions for the earliest days of 40k, before much modern fluff was established. There were some women marines then, so I’ve been told, but no women marines exist in modern 40k.
There was some non-GW fan content along those lines that got published in a fanzine, but that was before the modern conception of what a Space Marine is.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Sgt_Smudge wrote: Space Marines just not having women just feels spiteful, more than anything else, either as an arbitrary "our biology says no", or a "haha, no women allowed here, sucks to be you" (even though such blatant gender segregation doesn't really exist anywhere in the Imperium as a whole). There's no worldbuilding it contributes to, no aesthetic benefit or wider thematic point, and just seems more like a slap in the face than an organic, natural piece of worldbuilding.
I mean, the Emperor being a gynophobe makes sense, to be honest.
Sgt_Smudge wrote: Not that a fictional world should come before real world people feeling excluded in the first place, I may add.
Art's mission isn't to make people feel included, and however trite, the 40k setting is art.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
FezzikDaBullgryn wrote: Dude, Hecaton, you are getting really close to crossing the line, as so many from your side have already done. The personal attacks are unwarranted, and the relentless assertion that women don't have autonomy over their bodies is disgusting, and wrong. 40k's Imperium might be many things, but they don't really go out of their way to show that women are powerless over their bodies or autonomy. You are thinking of Chaos.
When did I say any of that? You're just making stuff up.
Arguing sanctity of lore is a stronger argument in a work of literature or a historical period piece, or otherwise the creative vision of a single author. 40K is not these things. 40K is a still-marketed living universe now with an advancing storyline with a thousand hands on the wheel, and without changing a single piece of 'historical lore' there is no reason that this story cannot advance in the direction of allowing women as marines.
Hecaton wrote: Of course. But that statement doesn't detract from the fact that the process of creating an Astartes has never been shown working on a female human, and it has been outright stated to not do so.
And the point is that this doesn't matter. Not only do they change the canon when it suits them, but GW have written quite nicely into themselves a method they could bypass this so-called 'issue' because the process for becoming a Marine is clearly not a fixed thing. Frankly I dislike the hell out of the Primaris too, but if Cawl figured out that his process worked on women, that'd give the Primaris more reason to exist than just shinier more expensive models.
Hecaton wrote: I don't want to see the setting turned into homogenized media trash *even more*.
This seems a bit of a depressingly common misconception - Inclusiveness is not inherently 'trashy,' and being male-only does not elevate the Marines in any way. Yes, inclusiveness can be and has been done poorly, but the problem in those cases is not the idea of inclusiveness, the problem in those cases is poor writing - often caused, I might suggest, by lack of exposure to other mindsets or cultures or a poor grasp of what 'inclusion' means. I would not judge the merit of inclusiveness purely on the basis of the worst possible way it could be implemented.
Even if GW were to bollock it all up, it doesn't change the fact that women should be allowed to be part of the most flexible and otherwise diverse force in the game. The benefits are immense in any setup that encourages you to invest yourself in Your Dudes. In fact, I've seen it suggested on this thread that if female marines existed, then if Your Dudes were all guys, that'd be a more meaningful choice - perhaps painting a chapter as traditionalist, or gay, or trans-men, or based on an Earth culture with a male-only warrior class while still allowing women who want to be represented have Their Dudettes.
Sgt_Smudge wrote: It's just a conceit of the setting, you're gonna have to learn to live with it.
I would suggest that this is no longer a conceit of the setting - and that Primaris are the reason we no longer should have to live with it.
CEO Kasen wrote: Arguing sanctity of lore is a stronger argument in a work of literature or a historical period piece, or otherwise the creative vision of a single author. 40K is not these things. 40K is a still-marketed living universe now with an advancing storyline with a thousand hands on the wheel, and without changing a single piece of 'historical lore' there is no reason that this story cannot advance in the direction of allowing women as marines.
There's also no reason it should. When the people arguing for it are saying things like, paraphrased "a bunch of men together with no women is a bad look" I question their motives.
CEO Kasen wrote: And the point is that this doesn't matter. Not only do they change the canon when it suits them, but GW have written quite nicely into themselves a method they could bypass this so-called 'issue' because the process for becoming a Marine is clearly not a fixed thing. Frankly I dislike the hell out of the Primaris too, but if Cawl figured out that his process worked on women, that'd give the Primaris more reason to exist than just shinier more expensive models.
The point is that they *shouldn't* be changing the canon that whimsically.
This seems a bit of a depressingly common misconception - Inclusiveness is not inherently 'trashy,' and being male-only does not elevate the Marines in any way. Yes, inclusiveness can be and has been done poorly, but the problem in those cases is not the idea of inclusiveness, the problem in those cases is poor writing - often caused, I might suggest, by lack of exposure to other mindsets or cultures or a poor grasp of what 'inclusion' means. I would not judge the merit of inclusiveness purely on the basis of the worst possible way it could be implemented.
Inclusiveness is not inherently trashy, but trying to make your product as mass-market appealing as possible almost certainly is. Having Astartes be male-only *does* elevate the setting, as it allows you to ask questions about why that is, how people in the setting feel about it, and explore whether or not people are content with that reality.
CEO Kasen wrote: Even if GW were to bollock it all up, it doesn't change the fact that women should be allowed to be part of the most flexible and otherwise diverse force in the game.
It's not a fact at all. There's no particular reason to support it.
I'd say that this is just evidence that Astartes's ubiquity in the setting has poisoned it.
CEO Kasen wrote: The benefits are immense in any setup that encourages you to invest yourself in Your Dudes. In fact, I've seen it suggested on this thread that if female marines existed, then if Your Dudes were all guys, that'd be a more meaningful choice - perhaps painting a chapter as traditionalist, or gay, or trans-men, or based on an Earth culture with a male-only warrior class while still allowing women who want to be represented have Their Dudettes.
I think the idea that people can only express themselves in the hobby by what color they paint their fascists' sci-fi armor pretty pathetic. I think the setting should focus less on Astartes, and Astartes should be kept as male-only.
Argive wrote:Nothing says inclusion and representation like charging for inclusion and representation...
I think his solution would likely backfire. Also it means more SM stuff..
Proof would have to be in the proverbial pudding though.
Proof would have to be in the pudding, yes. So perhaps the whole "but I'd have to pay extra!!" is an entirely fabricated concern, and not guaranteed to be a problem.
As I've said - GW have been happy to make upgrade sprues without forcibly including them into kits. I see no reason this would have to be different.
But you are good to go with any marine off the shelf as a specific chapter. Just need right colours.
Can you paint a woman onto a SM? An upgrade sprue for gender is absolutely a tax on inclusion... IMO We can agree to disagree but I think tis terrible optics and if Ive spotted it youd be nuts to think other wont spot it either. Just because you dont care because you get your way does not mean other people coming after will not be bothered by this.
They were more than happy to create women Stormcast, who fill a largely similar role to Space Marines in AoS. I'll be honest, I could see them quite literally using Stormcast as a testing ground for Space Marines: take the risks on your newly created faction in your second largest game, and if they pay off, try it on the mainline faction.
Yeeaaaah..... after they destroyed the game called WHFB in order to make room for AOS/storm casts.
And? How is this related to the inclusion of women?
I'm also fairly sure they didn't just nuke WHFB just for Stormcast - most likely, it was to break away from a setting that was perhaps a little too stagnant and creatively stifling - because they've certainly been flexing their creative muscles with AoS.
Well you keep brining up storm cast as an example of inclusion in Warhammer. I'm merely pointing out storm cast and AOS came with a huge cost.
You can yell about how this is not political till you blue in the face but will significant amount of customers see it that way?
That doesn't mean the significant amount of customers are still right.
And what if they are right? Who gets to decide.
I think it's pretty simple, really - can anyone tell me why women existing is political? How someone's very life is somehow a political topic? If so, isn't everyone's life political?
Completely irrelevant and absolutely nobody is making this argument. You are wilfully and purposively straw manning and misrepresenting what's being said.. Please show me quote where someone said women existing is political? This is clearly disengenuine deflection.
Garnering reaction out of a corporation through pressure can be construed as political if the values align with other political discussions going on elsewhere If you want to pretend this discussion exist in a vacuum I would just like to point out to the comparisons made with gaming and other media... Its relevant because you are attempting pressuring GW/ WH community to change their product. Wether or not you have political motive or not is irrelevant and not provable. I am merely pointing out that some/many customers will receive it that way. No idea what the numbers.
Again, all I'm saying is that they're more than happy to change the Space Marine identity - and if it becomes economically expedient to add women (as so many companies are realising that the women's market is fairly lucrative for pop culture), you bet they'll do it.
Market citations needed.
The RPG scene, Dungeons and Dragons 5th edition especially.
I also point towards the clothing industry, which was more tailored (ha!) towards men for the longest time. Similarly, the video game market is diversifying it's reach to more than it's previous demographics, and the industry is only growing.
How is a game you can play for free and talk to people comparable to Warhammer where you have to invest £100s if not £1000 and play a battle/war simulation??
Clothing? Longest time? When? Where? How is it relevant to Space Marines in a Warhammer 40k wargaming game?
What about all the things in recent times in popular media that failed when they seemed to have aligned with representation / inclusivity idea without adding anything of creative value...
It seems wargaming is just the next thing on the long list of culture that people want to change.
When companies get confused about what their purpose and mission statement and go off doing something else they tend to loose money.
This is an observation. Not an endorsement of anything.
A company's purpose, primarily, is nearly always profit. Not "we don't pander to women here".
Companies lose profit when they make certain business decisions that hurt their ability to deliver on the service/product they sell.
Like stopping marketing their products to their core audience.
40k/wargaming in general is 95+ % male is it currently?
There are awesome franchises and things where you have women as main protagonists. Like SOB in 40k. Why cant we elevate those and bring about organic change without burning everything to the ground?
Sisters aren't protagonists in 40k though, not in the broader sense. Sisters can be protagonists in their own books, sure, but they're not the "protagonist" faction plastered at the face of the company. Guess who are?
Oh yeah - the Space Marines.
Plus, why is including women Space Marines "burning everything to the ground"? Why the extreme language?
Why not, why cant sisters take the lead role in story telling? The new media seems to think so.. New comics, books and animations. I dont think the sisters hype train is stopping considering how popular its getting.
Can sisters be equal to SM or do they have to be superior in order to satisfy you?
I meant the setting. The cost weather you like it or not of creating Storm cast was the burnig to the ground of WHFB. Other factors aside that is a fact.
Did they do it to accommodate storm casts introduction ? Was it just rebranding or other reasons? Who knows the result is the same.
Whose to say some bright spark at GW wont think its time for new Warhmammer age of Galaxy because people seem to be saying 40k is outdated and needs to move with the times
Isn't the whole concept of women SM predicated on the fact that this idea didn't sell in the 80s but we have moved on since then?
Bringing up AOS storm cast as an example is really not a good play.. it was built on the ashes of WHFB and a lot of people lost their game. I'd rather this not happen to 40k.
Again, why would including women Space Marines be even close to equivalent to the setting shift that was WHFB/AoS? Rather an extreme reaction, don't you think?
Because GW is GW and I trust them as much with steering any change in the right direction as I do a back alley surgeon.
By all the SM fanboys account SM range is outselling all of creation which is why they get to have all the fun toys.. It appears they are doing something right.
And is that anything to do with them being all men, and being exclusively so? I don't think so.
Unless you're implying that apparently people seem to love Space Marines primarily because they exclude women?
Not what I said. Don't put words in my mouth.
I just observed SM+40k are selling really really well and GW is doing really well as a company.
You're absolutely right. I fail to see what that has to do with including women Space Marines though. Would you care to elaborate on that? Because I fail to understand why you'd mention how Space Marines are popular because they're "doing something right" when my point is about how they're excluding women.
Is excluding women the "something right" in this equation? Why else was it mentioned?
Ask GW why their marines are selling so well.. I don't know. Do you ?
It appears that not including women is irrelevant to sales of marines/40k. Because the market would be showing us otherwise vs AOS... This is an observation of objective fact.
Do not try to put up a straw man to argue against.
If you have deduced that's primarily because there are no female marines, that's entirely on you.. If you think that's somehow a bad thingy on you too.
The status quo seems to be working for GW as things stand.
Plus, you hit on a great point - "Space Marines get to have all the fun toys" - maybe women want to feel involved in those fun toys too, hence why they don't want to pick up a different faction?
Well sheeet maybe men who don't want to play SM want to have those toys too? What's being a woman has to do with anything?
Because the man is deciding he doesn't want to play *Space Marines*, but at least has the option for that representation. A woman doesn't even have the option of a woman getting those fun toys.
I don't want to play Warhammer space marine. Do you ?
I mean, I play every Imperial faction. So, I don't exactly fit your example.
Still does not change the fact i don't want o play Warhammer SM.
I dont care what your reasons are for more marine stuff. i dont want any more marine stuff.
Its of paramount importance more factions get more stuff and toys for longevity of the game. The fact you dislike SOB does not mean women wont like SOB... SOB should get all the same toys. Dragon SOB, Spiky SOB, Wolfy SOB etc the works! The sprinkle some for TAU and Eldar.
First, I don't dislike Sisters of Battle. I collect an army of them, for god's sake.
But your comment is exactly what I mean - you imply that Sisters of Battle are the "woman" faction. By my saying that I want women Space Marines, you take that as an attack on the Designated Woman Faction - when in reality, I'm simply saying that Sisters of Battle aren't equal to what Space Marines offer, from both a creative space, and a model range one too.
You say "we should have dragon SOB, spikey SOB, wolfy SOB" - but that's precisely the issue! The actual faction design of what Sisters of Battle are doesn't fit that kind of design. Sisters of Battle have a very strong faction design and culture - the Catholic nun trope, taken to the extreme, is integral to their design and aesthetic. By having "dragon SOB, spikey SOB wolfy SOB", you're actively compromising an *explicit* feature of their design. If you make wolfy SOB, you're needing to compromise on that very detailed Catholic nun design, and by doing so, you're harming their factional identity.
The same can't be said of Space Marines, whose faction design is centred on customisation and player freedoms. Their armour is neutral and blank for the most part, they're supplied with easy to convert upgrade sprues and sculpts. There is a wealth of different cultures and traditions reflected in the myriad Chapters, and GW are happy to encourage people to expand in weird and wacky ways. Space Marines are defined by their easy flavouring and ability to be defined as "spikey Marines, wolfy Marines, dragon Marines, Roman Marines, edgy Marines, etc etc" - Sisters aren't.
So either you're calling to massively overhaul the design of Sisters of Battle (not very lore friendly of you?), or we simply ignore 13 words of non-core lore, and add women Space Marines. I think one of these is much easier than the other.
It really seemed to me you are dissatisfied with SOB because they are not as good as SM according to you. Somehow even though on the table they can easily thrash any SM army.
I think they are just different side of the same coin. Like men and women..
The reason why I'm saying SOB because they are all women... And you seem to think 40k needs more representation of women. If the paramount thing of value that's being injected is gender and representation why would we not care about SOB who are all women? It fits the bill perfect.
Making SOB different to a SM does not make an SOB worse.
Unless you want to push an idea where men and women are the same... Because that's just not true in the real world so I don't see why this narrative should be reflected in 40k.
CEO Kasen wrote: Arguing sanctity of lore is a stronger argument in a work of literature or a historical period piece, or otherwise the creative vision of a single author. 40K is not these things. 40K is a still-marketed living universe now with an advancing storyline with a thousand hands on the wheel, and without changing a single piece of 'historical lore' there is no reason that this story cannot advance in the direction of allowing women as marines.
There's also no reason it should. When the people arguing for it are saying things like, paraphrased "a bunch of men together with no women is a bad look" I question their motives.
The point is that they *shouldn't* be changing the canon that whimsically.
Your issue isn't that there's no reason they should - it's that you don't value the reasons they should. Which is not the same thing.
This whole argument boils down to:
"allowing women to be marines has no impact on the setting, but has a big impact on the inclusivity felt by the audience"
vs
"that's not a good enough reason to do it"
your definition of whimsical also happens to align with your values as well - are we to got back to Rogue Trader era 40k so that none of the changes made to marines 'whimsically' since then have an affect?
This is the fandom equivalent of old men shouting at kids on their lawn because they no longer feel relevant to the world they inhabit - welcome to the background radiation of women (and minorities') lives...
Hecaton wrote: There was some non-GW fan content along those lines that got published in a fanzine, but that was before the modern conception of what a Space Marine is.
Interestingly, GDW #36 was published in January '88 and the Chapter Approved article came out in February. GDW also came with a disclaimer so, the Sunstroke article really never did have anything to do with Games Workshop.
Iracundus wrote: You have to have female Guard for the simple reason that if they survive long enough they get their own world. If they were male only, they would die out within a generation.
Hey, look at it this way.
You can just keep giving out the same planet every couple decades.
Your issue isn't that there's no reason they should - it's that you don't value the reasons they should. Which is not the same thing.
This whole argument boils down to:
"allowing women to be marines has no impact on the setting, but has a big impact on the inclusivity felt by the audience"
vs
"that's not a good enough reason to do it"
your definition of whimsical also happens to align with your values as well - are we to got back to Rogue Trader era 40k so that none of the changes made to marines 'whimsically' since then have an affect?
This is the fandom equivalent of old men shouting at kids on their lawn because they no longer feel relevant to the world they inhabit - welcome to the background radiation of women (and minorities') lives...
No, I disagree with the idea that it has a big impact on the inclusivity felt by the audience. Women are generally interested in stories where female characters are powerful and "heroic" less than men are; fundamentally this seems more about satisfying a certain kind of male gamer's want for an army of powerful women rather than satisfying women. Again, games like Infinity have parity or near-parity with depictions of men and women in the game, but women are not flocking to that game compared to other minis games. You still get the guys who are clamoring for more female sculpts, have a female alter-ego on the forums, etc.
Weren't you, not more than a page or two ago, saying how Smudge and the rest of us who want to be inclusive were just talking for women, instead of letting women talk for themselves?
So what do you call...
Hecaton wrote: No, I disagree with the idea that it has a big impact on the inclusivity felt by the audience. Women are generally interested in stories where female characters are powerful and "heroic" less than men are; fundamentally this seems more about satisfying a certain kind of male gamer's want for an army of powerful women rather than satisfying women. Again, games like Infinity have parity or near-parity with depictions of men and women in the game, but women are not flocking to that game compared to other minis games. You still get the guys who are clamoring for more female sculpts, have a female alter-ego on the forums, etc.
JNAProductions wrote: Weren't you, not more than a page or two ago, saying how Smudge and the rest of us who want to be inclusive were just talking for women, instead of letting women talk for themselves?
So what do you call...
Hecaton wrote: No, I disagree with the idea that it has a big impact on the inclusivity felt by the audience. Women are generally interested in stories where female characters are powerful and "heroic" less than men are; fundamentally this seems more about satisfying a certain kind of male gamer's want for an army of powerful women rather than satisfying women. Again, games like Infinity have parity or near-parity with depictions of men and women in the game, but women are not flocking to that game compared to other minis games. You still get the guys who are clamoring for more female sculpts, have a female alter-ego on the forums, etc.
That is a study that makes sense, from my personal experience as well. But there's no need to exclude people who would like female Space Marines from having them. You can have your marines be all male if you want, and I can put female Space Marines into my army if I so choose. You don't get to tell me how I should play my hobby. And it would be considerate if GW would consider what I and some others want in our Space Marine boxes, is all I'm saying.
CEO Kasen wrote: Arguing sanctity of lore is a stronger argument in a work of literature or a historical period piece, or otherwise the creative vision of a single author. 40K is not these things. 40K is a still-marketed living universe now with an advancing storyline with a thousand hands on the wheel, and without changing a single piece of 'historical lore' there is no reason that this story cannot advance in the direction of allowing women as marines.
There's also no reason it should. When the people arguing for it are saying things like, paraphrased "a bunch of men together with no women is a bad look" I question their motives.
A) It should change because it is not merely one story; this is a setting you are encouraged to invest yourself inside. You are encouraged to create your characters within it and play out their battles. It's really part of 40K's brilliance that despite how much I might dislike the current mechanics of the game, I'm still talking about it because of my investment in it. And it's increasingly problematic to arbitrarily disallow 50% of the population from being represented in the most iconic faction in the setting.
It'd be like if I said that Fighters in, say, Forgotten Realms could only be male because Reasons. It's leaving out a gender select box for no good reason.
B) Why I declare this arbitrary boils down to: "Does being male matter here?" Is it important that everyone in this faction be male? And if it doesn't, then why not allow the choice? Which is related to:
Hecaton wrote: Inclusiveness is not inherently trashy, but trying to make your product as mass-market appealing as possible almost certainly is. Having Astartes be male-only *does* elevate the setting, as it allows you to ask questions about why that is, how people in the setting feel about it, and explore whether or not people are content with that reality.
If GW saw it fit to have its characters ask those questions with any frequency, you'd have at least some point. Like I said, using misogyny to make the Imperium seem more dystopian is essentially the one valid argument for retaining this restriction - and they do not use it. GW hasn't even explicitly mentioned it in a codex in decades. I think there might have been one suggestion from Malcador about making the Primarchs women in the Heresy books somewhere and the Emperor laughed and thought he was joking, and as far as I know that's been the whole acknowledgement that this issue even exists.
There are works of fiction that explore gender and gender relations or for which gender is important, for which you couldn't casually gender-swap the protagonists and have them still function. 40K is not one of these.
Hecaton wrote: The point is that they *shouldn't* be changing the canon that whimsically.
Why not? It is a setting that's designed to be whimsically alterable. The whole "Everything is canon - not everything is true" line is an extremely clever dodge to account for the fact that thousands of writers are going to occasionally contradict one another and that things are going to change.
Hecaton wrote: I'd say that this is just evidence that Astartes's ubiquity in the setting has poisoned it.
I agree that it's tiresome that Space Marines are friggin' everywhere, but their ubiquity or lack of it wouldn't change the fact that there's really not a good reason to keep the restriction in place anymore. Stormcast Eternals are multigender and they sure as hell haven't wrecked AoS.
Guess we'll all have to make it a thing, then. Royston, fetch my 3d printer!
Hecaton wrote: No, I disagree with the idea that it has a big impact on the inclusivity felt by the audience. Women are generally interested in stories where female characters are powerful and "heroic" less than men are; fundamentally this seems more about satisfying a certain kind of male gamer's want for an army of powerful women rather than satisfying women. Again, games like Infinity have parity or near-parity with depictions of men and women in the game, but women are not flocking to that game compared to other minis games. You still get the guys who are clamoring for more female sculpts, have a female alter-ego on the forums, etc.
A) Infinity's a bit niche, which is unfortunate but understandable.
B) And if there are guys who want to run women space marines, so what? That isn't a reason to deny the women who want to run them, and those exist too.
C) None of this questioning of motivation really makes the argument for inclusiveness less valid. No one is reasonably expecting the player gender ratio to become 50/50 overnight once they allow women as Space Marines; there's thousands of years of cultural conditioning that isn't going to be undone immediately once you headswap little plastic space soldiers. But you do what good where you can. It might make a few more female-identifying people start looking to the setting, maybe even like that kind of hero, and not to be shackled to preconceived notions about the kinds of heroes they are personally interested in. Progress happens step by step, and this is a logical step at this point.
LumenPraebeo wrote: That is a study that makes sense, from my personal experience as well. But there's no need to exclude people who would like female Space Marines from having them. You can have your marines be all male if you want, and I can put female Space Marines into my army if I so choose. You don't get to tell me how I should play my hobby. And it would be considerate if GW would consider what I and some others want in our Space Marine boxes, is all I'm saying.
I mean if you kitbash an army of female Astartes it's not gonna bother me. I don't think GW should add them to the setting, though, and I think that the female space marine proponents find kitbashing to be unsatisfactory because it's about changing the canon, not self-expression.
LumenPraebeo wrote: That is a study that makes sense, from my personal experience as well. But there's no need to exclude people who would like female Space Marines from having them. You can have your marines be all male if you want, and I can put female Space Marines into my army if I so choose. You don't get to tell me how I should play my hobby. And it would be considerate if GW would consider what I and some others want in our Space Marine boxes, is all I'm saying.
GW Excluding people who like female marines is not the same as saying GW is excluding women though is it? Not all women would like the idea of Warhammer and even less women would care about female space marines...
GW gets to tell you how to hobby by having created the hobby and having conventions within the hobby... I.E. Eldar are eldar and not SM. Chaos is bad. Orks are green. Models have speciific base sizes. etc. SM are guys.
Ultimately nobody is going to stop you from changing your models how you want. You do you.
But if you don't care about GWs conventions why even be part of GW hobby ?
If GW created space for female space marines, there would still be plenty of space for people who didn't want them.
But anti-female marine people would look a lot worse to themselves and others if they deliberately excluded them in their own armies for personal 'my dudes' fluff reasons, than because they were 'justified' by previously published lore.
The argument 'my unique marine chapter is special because it only recruits men' looks pretty facile in that instance.
A) It should change because it is not merely one story; this is a setting you are encouraged to invest yourself inside. You are encouraged to create your characters within it and play out their battles. It's really part of 40K's brilliance that despite how much I might dislike the current mechanics of the game, I'm still talking about it because of my investment in it. And it's increasingly problematic to arbitrarily disallow 50% of the population from being represented in the most iconic faction in the setting.
"Problematic" is meaningless. Again, representation doesn't really matter in this context, it's not doing any good.
CEO Kasen wrote: It'd be like if I said that Fighters in, say, Forgotten Realms could only be male because Reasons. It's leaving out a gender select box for no good reason.
No, it wouldn't, because Fighter is a skillset, not an organization. Astartes are an organization (and a phenotype). So your analogy fails. There are women in the setting who are adept at using power armor and boltguns.
CEO Kasen wrote: B) Why I declare this arbitrary boils down to: "Does being male matter here?" Is it important that everyone in this faction be male? And if it doesn't, then why not allow the choice? Which is related to:
I mean, ask the guys who wrote the Astartes fluff that codified them as all-male. I'm sure they have their reasons.
CEO Kasen wrote: If GW saw it fit to have its characters ask those questions with any frequency, you'd have at least some point. Like I said, using misogyny to make the Imperium seem more dystopian is essentially the one valid argument for retaining this restriction - and they do not use it. GW hasn't even explicitly mentioned it in a codex in decades. I think there might have been one suggestion from Malcador about making the Primarchs women in the Heresy books somewhere and the Emperor laughed and thought he was joking, and as far as I know that's been the whole acknowledgement that this issue even exists.
GW doesn't ask those questions, you're right, but they should. I always interpreted the Emperor as gynophobic to a certain degree.
CEO Kasen wrote: There are works of fiction that explore gender and gender relations or for which gender is important, for which you couldn't casually gender-swap the protagonists and have them still function. 40K is not one of these.
Depends on the characters. Eisenhorn? Bequin? Calgaer, I'd say, too.
Why not? It is a setting that's designed to be whimsically alterable. The whole "Everything is canon - not everything is true" line is an extremely clever dodge to account for the fact that thousands of writers are going to occasionally contradict one another and that things are going to change.
Whether or not their are female Astartes is going to be a bigger deal than just "fuzzy canon."
I agree that it's tiresome that Space Marines are friggin' everywhere, but their ubiquity or lack of it wouldn't change the fact that there's really not a good reason to keep the restriction in place anymore. Stormcast Eternals are multigender and they sure as hell haven't wrecked AoS.
AoS wrecked WHF though. Or at least was the nail in the coffin.
A) Infinity's a bit niche, which is unfortunate but understandable.
Which wouldn't affect the *proportion* of men and women who are involved, so no, my argument stands.
CEO Kasen wrote: B) And if there are guys who want to run women space marines, so what? That isn't a reason to deny the women who want to run them, and those exist too.
So it's disingenuous for them to claim to be for pro-women representation when they want to make their Saber expy waifu in 40k.
CEO Kasen wrote: C) None of this questioning of motivation really makes the argument for inclusiveness less valid. No one is reasonably expecting the player gender ratio to become 50/50 overnight once they allow women as Space Marines; there's thousands of years of cultural conditioning that isn't going to be undone immediately once you headswap little plastic space soldiers. But you do what good where you can. It might make a few more female-identifying people start looking to the setting, maybe even like that kind of hero, and not to be shackled to preconceived notions about the kinds of heroes they are personally interested in. Progress happens step by step, and this is a logical step at this point.
My point is it's not inherently good for the hobby to be more gender-equal in its playerbase. It's value-neutral. Participating in 40k is not like the right to vote or own property, and it's not like women are being *prevented* from participating in minis gaming, it just doesn't appeal to the vast majority of them, it seems. And that's fine, as opposed to the people who get incredibly self-conscious about participating in a male-dominated hobby.
I think minis gaming itself, rather than the 40k setting and its depiction of women (or lack thereof), is what turns most women off, and the fact that other miniatures games which have more balanced depictions of men and women have similar male-female ratios of playerbase supports me and not you.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
LumenPraebeo wrote: Or, they SHOULD add them to the setting, and you simply need not use them.
No. Feel free to kitbash, you'd be doing better than the vast majority of hobbyists to put that kind of work in.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Hellebore wrote: If GW created space for female space marines, there would still be plenty of space for people who didn't want them.
But anti-female marine people would look a lot worse to themselves and others if they deliberately excluded them in their own armies for personal 'my dudes' fluff reasons, than because they were 'justified' by previously published lore.
The argument 'my unique marine chapter is special because it only recruits men' looks pretty facile in that instance.
I don't think they would. Unless, of course, you have this idea that male-only groups of humans are inherently immoral, which has popped up a few times in this thread.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
LumenPraebeo wrote: Quite simply, because i want to? Just because YOU don't think I care about GW conventions, doesn't mean I can't have it as a hobby..
Doesn't seem like you want to, since you find all-male space marines repulsive. Why don't you come play Infinity? The minis are ace.
Hecaton wrote: No, I disagree with the idea that it has a big impact on the inclusivity felt by the audience. Women are generally interested in stories where female characters are powerful and "heroic" less than men are; fundamentally this seems more about satisfying a certain kind of male gamer's want for an army of powerful women rather than satisfying women. Again, games like Infinity have parity or near-parity with depictions of men and women in the game, but women are not flocking to that game compared to other minis games. You still get the guys who are clamoring for more female sculpts, have a female alter-ego on the forums, etc.
Going by the abstract, that study doesn't say what you claimed. It says that the study found that books by male authors tended to have more powerful characters, and books by female authors didn't. Doesn't seem to be addressing who is actually interested in those stories at all.
And that's ignoring the fact that it's based on a statistically insignificant pool of authors (30 different series) and even within that they admit that the differences in many cases were not statistically significant. Also no mention of the criteria used to choose those authors, and whether the way the characters were portrayed is a result of gender predilections in the authors, the readers, or just the publishers.
CEO Kasen wrote: B) Why I declare this arbitrary boils down to: "Does being male matter here?" Is it important that everyone in this faction be male? And if it doesn't, then why not allow the choice? Which is related to:
I mean, ask the guys who wrote the Astartes fluff that codified them as all-male. I'm sure they have their reasons.
They already answered that question. Female miniatures didn’t sell in the 80’s. They sell now. Their reasoning for why they codified that is not valid anymore.
"Female miniatures were hideous in the 80's" I think it's a better description.
That said, unfortunately, it seems that GW evaluate the sanctity of their money more that any consideration about the product and the customers.
I'm referring here to the news that I just read that the US official GW tournament are entirely banning third party components (note: components, not models - which as far as I'm aware were allowed if minor on an otherwise GW model).
Which, I suppose, is another proof of how in order to be fully accepted as options Marines need a female sprue
If people are going to the trouble of purchasing third party heads from other manufacturers would it not be the same difference to use any of the female heads that Games Workshop produce?
"So now we've established the proposal in principle and are haggling over price!"
Just caught up on the last 2 pages of this one, and it seems like such a small thing to argue over - do we retrospectively change the lore, or build on it?
I honestly don't see the problem with advancing the lore rather than replacing it. I do see problems with taking an aspect of the lore and just rewriting it for the sake of it.
No doubt this will be met with the same deluge of "but it's only 13 words" and "But it was an arbitrary decision" and "but it hasn't even been mentioned for years", but we can all agree that, as we stand right now, without changing the lore, the whole setting, lore, and imagery of space marines says that we can't have female ones. That is, after all, the whole topic of this thread. Can we just agree that, as a baseline? I'm not saying that was a right thing to do, or a good one, but it is a thing that has happened and it's why space marines look like they do today. Right? Because if we can't agree on that then this is 47 pages wasted!
Now, as this thread was met with a huge amount of people (originally including myself) who said that the lore prevents it and should be left well enough alone, and absolutely nobody saying "oh, does it only work on men?" then we can safely say that this is a piece of lore that people know, and that people use to identify the space marine brand. People who have been playing the game know that space marines are all men, regardless of the reason behind that, and I would say in response to people asking for a definition of Core lore, this:
Core lore: Any lore which most people in the hobby are aware of.
For example - Necrons are walking death robots who have weapons that can strip the atoms from a target - most people know it, so it's core lore. Space marines are all men, and there's a reason for it somewhere - most people know it, it's core lore. Orks red vehicles go faster - it's core lore. Knowing that Wazdakka Gutsmek was intent on building a highway to ride motorbikes through the warp - some people might know it, but most wouldn't, so not core lore.
So, whilst there might not be many words, if any, to change to overwrite the lore, the fact remains that 90%* of people in the hobby are aware that marines are all men and most of those probably have some idea that the process only works on men.
So whilst you can say "the decision was arbitrary", "it's only 13 words and they aren't there any more" and "there was no reason for it to be only men in the first place" until you're blue in the face, it boils down to the fact that it was only men in the first place, and that most people in the hobby are aware of that fact, and to me, that's what makes something "core lore". Changing something which most people know means most people will feel like their 40k world has had to change to accommodate the change - like when newcrons were introduced and they rewrote their whole history. Adding a new part to the lore, and making it grow organically, should always be considered first. Conversely, changing a small aspect of the lore - like saying that (I don't know...) some piece of equipment which they once said was carried by space marines is actually built into their suits and always has been isn't going to affect most people's understanding of the lore.
I think that it is better if people who have followed a game for most of it's life don't get the response "actually you're wrong, they changed that" to saying "marine-juice only works on men", when they could instead get "that used to be true, but they have now found a way to make female marines which doubles their recruitment". The first will elicit a "that's annoying" response, and possibly even resentment that "women came in here and changed my game", which is hardly constructive to our goals of inclusivity, whereas the expansion of lore, nodding to what they already know but ultimately arriving at the same place - female marines are a thing now - then they are much more likely to say "oh, that's cool!" and be accepting of the change, and that is the response that we want, isn't it?
*number pulled from my behind, don't ask for a statistical analysis of it. By all means go into any GW store and ask anyone i nthere why all marines are male, and see if they have a reason or a shrug - and bring back your findings!
Cybtroll wrote: "Female miniatures were hideous in the 80's" I think it's a better description.
That said, unfortunately, it seems that GW evaluate the sanctity of their money more that any consideration about the product and the customers.
I'm referring here to the news that I just read that the US official GW tournament are entirely banning third party components (note: components, not models - which as far as I'm aware were allowed if minor on an otherwise GW model).
Which, I suppose, is another proof of how in order to be fully accepted as options Marines need a female sprue
The whole no 3rd Party thing has always been policy for UK events at Warhammer World where GW hosts its events. They've just extended this policy to the tournaments they've officially sponsored in the States. GW couldn't allow another company's product to be featured at what is essentially a big marketing exercise.
LumenPraebeo wrote: That is a study that makes sense, from my personal experience as well. But there's no need to exclude people who would like female Space Marines from having them. You can have your marines be all male if you want, and I can put female Space Marines into my army if I so choose. You don't get to tell me how I should play my hobby. And it would be considerate if GW would consider what I and some others want in our Space Marine boxes, is all I'm saying.
I mean if you kitbash an army of female Astartes it's not gonna bother me. I don't think GW should add them to the setting, though, and I think that the female space marine proponents find kitbashing to be unsatisfactory because it's about changing the canon, not self-expression.
I have kitbashed female marines so please don’t talk rubbish about my motivations. Your argument seems to be that it wouldn’t improve the setting because you wouldn’t like it. There’s no reason for that, you just wouldn’t. Please explain further if I’m wrong on that but that appears to be the case from what you have said.
We cannot give you evidence of females having been made because that’s the point. They are banned by an outdated piece of fluff that doesn’t appear in any codexs. That’s what we are arguing for. Yes folk can kitbash them and head canon them but the6 may get death threats if they do. So let’s change the rules. Write out the bit of old fluff that these horrible people use to justify their threats and make the community a nicer place for all.
As for this being a core part of marines identity, it was first brought up by your side and then thoroughly debunked by ours. It’s not core at all. Every codex for marines ever, from 2nd edition when they started up to now has a section on the creation of a marine. None of them, not one ever, has stated they have to be male only. That “fact” is not in print now and has not been since it was in WD in 2017, it has only ever been in WD and and in anthologies of WD articles. It is so peripheral to marines that it does not make it into their books and isn’t in print anywhere now. Now, you are claiming it is core to them.
There’s our argument against, prove us wrong. Same with the setting. We have laid out lots of times why the setting would benefit from the change. Again, prove us wrong. Why shouldn’t it change?
some bloke wrote: "So now we've established the proposal in principle and are haggling over price!"
Just caught up on the last 2 pages of this one, and it seems like such a small thing to argue over - do we retrospectively change the lore, or build on it?
I honestly don't see the problem with advancing the lore rather than replacing it. I do see problems with taking an aspect of the lore and just rewriting it for the sake of it.
No doubt this will be met with the same deluge of "but it's only 13 words" and "But it was an arbitrary decision" and "but it hasn't even been mentioned for years", but we can all agree that, as we stand right now, without changing the lore, the whole setting, lore, and imagery of space marines says that we can't have female ones. That is, after all, the whole topic of this thread. Can we just agree that, as a baseline? I'm not saying that was a right thing to do, or a good one, but it is a thing that has happened and it's why space marines look like they do today. Right? Because if we can't agree on that then this is 47 pages wasted!
Now, as this thread was met with a huge amount of people (originally including myself) who said that the lore prevents it and should be left well enough alone, and absolutely nobody saying "oh, does it only work on men?" then we can safely say that this is a piece of lore that people know, and that people use to identify the space marine brand. People who have been playing the game know that space marines are all men, regardless of the reason behind that, and I would say in response to people asking for a definition of Core lore, this:
Core lore: Any lore which most people in the hobby are aware of.
For example - Necrons are walking death robots who have weapons that can strip the atoms from a target - most people know it, so it's core lore. Space marines are all men, and there's a reason for it somewhere - most people know it, it's core lore. Orks red vehicles go faster - it's core lore. Knowing that Wazdakka Gutsmek was intent on building a highway to ride motorbikes through the warp - some people might know it, but most wouldn't, so not core lore.
So, whilst there might not be many words, if any, to change to overwrite the lore, the fact remains that 90%* of people in the hobby are aware that marines are all men and most of those probably have some idea that the process only works on men.
So whilst you can say "the decision was arbitrary", "it's only 13 words and they aren't there any more" and "there was no reason for it to be only men in the first place" until you're blue in the face, it boils down to the fact that it was only men in the first place, and that most people in the hobby are aware of that fact, and to me, that's what makes something "core lore". Changing something which most people know means most people will feel like their 40k world has had to change to accommodate the change - like when newcrons were introduced and they rewrote their whole history. Adding a new part to the lore, and making it grow organically, should always be considered first. Conversely, changing a small aspect of the lore - like saying that (I don't know...) some piece of equipment which they once said was carried by space marines is actually built into their suits and always has been isn't going to affect most people's understanding of the lore.
I think that it is better if people who have followed a game for most of it's life don't get the response "actually you're wrong, they changed that" to saying "marine-juice only works on men", when they could instead get "that used to be true, but they have now found a way to make female marines which doubles their recruitment". The first will elicit a "that's annoying" response, and possibly even resentment that "women came in here and changed my game", which is hardly constructive to our goals of inclusivity, whereas the expansion of lore, nodding to what they already know but ultimately arriving at the same place - female marines are a thing now - then they are much more likely to say "oh, that's cool!" and be accepting of the change, and that is the response that we want, isn't it?
*number pulled from my behind, don't ask for a statistical analysis of it. By all means go into any GW store and ask anyone i nthere why all marines are male, and see if they have a reason or a shrug - and bring back your findings!
About your core lore. It’s core lore that technology has stagnated and new inventions are heresy. Yet every few months new and unheard of equipment has been released for marines and no one bats an eyelid. New tanks, new guns, new troops. All fine. There are countless examples of truly core lore that is printed in all the books being changed or ignored and no one minds. The horus heresy has changed entirely over the years, folk Lap it up. Chapter identities changed entirely (space Vikings into space werewolves on wolves firing ice guns) love it. But this old bit of fluff about men only is so sacred that it cannot be changed ever.
In the same paragraph where this line of text first appeared it also talked about the emperor being the only person allowed to issue the order for a new chapter. That’s has changed, he barely ever talks to anyone if he can at all. SAME paragraph but that can change but not men only. Why is that? Why is that but so sacred and important? Sadly for many I see the answer as being misogyny. (Not saying it is for you, no personal attack here, but I think it’s why it is in general). Could you explain why it’s so important to you? Or to the community? Why is it so much more sacred than all other fluff?
Hobbyist: *kitbashes female SM*
The community: YOU CAN'T DO THAT IT VIOLATES THE SANCTITY OF THE LORE!! YOU DESERVE TO DIE FOR THIS!!!
Other hobbyist: *uses 3rd party products and makes Afrika Korps Orks*
The community: HAHA YES THIS IS SO GOOD!! SCREW GW!!!
Obviously I emphasised some parts for the joke but the reality is that if you make your Orks look like WW2 Wehrmacht or have your custom Chapter be obsessed with "genetic purity", that's perfectly OK. But if you dare to make SM women then you've crossed a line. Where's the logic in that?
GW is the bad guy if you're using another companies products to play the game but if you want to make changes to the background then suddenly GW must be protected at all costs.
And they would still need baseline humans to reproduce because the Astartes process makes them incapable of reproduction. Astartes aren't human anymore, they don't get all the human features.
It doesn't have to make them incapable of reproduction.
Doesn't have to, you're right. But show me a Space Marine who is capable of reproduction.
Gert wrote: As for women feeling comfortable with a fantasy setting (you mention GoT) from my personal experience that is a lie, and the overwhelming majority of fantasy, and indeed GoT fans, are men.
Whatever. My point is that there are a higher percentage of female GoT/ASOIAF fans than female Warhammer 40k fans.
Have you considered that this is because it's an entirely different medium of media, and because there's also a higher percentage of women represented on the show? Still a ridiculously poor example.
Gert wrote: For specific examples, my immediate women family members think it's far too flippant with certain topics and the female characters aren't good. The "strong female characters" of GoT are almost without fail, all victims of *not nice things* which from my perspective, tells women that to be in a fantasy setting they have to suffer from these *not nice things* in order to be a "strong female character". If we go into things like Star Wars or Star Trek, characters like Rey or Burnham are decried as Mary Sue's because they do the exact same things that male characters can/have done in the series. Rey, Luke, and even Anakin are all exactly the same in terms of character development.
Sorry, heroism requires going through rough gak. If you find that unacceptable, you don't want your characters to be heroes.
Not always. There's different kinds of "not nice things" that affect heroes, and with women characters, it's always very sexually charged. The same is rarely, if ever, the case for men.
Speaking of sexually charged, let's talk about your wee obsession with Space Marines suddenly becoming breeding machines the moment women are introduced, hmm?
Sgt_Smudge wrote: While not explicitly mentioned, I believe I have seen it expressed that Space Marines are infertile anyway. And is it not reasonable to assume that Space Marines at current are chemically castrated, or otherwise infertile? Especially seeing as most recruits are pre-pubescent.
Maybe they're hyper-fertile, with all those hormones pumped into them.
Maybe they are, maybe they aren't. But suffice to say, we've never seen it, it would be totally arbitrary if they *were*, and there's non-core lore supporting that they're most definitely not.
Or are you suggesting that Marneus Calgar is this raging ball of fertile energy in his current depiction?
Sgt_Smudge wrote: Adding women Astartes wouldn't make them suddenly baby makers, and honestly, I really don't appreciate the implication that women=pregnancies.
There was no such implication.
Really? And that's why all of a sudden you're conflating Space Marines with sex and reproduction?
Don't BS me.
Are you really so dense that you don't understand that it takes males *and* females for sexual reproduction to occur in mammals?
Yeah - and? These are hypno-indoctrinated soldiers that have never shown an interest in sex at all. Why is sex suddenly coming into things now that women are being mentioned?
I don't see you mentioning the Imperial Guard being a reason that women shouldn't be present in that faction. I don't see you doing it with men attached to the Sororitas. So why Space Marines? Why does the mere inclusion of women suddenly spawn images of sexual relationships between Astartes? Hell, not only is it kinda reductive of the role of women, but it's also incredibly heteronormative - intentionally or not, you're implying that Space Marines *do* care about sex, but absolutely none of them are homosexual or otherwise non-straight?
I'd just like to say, Hecaton, you're the one who brought sex into this. I'm *very* curious why you did, because I don't think it was relevant at all.
That's what I was talking about
But why bring it up? Why did we all need reminding of the mammalian reproductive system when we talked about simply including women?
The fact that you're so emphatically trying to claim how Space Marines are just super fertile and interested in sex is just a little weird, to be honest.
and the fact that you deceptively tried to spin it as sexism on my part just makes you look like a charlatan trying to score white knight points.
You know, if I brought up something completely unrelated out of nowhere, and someone expressed how that was honestly kinda weird and gave off massively sexist vibes, the first thing *I'd* do is apologise and retract my comments, and perhaps reword them.
The fact that you jump so strongly to various buzzwords instead of self-reflecting on just how weird it is that you started bringing sex into the situation doesn't reflect well on your case.
Sgt_Smudge wrote: Emphasising the Imperium's pragmatism and focus on war over any sort of gender segregating, for one.
The Imperium is not pragmatic; it is needlessly cruel and self-degrading.
In some things, yes. In others, no, it is very evidently pragmatic.
See: women serving alongside men in the Astra Militarum.
Sgt_Smudge wrote: Have you considered that Brienne of Tarth literally exists to fill that gap? Brienne *is* the representative aspect of that.
Probably the worst example you could have thought of to defend the whole "women like settings where there are no women fighters", considering the amount of formidable female combatants in that series.
Brienne is pretty much the only Westerosi woman in that series who's good at fighting
Hey, remind me, who killed the Night King?
Brienne's situation is presented as unique within the setting - her being a warrior woman is almost unheard of in her society.
You're right - but Brienne, no matter how unique she is in her setting, becomes the icon for warrior women, and becomes a source of representation for many women. The very fact that Brienne *exists* is representation, no matter how unique she is in the setting.
Somehow women seem to like this book series and television adaptation more than Warhammer 40k.
First, women's representation is *stronger* in GoT than it is in 40k. I'm not sure at all where you're getting this "GoT is unrepresentative of women but women love it!!" tangent from. And I'm sure there's totally not a thousand reasons why women prefer GoT, not least perhaps because you can enjoy GoT from the comfort of your own sofa without needing to go into a hobby store and be leered at by men who aren't quite sure if you "belong" in there or not.
Just a thought.
Hecaton wrote:
Sgt_Smudge wrote:Can you show me a real life human undergoing the process? You can't. It's fictional.
Of course. But that statement doesn't detract from the fact that the process of creating an Astartes has never been shown working on a female human, and it has been outright stated to not do so.
Yeah - for entirely made up arbitrary reasons.
Why should I care about arbitrary reasons? Why are women arbitrarily restricted? Why should I respect made up words?
Sgt_Smudge wrote: Aw jeez. Shame.
Guess that canon's really sacred though still, right?
I don't want to see the setting turned into homogenized media trash *even more*.
I'm asking for the inclusion of women. Why is the inclusion of women "homogenised media trash"? They're just women.
Sgt_Smudge wrote: Sorry to burst your bubble, but the Imperium was always gender-equal. Guardsmen are mixed gender, the High Lords are mixed gender, the Inquisition is mixed gender, the Admech barely *have* gender, the Assassinorum are mixed gender, the Navigators are mixed gender, the Navy are mixed gender, the PDF are mixed gender, etc etc
But why aren't Space Marines? After all - the Imperium clearly isn't institutionally sexist, unless you want to change that sacred sacred lore?
Neither are Custodes. It's just a conceit of the setting, you're gonna have to learn to live with it.
Oh, sorry, Custodes too. Wow. Two factions, one of them not being more than 10,000 members in number - versus the entire rest of the Imperium?
Might want to get a sense of scale there.
JNAProductions wrote: Edit: Exceptions for the earliest days of 40k, before much modern fluff was established. There were some women marines then, so I’ve been told, but no women marines exist in modern 40k.
There was some non-GW fan content along those lines that got published in a fanzine, but that was before the modern conception of what a Space Marine is.
Aaaactually it was endorsed by Chapter Approved, at the time. Sure, you can say "before the modern conception of what a Space Marine is", but that just further lends into the idea that "modern conception of what a Space Marine is" is rather... flexible, no?
After all, the modern conception of what Space Marines are is Primaris.
Sgt_Smudge wrote: Space Marines just not having women just feels spiteful, more than anything else, either as an arbitrary "our biology says no", or a "haha, no women allowed here, sucks to be you" (even though such blatant gender segregation doesn't really exist anywhere in the Imperium as a whole). There's no worldbuilding it contributes to, no aesthetic benefit or wider thematic point, and just seems more like a slap in the face than an organic, natural piece of worldbuilding.
I mean, the Emperor being a gynophobe makes sense, to be honest.
The Emperor didn't make the Space Marines though. Amar Astarte did.
Sgt_Smudge wrote: Not that a fictional world should come before real world people feeling excluded in the first place, I may add.
Art's mission isn't to make people feel included
Actually, that's entirely dependant on the art in question. Nice try.
and however trite, the 40k setting is art.
And art isn't immune to criticism.
Also, we're not talking about just art. We're talking about a toy soldiers game where people get to express their own creative freedom with little plastic toy soldiers on a battlefield, with some made up arbitrary flavour text behind it to get the imagination roaring. It is a product. It is merchandise. And you'd be lying to yourself if you didn't recognise that the point of merchandise is to sell it, and to sell it as well as you can.
And representation sells well.
FezzikDaBullgryn wrote: Dude, Hecaton, you are getting really close to crossing the line, as so many from your side have already done. The personal attacks are unwarranted, and the relentless assertion that women don't have autonomy over their bodies is disgusting, and wrong. 40k's Imperium might be many things, but they don't really go out of their way to show that women are powerless over their bodies or autonomy. You are thinking of Chaos.
When did I say any of that?
Literally the moment that you started making biologically reductive comments the moment that women Space Marines were suggested?
I really can't fathom why you felt the need to bring up mammalian reproduction here.
Argive wrote:
As I've said - GW have been happy to make upgrade sprues without forcibly including them into kits. I see no reason this would have to be different.
But you are good to go with any marine off the shelf as a specific chapter. Just need right colours. Can you paint a woman onto a SM?
Sure - same as a helmeted Space Marines could be a woman. Just put a helmet on, and you *could* be good to go. Just as long as there's the option for actual visible representation too.
And, as I've said, when, inevitably new Space Marine kits are released, they'd include some women heads, just like they include male heads currently. There you go, problem solved.
An upgrade sprue for gender is absolutely a tax on inclusion... IMO
People have been happy to get third party bits to customise their Marines how they like for decades. I don't think people will cry too much about this, in the wake of it being made canon. And, as I've said, *when* new kits are released (because you'd be kidding yourself if you didn't think new Space Marines will eventually be released), if they included a woman's head or two on the sprue alongside the bare male ones, there's no more "sprue inclusion tax".
Just because you dont care because you get your way does not mean other people coming after will not be bothered by this.
Who'd be bothered, exactly? Again, people are happy to spend extra to get the bits they want. Not to mention that a single sprue of heads can go a long way, if you're not putting them on every Marine.
Well you keep brining up storm cast as an example of inclusion in Warhammer. I'm merely pointing out storm cast and AOS came with a huge cost.
And why does that have anything to do with Stormcast including women?
I think it's pretty simple, really - can anyone tell me why women existing is political? How someone's very life is somehow a political topic? If so, isn't everyone's life political?
Completely irrelevant and absolutely nobody is making this argument.
Really? I'm not the one saying that this is "political". Come on, tell me - how is this topic political? All we're discussing is women's representation - so if that's all that's being discussed, and this is "political", what's political about women's representation?
Garnering reaction out of a corporation through pressure can be construed as political if the values align with other political discussions going on elsewhere
So, basically, it might totally not be political, but if someone thinks it looks a little bit similar to other things, it's suddenly political? Not exactly a benchmark for objective judgement there.
If you want to pretend this discussion exist in a vacuum I would just like to point out to the comparisons made with gaming and other media...
Thing is, no discussion exists in a vaccuum. And I'd like to point out that it's the people calling it "political" who are making the comparisons with other media and gaming first.
Its relevant because you are attempting pressuring GW/ WH community to change their product.
But why is that **political**?
The RPG scene, Dungeons and Dragons 5th edition especially.
I also point towards the clothing industry, which was more tailored (ha!) towards men for the longest time. Similarly, the video game market is diversifying it's reach to more than it's previous demographics, and the industry is only growing.
How is a game you can play for free and talk to people comparable to Warhammer where you have to invest £100s if not £1000 and play a battle/war simulation??
You tell me how they're not - why does investing hundreds of pounds mean that women wouldn't be interested?
Clothing? Longest time? When? Where? How is it relevant to Space Marines in a Warhammer 40k wargaming game?
Uh, you are familiar with dandyism, right? Again, that was on you - you asked for examples of markets shifting to expand into the women demographic. I gave them.
What about all the things in recent times in popular media that failed when they seemed to have aligned with representation / inclusivity idea without adding anything of creative value...
What about them? Did they fail because they "aligned with representation", or did they fail because of other causes? Because I'm not seeing anything that inherently suggests "aligning with representation" is economically bad.
It seems wargaming is just the next thing on the long list of culture that people want to change.
Fun fact! Culture always changes.
Remember that fact.
A company's purpose, primarily, is nearly always profit. Not "we don't pander to women here".
Companies lose profit when they make certain business decisions that hurt their ability to deliver on the service/product they sell.
Like stopping marketing their products to their core audience.
Why would including women Space Marines be "stopping marketing to their core audience"?
Is the male audience of 40k so fragile that they'd see women Space Marines and suddenly think "OH NO, THEY'RE NOT MARKETING TO ME ANY MORE!!" You think so little of men that this would be the case?
40k/wargaming in general is 95+ % male is it currently?
Possibly. And GW reaching out to more women and appealing to them would simply just add more potential buyers. But are you really saying that men would drop out if women Space Marines were a thing? I had no idea men were so fragile about such things.
Sisters aren't protagonists in 40k though, not in the broader sense. Sisters can be protagonists in their own books, sure, but they're not the "protagonist" faction plastered at the face of the company. Guess who are?
Oh yeah - the Space Marines.
Plus, why is including women Space Marines "burning everything to the ground"? Why the extreme language?
Why not, why cant sisters take the lead role in story telling?
Because they're not the poster boys. Space Marines are.
And if you want to know why Space Marines are the poster boys - maybe it's got something to do with that 95% male audience you just mentioned?
The new media seems to think so.. New comics, books and animations. I dont think the sisters hype train is stopping considering how popular its getting.
And it's still laughably smaller than the cult of personality surrounding Space Marines.
Can sisters be equal to SM or do they have to be superior in order to satisfy you?
Sisters *won't* be equal to Space Marines, because they're two completely different factions, offering two completely different things, and because GW won't let Sisters be equal to Space Marines, because Space Marines are their poster child.
It's called being realistic - Space Marines will continue to be dominant. Therefore, if we want visibility, we change the dominant force to something that it has no reason not to be in the first place.
I meant the setting. The cost weather you like it or not of creating Storm cast was the burnig to the ground of WHFB.
Eh, not really? Stormcast could have been thrown into the World that Was just like the Storm of Magic was. GW simply decided to go full out with their new setting.
Other factors aside that is a fact. Did they do it to accommodate storm casts introduction ? Was it just rebranding or other reasons? Who knows the result is the same.
Exactly my point - you can't even say if Stormcast were a direct *reason* - so how can you talk about "costs" when you don't even know the reasons and costs in the first place!
Whose to say some bright spark at GW wont think its time for new Warhmammer age of Galaxy because people seem to be saying 40k is outdated and needs to move with the times
Sure - but at this point, you're now just inventing scenarios and looking for made-up incidents.
I think we call them strawmen.
Isn't the whole concept of women SM predicated on the fact that this idea didn't sell in the 80s but we have moved on since then?
Yes. I fail to see why that requires a full setting reboot to change 13 words.
Again, why would including women Space Marines be even close to equivalent to the setting shift that was WHFB/AoS? Rather an extreme reaction, don't you think?
Because GW is GW and I trust them as much with steering any change in the right direction as I do a back alley surgeon.
Did Primaris burn the setting to the ground? They were a much more extreme change than simply including women.
You're absolutely right. I fail to see what that has to do with including women Space Marines though. Would you care to elaborate on that? Because I fail to understand why you'd mention how Space Marines are popular because they're "doing something right" when my point is about how they're excluding women.
Is excluding women the "something right" in this equation? Why else was it mentioned?
Ask GW why their marines are selling so well.. I don't know. Do you ?
No, I don't - but you're the one who brought it up. So please, elaborate. Why was this necessary to be mentioned in a thread about women Astartes?
It appears that not including women is irrelevant to sales of marines/40k.
You literally don't have any kind of data to make that comment How can you say that "not including women is irrelevant to the sales" when we have no idea of what the sales would be like if we *did* include women Astartes? For all you know, including women Astartes might increase the sales drastically - the point is, we have no evidence at all to make the claim that the sales difference is "irrelevant" because we don't have any.
Because the market would be showing us otherwise vs AOS... This is an observation of objective fact.
Did you miss all the other context around the two settings? Space Marines have been around for orders of magnitude more time than the Stormcast have. Don't you think that would play into things just a smidge?
Do not try to put up a straw man to argue against.
That's not even what a strawman argument is!
The status quo seems to be working for GW as things stand.
And? Does changing the representation of women affect that at all? You literally don't know at all, yet are fighting so hard to keep things as they are, despite the objections of real world people saying that this isn't okay - why?
I mean, I play every Imperial faction. So, I don't exactly fit your example.
Still does not change the fact i don't want o play Warhammer SM. I dont care what your reasons are for more marine stuff. i dont want any more marine stuff.
Then don't buy it. Simple.
First, I don't dislike Sisters of Battle. I collect an army of them, for god's sake. But your comment is exactly what I mean - you imply that Sisters of Battle are the "woman" faction. By my saying that I want women Space Marines, you take that as an attack on the Designated Woman Faction - when in reality, I'm simply saying that Sisters of Battle aren't equal to what Space Marines offer, from both a creative space, and a model range one too.
You say "we should have dragon SOB, spikey SOB, wolfy SOB" - but that's precisely the issue! The actual faction design of what Sisters of Battle are doesn't fit that kind of design. Sisters of Battle have a very strong faction design and culture - the Catholic nun trope, taken to the extreme, is integral to their design and aesthetic. By having "dragon SOB, spikey SOB wolfy SOB", you're actively compromising an *explicit* feature of their design. If you make wolfy SOB, you're needing to compromise on that very detailed Catholic nun design, and by doing so, you're harming their factional identity.
The same can't be said of Space Marines, whose faction design is centred on customisation and player freedoms. Their armour is neutral and blank for the most part, they're supplied with easy to convert upgrade sprues and sculpts. There is a wealth of different cultures and traditions reflected in the myriad Chapters, and GW are happy to encourage people to expand in weird and wacky ways. Space Marines are defined by their easy flavouring and ability to be defined as "spikey Marines, wolfy Marines, dragon Marines, Roman Marines, edgy Marines, etc etc" - Sisters aren't.
So either you're calling to massively overhaul the design of Sisters of Battle (not very lore friendly of you?), or we simply ignore 13 words of non-core lore, and add women Space Marines. I think one of these is much easier than the other.
It really seemed to me you are dissatisfied with SOB because they are not as good as SM according to you.
I'm not "dissatisfied" with them. I'm just not deluding myself to think that they stand a cat in hell's chance of being the poster faction. Sisters are fine with what they are, because their design is tight, it is aesthetically impressive and evocative, and the range is pretty damn solid. I like Sisters of Battle very much - but they're not Space Marines, in the same way that Orks aren't Space Marines, or Tau aren't Space Marines, or any of the other factions aren't Space Marines, except Space Marines.
Somehow even though on the table they can easily thrash any SM army.
I don't care about how strong they are on tabletop.
I think they are just different side of the same coin. Like men and women..
But that's the thing - they're not two different sides of the same coin any more so than Tau and Space Marines are two sides of the same coin.
Sisters of Battle are defined by a very strong cultural aesthetic design. Their lore is generally very centred on a unified concept and principle. Their existence is tied to a very specific single identity.
Space Marines are defined by their freedom to embrace a massive range of aesthetic designs and styles. Their lore is, for the most part, some of the most open-ended in all 40k. Their existence is justified by whatever the player wants it to be, because they have such a vast history to choose from.
They're vastly different factions, so I don't understand for a second why Sisters need to be brought into this, because they're not a suitable stand-in for actual Space Marines.
The reason why I'm saying SOB because they are all women... And you seem to think 40k needs more representation of women. If the paramount thing of value that's being injected is gender and representation why would we not care about SOB who are all women? It fits the bill perfect.
Thank you for proving my point - you've reduced the entire identity of Sisters of Battle down to "they're the woman faction" and ignored all the other design aspects they have, and how fundamentally they *don't* do the same things Space Marines do.
Space Marines are the poster boys because they are so flexible, so perfect a creative canvas for the player, so utterly open ended and free to interpretation. Sisters of Battle just aren't that. Sisters of Battle have a very tight, very strong design, but if you don't like that design - well, you're kind of left stranded.
Space Marines don't have that problem, and represent the apex of player creativity... unless you're a woman.
I also mention again that representation is nothing without visibility, and as I've said, you'd be deluding yourself to think that Sisters will ever come close to the cultural impact that Space Marines have - largely because Space Marines are such an excellent blank canvas for creativity. Therefore, Space Marines are the best candidate, and Sisters of Battle are not.
Making SOB different to a SM does not make an SOB worse.
It doesn't make them worse - but it does make them unsuitable for representative purposes in the same way Space Marines are perfect for representation.
Unless you want to push an idea where men and women are the same... Because that's just not true in the real world so I don't see why this narrative should be reflected in 40k.
Go on - what's not the same? Don't forget, we're talking about made-up magic super soldiers in a far future setting - so I don't wanna hear any biology arguments come into play.
Hellebore wrote:Your issue isn't that there's no reason they should - it's that you don't value the reasons they should. Which is not the same thing.
This whole argument boils down to:
"allowing women to be marines has no impact on the setting, but has a big impact on the inclusivity felt by the audience"
vs
"that's not a good enough reason to do it"
Absolutely right. And this has been the argument for most of the thread - people not valuing the real feelings of inclusivity felt by the audience.
Hecaton wrote:No, I disagree with the idea that it has a big impact on the inclusivity felt by the audience.
You can disagree, but you'd be wrong, considering the amount of people who have very vocally said that visibility and inclusivity matter to them, myself included.
But sure, I guess you're just going to speak for (or rather, over) them.
some bloke wrote:Just caught up on the last 2 pages of this one, and it seems like such a small thing to argue over - do we retrospectively change the lore, or build on it?
I honestly don't see the problem with advancing the lore rather than replacing it. I do see problems with taking an aspect of the lore and just rewriting it for the sake of it.
No doubt this will be met with the same deluge of "but it's only 13 words" and "But it was an arbitrary decision" and "but it hasn't even been mentioned for years", but we can all agree that, as we stand right now, without changing the lore, the whole setting, lore, and imagery of space marines says that we can't have female ones. That is, after all, the whole topic of this thread. Can we just agree that, as a baseline? I'm not saying that was a right thing to do, or a good one, but it is a thing that has happened and it's why space marines look like they do today. Right? Because if we can't agree on that then this is 47 pages wasted!
No, I think we're all in agreement here that women Space Marines are not a thing right now. Sure, it's for totally arbitrary reasons, or reasons that don't tie in to the current depictions of what Space Marines stand for as a faction, but we cannot claim that women Space Marines exist at present.
The point of contention comes from how much of that is because it's actively enforced from GW's core lore, and how much of that is enforced by cultural inertia and simply just momentum from not changing decades-old lore.
People who have been playing the game know that space marines are all men
But how do they know that? Is it because they've gone and read Index Astartes, or the antiquated "Creation of a Space Marine" article which isn't repeated in the Codexes, or because they've gone digging on Lexicanum, or because it was repeated on some webforum, or simply because all the Space Marines they've seen are men?
My issue is why they know they can only be men, because GW certainly aren't saying it.
Core lore: Any lore which most people in the hobby are aware of.
You'd be surprised at the amount of "core lore" then which is incredibly outdated or misquoted then.
Abaddon being an armless failure is considered "core lore", yet has never once been an accurate depiction of him. Orks being able to make a working gun from a box and some nails is a gross exaggeration of their gestalt field theory, and yet is widely considered as "canon". And what about stuff that people outside of the hobby are aware of? I'd say that arguably, it should be what people outside of the hobby, or incredibly new to it, are aware of that is really the core stuff. After all, if we're trying to pinpoint what the majority of people see and engage with first, we should be asking the people whose views are solely based on their first impressions and the most surface level readings. That's arguably more "core" than anything else to me.
The problem with the whole "lore which most people are aware of" leads to things like fanon being considered "core lore", such as "the Emperor created the Space Marines" - he didn't.
For example - Necrons are walking death robots who have weapons that can strip the atoms from a target - most people know it, so it's core lore.
Because you can very clearly visually see from their skeletal design and that their guns are called "flayers", yes. GW also say on the webpage for the Necron Warriors kit that their guns "shred" the enemy - further reinforcing that ranged technology angle.
Space marines are all men, and there's a reason for it somewhere - most people know it, it's core lore.
They know it, but they don't know why it exists. I can't call that core lore, because it's based on simple rote and inertia.
Orks red vehicles go faster - it's core lore.
There were literally mechanical benefits in game to painting your vehicles red - of course that was core lore.
So, whilst there might not be many words, if any, to change to overwrite the lore, the fact remains that 90%* of people in the hobby are aware that marines are all men and most of those probably have some idea that the process only works on men.
90% of people in the hobby, sure, but some people have been in the hobby for a VERY long time, and have had a chance to read up on the non-core lore.
Who we really should be asking are people who are fresher to the hobby, or unfamiliar, and see what a cursory glance at a faction tells them. That way, they're only being exposed to what GW has prioritised, the stuff that, according to GW, is the most important selling point of that faction.
Again, if people are only aware that Space Marines are male, but don't know why, that's not really that strong of a reason why they still need to be male, is it?
So whilst you can say "the decision was arbitrary", "it's only 13 words and they aren't there any more" and "there was no reason for it to be only men in the first place" until you're blue in the face, it boils down to the fact that it was only men in the first place, and that most people in the hobby are aware of that fact, and to me, that's what makes something "core lore".
Again, that would imply that Abaddon being a failure is "core lore", or the Emperor making the Space Marines is "core lore" - and neither of these are accurate.
Changing something which most people know means most people will feel like their 40k world has had to change to accommodate the change - like when newcrons were introduced and they rewrote their whole history.
Well, yeah. 40k has *always* been changing. "Their 40k world" had changed before they started, has likely changed since they started, and likely will change in the future. It's a little late to be calling for sanctity in 40k lore when it wasn't really there in the first place.
Adding a new part to the lore, and making it grow organically, should always be considered first.
Disagree. Why is the lore more important than real human beings?
Conversely, changing a small aspect of the lore - like saying that (I don't know...) some piece of equipment which they once said was carried by space marines is actually built into their suits and always has been isn't going to affect most people's understanding of the lore.
People's understanding of the lore changes with the lore itself. Ultramarines once weren't a first founding Chapter, but people got over it. Primaris once didn't exist, and Guilliman was bound in stasis - but some people got over it. Heck, Leman Russ used to be a regular human - and people got over it.
Making women Space Marines doesn't retcon anyone's existing models. It's simply just "women are here".
I think that it is better if people who have followed a game for most of it's life don't get the response "actually you're wrong, they changed that" to saying "marine-juice only works on men", when they could instead get "that used to be true, but they have now found a way to make female marines which doubles their recruitment". The first will elicit a "that's annoying" response, and possibly even resentment that "women came in here and changed my game", which is hardly constructive to our goals of inclusivity, whereas the expansion of lore, nodding to what they already know but ultimately arriving at the same place - female marines are a thing now - then they are much more likely to say "oh, that's cool!" and be accepting of the change, and that is the response that we want, isn't it?
But the whole "actually you're wrong, they changed it" is already a thing! See: - Necrons - Tau - Primaris - Primarchs - Who created the Space Marines - Cadia - Ynnari - The whole Horus Heresy
Sure, we all know out of universe that women weren't always Space Marines, no-one's trying to pretend that GW were always including women. What I'm just simply baffled by is why we need to pretend why we need to preserve and date this development in the lore. The people reading the lore are grown-ups - I'm sure they can rationalise how inclusivity works and lore changes. What I have to ask is why "women are part of the faction and they weren't before" would be considered grounds for resentment if it was retconned in, but would suddenly be all fine if GW said "women can be part of the faction *from this point in the made up timeline*"? I fear that you may be being a little too generous to the reaction of the latter portion.
Frankly, as to the reaction I want, if there's people who are getting their backs up because women are simply being added, I'm not sure I really care if I get their backs up or not. If they start to go increasingly hostile towards women, I'd hope that everyone else would see that for what it is - blatant exclusionism.
Hecaton wrote: No, I disagree with the idea that it has a big impact on the inclusivity felt by the audience. Women are generally interested in stories where female characters are powerful and "heroic" less than men are; fundamentally this seems more about satisfying a certain kind of male gamer's want for an army of powerful women rather than satisfying women. Again, games like Infinity have parity or near-parity with depictions of men and women in the game, but women are not flocking to that game compared to other minis games. You still get the guys who are clamoring for more female sculpts, have a female alter-ego on the forums, etc.
Going by the abstract, that study doesn't say what you claimed. It says that the study found that books by male authors tended to have more powerful characters, and books by female authors didn't. Doesn't seem to be addressing who is actually interested in those stories at all.
And that's ignoring the fact that it's based on a statistically insignificant pool of authors (30 different series) and even within that they admit that the differences in many cases were not statistically significant. Also no mention of the criteria used to choose those authors, and whether the way the characters were portrayed is a result of gender predilections in the authors, the readers, or just the publishers.
Yeah, methodologically this is a joke. Evopsych bs is always like this 'We did a "Study" on six rhesus monkeys where the boy monkeys liked trucks and the girl monkeys liked a teddy bear! And in my conclusion I shall talk about the incredibly brave and not at all entirely societally entrenched belief that I happened to maybe be going into this study just a little bit seeking to find the exact opinion that I went into doing it with about how this is exactly how humans work!'
Seriously... We examined THIRTY novels, TOTAL, selected..somehow... and determined using....some criteria??? that the FIFTEEN novels written by male authors featured more powerful heroes who solved their problems with violence more often.
And then of course, because it's Evopsych broscience bs, you've gotta make sure to get a claim like "This may be because females benefit when their mate can dominate other males" riiiiiiiiiiiight into that abstract.
it can't be that there's a tendency for female authors to create less physically powerful, physically confrontational protagonists because males grow up in our society bombarded by stories of men solving their problems through physical confrontation and women are not, it must be that women are hard coded by their monkey dna to want to submit to a dominant alpha male who can overpower other masculoids with his big stronk monkey muscles! Nobody is ever influenced by stories they read and watch to create similar stories and narratives, that's crazy talk!
For example - Necrons are walking death robots who have weapons that can strip the atoms from a target - most people know it, so it's core lore.
Because you can very clearly visually see from their skeletal design and that their guns are called "flayers", yes. GW also say on the webpage for the Necron Warriors kit that their guns "shred" the enemy - further reinforcing that ranged technology angle.
Space marines are all men, and there's a reason for it somewhere - most people know it, it's core lore.
They know it, but they don't know why it exists. I can't call that core lore, because it's based on simple rote and inertia.
Orks red vehicles go faster - it's core lore.
There were literally mechanical benefits in game to painting your vehicles red - of course that was core lore.
So, whilst there might not be many words, if any, to change to overwrite the lore, the fact remains that 90%* of people in the hobby are aware that marines are all men and most of those probably have some idea that the process only works on men.
90% of people in the hobby, sure, but some people have been in the hobby for a VERY long time, and have had a chance to read up on the non-core lore.
Who we really should be asking are people who are fresher to the hobby, or unfamiliar, and see what a cursory glance at a faction tells them. That way, they're only being exposed to what GW has prioritised, the stuff that, according to GW, is the most important selling point of that faction.
Again, if people are only aware that Space Marines are male, but don't know why, that's not really that strong of a reason why they still need to be male, is it?
I cut out the irrelevant bits to our discussion. Have you considered writing novels - you'd be able to bash one out every week at this rate!
Point 1: I find it odd that you can say, in the same breath (paraphrased), that "necrons are visually walking machines and their guns are called flayers so it's obviously part of what they are", and "Space marines are visually all men and call each other brother, but this cannot possibly define them". That seems somewhat hypocritical, and I mean that in a very mild sense.
Point 2: You say that you want to do this from the point of making new people to the hobby feel like women are represented, and aren't concerned with people who have been in the hobby for a very long time and have read up on the lore. So, if they introduce female space marines and acknowledge in the lore that "there were none before, but now there are, because they made the process work!" then surely the only people who would know that there were no female marines before would be those who have read up on the lore? Those new people looking in through the windows of GW would see female marines, not a sign saying "there never used to be female marines though!".
Final point, You're continuing to respond to me as if I am against female marines being added to the game - which I'm not. I'm against rewriting the lore so that female marines were always there.
One additional point to this is that every story written about marines - black library, the Horus heresy, all the fluff - will have "brother" and "he/him" used for every single character. I think that having female representation is better to acknowledge that it is moderately new in the setting, rather than have women take up the game thinking it's always been like it, and then find that every space marine novel or fluff ever written is all about men - making the female presence feel even more like a token gesture. The 13-word lore reason can easily be swept away, never to resurface, but you'll have to deal with the fact that everything ever officially made for Astartes is male, right up until the change is made.
some bloke wrote:I cut out the irrelevant bits to our discussion. Have you considered writing novels - you'd be able to bash one out every week at this rate!
I'll take that as a compliment!
Point 1: I find it odd that you can say, in the same breath (paraphrased), that "necrons are visually walking machines and their guns are called flayers so it's obviously part of what they are", and "Space marines are visually all men and call each other brother, but this cannot possibly define them". That seems somewhat hypocritical, and I mean that in a very mild sense.
The thing is, guardsmen are also visually all men, and yet aren't supposed to be. We can't tell if this is a feature of Space Marines *needing* to be all men, or just defaulting to a male representation.
Necrons are literally entirely made up, they have no basis or default, so whatever they look like must be intentional. With a human presenting figure, like a Space Marine or Guardsman, we can't represent all people by how they look, but as a whole range, we can. The thing is, we can't tell at a glance if Space Marines are *meant* to be all male, or if that's just poor representation, just as we can't tell if Guardsmen are meant to be all male, or just have poor representation. And, I will say as well, the fact they're called Guardsmen would indicate a masculine preference, even in the mixed gender Astra Militarum.
Basically, it's because Necrons are entirely fictional, but Space Marines still are somewhat reflective of humans.
EDIT: And, I will say that not all Space Marines are visually men. A helmeted Space Marine can feasibly be any gender - it's just that all the *unhelmeted* Space Marines are visually male, but that is just a small nitpick, I grant.
Point 2: You say that you want to do this from the point of making new people to the hobby feel like women are represented, and aren't concerned with people who have been in the hobby for a very long time and have read up on the lore. So, if they introduce female space marines and acknowledge in the lore that "there were none before, but now there are, because they made the process work!" then surely the only people who would know that there were no female marines before would be those who have read up on the lore? Those new people looking in through the windows of GW would see female marines, not a sign saying "there never used to be female marines though!".
Sure, but *why* do we even need to make that distinction in the lore? I get your point, I do, but I don't understand why we even need to act like it wasn't possible in the first place in lore, aside from arbitrary reasoning?
Final point, You're continuing to respond to me as if I am against female marines being added to the game - which I'm not. I'm against rewriting the lore so that female marines were always there.
I am aware of that, and my apologies if it comes across like I don't recognise that. I do still fail to understand why we shouldn't rewrite the lore though.
It's not redacting history - the real world history of 40k shouldn't be forgotten, but the internal lore of the setting doesn't need to cling to that.
One additional point to this is that every story written about marines - black library, the Horus heresy, all the fluff - will have "brother" and "he/him" used for every single character. I think that having female representation is better to acknowledge that it is moderately new in the setting, rather than have women take up the game thinking it's always been like it, and then find that every space marine novel or fluff ever written is all about men - making the female presence feel even more like a token gesture.
The thing with that is that, even for gender neutral factions, most of the characters are men anyway. Most guardsmen novels didn't exactly have many women in them, leading to them also being full of masculine pronouns. It's honestly much easier to turn around and say "look, we weren't exactly the most representative when it came to our visibility of women in our setting - our older stuff is a product of it's time, and we're working on that". End of the day, short of rewriting all the old books (bad idea for many reasons!), those books will still be male-dominated. I think, by having women Space Marines always be possible, it at least opens the door for that open-ended creativity that 40k fiction has largely allowed, and what a lot of people enjoy about the Horus Heresy in particular - the chance to have your own dudes running around in the madness of the Imperium's greatest civil war.
If we allow women Space Marines retroactively, then 30k also becomes a place where women Space Marines can crop up in your own forces. Sure, unless new 30k stuff is written, there won't be any named examples, but there's nothing then stopping you making your own.
The 13-word lore reason can easily be swept away, never to resurface, but you'll have to deal with the fact that everything ever officially made for Astartes is male, right up until the change is made.
This is true, but as I said, the same can be said for how the majority of stuff made for Guardsmen was male too - it's easier just to say "yeah, we messed up in the past, we're gonna work on that", and more honest too.
Sure, but *why* do we even need to make that distinction in the lore? I get your point, I do, but I don't understand why we even need to act like it wasn't possible in the first place in lore, aside from arbitrary reasoning?
It's worth remembering that everything in the lore is arbitrary, except perhaps the basics like "there are humans". They made a decision to make necrons into robots, not skeletons or shellfish-people or just people full of nanobots to heal them or any number of things which would have fitted their lore and playstyle. Murder robots was decided, arbitrarily, so murder robots is what they are.
I suppose, really, this boils down to personal opinion. I think that retro-fitting the lore to suit a new change is unnecessary, particularly when they have such a clear opportunity to say "primaris works on female candidates too, doubling the recruitment opportunities for space marines". As it will also be driven by sales, there is a delicious irony in the phrase "doubling recruitment opportunities", as it can represent the potential target audience being expanded to include women. But that's just a bonus.
I just feel like, as it stands, the lore of the game is a bit contradictory but generally fits with the novels and all the fluff. If they retcon the fluff, then anything written before that retcon becomes wrong. If they build on it, then anything written before it simply becomes old - you can read it, learn it, and it may not still be valid, but it won't be wrong.
I think that's the crux of it for me. If you're presented with two options - one of which makes every space marine book published thus far wrong, and one which simply makes them set before female marines, then I feel like the respectful way to approach it is the second way.
I understand your frustration at "why should it have been this way", but nothing short of a time machine will change the fact that being all male is something which space marines have been presented as for the lifetime of the game, and as such everything about them is written about that fact. Regardless of the reasons for making the decision, the decision was made, and that is why there's no mention of a female Astartes anywhere in the lore right now. We can respectfully say "that was not a good thing, so we've improved the setting", or we can say "actually that never happened", and then have a generation of people asking why there are no female space marines in any of the books.
Obviously for the lack of female models in guard & such, where there's nothing backing up the decision except needing to make more models, they can just say "we've finally made models that represent the female guard". That's not such a big issue.
I suppose, really, this boils down to personal opinion. I think that retro-fitting the lore to suit a new change is unnecessary, particularly when they have such a clear opportunity to say "primaris works on female candidates too, doubling the recruitment opportunities for space marines". As it will also be driven by sales, there is a delicious irony in the phrase "doubling recruitment opportunities", as it can represent the potential target audience being expanded to include women. But that's just a bonus.
I don't really see why the lore aspect of "more recruitment candiates" is something that makes a difference when the reason for their numbers in the first place place wasn't really to do with struggling to find recruits but the difficulty around acquiring the necessary organs and such.
I suppose, really, this boils down to personal opinion. I think that retro-fitting the lore to suit a new change is unnecessary, particularly when they have such a clear opportunity to say "primaris works on female candidates too, doubling the recruitment opportunities for space marines". As it will also be driven by sales, there is a delicious irony in the phrase "doubling recruitment opportunities", as it can represent the potential target audience being expanded to include women. But that's just a bonus.
I don't really see why the lore aspect of "more recruitment candiates" is something that makes a difference when the reason for their numbers in the first place place wasn't really to do with struggling to find recruits but the difficulty around acquiring the necessary organs and such.
Twice as many candidates, twice as many failures - twice as many organs to harvest
Thanks to pointing that out though, I didn't know that was the reason. I thought becoming Astartes just had a fairly high failure rate!
I suppose, really, this boils down to personal opinion. I think that retro-fitting the lore to suit a new change is unnecessary, particularly when they have such a clear opportunity to say "primaris works on female candidates too, doubling the recruitment opportunities for space marines". As it will also be driven by sales, there is a delicious irony in the phrase "doubling recruitment opportunities", as it can represent the potential target audience being expanded to include women. But that's just a bonus.
I don't really see why the lore aspect of "more recruitment candiates" is something that makes a difference when the reason for their numbers in the first place place wasn't really to do with struggling to find recruits but the difficulty around acquiring the necessary organs and such.
Twice as many candidates, twice as many failures - twice as many organs to harvest
Thanks to pointing that out though, I didn't know that was the reason. I thought becoming Astartes just had a fairly high failure rate!
It has been and still is that the reason for recruit tests and rituals is that it is difficult to find suitable candidates. Then even more fail. Just just physically, but mentally too. Most fail long before they need any organs. THAT is in all the current texts. So having the ability to choose women too would double the number of potential recruits. They could be even more selective before implanting any organs.
I suppose, really, this boils down to personal opinion. I think that retro-fitting the lore to suit a new change is unnecessary, particularly when they have such a clear opportunity to say "primaris works on female candidates too, doubling the recruitment opportunities for space marines". As it will also be driven by sales, there is a delicious irony in the phrase "doubling recruitment opportunities", as it can represent the potential target audience being expanded to include women. But that's just a bonus.
I don't really see why the lore aspect of "more recruitment candiates" is something that makes a difference when the reason for their numbers in the first place place wasn't really to do with struggling to find recruits but the difficulty around acquiring the necessary organs and such.
I seem to remember like 3-4 times recently where 'oh no, our primary recruitment population has been decimated' was a major plot point. Fenris, at the very least, and Baal, and some of the worlds surrounding Ultramar.
It has been and still is that the reason for recruit tests and rituals is that it is difficult to find suitable candidates. Then even more fail. Just just physically, but mentally too. Most fail long before they need any organs. THAT is in all the current texts. So having the ability to choose women too would double the number of potential recruits. They could be even more selective before implanting any organs.
This is the sort of reason I prefer to build on the lore rather than wipe it clean and start again. This adds to the setting, rather than just shifting it sideways.
Sure, but *why* do we even need to make that distinction in the lore? I get your point, I do, but I don't understand why we even need to act like it wasn't possible in the first place in lore, aside from arbitrary reasoning?
It's worth remembering that everything in the lore is arbitrary, except perhaps the basics like "there are humans". They made a decision to make necrons into robots, not skeletons or shellfish-people or just people full of nanobots to heal them or any number of things which would have fitted their lore and playstyle. Murder robots was decided, arbitrarily, so murder robots is what they are.
Oh, absolutely, but when you're arbitrarily excluding representation of *real humans*, that's quite something different.
Arbitrary artistic decisions in how you design your fictional aliens is totally fine, but the problem is that Space Marines are too human still, and if they're looking visibly "male" and not visibly "female", it begs the question "why is only one getting shown"?
I suppose, really, this boils down to personal opinion. I think that retro-fitting the lore to suit a new change is unnecessary, particularly when they have such a clear opportunity to say "primaris works on female candidates too, doubling the recruitment opportunities for space marines". As it will also be driven by sales, there is a delicious irony in the phrase "doubling recruitment opportunities", as it can represent the potential target audience being expanded to include women. But that's just a bonus.
I totally recognise that Primaris represented a great chance to add women Astartes: after all, it really *was* Primaris that shifted my stance from opposed to women Astartes to pro-woman Astartes (as I believe one user pointed out!) - it's just that I personally don't see any benefit in having a "pre-women Astartes" and "post-women Astartes" distinction in the lore, especially when it ends up still limiting representation in things like the Horus Heresy.
I just feel like, as it stands, the lore of the game is a bit contradictory but generally fits with the novels and all the fluff. If they retcon the fluff, then anything written before that retcon becomes wrong. If they build on it, then anything written before it simply becomes old - you can read it, learn it, and it may not still be valid, but it won't be wrong.
The problem is that there's already *loads* of stuff that's retconned and outdated - it's just stuff that you just have to gloss over, or treat each book as it's own snippet of 40k.
There's already plenty of "wrong" lore out there - when this one can cause so much net good, I think it's okay adding one more.
I think that's the crux of it for me. If you're presented with two options - one of which makes every space marine book published thus far wrong, and one which simply makes them set before female marines, then I feel like the respectful way to approach it is the second way.
It doesn't make them *wrong* (unless they're one which mentions how no women can be Space Marines, which very few touch on) - it just makes them unrepresentative. In much the same way as older stuff makes no reference to things like Hunters, Stalkers, Centurion warsuits, or Stormravens, it's not that those things didn't exist - it's just that we don't see them represented.
And while that might be a little counter to my goal of visible representation, in terms of cost/benefit, updating all the old Space Marines books to feature women wouldn't be cost-effective - but later just including them in other books, both set pre- and post-Primaris would be fine.
I understand your frustration at "why should it have been this way", but nothing short of a time machine will change the fact that being all male is something which space marines have been presented as for the lifetime of the game, and as such everything about them is written about that fact. Regardless of the reasons for making the decision, the decision was made, and that is why there's no mention of a female Astartes anywhere in the lore right now. We can respectfully say "that was not a good thing, so we've improved the setting", or we can say "actually that never happened", and then have a generation of people asking why there are no female space marines in any of the books.
Agreed, nothing will change what has already been presented in the real world - but we don't have to abide by those rules within the chronology of the setting.
I really don't think we'd end up with a generation of people asking why there are no women Astartes in the books any more so than we have people asking why the Astra Militarum are called the Imperial Guard in older books - and if anyone did, then you could just point to the date it was published and say "yeah, this was before we included women Space Marines, our bad".
Obviously for the lack of female models in guard & such, where there's nothing backing up the decision except needing to make more models, they can just say "we've finally made models that represent the female guard". That's not such a big issue.
True, but the point stands that guardsmen, for all realistic purposes, also presented as an all-male faction, despite not being so. Hence my point that just because all Space Marines present as male doesn't mean that it's an integral part of their design any more so than guardsmen presenting as all-male did.
Mentlegen324 wrote:I don't really see why the lore aspect of "more recruitment candiates" is something that makes a difference when the reason for their numbers in the first place place wasn't really to do with struggling to find recruits but the difficulty around acquiring the necessary organs and such.
Again, still an arbitrary reason, and as Cawl has evidenced, it's totally possible to have a surplus of geneseed and repurposing it.
To be honest, GW haven't exactly been 100% clear on exactly why there are a limited number of Astartes. Sometimes it's because the Codex restricts Chapter sizes, other times it's because of a shortage of geneseed, other times a shortage of suitable recruits, other times because the High Lords artificially keep Astartes numbers low, out of fear of a second Heresy.
some bloke wrote:Twice as many candidates, twice as many failures - twice as many organs to harvest
Not even that, but twice as many fleshy meatbags to turn into hypno-indoctrinated soldiers - quite my reasoning too.
I don't really see why the lore aspect of "more recruitment candiates" is something that makes a difference when the reason for their numbers in the first place place wasn't really to do with struggling to find recruits but the difficulty around acquiring the necessary organs and such.
Depends on the chapter though doesn't it. A chapter that has a high rate of combat attrition will need more aspirants and if they could double the pool why wouldn't they?
Or what about a chapter that recruits from a planet with a low population?
Chapters do dumb things like that.
And the whole "Space Marines are a dying breed" thing was played up quite a bit recently as a signifier of the "End of Days".
How many chapter homeworlds were devastated or destroyed when the Rift opened? How many chapters got hammered and lost hundreds of Astartes, vehicles and Aspirants?
It has been and still is that the reason for recruit tests and rituals is that it is difficult to find suitable candidates. Then even more fail. Just just physically, but mentally too. Most fail long before they need any organs. THAT is in all the current texts. So having the ability to choose women too would double the number of potential recruits. They could be even more selective before implanting any organs.
This is the sort of reason I prefer to build on the lore rather than wipe it clean and start again. This adds to the setting, rather than just shifting it sideways.
There’s a lot of ways that the addition of female marines could add to the setting. How they would go about it is very much personal preference. You said they should have it as a new thing, good time to do that, I’d be happy however they did it.
An Ultramarine Successor Chapter with an Amazon theme is something I could get definitely interested in from a modelling point of view.
The same with Space Wolves and Valkyries.
Both exclusively female of course.
(And I'm someone who sworn to never purchase loyalists again: I've already more than enough).
I am a REALLY big believer in the Rainbow Space Marines that have been getting painted for the Trevor Project. Here is a video of the one by Goobertown Hobbies:
FezzikDaBullgryn wrote: I am a REALLY big believer in the Rainbow Space Marines that have been getting painted for the Trevor Project. Here is a video of the one by Goobertown Hobbies:
Yanno, I was wondering what colors to use on this handful of 3d printed pony marines I put together here. Beginning to look like the answer was "All of them."
Cybtroll wrote: An Ultramarine Successor Chapter with an Amazon theme is something I could get definitely interested in from a modelling point of view.
The same with Space Wolves and Valkyries.
Both exclusively female of course.
(And I'm someone who sworn to never purchase loyalists again: I've already more than enough).
Artemis/Diana would be my obvious choice- goddess of hunters, and known to carry bow, arrow, quiver and hunting knives.
Virginity/assexuality were also part of her attributes (more related to purification rituals prior to hunting, apparently) but the bits I've read seemed to suggest these related to her power and independence, and at least according to wiki, there was a nice bit stating this 'signals Artemis as her own master, with power equal to that of male gods'.
Thankfully, gw steers clear of anything sex related (so obviously, the 'virginity' aspect can be completely ignored) and I'd strongly urge that this needs to be maintained.
Its so easy to avoid talking about sex related stuff so I really don't see why that would be an issue.
If I can read Greek myths when I was a young un' and not have a single mention of how Zeus was a massive perv or how a core aspect of the origin of the Gorgon's was how Poseidon did the naughty with them in Athena's temple, then I think GW can implement female SM without any thoughts to "but would they bang?".
Funnily enough you can write things for kids and adults.
Gert wrote: Its so easy to avoid talking about sex related stuff so I really don't see why that would be an issue.
If I can read Greek myths when I was a young un' and not have a single mention of how Zeus was a massive perv or how a core aspect of the origin of the Gorgon's was how Poseidon did the naughty with them in Athena's temple, then I think GW can implement female SM without any thoughts to "but would they bang?".
Funnily enough you can write things for kids and adults.
Sadly, I think you have more faith in some members of our community than I do.
I hope you are right though. As I mentioned, gw is pretty good at sidestepping 'that kind of stuff' in their IP or at least having a different spin on it. My concern isn't necessarily with them. But this is going o/t.
Oh I gave zero faith in the community and I would fully expect very crass or inappropriate remarks.
That being said, I would think the majority would either grumble a bit then get over it or just not mind. I think it be would the exact same situation as Primaris.
What would we expect GW to pull the first female astartes from? My guess is either Salamanders or Blood Angels. Although with the problems in their region it might be difficult to come up with a lore justification as to how they made it. Maybe Imp Fists?
I also like the idea of the Astartes Chapter Master personally over seeing the creation and giving their stamp of approval. If Marneus Calgar says the person is good enough to be a Space Marine, who's gonna call them a liar?
Oh right you want a serious answer. TBH I would say some kind of new Primaris chapter thrown in as reinforcements to a battle. Leader takes helmet off and its not a dude. Very cliché I know but clichés work.
If they went down the "Cawl's found a new way to introduce them!" route, and not just a whole new Chapter, I'd say Blood Angels. The BA got hammered *hard* at Baal, and so I can see Dante being very eager to get his Chapter up to full strength again. Plus, it's Dante - arguably the second most powerful man in the Imperium right now. No-one's going to dispute his word on the matter or call him into question.
All sound good to me. Ultras would seem to be the obvious choice cos of poster faction. I’d still like to see it done with little fan fair. No one reacting massively to it in the stories.
Sgt_Smudge wrote: If they went down the "Cawl's found a new way to introduce them!" route, and not just a whole new Chapter, I'd say Blood Angels. The BA got hammered *hard* at Baal, and so I can see Dante being very eager to get his Chapter up to full strength again. Plus, it's Dante - arguably the second most powerful man in the Imperium right now. No-one's going to dispute his word on the matter or call him into question.
The hard part is they've built a literal wall of undescribable Chaos fluff blocking off the southern half, at least i think it's the southern half. Nihilus, it's blocking that off. And it's literally impassible according to Avenging Son, until Gman literally passes it in the next book. My point is I don't think he'd have a good time getting a new batch over the wall.
I could see Dante having a meeting with his entire chapter planet and being like, "We are going to start recruiting women, because the women of this POS planet are JUST AS TOUGH as the men are. Send your daughters for the trials.
And since he is literal reagent of his entire half of the imperial galaxy, not even the Inquisition could stop him. I would really love the Sons of Sanguinius being the first to do that. The sons of Russ would likely be second, as they don't give a toss about rules, or fluff. A Space wolf female Astartes Captain would make a awesome book.
If it's a matter of not-forgrounded till now, Ultramarine. Not like Guilliman lacks for a formative female presence in his life, is it?
Automatically Appended Next Post: And on the Chaos side of things, the Word Bearers are right there after Monarchia with the iconoclasm and their own Saint.
Likewise, Angron's rebellion was gender-integrated, so would make sense as a finger towards Bad Dad.
The Emperor as a sexist atop the rest of his personal failings also tracks with the Custodes being essentially the Sacred Band of Thebes.
Catulle wrote:Likewise, Angron's rebellion was gender-integrated, so would make sense as a finger towards Bad Dad.
The Emperor as a sexist atop the rest of his personal failings also tracks with the Custodes being essentially the Sacred Band of Thebes.
The Emperor being a sexist I can understand, and that gels well with the Custodes being what they are - especially as the Emperor has much more direct hand in creating the Custodes.
The Space Marines, on the other hand, weren't really much of the Emperor's invention, and more of Amar Astarte's, so him being sexist doesn't mean that the Space Marines need to be all-men any more so than the Imperial Army were all male.
Catulle wrote:Likewise, Angron's rebellion was gender-integrated, so would make sense as a finger towards Bad Dad.
The Emperor as a sexist atop the rest of his personal failings also tracks with the Custodes being essentially the Sacred Band of Thebes.
The Emperor being a sexist I can understand, and that gels well with the Custodes being what they are - especially as the Emperor has much more direct hand in creating the Custodes.
The Space Marines, on the other hand, weren't really much of the Emperor's invention, and more of Amar Astarte's, so him being sexist doesn't mean that the Space Marines need to be all-men any more so than the Imperial Army were all male.
Well, quite, and it's a difference of degree rather than type anyway. I'd rather the not-foregrounded-till-now approach, but accounting for the intransigence of the shareholders seemed prudent...
Going by the abstract, that study doesn't say what you claimed. It says that the study found that books by male authors tended to have more powerful characters, and books by female authors didn't. Doesn't seem to be addressing who is actually interested in those stories at all.
One can assume that people write the kinds of stories they'd be interested in reading. And let's be clear - it said that male authors wrote *more powerful female characters*.
insaniak wrote: And that's ignoring the fact that it's based on a statistically insignificant pool of authors (30 different series) and even within that they admit that the differences in many cases were not statistically significant.
N=30 is oftentimes statistically significant. If I do 30 replicates of a molecular biology procedure, that's oftentimes plenty good.
macluvin wrote: They already answered that question. Female miniatures didn’t sell in the 80’s. They sell now. Their reasoning for why they codified that is not valid anymore.
If that was the case, why the female Eldar? I think there's some misinterpretation on your part going on here.
Gert wrote: Obviously I emphasised some parts for the joke but the reality is that if you make your Orks look like WW2 Wehrmacht or have your custom Chapter be obsessed with "genetic purity", that's perfectly OK. But if you dare to make SM women then you've crossed a line. Where's the logic in that?
Orks intentionally play towards the humorous part of the setting, and the Imperium itself is obsessed with "genetic purity," to the point of killing people born with physical disabilities, intersex, etc at birth (though they're obviously too stupid to tell if those disabilities or other conditions are the result of genetics or the amount of toxins they skeet into the environment with their rampant overindustrialization, natch.)
Like I said, I'm fine with people kitbashing female space marines. So your strawman is pretty overbearing there.
Andykp wrote: I have kitbashed female marines so please don’t talk rubbish about my motivations. Your argument seems to be that it wouldn’t improve the setting because you wouldn’t like it. There’s no reason for that, you just wouldn’t. Please explain further if I’m wrong on that but that appears to be the case from what you have said.
No, I wouldn't like it because it wouldn't improve the setting. In many ways a given setting is defined by its idiosyncracies rather than anything else. Having an all-male contingent of future warrior monks is along those lines.
Andykp wrote: We cannot give you evidence of females having been made because that’s the point. They are banned by an outdated piece of fluff that doesn’t appear in any codexs. That’s what we are arguing for. Yes folk can kitbash them and head canon them but the6 may get death threats if they do. So let’s change the rules. Write out the bit of old fluff that these horrible people use to justify their threats and make the community a nicer place for all.
And I don't think that bit of fluff is outdated. And I know some horrible, despicable people who think female marines are a good idea, so that argument doesn't work for me.
Andykp wrote: As for this being a core part of marines identity, it was first brought up by your side and then thoroughly debunked by ours. It’s not core at all. Every codex for marines ever, from 2nd edition when they started up to now has a section on the creation of a marine. None of them, not one ever, has stated they have to be male only. That “fact” is not in print now and has not been since it was in WD in 2017, it has only ever been in WD and and in anthologies of WD articles. It is so peripheral to marines that it does not make it into their books and isn’t in print anywhere now. Now, you are claiming it is core to them.
The process is clearly intended to only work on male humans. You haven't debunked gak, you're just mistaking your fantasies for reality.
You are vastly misrepresenting my point and trying to imply that I'm bringing a puerile angle into this discussion. Anyone with a shred of intellectual integrity can tell you're misrepresenting my words, and I'll stick to discussing things with people who aren't lying in the hopes of earning white knight points.
the_scotsman wrote: it can't be that there's a tendency for female authors to create less physically powerful, physically confrontational protagonists because males grow up in our society bombarded by stories of men solving their problems through physical confrontation and women are not, it must be that women are hard coded by their monkey dna to want to submit to a dominant alpha male who can overpower other masculoids with his big stronk monkey muscles! Nobody is ever influenced by stories they read and watch to create similar stories and narratives, that's crazy talk!
Whether it's something innate or not, the tendency is there, so the push for female "warrior women" is more about satisfying a particular kind of man than women.
It has been and still is that the reason for recruit tests and rituals is that it is difficult to find suitable candidates. Then even more fail. Just just physically, but mentally too. Most fail long before they need any organs. THAT is in all the current texts. So having the ability to choose women too would double the number of potential recruits. They could be even more selective before implanting any organs.
They are also often limited by available gene-seed anyway, and the process is only described as working on male humans.
Hecaton wrote: One can assume that people write the kinds of stories they'd be interested in reading.
You know what they say about assumptions... sometimes they're wrong.
Some authors have the freedom to write the kinds of stories they would be interested in reading. The rest write stories that their publishers are willing to publish.
And let's be clear - it said that male authors wrote *more powerful female characters*.
Which means nothing more than that those male authors, from their massive pool of 30 authors, wrote more powerful female characters. Again, that doesn't tell us whether or not those characters were more well received amongst male or female readers, whether those authors wrote the characters that way due to innate biological predilection, socially-imposed predilection, because they thought that was what their readers wanted, or because their editor and/or publisher told them to write the characters that way.
You're taking the fact that Coca Cola Co released New Coke as a sign that people wanted new Coke. The information provided simply doesn't give us enough information to make that judgement.
N=30 is oftentimes statistically significant.
Sure. Not when you're trying to establish whether we have an inbuilt gender bias as a species, however. 30 is a ludicrously low sample size for that.
You know what they say about assumptions... sometimes they're wrong.
Some authors have the freedom to write the kinds of stories they would be interested in reading. The rest write stories that their publishers are willing to publish.
It's specious to suggest that publishers aren't willing to publish works written by female authors with powerful female characters but *are* willing to do so for male authors.
Which means nothing more than that those male authors, from their massive pool of 30 authors, wrote more powerful female characters. Again, that doesn't tell us whether or not those characters were more well received amongst male or female readers, whether those authors wrote the characters that way due to innate biological predilection, socially-imposed predilection, because they thought that was what their readers wanted, or because their editor and/or publisher told them to write the characters that way.
You're taking the fact that Coca Cola Co released New Coke as a sign that people wanted new Coke. The information provided simply doesn't give us enough information to make that judgement.
Well it's infinitely more evidence than "Here's this blog post that says that powerful warrior women is what women want in their fantastical fiction."
Sure. Not when you're trying to establish whether we have an inbuilt gender bias as a species, however. 30 is a ludicrously low sample size for that.
Pretty common in psychological studies. And if you're able to make statistically significant claims with it, then that's fine. Sample size is taken into account when determining significance.
Hecaton wrote: It's specious to suggest that publishers aren't willing to publish works written by female authors with powerful female characters but *are* willing to do so for male authors.
It's also impossible to make that judgement based on thirty authors who may or may not be published through the same publishers.
All we know is that in this study they observed a trend for male authors to write more powerful female characters, while also admitting that in many cases there was no significant difference.
Well it's infinitely more evidence than "Here's this blog post that says that powerful warrior women is what women want in their fantastical fiction."
It's admittedly been a while since I did high school maths, but I'm fairly sure that one thing is a reasonable distance from being 'ínfinite' anything...
Sample size is taken into account when determining significance.
Sure. And here we have a study of thirty samples in which many of the results were stated as being statistically insignificant.
It's very difficult to determine, just by sampling novels, what might be causing any gender bias that is present.
For example, if someone is basing their story on medieval times, when women were literally property, then it is going to be influenced by the fact that men were the fighters and women were not. That's not necessarily any reflection of the authors bias, because the historical period they picked is one where women and men were not treated equally. Take Game of Thrones - the majority of women in there were either of the "oh, please send a man to help me!" vein or they were simply passed without mention. A couple of token women fighting, and them being regarded as the exceptions to the rules anyway, further highlights this. That's not necessarily because GRR is sexist, because it's based on a medieval fantasy world, and the medieval times would have been considered Sexist, if that had even been a considered thing back then.
Similarly, you cannot claim that any of the black library writers who write books about space marines are themselves sexist for not writing in strong female characters, when the book is based around characters which are all male by necessity of being a space marine.
Then you also have comedic books which play on stereotypes, which might portray a woman as the stereotypical dead-weight screaming at the wrong moments kind of thing, but using that trope to play for laughs at the absurdity of it rather than to claim that is what women are like. These need to be discounted as you cannot accurately say where satire ends and prejudice begins.
By the time you filter out all the books with any inspiration from history, and any books playing the stereotypes, then you'll be left with pure fiction, where there's no influence from the real world at all, and then the decisions about male and female roles in the world become entirely arbitrary, and as such cannot be right or wrong. Furthermore, in a world where everyone is treated equally, and everyone can do anything, with no oppression whatsoever and all that - how dull are the stories going to be? Darker worlds tend to make better stories for heroes - otherwise they can't fight anyone!
The Federation has equality and Star Trek still manages to find stories to write. Men and women are treated equally in the Federation yet every single Star Trek series is multiple seasons long and tells stories about Starfleet Officers.
The Klingons nominally view all Warriors as equals but a woman isn't allowed to lead a House without special dispensation. So we have the notion of equality but in practice not so much.
The Ferengi Alliance is incredibly sexist and then multiple Ferengi stories in DS9 have female Ferengi being just as good at earning profit as male Ferengi. Here we have enforced inequality but then in practice not so much either.
Equality between sexes/genders doesn't mean a perfect world where nothing goes wrong ever.
The Federation despite being a nominally peaceful state exists only because of the Earth-Romulan War which united Earth, Andoria, Tellar, and Vulcan. The Klingon Empire has more internal strife than should be possible but men and women are generally equal. Same with the Cardassians.
I'm using ST as the example because it is generally the "hope and happiness" universe of SciFi.
Going by the abstract, that study doesn't say what you claimed. It says that the study found that books by male authors tended to have more powerful characters, and books by female authors didn't. Doesn't seem to be addressing who is actually interested in those stories at all.
One can assume that people write the kinds of stories they'd be interested in reading. And let's be clear - it said that male authors wrote *more powerful female characters*.
insaniak wrote: And that's ignoring the fact that it's based on a statistically insignificant pool of authors (30 different series) and even within that they admit that the differences in many cases were not statistically significant.
N=30 is oftentimes statistically significant. If I do 30 replicates of a molecular biology procedure, that's oftentimes plenty good.
macluvin wrote: They already answered that question. Female miniatures didn’t sell in the 80’s. They sell now. Their reasoning for why they codified that is not valid anymore.
If that was the case, why the female Eldar? I think there's some misinterpretation on your part going on here.
Gert wrote: Obviously I emphasised some parts for the joke but the reality is that if you make your Orks look like WW2 Wehrmacht or have your custom Chapter be obsessed with "genetic purity", that's perfectly OK. But if you dare to make SM women then you've crossed a line. Where's the logic in that?
Orks intentionally play towards the humorous part of the setting, and the Imperium itself is obsessed with "genetic purity," to the point of killing people born with physical disabilities, intersex, etc at birth (though they're obviously too stupid to tell if those disabilities or other conditions are the result of genetics or the amount of toxins they skeet into the environment with their rampant overindustrialization, natch.)
Like I said, I'm fine with people kitbashing female space marines. So your strawman is pretty overbearing there.
Andykp wrote: I have kitbashed female marines so please don’t talk rubbish about my motivations. Your argument seems to be that it wouldn’t improve the setting because you wouldn’t like it. There’s no reason for that, you just wouldn’t. Please explain further if I’m wrong on that but that appears to be the case from what you have said.
No, I wouldn't like it because it wouldn't improve the setting. In many ways a given setting is defined by its idiosyncracies rather than anything else. Having an all-male contingent of future warrior monks is along those lines.
Andykp wrote: We cannot give you evidence of females having been made because that’s the point. They are banned by an outdated piece of fluff that doesn’t appear in any codexs. That’s what we are arguing for. Yes folk can kitbash them and head canon them but the6 may get death threats if they do. So let’s change the rules. Write out the bit of old fluff that these horrible people use to justify their threats and make the community a nicer place for all.
And I don't think that bit of fluff is outdated. And I know some horrible, despicable people who think female marines are a good idea, so that argument doesn't work for me.
Andykp wrote: As for this being a core part of marines identity, it was first brought up by your side and then thoroughly debunked by ours. It’s not core at all. Every codex for marines ever, from 2nd edition when they started up to now has a section on the creation of a marine. None of them, not one ever, has stated they have to be male only. That “fact” is not in print now and has not been since it was in WD in 2017, it has only ever been in WD and and in anthologies of WD articles. It is so peripheral to marines that it does not make it into their books and isn’t in print anywhere now. Now, you are claiming it is core to them.
The process is clearly intended to only work on male humans. You haven't debunked gak, you're just mistaking your fantasies for reality.
You are vastly misrepresenting my point and trying to imply that I'm bringing a puerile angle into this discussion. Anyone with a shred of intellectual integrity can tell you're misrepresenting my words, and I'll stick to discussing things with people who aren't lying in the hopes of earning white knight points.
the_scotsman wrote: it can't be that there's a tendency for female authors to create less physically powerful, physically confrontational protagonists because males grow up in our society bombarded by stories of men solving their problems through physical confrontation and women are not, it must be that women are hard coded by their monkey dna to want to submit to a dominant alpha male who can overpower other masculoids with his big stronk monkey muscles! Nobody is ever influenced by stories they read and watch to create similar stories and narratives, that's crazy talk!
Whether it's something innate or not, the tendency is there, so the push for female "warrior women" is more about satisfying a particular kind of man than women.
It has been and still is that the reason for recruit tests and rituals is that it is difficult to find suitable candidates. Then even more fail. Just just physically, but mentally too. Most fail long before they need any organs. THAT is in all the current texts. So having the ability to choose women too would double the number of potential recruits. They could be even more selective before implanting any organs.
They are also often limited by available gene-seed anyway, and the process is only described as working on male humans.
This is just stupid. You are basically sticking your fingers in your ears and saying “nah nah nah, can’t hear you”. We have laid out time and time again our arguments. And all you can say is that you disagree, not why yiu disagree, no counter argument. You are basically doing a yeah, no based argument. Your scientific study yiu have quoted doesn’t stand up to even the slightest scrutiny. You have no case for maintaining the status quo other than you like it. That’s no misrepresentation by the way it’s what you are actually saying. Never mind anyone else’s feelings or thoughts. You wouldn’t like it. Never mind that we have shown how irrelevant this bit of background that you love so much is and how out of date it is. Out of date as in not in print or in any current source material and out of date as in totally of of touch with current cultural norms. What other definition do you want to use. You claim it is important because it is. End of. That is no way to conduct any kind of meaningful discussion and leads me to think that you either have altering motives for not wanting the change or don’t want a meaningful debate on it.
You might be happy for people to kit bash and head canon female marines but by refusing to acknowledge the need for change to the out dated background and trying to prop up flimsy arguments around how it’s designed to only work and men and it’s a quirk of the setting, you are enabling those who send threats and hate to people who do do that. As long as this sexist and pointless bit of old background is not corrected the. The hate mongers and bigots in the community will feel empowered to spew that hatred. It has happened on this thread. It happens every time it’s discussed. But only ever around this issue.
Monks are not all male,
Marines are not all warrior monks, and if they were monks are not all male.
The science is entirely made up. It’s absolute nonsense. It has no grounding it real world science at all. A science argument does not stack up at all. In fact it’s laughable.
They are not fraternity either. If they are it’s only because of this outdated stupid and pointless line of text.
There is NO credible argument to say that the official addition of female marines would do the setting any harm. None. If it would damage the setting to you and you place that higher than the damage been done by hatred and death threats then you need look at yourself and your motives. Why does it bother you?
That’s my argument for why we should change. You might not be convinced but again that’s speaks of yiu and your motives. Now please stop dodging the question and say why you think maintaining the status quo, where people are threatened and harassed is ok?
macluvin wrote: They already answered that question. Female miniatures didn’t sell in the 80’s. They sell now. Their reasoning for why they codified that is not valid anymore.
If that was the case, why the female Eldar? I think there's some misinterpretation on your part going on here.
Going purely off of pop culture knowledge and how Eldar were, at the time, known as Space Elves, it's most likely they were playing into the whole "female elves" trope that dominated fantasy media.
Gert wrote: Obviously I emphasised some parts for the joke but the reality is that if you make your Orks look like WW2 Wehrmacht or have your custom Chapter be obsessed with "genetic purity", that's perfectly OK. But if you dare to make SM women then you've crossed a line. Where's the logic in that?
Orks intentionally play towards the humorous part of the setting, and the Imperium itself is obsessed with "genetic purity," to the point of killing people born with physical disabilities, intersex, etc at birth (though they're obviously too stupid to tell if those disabilities or other conditions are the result of genetics or the amount of toxins they skeet into the environment with their rampant overindustrialization, natch.)
Yeah, the Imperium *is* obsessed with genetic purity, but in the case of *abhumans* - I think Gert was implying more race related (a la Nazis) than abhuman related, which the Imperium is certainly not.
Andykp wrote: I have kitbashed female marines so please don’t talk rubbish about my motivations. Your argument seems to be that it wouldn’t improve the setting because you wouldn’t like it. There’s no reason for that, you just wouldn’t. Please explain further if I’m wrong on that but that appears to be the case from what you have said.
No, I wouldn't like it because it wouldn't improve the setting.
In what way though?
In many ways a given setting is defined by its idiosyncracies rather than anything else. Having an all-male contingent of future warrior monks is along those lines.
Except the Custodes fill that idiosyncrasy far better. Space Marines actually being all-male is actually an anomaly and less befitting of the Imperium's nature than having them be mixed gender.
I also repeat that Space Marines aren't depicted on the whole as warrior monks, so that comparison is moot too.
And I know some horrible, despicable people who think female marines are a good idea, so that argument doesn't work for me.
Which ones have made death threats because someone put a woman's head on a Space Marine again?
Andykp wrote: As for this being a core part of marines identity, it was first brought up by your side and then thoroughly debunked by ours. It’s not core at all. Every codex for marines ever, from 2nd edition when they started up to now has a section on the creation of a marine. None of them, not one ever, has stated they have to be male only. That “fact” is not in print now and has not been since it was in WD in 2017, it has only ever been in WD and and in anthologies of WD articles. It is so peripheral to marines that it does not make it into their books and isn’t in print anywhere now. Now, you are claiming it is core to them.
The process is clearly intended to only work on male humans.
But why? And why not mention it in any core material? If it was so important, you'd think it be mentioned there.
This actually sets up a bit of a thing I'd like some clarification on, actually - what exactly *is* the reason for Space Marines being all male? Is it because their biology simply doesn't allow it (arbitrarily)? Is it because they're (supposedly) warrior monks and just refuse to take women even though they probably could? Is it because the Emperor is sexist and decreed that no women could be Space Marines (even though he didn't actually make them, and clearly was fine with mixed gender guardsmen)? Is it because Space Marines would suddenly start breeding like rabbits and the HLOT don't want that (even though we have it on good reason that Space Marines are infertile, or otherwise *not interested*?
Because I've heard a lot of reasons, but there's no real consensus on *why* Space Marines are how they are.
You are vastly misrepresenting my point and trying to imply that I'm bringing a puerile angle into this discussion.
Hey, I'm not the one who jumped headfirst into how Space Marines would start having sex if women Astartes existed.
You've yet to actually even elaborate on *why* you thought that was appropriate for this discussion, but continue with the faux outrage, I guess.
Anyone with a shred of intellectual integrity can tell you're misrepresenting my words
Says the one who literally just misrepresented my entire argument and reposted it as "*lies*"?
You've not got a leg to stand on here.
and I'll stick to discussing things with people who aren't lying in the hopes of earning white knight points.
Is that your solution? Call anyone who challenges you on a pretty laughable point a "white knight" and run away?
Very mature, I think.
the_scotsman wrote: it can't be that there's a tendency for female authors to create less physically powerful, physically confrontational protagonists because males grow up in our society bombarded by stories of men solving their problems through physical confrontation and women are not, it must be that women are hard coded by their monkey dna to want to submit to a dominant alpha male who can overpower other masculoids with his big stronk monkey muscles! Nobody is ever influenced by stories they read and watch to create similar stories and narratives, that's crazy talk!
Whether it's something innate or not, the tendency is there
Is it? Or is that tendency only due to societal pressures and certain attitudes being pushed by dominant powers in society?
Why stick to tendency if people want to break them? Why must tendency be preserved?
so the push for female "warrior women" is more about satisfying a particular kind of man than women.
Suuuuuuure. And that why we've totally not been linking examples of women-led projects pushing for this. /s
Andykp wrote: It has been and still is that the reason for recruit tests and rituals is that it is difficult to find suitable candidates. Then even more fail. Just just physically, but mentally too. Most fail long before they need any organs. THAT is in all the current texts. So having the ability to choose women too would double the number of potential recruits. They could be even more selective before implanting any organs.
They are also often limited by available gene-seed anyway, and the process is only described as working on male humans.
A process which, need I remind, is completely arbitrary.
Hecaton wrote:Well it's infinitely more evidence than "Here's this blog post that says that powerful warrior women is what women want in their fantastical fiction."
It's really not, considering that those blog posts are written by women* - and I think your idea of "infinitely" perhaps is just a little lacking in scale.
*unless you're now claiming to speak for those women?
Sure. Not when you're trying to establish whether we have an inbuilt gender bias as a species, however. 30 is a ludicrously low sample size for that.
Pretty common in psychological studies. And if you're able to make statistically significant claims with it, then that's fine. Sample size is taken into account when determining significance.
So, this is an entirely insignificant study - because 30 really is ridiculously low to make such a claim with.
some bloke wrote:It's very difficult to determine, just by sampling novels, what might be causing any gender bias that is present.
For example, if someone is basing their story on medieval times, when women were literally property, then it is going to be influenced by the fact that men were the fighters and women were not. That's not necessarily any reflection of the authors bias, because the historical period they picked is one where women and men were not treated equally. Take Game of Thrones - the majority of women in there were either of the "oh, please send a man to help me!" vein or they were simply passed without mention. A couple of token women fighting, and them being regarded as the exceptions to the rules anyway, further highlights this. That's not necessarily because GRR is sexist, because it's based on a medieval fantasy world, and the medieval times would have been considered Sexist, if that had even been a considered thing back then.
Agreed, because that is considered important for the verisimilitude of that setting, which is being evocative of a real world period.
However, the very existence of individuals like Brienne, no matter how exceptional and rare they are, indicates towards that drive for inclusivity, and sacrificing that "no women knights!!" idea in favour of telling a better story, one that will appeal to more people.
We easily see in GoT that women are not considered equal to men in the setting, but in the actual narrative and their representation within it, they are still empowered, through characters like Arya and Brienne.
Similarly, you cannot claim that any of the black library writers who write books about space marines are themselves sexist for not writing in strong female characters, when the book is based around characters which are all male by necessity of being a space marine.
I can't call *them* sexist, but I can question the "necessity" of all-male Space Marines, and GW's wider reluctance to review that.
By the time you filter out all the books with any inspiration from history, and any books playing the stereotypes, then you'll be left with pure fiction, where there's no influence from the real world at all, and then the decisions about male and female roles in the world become entirely arbitrary, and as such cannot be right or wrong.
Eh, I'm not sure I entirely disagree, as even a purely fictional book can still be influenced by those stereotypes, which contribute to the existence of those "arbitrary" restrictions.
And, irrespective of that, an arbitrary restriction that excludes women is still excluding women, and, without context as to how that contributes at all to the setting, if it offers no artistic merit, it's not exactly *good*.
Furthermore, in a world where everyone is treated equally, and everyone can do anything, with no oppression whatsoever and all that - how dull are the stories going to be? Darker worlds tend to make better stories for heroes - otherwise they can't fight anyone!
Sure, but including women Space Marines won't make the setting all perfect and sunshine and rainbows. The Imperium already treats gender very even handedly, on the macro scale - the oppression comes from elsewhere, not from gender segregation.
Orks intentionally play towards the humorous part of the setting, and the Imperium itself is obsessed with "genetic purity," to the point of killing people born with physical disabilities, intersex, etc at birth (though they're obviously too stupid to tell if those disabilities or other conditions are the result of genetics or the amount of toxins they skeet into the environment with their rampant overindustrialization, natch.)
Like I said, I'm fine with people kitbashing female space marines. So your strawman is pretty overbearing there.
Ah so it's OK to dress up your Orks like real world fascists because Orks are funny. That'll hold up.
As for your point about the Imperium, please cite which publication you found evidence of the Imperium killing babies who had disabilities or were intersex.
Yeah, the Imperium *is* obsessed with genetic purity, but in the case of *abhumans* - I think Gert was implying more race related than abhuman related, which the Imperium is certainly not.
It was exactly that but Hecaton chose to deliberately misread it and put their own inflection on what I said.
Orks intentionally play towards the humorous part of the setting, and the Imperium itself is obsessed with "genetic purity," to the point of killing people born with physical disabilities, intersex, etc at birth (though they're obviously too stupid to tell if those disabilities or other conditions are the result of genetics or the amount of toxins they skeet into the environment with their rampant overindustrialization, natch.)
Like I said, I'm fine with people kitbashing female space marines. So your strawman is pretty overbearing there.
Ah so it's OK to dress up your Orks like real world fascists because Orks are funny. That'll hold up.
As for your point about the Imperium, please cite which publication you found evidence of the Imperium killing babies who had disabilities or were intersex.
Yeah... that is *quite* the tip of the hand there. :/
The Imperium is a bad empire to live in but just because it does Xenocides and kills people born with Goats legs or tentacle arms, doesn't mean it does things the actual real-life Nazis did.
I want that citation and I have a sneaking suspicion that it falls under DHOTYA.
I think we're all in agreement and awareness that the Imperium is an absolutely awful place to live in.
However, according to all publications (as far as I'm aware) it's simply not shown as being institutionally sexist and racist (and by racist, I mean in regards to human ethnicity), and I don't think it would need to be changed to be. The Imperium's awful and dehumanising enough - we don't need to start throwing in other real life prejudices too.
...........Anyway, we can obviously infer that the imperium would clearly slaughter people born with real-world genetic conditions thinking that they were mutants, and they probably perform racial purges based on current human understandings of ethnic groups, despite there having been as much time between the present day and this setting for humans to have developed just as many new minor ethnic signifiers as we have on earth since the time we lived in caves. OH, and they'd most definitely have sex-based descrimination like we do today as long as you ignore the fact that women are among the high lords of terra like the one GW just made a model for like a month ago.
Anyway, Keep current political conversations out of my 40k! And by that I mean, include them, but only depict the ones I specifically mentioned above for reasons I choose not to specify!"
This one point by Hecaton has actually really ticked me off so we're going to do a deep dive on which "modern" issues apply to the 40k setting.
Racism - Humanity exists in the trillions spread across worlds that number in the thousands. The populations of two Hive Cities have the potential for more than modern-day Earth. There is such a critical mass of humanity that it wouldn't even be possible for a central government to take a census let alone ask someone what race they thought they were.
LGBTQ+ - See above for why this isn't an issue in-universe. IRLGW has made more progress in featuring LGBTQ+ characters, which is good because these people exist and there's no way they wouldn't 40k years from now.
Sexism - Instances of sexism in the 40k setting are always exceptions to the rule. Women can be anything from High Lords to Sump Dwellers, from Lord Generals to Conscripts. GW just doesn't portray the fact women can be anything in their model range very well.
Religion - There is one religion for the Imperium with many different sects, cults, and denominations. There's no disparaging or promoting of one religion over any others.
Disability - Life is terrible but you still serve the Emperor. If you have the money, there are chances for assistance with a disability (I believe Ravenor has a hoverchair). The Imperium doesn't care about you enough to know if you have autism or ADHD. Can you lift a crate? Good job, you have employment.
I'll respond to other people later (except Smudge, because he can't stop lying) but 40k has a lot of politics in it - it was created partially as a reaction to Thatcherite England and the horrible gak her government was doing. I'm ok with 40k being political, and am a formerly Bernie-supporting progressive myself. I find this push for female Astartes to be more about satisfying the borderline-kink desires of men in the community.
I'll respond to other people later (except Smudge, because he can't stop lying)
My pronouns are in my sig. I'd appreciate if you used them.
That is all.
but 40k has a lot of politics in it - it was created partially as a reaction to Thatcherite England and the horrible gak her government was doing.
Absolutely right - and yet, the Imperium is still largely neutral when it comes to gender, race, and sexuality.
This is irrespective of the fact that simply including women is not political.
I find this push for female Astartes to be more about satisfying the borderline-kink desires of men in the community.
So, you're speaking for men now?
Also, way to jump aboard that "accusing other users" train, instead of actually addressing, well, *any* of the arguments made, and going straight for ad hominems.
I'll respond to other people later (except Smudge, because he can't stop lying) but 40k has a lot of politics in it - it was created partially as a reaction to Thatcherite England and the horrible gak her government was doing. I'm ok with 40k being political, and am a formerly Bernie-supporting progressive myself. I find this push for female Astartes to be more about satisfying the borderline-kink desires of men in the community.
Smudge prefers "they", it's in their signature.
Implying that people only want female SM to satisfy sexual urges is not only laughable but very insulting.
Implying that people only want female SM to satisfy sexual urges is not only laughable but very insulting.
Obviously I disagree.
I'm sorry, but that's not really a matter to "disagree" on - unless you're happy announcing to everyone here that you're not arguing in good faith.
You are quite literally calling everyone who is arguing against you sexually motivated. Do you think for a second that's an acceptable way to have a discussion?
Not how that works chief. If you say something about me, I'm the one who decides if it's insulting.
Just because you find it insulting doesn't mean it's wrong. A white supremacist would find it insulting to be told they were the moral equal of non-whites.
Firstly it's an opinion not objective fact. You need to learn the difference.
Second, are you now comparing people who are pro-female SM to white supremacist? You want to ease up on the pedal before you say something you're going to regret?
Gert wrote: Firstly it's an opinion not objective fact. You need to learn the difference.
Second, are you now comparing people who are pro-female SM to white supremacist? You want to ease up on the pedal before you say something you're going to regret?
No, I'm comparing you specifically to someone like that and making the point that feelings of offense don't mean that anything wrong was said.
You don't seem to be following what I'm saying too well.
Not how that works chief. If you say something about me, I'm the one who decides if it's insulting.
Just because you find it insulting doesn't mean it's wrong.
I mean, it *is* wrong - unless you're going to whip out some evidence on how all the men who are pro-women Astartes here are doing so for sexual reasons.
After all - onus of proof is on you, or else that's rather libellous of you, to make such a claim about so many users here.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Hecaton wrote: No, I'm comparing you specifically to someone like that and making the point that feelings of offense don't mean that anything wrong was said.
Sure. Now prove that you *are* right in your comments that the men here are only arguing in favour of sexually gratuitous purposes. Otherwise, something wrong definitely was said.
After all, it is *your* place to prove that, having made the claim.
You don't seem to be following what I'm saying too well.
I think we're all seeing what you're saying. The thing is, what you're saying is *really* sketchy, and in incredibly bad faith.
Seems like an opportune time for everyone to take a moment to recall that this topic, toy soldiers, does not need to be the basis for giving or taking offense. This topic can be discussed without ratcheting up the emotion and vitriol or playing into that kind of strategy.
Gert wrote: Firstly it's an opinion not objective fact. You need to learn the difference.
Second, are you now comparing people who are pro-female SM to white supremacist? You want to ease up on the pedal before you say something you're going to regret?
No, I'm comparing you specifically to someone like that and making the point that feelings of offense don't mean that anything wrong was said.
You don't seem to be following what I'm saying too well.
Would you care to explain on what basis you disagree. Just disagreeing is not real enough in a conversation. Or would you care to answer my previous question? Or care to explain why on Earth you think my wanting to have female marines is in any way sexually motivated.??? Or a kink? That’s just weird and I assure you it is not sexual. Nothing about my interest in 40K is in anyway sexual. So you can explain that accusation or leave it there? But do try and bring something useful to the conversation because right now all you are doing is insulting people and and going “nah” when anyone counters your ludicrous opinions.
On the front of sexism being absent in the imperium, the presence of women in leadership roles does not necessarily exclude the presence of sexism in the imperium. IRL, we have women in prominent roles of our government (Vice President, Governors, Senators, Congress, etc.) yet we still institute luxury taxes on female hygiene products, and products marketed towards women charge what is known as the "pink tax" for example. Sexism is also rampant in our culture; for a famous example just look up Tucker Carlson military uniforms. We use women as cannon fodder at their expense, and the expense of common human decency, all the time, to push sexist rhetoric to further political agendas. Other things I would consider sexist is certain anti-abortion legislation which at times have made some medically necessary abortions illegal and forced women to carry out stillborn pregnancies to term, and even resulted in deaths from sepsis because the removal of the rest of the dead fetus would technically be a violation of laws designed to strengthen abortion bans. Privileged, wealthy women have ways to sidestep such repercussions.
The fact is that women born into positions of privilege may find their personal privilege to diminish or completely hide sexist biases against them by the imperium. My point is that proudly proclaiming that 3 out of 9 of the high lords of terra are females, and that a few named female commissars/officers/etc. does not necessarily prove a lack of sexism in the imperium. That is ultimately up to the fluff writers; it is entirely possible that a high ranking female officer only obtained a position of prestige because of wealth and privilege, or because she was no less than twice the tactical genius of any other male officer of equivalent or even higher rank. It certainly wouldn't be out of place in the dystopic crap hole that is the imperium that a top ranking officer got his (or her) rank purely because of nepotism, bribery/purchasing of office, or even taking credit for someone else's tactical brilliance and leadership skills, and that any individual that actually made rank of of merit may have needed to have demonstrated a bit more aptitude and capability than those with the advantages of wealth and privilege.
The fact is that women born into positions of privilege may find their personal privilege to diminish or completely hide sexist biases against them by the imperium. My point is that proudly proclaiming that 3 out of 9 of the high lords of terra are females, and that a few named female commissars/officers/etc. does not necessarily prove a lack of sexism in the imperium. That is ultimately up to the fluff writers; it is entirely possible that a high ranking female officer only obtained a position of prestige because of wealth and privilege, or because she was no less than twice the tactical genius of any other male officer of equivalent or even higher rank. It certainly wouldn't be out of place in the dystopic crap hole that is the imperium that a top ranking officer got his (or her) rank purely because of nepotism, bribery/purchasing of office, or even taking credit for someone else's tactical brilliance and leadership skills, and that any individual that actually made rank of of merit may have needed to have demonstrated a bit more aptitude and capability than those with the advantages of wealth and privilege.
GW has made it pretty clear in the variety of publications it has that the Imperium cares about an individual's humanity, that is that they aren't Xenos/abhuman/Chaos tainted and not their sex/gender/sexuality. There can be sexist individuals within the setting because you can't legislate for people's opinions but overall there is nothing preventing a woman from becoming a Lord General/Factory Overseer/Planetary Governor/Militarum Sergeant over a man. There is a distinct difference between an individual being sexist and state-mandated or supported sexism. The Imperium undoubtedly has the former but does not conform to the latter.
If we look at specific examples, the Verghast Ghost influx brought many women into the Tanith 1st where some soldiers believed they were nothing but distractions or poor fighters. The reality was that many of the female Ghosts had fought either in the Vervunhive PDF or Scratch Companies (partisans basically) and were just as good as the Tanith Ghosts. Many female Ghosts would go on to become some of the regiments' best snipers, scouts (a great honour in the regiment), and officers.
The SoB are a religious order set up from an all-female cult, the Daughters of the Emperor. Goge Vandire tricked them (and most of the Imperium) into believing he was blessed by the Emperor and recruited them into his private army. After Vandire was deposed, the Daughters were maintained and expanded as the militant arms of both the Ecclesiarchy and the Ordo Hereticus. It's not sexism that doesn't allow men to become a Sister, it's cult logic combined with a law that was deliberately worded poorly to allow the Church to have soldiers.
Cadia has all children taken into the PDF to learn how to be soldiers and from there they can choose to serve in the Guard. All Cadians (before the planet broke) were soldiers first then men/women/children second.
Catachan tries to eat the people that live on it, and the critters there don't care what insides you have as long as you are tasty.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Again, similar traits between my country and the imperium. We don't have anything explicitly preventing women from being officers in our military, or holding prestigious offices. We even claim to be a meritocracy. But we still force women to do horrible things out of religious dogma and self rightousness, like die of sepsis from a bit of still born fetus still inside their womb. Or carry stillborn births to term. Or even simply dictating what they can do with their body and womb in the first place. That's pretty horrid and misogynous. My point is that they could easily portray the Imperium as a sexist civilization, or that some cultures are sexist, and that space marine culture was inspired by sexism from the emperor, without retconning anything. Easily. I doubt the fluff writers and most in this forum are interested in pursuing that explanation, but nothing in the lore has actually excluded the presence of sexism in the imperium.
The fact is that women born into positions of privilege may find their personal privilege to diminish or completely hide sexist biases against them by the imperium. My point is that proudly proclaiming that 3 out of 9 of the high lords of terra are females, and that a few named female commissars/officers/etc. does not necessarily prove a lack of sexism in the imperium. That is ultimately up to the fluff writers; it is entirely possible that a high ranking female officer only obtained a position of prestige because of wealth and privilege, or because she was no less than twice the tactical genius of any other male officer of equivalent or even higher rank. It certainly wouldn't be out of place in the dystopic crap hole that is the imperium that a top ranking officer got his (or her) rank purely because of nepotism, bribery/purchasing of office, or even taking credit for someone else's tactical brilliance and leadership skills, and that any individual that actually made rank of of merit may have needed to have demonstrated a bit more aptitude and capability than those with the advantages of wealth and privilege.
GW has made it pretty clear in the variety of publications it has that the Imperium cares about an individual's humanity, that is that they aren't Xenos/abhuman/Chaos tainted and not their sex/gender/sexuality. There can be sexist individuals within the setting because you can't legislate for people's opinions but overall there is nothing preventing a woman from becoming a Lord General/Factory Overseer/Planetary Governor/Militarum Sergeant over a man. There is a distinct difference between an individual being sexist and state-mandated or supported sexism. The Imperium undoubtedly has the former but does not conform to the latter.
If we look at specific examples, the Verghast Ghost influx brought many women into the Tanith 1st where some soldiers believed they were nothing but distractions or poor fighters. The reality was that many of the female Ghosts had fought either in the Vervunhive PDF or Scratch Companies (partisans basically) and were just as good as the Tanith Ghosts. Many female Ghosts would go on to become some of the regiments' best snipers, scouts (a great honour in the regiment), and officers.
The SoB are a religious order set up from an all-female cult, the Daughters of the Emperor. Goge Vandire tricked them (and most of the Imperium) into believing he was blessed by the Emperor and recruited them into his private army. After Vandire was deposed, the Daughters were maintained and expanded as the militant arms of both the Ecclesiarchy and the Ordo Hereticus. It's not sexism that doesn't allow men to become a Sister, it's cult logic combined with a law that was deliberately worded poorly to allow the Church to have soldiers.
Cadia has all children taken into the PDF to learn how to be soldiers and from there they can choose to serve in the Guard. All Cadians (before the planet broke) were soldiers first then men/women/children second.
Catachan tries to eat the people that live on it, and the critters there don't care what insides you have as long as you are tasty.
Or we could just say the fact that the Astartes project got bungled when the primary contributor turned against the Imperium and tried to destroy the project.
There are ways to add female SM in without even going near sexism, most of them just means the Imperium acknowledges their God wasn't as good at science as He said he was. Hell, there doesn't even need to be that, say that the Emperor had to rush the project but secret data vaults reveal how He was going to do it originally.
Obiviously I haven't read all of the novels/fluff, but I don't remember blatant sexism in the Imperium. Women seem to be expected to do their duty just like the men and no one has anything to say about that. I don't remember any stories that went out of their way to show that female characters were treated any differently.
The only exception that I know of is with some knight houses that explicitly forbid women pilots out of tradition. Knight houses aren't exactly representative of the Imperium, though. They're mostly considered backwards with the whole feudal lifestyle stuff and this isn't even a generalized thing; some houses realize that the gender of the person inside the giant death robot seriously doesn't matter...
I haven’t read the whole thread (49 pages and counting!!) but I’d be happy to see female space marines.
I don’t have any issues with updating or retconning the background. Like the OP said 49 pages ago, it would be a smaller change than the introduction of Primaris marines.
I think it would be cool to have a bit more variety to the SM models, in the same way I’d like to see more female imperial guard models.
For those against the idea, I don’t see how it would be negative, nobody would make you use female SM models, and 40K has always been about making your own head canon as much much as it is about sticking to the background, so if they were introduced and you don’t like the idea of female space marines, just don’t include them in your army.
Does anyone get upset if someone names there SM captain from a specific chapter and company differently than the name given in the background? Or if the squad markings aren’t exactly as depicted in the codex?
If a player headswapped their space marines with SOB heads would anyone actually refuse to play against them? I don’t see updating the fluff to include female marines as any different.
Edit: IIRC there originally were female space marines but they didn’t sell well, so were discontinued and the background was changed to acknowledge this ( back when SMs were mind-wiped convicts), reintroducing then because there might be a market for them and adjusting the background accordingly once again seems perfectly reasonable to me.
It's also impossible to make that judgement based on thirty authors who may or may not be published through the same publishers.
Sure, so why are you suggesting it?
insaniak wrote: All we know is that in this study they observed a trend for male authors to write more powerful female characters, while also admitting that in many cases there was no significant difference.
It's admittedly been a while since I did high school maths, but I'm fairly sure that one thing is a reasonable distance from being 'ínfinite' anything...
As a matter of percentages (or a fraction), it's infinite. I was making the point that anecdotal evidence is meaningless.
Sure. And here we have a study of thirty samples in which many of the results were stated as being statistically insignificant.
And not all of them were... as much as you might wish they were.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
LumenPraebeo wrote: Lets not forget this guy also assumes that wanting female marines means you find all-male marines repulsive.
Nope. Literally people in this thread are saying that it's "Not a good look" for the hobby to be predominantly male.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Andykp wrote: You might be happy for people to kit bash and head canon female marines but by refusing to acknowledge the need for change to the out dated background and trying to prop up flimsy arguments around how it’s designed to only work and men and it’s a quirk of the setting, you are enabling those who send threats and hate to people who do do that. As long as this sexist and pointless bit of old background is not corrected the. The hate mongers and bigots in the community will feel empowered to spew that hatred. It has happened on this thread. It happens every time it’s discussed. But only ever around this issue.
There is no need to de-segregate a fictional organization like the Astartes. None. I reject your premises.
Andykp wrote: Marines are not all warrior monks, and if they were monks are not all male.
Wrong, see above.
Andykp wrote: The science is entirely made up. It’s absolute nonsense. It has no grounding it real world science at all. A science argument does not stack up at all. In fact it’s laughable.
You're not cogent enough to make this argument. You're trying to claim it's wrongthink to even conceive of a fantastical medical procedure that would only work properly on male humans. That's ridiculous.
Andykp wrote: They are not fraternity either. If they are it’s only because of this outdated stupid and pointless line of text.
They call each other "battle brothers." That's pretty close to the definition of a "fraternity" (aka brotherhood).
Andykp wrote: There is NO credible argument to say that the official addition of female marines would do the setting any harm. None. If it would damage the setting to you and you place that higher than the damage been done by hatred and death threats then you need look at yourself and your motives. Why does it bother you?
What hatred? What death threats? Who cares?
Andykp wrote: That’s my argument for why we should change.
Ah so it's OK to dress up your Orks like real world fascists because Orks are funny. That'll hold up.
Depends on the company you keep.
Gert wrote: As for your point about the Imperium, please cite which publication you found evidence of the Imperium killing babies who had disabilities or were intersex.
The rulebook that came with the Rogue Trader KT set was the most recent explanation of it that I've read; they use the term "mutations" but that covers all forms of physical disability and deformity (and doesn't literally mean mutation in the scientific sense).
It was exactly that but Hecaton chose to deliberately misread it and put their own inflection on what I said.
The point is this - if there was a child born intersex or with a sixth finger or something, the Imperial authorities would kill the baby, and then kill the mother if she tried to interfere. Probably slowly and painfully, to make a point.
Games Workshop have never marketed or sold female space marines. In 1988, there was an advert for "Adventurers" which features two miniatures called Female Warrior Jayne and Female Warrior Gabs. These miniatures were sold as part of the RT601 "Adventurers" blister pack. It is pure speculation that these two miniatures were actually something other than what they were advertised and sold as but, if they were supposed to be something else, that is almost certainly Sisters of Battle. On the miniatures themselves, the base tag says "sister" and there are a few other design elements that point towards this liklihood, as shown in the image below, which is a comparison between one of the miniatures and the Stephen Tappin artwork of Sister Sin, as seen in the back of the Rogue Trader rulebook near a background section talking about the Sisters of Battle.
As you can see, the miniature has the same style of powered armour, the same rebreather apparatus and the same horned skull device on the left shoulder pad.
EDIT: I suppose they both also have bare hands too, although Gabs is painted to have gloves, on the official model so, eh *shrug*
The idea that there were female space marines is from a misreading of a reply by Alan Merrett.
Spoiler:
Allegedly, so Alan explains, retailers told Games Workshop that customers weren't buying female models from the C01 Fighters range. Here's two examples of those miniatures.
Spoiler:
Not eaxctly the best looking minis nor do I suppose a kid in the 80's asking their parents for some half naked lady models would have been taken well.
Alan then goes on to say the customers told them they didn't want female models, but he already said he didn't include them in the production cycle because retailers told them, so which was it, retailers or customers? Possibly both? Maybe, but that doesn't seem likely to me, how many customers would realistically write in to ask Games Workshop to stop making any female miniatures what-so-ever or kick up such a fuss in a shop that the manager would pass it on?
He then goes on to say that they didn't include any female miniatures in with the marines because they knew people would complain and he says they didn't make any except for the occasional ones that pop up. What exactly does that mean? That they didn't make any female marines but did make some female models? He then says that the background that Rick Priestly wrote saying there were male only space marines was there to justify a 'commercial logistics issue'. Looking at it one way, that they wrote the background to appease customers who didn't want any female miniatures, why didn't they include that caveat for all the miniatures lines in 40k, why single out space marines? Afterall, these were all decisions being made by Games Workshop as they developed 40k for release, the two adventurer models were made in 1987, Rogue Trader was revealed to the world in 1988 so they already made all these decisions before any customers got to comment on it. On the other hand, what has customers not wanting female miniatures got to do with 'commercial logistics' and why does it only apply to marines and not to anything else? Then he finishes off by saying that the RTB01 box set had no female marines in it because they never even thought to make any and allegedly couldn't have done anyway which is utterly nonsense, any of the sprues could have had a female head on so job done.
What Alan says here, if the post is genuine, is frankly, bollocks, nothing much about what he says hangs together but this is the man who refused to touch a Chapter House resin part, in court, because of "quite nasty" chemicals, so not the most reliable or sensible witness.
Cybtroll wrote: I think that if you puncture him he'll bleed some Contrast instead of blood because "it's better!!!".
That said, about mutations: the Imperium employs Abhuman and has entire worlds with Abhuman in it...
The problem is that the setting is contradictory by design, so it's funny to see people see certainties where there's none.
The bit about abhumans though is they're genetically stable, can reproduce and are not subject to mutations to a greater degree than is 'normal'. What normal is depends on world to world. It should be noted they are distrusted at best and outright persecuted by more puritan members of the imperium.
On the whole 'the imperium will execute you if you're intersex or have six fingers', it depends. Most references to mutants in 40k tend to be along the lines of:
In the doctrine of the theocratic Imperium, any deviation from the holy Human form is considered a sin to be punished with suppression, and even death.
There are variations. Some are minor. Some are major, to the point of disfigurement. Having six fingers on necromunda might be tolerated, having six fingers on the shrine world of Saint cuthbert might get you and everyone in your vicinity slain, just because.
I don't think intersex was known to a lot of people when 40k was written, I suspect the writers understanding of mutants was more xmen than xxy. I've read in places that in the realpolitik of 40k, exceptions can be made and there are tolerances and degrees that are allowed, or tolerated, depending on where you are. You might get away with six fingers, that weird mole that looks like a face or abnormal genetics, then again, you might not. Personally I lean towards the notion that unless you're rich, or can hide it, you're going on the pyre. Folks in the imperium don't care that much. Life is pretty damn cheap and horrible.
macluvin wrote:On the front of sexism being absent in the imperium, the presence of women in leadership roles does not necessarily exclude the presence of sexism in the imperium.
Yes, while it doesn't mean that the Imperium couldn't still be sexist to a large degree, and all we're seeing are the exceptions, there's also no evidence to suggest that the Imperim is institutionally sexist in the first place.
This is one of those things that GW haven't really codified, so we can't know for sure which way it swings - but all I can say is that considering how the Imperial Guard are treated, I'd say it's more likely the Imperium is uncaring when it comes to sexism. Or as Gert put it:
Gert wrote:GW has made it pretty clear in the variety of publications it has that the Imperium cares about an individual's humanity, that is that they aren't Xenos/abhuman/Chaos tainted and not their sex/gender/sexuality. There can be sexist individuals within the setting because you can't legislate for people's opinions but overall there is nothing preventing a woman from becoming a Lord General/Factory Overseer/Planetary Governor/Militarum Sergeant over a man. There is a distinct difference between an individual being sexist and state-mandated or supported sexism. The Imperium undoubtedly has the former but does not conform to the latter.
macluvin wrote: I doubt the fluff writers and most in this forum are interested in pursuing that explanation, but nothing in the lore has actually excluded the presence of sexism in the imperium.
But again, nothing has indicated that it exists either. I'm not sure if we should be making headcanons that the Imperium is even more of an oppressive hellhole than it needs to be already.
Hecaton wrote:
LumenPraebeo wrote: Lets not forget this guy also assumes that wanting female marines means you find all-male marines repulsive.
Nope. Literally people in this thread are saying that it's "Not a good look" for the hobby to be predominantly male.
Citation? What I recall people saying was it's not a good look for the *flagship faction* to be all-male. There is a distinction.
Andykp wrote: You might be happy for people to kit bash and head canon female marines but by refusing to acknowledge the need for change to the out dated background and trying to prop up flimsy arguments around how it’s designed to only work and men and it’s a quirk of the setting, you are enabling those who send threats and hate to people who do do that. As long as this sexist and pointless bit of old background is not corrected the. The hate mongers and bigots in the community will feel empowered to spew that hatred. It has happened on this thread. It happens every time it’s discussed. But only ever around this issue.
There is no need to de-segregate a fictional organization like the Astartes.
Not exactly familiar with Buddhist monks then, are you?
Monks don't need to be all male, because monk is a generic term that applies to the simple concept of religious asceticism - in the original Greek it is derived from, it is used gender-neutrally, and as mentioned above, is also used gender-neutrally in referring to non-Christian faiths.
Andykp wrote: Marines are not all warrior monks, and if they were monks are not all male.
Wrong, see above.
Wrong, see above!
Andykp wrote: The science is entirely made up. It’s absolute nonsense. It has no grounding it real world science at all. A science argument does not stack up at all. In fact it’s laughable.
You're not cogent enough to make this argument. You're trying to claim it's wrongthink to even conceive of a fantastical medical procedure that would only work properly on male humans. That's ridiculous.
Why do you need to invent a fantastical medical procedure that only works on men? Why is that such an important thing to make sure your Made-Up Magic Super Soldier Serum Juice does?
Why is it necessary to exclude women in this way?
Andykp wrote: They are not fraternity either. If they are it’s only because of this outdated stupid and pointless line of text.
They call each other "battle brothers." That's pretty close to the definition of a "fraternity" (aka brotherhood).
And Guardsmen are most frequently called Guardsmen. Are they a warrior brotherhood too?
Andykp wrote: There is NO credible argument to say that the official addition of female marines would do the setting any harm. None. If it would damage the setting to you and you place that higher than the damage been done by hatred and death threats then you need look at yourself and your motives. Why does it bother you?
What hatred? What death threats?
The death threats and abuse received by people who post their converted women Astartes models, which you'd have read about if you checked the thread.
Who cares?
Aw gee, I think the people receiving death threats because their plastic model had a different head might care.
Seriously, what kind of unsympathetic response is that? Not even a "that's a shame that happens", but an outright "who cares if they're getting death threats over plastic models".
Andykp wrote: That’s my argument for why we should change.
It's full of logical and factual inaccuracies.
Not one was uttered, and your only rebuttals were you simply saying "nuh uh", and "I don't care".
Ah so it's OK to dress up your Orks like real world fascists because Orks are funny. That'll hold up.
Depends on the company you keep.
Nope, I don't think so. Irrespective of whatever company you keep, dressing up your Orks like real world fascists is pretty sketchy.
Gert wrote: As for your point about the Imperium, please cite which publication you found evidence of the Imperium killing babies who had disabilities or were intersex.
The rulebook that came with the Rogue Trader KT set was the most recent explanation of it that I've read; they use the term "mutations" but that covers all forms of physical disability and deformity (and doesn't literally mean mutation in the scientific sense).
It was exactly that but Hecaton chose to deliberately misread it and put their own inflection on what I said.
The point is this - if there was a child born intersex or with a sixth finger or something, the Imperial authorities would kill the baby, and then kill the mother if she tried to interfere. Probably slowly and painfully, to make a point.
Again, citations, please - because we don't see that happen anywhere. In fact, I don't believe there is a mention of intersex folks in 40k, or their explicit absence either. Care to find that proof?
Removed - BrookM
Gogsnik wrote:Not eaxctly the best looking minis nor do I suppose a kid in the 80's asking their parents for some half naked lady models would have been taken well.
Oh, absolutely agreed that the models looked awful, but the point is that they *did* exist, and when GW became able to make half-decent female-presenting sculpts, they could've just done Marines again.
Alan then goes on to say the customers told them they didn't want female models, but he already said he didn't include them in the production cycle because retailers told them, so which was it, retailers or customers? Possibly both? Maybe, but that doesn't seem likely to me, how many customers would realistically write in to ask Games Workshop to stop making any female miniatures what-so-ever or kick up such a fuss in a shop that the manager would pass it on?
It reads to me that retailers heard from customers that women models wouldn't sell, or simply just perhaps from reading the (very male-dominated) room at the time.
He then says that the background that Rick Priestly wrote saying there were male only space marines was there to justify a 'commercial logistics issue'. Looking at it one way, that they wrote the background to appease customers who didn't want any female miniatures, why didn't they include that caveat for all the miniatures lines in 40k, why single out space marines?
Honestly, agreed! Why did Guardsmen get to dodge the bullet, but Space Marines didn't? But, in all fairness, there were hardly any women sculpts for Guardsmen either.
For Eldar and Dark Eldar and similar, they fed into the "Space Elves" trope, and elves are/were commonly portrayed as having many female-presenting models in all forms of fantasy. Women elves was just a common trope that got fed into the trope-laden mess of 40k.
Then he finishes off by saying that the RTB01 box set had no female marines in it because they never even thought to make any and allegedly couldn't have done anyway which is utterly nonsense, any of the sprues could have had a female head on so job done.
I obviously don't know the actual situation, and honestly, as you say later, it's still a lazy excuse which has flaws in some way or another, but by "couldn't have done anyway", that may be a reference to their awful sculpting abilities of female heads. Unlikely, but hey, it's all excuses that don't really excuse anything in my book.
Irrespective of how well the story holds up, we can clearly see two models that are pretty clearly Space Marines, or Space Marine-adjacent. They existed, and then they didn't. And, aside for some pretty arbitrary lore reasons or issues with reception at the time of production, there isn't too much of a reason not to include them now.
It's not "woke", it's not "generification of the setting", it's not "hating men". It's just asking for some cool-ass models in a cool-ass faction that just happens to be at the forefront of 40k, because there's no good reason why women shouldn't be represented in that cool-ass faction.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Deadnight wrote: On the whole 'the imperium will execute you if you're intersex or have six fingers', it depends. Most references to mutants in 40k tend to be along the lines of:
In the doctrine of the theocratic Imperium, any deviation from the holy Human form is considered a sin to be punished with suppression, and even death.
There are variations. Some are minor. Some are major, to the point of disfigurement. Having six fingers on necromunda might be tolerated, having six fingers on the shrine world of Saint cuthbert might get you and everyone in your vicinity slain, just because.
I don't think intersex was known to a lot of people when 40k was written, I suspect the writers understanding of mutants was more xmen than xxy. I've read in places that in the realpolitik of 40k, exceptions can be made and there are tolerances and degrees that are allowed, or tolerated, depending on where you are. You might get away with six fingers, that weird mole that looks like a face or abnormal genetics, then again, you might not. Personally I lean towards the notion that unless you're rich, or can hide it, you're going on the pyre. Folks in the imperium don't care that much. Life is pretty damn cheap and horrible.
Generally agreed - which would support the idea that it's not institutionally obsessed with genetic purity - there's a great deal of leeway and varying interpretations within the Imperium, and really, it's all about *where* in the Imperium you get caught.
Lower levels of society? You're mostly beyond scrutiny, you could avoid detection for being born intersex or with six fingers. Upper classes, you're most likely rich and/or influential. You can finesse your way out of that. It's going to be the managerial classes, or as close to "middle" class as you can get within the neo-feudal Imperial system, which would be the most scrutinised by this, but even that depends on local politics.
I mean it further normalises fascism within a hobby that already has a problem with normalising fascism. "Oh but Orks are the comedy faction" doesn't hold up because the Orks aren't normalising fascism, the player who made them is.
The rulebook that came with the Rogue Trader KT set was the most recent explanation of it that I've read; they use the term "mutations" but that covers all forms of physical disability and deformity (and doesn't literally mean mutation in the scientific sense).
Yeah, I want the direct quote from a GW publication that says the Imperium mandates the killing of babies with disabilities or who are intersex. It seems to me you're just applying the term "mutant" to people with disabilities or who are intersex despite knowing that when the Imperium talks about mutation, it means tentacle arms or goat legs.
The point is this - if there was a child born intersex or with a sixth finger or something, the Imperial authorities would kill the baby, and then kill the mother if she tried to interfere. Probably slowly and painfully, to make a point.
Prove it. Show me the quote that says this is the case.
The only exception that I know of is with some knight houses that explicitly forbid women pilots out of tradition. Knight houses aren't exactly representative of the Imperium, though. They're mostly considered backwards with the whole feudal lifestyle stuff and this isn't even a generalized thing; some houses realize that the gender of the person inside the giant death robot seriously doesn't matter...
This actually isn't true for all Knight houses, in fact, some are entirely matriarchal. The whole "no female Knights" thing comes from GW only featuring men in the initial Knight codex and the fact that historical Knights were men.
jeff white wrote: When 40k goes full woke, I quit. The rainbow warriors predate the raging cultish neo fascist wokeness of today.
Just wanted to point out that the Rainbow Warriors aren't a gay pride wokeness thing. They're a reference to the Rainbow Warrior, a boat belonging to Greenpeace. It made the news in the 80s around the time Rogue Trader was created, when French secret services sunk it to stop it from protesting French nuclear testing in the Pacific.
It's also impossible to make that judgement based on thirty authors who may or may not be published through the same publishers.
Sure, so why are you suggesting it?
insaniak wrote: All we know is that in this study they observed a trend for male authors to write more powerful female characters, while also admitting that in many cases there was no significant difference.
It's admittedly been a while since I did high school maths, but I'm fairly sure that one thing is a reasonable distance from being 'ínfinite' anything...
As a matter of percentages (or a fraction), it's infinite. I was making the point that anecdotal evidence is meaningless.
Sure. And here we have a study of thirty samples in which many of the results were stated as being statistically insignificant.
And not all of them were... as much as you might wish they were.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
LumenPraebeo wrote: Lets not forget this guy also assumes that wanting female marines means you find all-male marines repulsive.
Nope. Literally people in this thread are saying that it's "Not a good look" for the hobby to be predominantly male.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Andykp wrote: You might be happy for people to kit bash and head canon female marines but by refusing to acknowledge the need for change to the out dated background and trying to prop up flimsy arguments around how it’s designed to only work and men and it’s a quirk of the setting, you are enabling those who send threats and hate to people who do do that. As long as this sexist and pointless bit of old background is not corrected the. The hate mongers and bigots in the community will feel empowered to spew that hatred. It has happened on this thread. It happens every time it’s discussed. But only ever around this issue.
There is no need to de-segregate a fictional organization like the Astartes. None. I reject your premises.
Andykp wrote: Marines are not all warrior monks, and if they were monks are not all male.
Wrong, see above.
Andykp wrote: The science is entirely made up. It’s absolute nonsense. It has no grounding it real world science at all. A science argument does not stack up at all. In fact it’s laughable.
You're not cogent enough to make this argument. You're trying to claim it's wrongthink to even conceive of a fantastical medical procedure that would only work properly on male humans. That's ridiculous.
Andykp wrote: They are not fraternity either. If they are it’s only because of this outdated stupid and pointless line of text.
They call each other "battle brothers." That's pretty close to the definition of a "fraternity" (aka brotherhood).
Andykp wrote: There is NO credible argument to say that the official addition of female marines would do the setting any harm. None. If it would damage the setting to you and you place that higher than the damage been done by hatred and death threats then you need look at yourself and your motives. Why does it bother you?
What hatred? What death threats? Who cares?
Andykp wrote: That’s my argument for why we should change.
Ah so it's OK to dress up your Orks like real world fascists because Orks are funny. That'll hold up.
Depends on the company you keep.
Gert wrote: As for your point about the Imperium, please cite which publication you found evidence of the Imperium killing babies who had disabilities or were intersex.
The rulebook that came with the Rogue Trader KT set was the most recent explanation of it that I've read; they use the term "mutations" but that covers all forms of physical disability and deformity (and doesn't literally mean mutation in the scientific sense).
It was exactly that but Hecaton chose to deliberately misread it and put their own inflection on what I said.
The point is this - if there was a child born intersex or with a sixth finger or something, the Imperial authorities would kill the baby, and then kill the mother if she tried to interfere. Probably slowly and painfully, to make a point.
Smudge has covered all of the points I wanted to make so I will just say that it is painfully clear that you do not any case or argument and are not prepared to even pretend to have a discussion with any honesty at all. From what I can see you basically trolling now, not willing to provide any real constructive argument at all, just saying “nah” and “don’t care”. I do think you should have a good look at yourself though if you have an issue with those receiving death threats and online abuse and no empathy for them but have no issue at all with those giving it out. You are maybe on the wrong side of decency on this one? I would say so.
Agreed with Smudge, Gert and Andy. Aside from the "thinly veiled" part
I await Hecaton adding the request for an explicit quote to the weird take about gender inclusion being a pretext for sexual motives onto the pile of reactionary talking points never to be addressed or evidenced.
I'm still waiting for the passage that says the Imperium kills babies with disabilities or who are intersex.
I mean I know exactly what is going to happen but still.
It's also impossible to make that judgement based on thirty authors who may or may not be published through the same publishers.
Sure, so why are you suggesting it?
I didn't. You did.
I merely pointed out that authors are often subject to the requirements of their publishers. We have no way of judging the differences in publishing requirements without knowing who the authors in question were, what the books were, and who published them. If they were all from the same publisher, and approved by the same editor, then there would be a crumb of evidence on your inherent gender bias trail. Without that information there is no way of determining whether the writers were creating the characters they wanted to create, the characters they thought would be the most commercially viable, or the characters they were told to create.
But, honestly, this isn't worth the effort of continuing. Clearly you place more importance on the vague and self-admittedly-inconclusive results of a statistically insignificant study than I do. You do you.
Cybtroll wrote: I think that if you puncture him he'll bleed some Contrast instead of blood because "it's better!!!".
That said, about mutations: the Imperium employs Abhuman and has entire worlds with Abhuman in it...
The problem is that the setting is contradictory by design, so it's funny to see people see certainties where there's none.
Well, the same section I was referring to said that something like one in 10,000 mutants were kept alive, that might account for what you're talking about. But given there are armies of abhumans... that means that anyone without a militarily useful suite of mutations is getting purged. Anyone.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Deadnight wrote: I don't think intersex was known to a lot of people when 40k was written, I suspect the writers understanding of mutants was more xmen than xxy.
Mmmm, it's worth noting that Klinefelter's syndrome (xxy sex chromosomes) isn't really "intersex," and the Imperium in 40k is so ass-backwards they probably don't even know what it is, they just think "Oh that guy has a low sex drive."
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Gert wrote: I'm still waiting for the passage that says the Imperium kills babies with disabilities or who are intersex.
I mean I know exactly what is going to happen but still.
I told you where it was found. Do you want a screenshot?
Jesus Hecaton, you are cutting off your head to spite your nose. You are continuing to make worse and worse arguments and attack people just to prevent the IDEA that females can be space marines.
Cybtroll wrote: I think that if you puncture him he'll bleed some Contrast instead of blood because "it's better!!!".
That said, about mutations: the Imperium employs Abhuman and has entire worlds with Abhuman in it...
The problem is that the setting is contradictory by design, so it's funny to see people see certainties where there's none.
Well, the same section I was referring to said that something like one in 10,000 mutants were kept alive, that might account for what you're talking about. But given there are armies of abhumans... that means that anyone without a militarily useful suite of mutations is getting purged. Anyone.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Deadnight wrote: I don't think intersex was known to a lot of people when 40k was written, I suspect the writers understanding of mutants was more xmen than xxy.
Mmmm, it's worth noting that Klinefelter's syndrome (xxy sex chromosomes) isn't really "intersex," and the Imperium in 40k is so ass-backwards they probably don't even know what it is, they just think "Oh that guy has a low sex drive."
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Gert wrote: I'm still waiting for the passage that says the Imperium kills babies with disabilities or who are intersex. I mean I know exactly what is going to happen but still.
I told you where it was found. Do you want a screenshot?
Klinefelter's is not the only form of intersex. One of my close friends was born with male sexual characteristics and ovaries. The fact that you think Klinefelter's is the only form of being intersex is telling to me.
I mean it further normalises fascism within a hobby that already has a problem with normalising fascism. "Oh but Orks are the comedy faction" doesn't hold up because the Orks aren't normalising fascism, the player who made them is.
The thing that people are dancing around is that portraying the senselessly cruel and oppressive Imperium as unironically heroic normalizes fascism in a way that an ork army painted like real-world fascists cannot, because basically everything that orks do is ironic.
Yeah, I want the direct quote from a GW publication that says the Imperium mandates the killing of babies with disabilities or who are intersex. It seems to me you're just applying the term "mutant" to people with disabilities or who are intersex despite knowing that when the Imperium talks about mutation, it means tentacle arms or goat legs.
The way "mutation" is used in 40k is not the scientific sense, but rather in the "abnormal physical phenotype" sense. There's mutants displayed in 40k material who have extra or missing limbs, eyes, whatever.
The relevant quotes (from p. 8 of the Rogue Trader KT book) are as follows:
Rogue Trader wrote:Amongst Humanity in the 41st millenium, mutations are commonplace. While many can be attributed to environmental conditions such as rad-pollution, the most insidious are those caused by the powers of Chaos...
...But for every sanctioned mutant that serves the Imperium ... there are a thousand lesser mutants that are slain outright, and another thousand that dwell hidden in the shadows, rightfully afraid to reveal themselves...
So what we can see here is that the Imperium doesn't distinguish between mutations caused by pollution and those caused by Chaos, and it kills 99.9% of mutants it can. The ones who aren't are mentioned - abhuman soldiers, navigators, psykers, etc.
Mutations caused by environmental toxins can cause things like extra or missing limbs or digits due to interfering with developmental genes, like the infamous case of thalidomide in the 20th century. This is consistent with the way mutations are depicted in 40k, with extra limbs being a common effect of mutation, and nowhere is it said that the Imperium distinguishes between mutation caused by environmental causes or Chaos.
Klinefelter's is not the only form of intersex. One of my close friends was born with male sexual characteristics and ovaries. The fact that you think Klinefelter's is the only form of being intersex is telling to me.
Do you really think I said that Klinefelter's was the only form of intersex characteristics, or are you joking around?
I merely pointed out that authors are often subject to the requirements of their publishers. We have no way of judging the differences in publishing requirements without knowing who the authors in question were, what the books were, and who published them. If they were all from the same publisher, and approved by the same editor, then there would be a crumb of evidence on your inherent gender bias trail. Without that information there is no way of determining whether the writers were creating the characters they wanted to create, the characters they thought would be the most commercially viable, or the characters they were told to create.
But, honestly, this isn't worth the effort of continuing. Clearly you place more importance on the vague and self-admittedly-inconclusive results of a statistically insignificant study than I do. You do you.
Yes, because all the results of the study were statistically insignificant. /s
And I haven't seen any studies that show that women are more likely to engage with fiction that depicts powerful, heroic women. Twlight was a smash success but the main female character was anything but.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Andykp wrote: Smudge has covered all of the points I wanted to make so I will just say that it is painfully clear that you do not any case or argument and are not prepared to even pretend to have a discussion with any honesty at all. From what I can see you basically trolling now, not willing to provide any real constructive argument at all, just saying “nah” and “don’t care”. I do think you should have a good look at yourself though if you have an issue with those receiving death threats and online abuse and no empathy for them but have no issue at all with those giving it out. You are maybe on the wrong side of decency on this one? I would say so.
Smudge was misrepresenting my points, presumably with the goal of attracting mod attention to them. I'm not interesting in engaging with that poster anymore, since they aren't discussing in good faith.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Deadnight wrote: If anything, the Dark Angels have far stronger ties to the idea of being the 'lgbtq themed' army...
It would be unironically great for them to actually engage with that idea in some way, though the hamfisted naming of "Lion El'Johnson" does hamper it a bit. I do prefer consistently referring to him as "The Lion."
Hecaton wrote: I told you where it was found. Do you want a screenshot?
Yes.
Yes we do, because we are currently left to assume that you are projecting your regressive fantasies about real people into an abstract social hellscape while at the same time insisting that aspects which are not written, yet which coincidentally fit a *particular* mold ("Nazi Orks, cool and funny, girl marines literal neo-fascism") has a place, not to mention the weird plastic soldier sex fetishism you insist is a thing for your contras...
Please, evidence any of that bollocks, or just feth off.
Automatically Appended Next Post: To be clear, we do not believe you.
We believe you are arguing in bad faith.
We believe you *must* be either disingenuous or stupid, and we would rather assume the former than the latter.
Hecaton wrote: I told you where it was found. Do you want a screenshot?
Yes.
Yes we do, because we are currently left to assume that you are projecting your regressive fantasies about real people into an abstract social hellscape while at the same time insisting that aspects which are not written, yet which coincidentally fit a *particular* mold ("Nazi Orks, cool and funny, girl marines literal neo-fascism") has a place, not to mention the weird plastic soldier sex fetishism you insist is a thing for your contras...
Please, evidence any of that bollocks, or just feth off.
Automatically Appended Next Post: To be clear, we do not believe you.
We believe you are arguing in bad faith.
We believe you *must* be either disingenuous or stupid, and we would rather assume the former than the latter.
Luckily for me and everyone else, your beliefs are wrong.
None of that says the Imperium kills kids with disabilities or who are intersex. You've projected your personal opinion on something and declared it fact.
GW is very clear about what they consider mutation and the very passages you've just sent show that.
Even then the ACTUAL mutants with tentacle arms and goat legs aren't always hunted down at every opportunity because that takes time and resources the Imperium either doesn't have or doesn't want to spend. It would collectively have to do monthly if not weekly purges on every single planet, starship, and starbase in the Imperium because the mass of humanity is so great that anyone can become mutated at any time.
When dogma comes face to face with reality, even in the Imperium, dogma backs down quite a bit.
I mean it further normalises fascism within a hobby that already has a problem with normalising fascism. "Oh but Orks are the comedy faction" doesn't hold up because the Orks aren't normalising fascism, the player who made them is.
The thing that people are dancing around is that portraying the senselessly cruel and oppressive Imperium as unironically heroic normalizes fascism in a way that an ork army painted like real-world fascists cannot, because basically everything that orks do is ironic.
Yeah, I want the direct quote from a GW publication that says the Imperium mandates the killing of babies with disabilities or who are intersex. It seems to me you're just applying the term "mutant" to people with disabilities or who are intersex despite knowing that when the Imperium talks about mutation, it means tentacle arms or goat legs.
The way "mutation" is used in 40k is not the scientific sense, but rather in the "abnormal physical phenotype" sense. There's mutants displayed in 40k material who have extra or missing limbs, eyes, whatever.
The relevant quotes (from p. 8 of the Rogue Trader KT book) are as follows:
Rogue Trader wrote:Amongst Humanity in the 41st millenium, mutations are commonplace. While many can be attributed to environmental conditions such as rad-pollution, the most insidious are those caused by the powers of Chaos...
...But for every sanctioned mutant that serves the Imperium ... there are a thousand lesser mutants that are slain outright, and another thousand that dwell hidden in the shadows, rightfully afraid to reveal themselves...
So what we can see here is that the Imperium doesn't distinguish between mutations caused by pollution and those caused by Chaos, and it kills 99.9% of mutants it can. The ones who aren't are mentioned - abhuman soldiers, navigators, psykers, etc.
Mutations caused by environmental toxins can cause things like extra or missing limbs or digits due to interfering with developmental genes, like the infamous case of thalidomide in the 20th century. This is consistent with the way mutations are depicted in 40k, with extra limbs being a common effect of mutation, and nowhere is it said that the Imperium distinguishes between mutation caused by environmental causes or Chaos.
Klinefelter's is not the only form of intersex. One of my close friends was born with male sexual characteristics and ovaries. The fact that you think Klinefelter's is the only form of being intersex is telling to me.
Do you really think I said that Klinefelter's was the only form of intersex characteristics, or are you joking around?
I merely pointed out that authors are often subject to the requirements of their publishers. We have no way of judging the differences in publishing requirements without knowing who the authors in question were, what the books were, and who published them. If they were all from the same publisher, and approved by the same editor, then there would be a crumb of evidence on your inherent gender bias trail. Without that information there is no way of determining whether the writers were creating the characters they wanted to create, the characters they thought would be the most commercially viable, or the characters they were told to create.
But, honestly, this isn't worth the effort of continuing. Clearly you place more importance on the vague and self-admittedly-inconclusive results of a statistically insignificant study than I do. You do you.
Yes, because all the results of the study were statistically insignificant. /s
And I haven't seen any studies that show that women are more likely to engage with fiction that depicts powerful, heroic women. Twlight was a smash success but the main female character was anything but.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Andykp wrote: Smudge has covered all of the points I wanted to make so I will just say that it is painfully clear that you do not any case or argument and are not prepared to even pretend to have a discussion with any honesty at all. From what I can see you basically trolling now, not willing to provide any real constructive argument at all, just saying “nah” and “don’t care”. I do think you should have a good look at yourself though if you have an issue with those receiving death threats and online abuse and no empathy for them but have no issue at all with those giving it out. You are maybe on the wrong side of decency on this one? I would say so.
Smudge was misrepresenting my points, presumably with the goal of attracting mod attention to them. I'm not interesting in engaging with that poster anymore, since they aren't discussing in good faith.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Deadnight wrote: If anything, the Dark Angels have far stronger ties to the idea of being the 'lgbtq themed' army...
It would be unironically great for them to actually engage with that idea in some way, though the hamfisted naming of "Lion El'Johnson" does hamper it a bit. I do prefer consistently referring to him as "The Lion."
Smudge was not misrepresenting your words at all. He summed them and your argument up very nicely. It might be tricky to see from your view but he is not the discussing in bad faith. You have done than time and time again.
And those pics of text really do not say what you claim they do. That is not evidence of what you claim. And still you have not answered my question.
Gert wrote: None of that says the Imperium kills kids with disabilities or who are intersex. You've projected your personal opinion on something and declared it fact.
GW is very clear about what they consider mutation and the very passages you've just sent show that.
No they're not.
Lets be clear- Hecaton says plenty things I personally find very objectionable, but he's not exactly wrong here.
With respect Gert, I appreciate what you're saying comes from a good place but you are nitpicking technicalities. It's absolutely the wrong way to win an argument. You're setting hecaton up as a villain and trying to fight everything he says just because he says it. Sone of that is misplaced. There's better things to argue against than standing on a hill saying 'the imperium is not as horrible as you are implying' or 'how dare you say they do bad things to these people!'
Most of this kind of stuff is heavily implied and inferred and left to your imagination rather than described in exacting detail in black and white. Gw paints in broad strokes. Back when I started in third, it was absolutely understood this kind of backwardness and mind numbing horror was a normal Tuesday for the imperium.
Youre talking, frankly about a medieval or dark age world view turned up to 11. Crippled kids were absolutely left out in the cold to freeze in our history. Not unheard of at all.
On mutation, Typically you see things like 'the Imperium has little tolerance for any who deviate from the divine perfection of the baseline Human form in mind or body'.
Mutation is more than just spikes and tentacles. Anything deviating from the baseline Human phenotypic state is technically a mutant. There are degrees of intolerance for sure, but ultimately this is how it is.
Most mutants are purged or pushed to the fringes of society. I have no objections to the notion that the imperium is so horrible that invalids, those with disabilities or those with 'abnormal' genetics will be sent to the pyre. Or if theyre really lucky, turned into a servitor and allowed the opportunity to atone for the sin of their own existence. It's the Imperium. Life is pretty cheap. And utterly horrible.
Regarding mutation and intersex or disabled children:
the writers are quite clearly referring to physical, unnatural mutation - 12 foot high monster people, people with mandibles instead of jaws, or insectoid limbs. They aren't scanning babies to see if they have extra or lacking internal organs. If a person cannot walk, then they aren't about to be purged - though they might end up on the wayside of society begging for scraps, but that's a different thing entirely. A lack of social support is an issue from the imperium being stretched thin and overpopulated, not from their inherent decisions. Someone born disabled in a hive city is getting a shorter shrift of life than one born into a more luxurious planet where their family can afford to look after them.
Regarding the idea that female space marines is a fetish thing, that may be saying more about the person who assumes this than the people they assume it about. The two reasons I have for wanting to see female marines is "There's no reason not to" and "they would look really cool". I don't even play space marines, so have no interest in buying them either way. But to suggest that people only want to see 28mm tall plastic women for sexual reasons? I wonder if perhaps you are either too familiar with the internet, thinking that everything has sexual explanations, or not familiar enough, thinking that 28mm female models in thick, non-form-fitting power armour even comes close to the depravity of humanity.
Regarding the idea that an ork (or any) force themed about historically "evil" faction is one of personal tastes. If I were to model my orks around Wolfenstein, I would not then expect people to claim that I am supporting nazism, any more than if I were playing a WW2 historical game and playing as the Germans. Tabletop wargames are not inherently political - otherwise we can claim that anyone playing ultramarines is supporting the tories because they are blue and popular amongst people with a high disposable income. 40k isn't a political platform. It is important to be able to divorce the serious side of things from the non-serious side of things. It's also worth recalling that we have our own viewpoints on these things, and that these things are not always right. Making a car that is based off the name and shape of the Enola Gay is perhaps considered a cool thing in the west. Now drive that through Japan and see how they see it.
The suitability or properness of representing historic factions, regardless of their actions, is always a matter of perspective.
See the difference between someone with tentacles getting burned and someone with Downs Syndrome getting purged, is that people with tentacles AREN'T REAL.
By Hecaton's logic, the Imperium would also purge people modern society considers LGBTQ+ because they "deviate from the divine perfection of the baseline Human form in mind or body" as you put it.
You can portray the Imperium as a bad place without making people who already suffer stigmatism and difficulty in our society feel even worse about themselves.
THAT is the point I am objecting to here.
The Imperium genocides Xenos? Ok, those Xenos aren't real living people in the society in which 40k exists. No harm done.
The Imperium has a violent and dogmatic religion as the core of its state? Ok, this could be seen as insulting to a religious individual but at the same time, it is clearly intended to be a super extreme outlier and not "normal".
The Imperium purges those with mutations? Ok, GW has made it pretty clear that they consider "mutants" to be like those found in the Morlocks group from Marvel, who are burdened with physical mutations that they can't hide i.e. horns, too many heads, too many limbs, and not people with disabilities such as Downs or ADHD or those who are trans/intersex.
I am sorry but are we comparing sexes or gender to mutations? If yes, why?
Is this the argument? That Female Space Marine will be considered mutants?
Just because,you know, the same should apply to technology. To be precise, innovation in technology (AI, but even standard maintenance) is dreaded and manage attentively as much (if not more) of the physical corruption.
So, how does fare your Imperium with new vehicles, new weapons, new equipment that come endlessly any six months?
(There are a lot of other inconsistencies, like how Psyker are variably tolerated rather than purged).
As usual for any lore-related explanation, it doesn't stand against any level of scrutiny. I prefer to consider it a mediocre world building, not a restrictive guideline.
Gert wrote: See the difference between someone with tentacles getting burned and someone with Downs Syndrome getting purged, is that people with tentacles AREN'T REAL.
By Hecaton's logic, the Imperium would also purge people modern society considers LGBTQ+ because they "deviate from the divine perfection of the baseline Human form in mind or body" as you put it.
You can portray the Imperium as a bad place without making people who already suffer stigmatism and difficulty in our society feel even worse about themselves.
THAT is the point I am objecting to here.
Should we also remove any reference to religion and gods, or the Emperors attempt to stamp out religion and the destruction of churches in the pre-heresy lore such as “the last church” too?
The whole point of the setting is how insanely awful the imperium is, and how any number of normal things in reality would get you summarily executed or worse in the dystopia of 40K.
Should we also remove any reference to religion and gods, or the Emperors attempt to stamp out religion and the destruction of churches in the pre-heresy lore such as “the last church” too?
The whole point of the setting is how insanely awful the imperium is, and how any number of normal things in reality would get you summarily executed or worse in the dystopia of 40K.
Are any of the modern-day religions supplanted by one another in 40k? No, it's a made-up religion that isn't real that makes no claims that it is tied to any one of the modern-day religions. And just so we're clear on this, there are many subsets of modern-day religions that specifically claim to be the only true religion and all others are false.
The Emperor was a bad dude and His militant atheism is a part of that. I am not a religious person but I'm not launching a crusade to exterminate all the religious people in the world.
And for the thousandth time in this cursed nightmare of a thread, YOU CAN SHOW THAT THE IMPERIUM IS BAD WITHOUT MAKING REAL PEOPLE FEEL BAD.
Just so we're 100% clear on the hypocrisy of the Imperium BTW, Space Marines are mutants, Ogryns are mutants, Ratlings are mutants, every shade of Psyker under the stars is a mutant and every single one is not only tolerated but seen as a vital part of the Imperium. Removed - BrookM
Should we also remove any reference to religion and gods, or the Emperors attempt to stamp out religion and the destruction of churches in the pre-heresy lore such as “the last church” too?
The whole point of the setting is how insanely awful the imperium is, and how any number of normal things in reality would get you summarily executed or worse in the dystopia of 40K.
Are any of the modern-day religions supplanted by one another in 40k? No, it's a made-up religion that isn't real that makes no claims that it is tied to any one of the modern-day religions. And just so we're clear on this, there are many subsets of modern-day religions that specifically claim to be the only true religion and all others are false.
The Emperor was a bad dude and His militant atheism is a part of that. I am not a religious person but I'm not launching a crusade to exterminate all the religious people in the world.
And for the thousandth time in this cursed nightmare of a thread, YOU CAN SHOW THAT THE IMPERIUM IS BAD WITHOUT MAKING REAL PEOPLE FEEL BAD.
I think the caps lock is a bit unnecessary, I was only trying to engage in the conversation. Sorry you feel bad.
My point is I don’t think that just because something is fictional it should flinch away from painful subjects. I find that Dystopian fiction works best when it makes a point, when it says something and when it hold a mirror up to society. 40K started off by holding a funhouse mirror up to Thatcher’s Britain and political situation on the late 1980s, for it to stay relevant it needs to reflect modern times. To do that sometimes involves uncomfortable ideas. That’s the point. By saying the dystopia of 40K would to horrific things to innocents who are persecuted in reality, it is commenting on those real issues. It is saying “look at this terrible vision of humanity! It’s not quite so far removed from reality as you might like to think. These awful things are wrong, we’d best change our ways lest this is where we end up.”
So again, I’m sorry if you feel bad, but that’s sort of the point.
There is a distinct difference between making fun of Margaret Thatcher and telling an intersex person they would be purged because they are a mutant.
As for the caps lock, I'm sick of people making stupid arguments based on no version of reality but their own. Maybe next time actually read some of the conversation before jumping in at the very end.
Gert wrote: See the difference between someone with tentacles getting burned and someone with Downs Syndrome getting purged, is that people with tentacles AREN'T REAL.
By Hecaton's logic, the Imperium would also purge people modern society considers LGBTQ+ because they "deviate from the divine perfection of the baseline Human form in mind or body" as you put it.
You can portray the Imperium as a bad place without making people who already suffer stigmatism and difficulty in our society feel even worse about themselves.
THAT is the point I am objecting to here.
Should we also remove any reference to religion and gods, or the Emperors attempt to stamp out religion and the destruction of churches in the pre-heresy lore such as “the last church” too?
The whole point of the setting is how insanely awful the imperium is, and how any number of normal things in reality would get you summarily executed or worse in the dystopia of 40K.
They do.
That's exactly why.
The head writers at games workshop are not interested in placing politics into 40k, and portraying the imperium wiping out real-world religions, physical variations of humanity, or currently-recognized human races is placing politics into 40k precisely because a particular small group of folks is extremely interested in seeing the canon include those types of things.
That's the reason why the examples listed of what the humans in 40k view as 'mutations' is limited to stuff like mandibles, tentacles, and 12 foot hulks.
You may feel free to headcanon the imperium rounding up anyone with an intersex population and shooting them in the head if you want to, but it is precisely as officially recognized canon as the existence of female space marines.
And you wouldnt' want that, would you? Imagining a fictional imperium systematically purging people perceived as genetically aberrant is one thing, but open the door to such woke nonsense as female marines would be neo-fascism.
Should we also remove any reference to religion and gods, or the Emperors attempt to stamp out religion and the destruction of churches in the pre-heresy lore such as “the last church” too?
The whole point of the setting is how insanely awful the imperium is, and how any number of normal things in reality would get you summarily executed or worse in the dystopia of 40K.
Are any of the modern-day religions supplanted by one another in 40k? No, it's a made-up religion that isn't real that makes no claims that it is tied to any one of the modern-day religions. And just so we're clear on this, there are many subsets of modern-day religions that specifically claim to be the only true religion and all others are false.
The Emperor was a bad dude and His militant atheism is a part of that. I am not a religious person but I'm not launching a crusade to exterminate all the religious people in the world.
And for the thousandth time in this cursed nightmare of a thread, YOU CAN SHOW THAT THE IMPERIUM IS BAD WITHOUT MAKING REAL PEOPLE FEEL BAD.
Just so we're 100% clear on the hypocrisy of the Imperium BTW, Space Marines are mutants, Ogryns are mutants, Ratlings are mutants, every shade of Psyker under the stars is a mutant and every single one is not only tolerated but seen as a vital part of the Imperium. Removed - BrookM
Walk that back. Seriously not cool.
Ogryns and ratlings are abhumans and fall under a different category (genetically stable). Space Marines are made of the emperors own genetics, they are His sons (and His daughters if we are going there), questioning them is questioning the Emperor himself. Navigators in some ways don't count; they were deliberately engineered during the dark age of technology and they are hated and feared as much as anythimg else. In any case their existance hase deliberate dispensation from the Emperor himself. Psykers are absolutely not tolerated - as a point of fact, they're incredibly dangerous, most are rightly killed on sight or fed to the Emperor. It's only the rarest few that are kept alive and even then, they're 'used', with any number iof safeguards, failsafes and laspistold to their heads,and theyre distrusted as a matter of course.
If we're banning things because their inclusion people might feel bad, there's a hell of a lot of things to be scrubbed out of 40k.
Yeah, you aren't getting what I'm saying here chief.
Hecaton made an unfounded statement that has since been shown to be untrue and only true within their headcanon. Other people have decided that instead of saying "maybe you shouldn't make up nonsense", they jumped right on in to support a completely untrue statement.
I'm objecting to this untrue statement on the grounds of:
A - It's not true.
B - It can cause actual real harm to real people who already have to deal with loads of persecution anyway.
If you want to headcanon that the Imperium kills babies with disabilities, that is up to you just don't frame it as "official canon" then get mad because everyone, including the source you provided, says you're wrong.
Gert wrote: There is a distinct difference between making fun of Margaret Thatcher and telling an intersex person they would be purged because they are a mutant.
As for the caps lock, I'm sick of people making stupid arguments based on no version of reality but their own. Maybe next time actually read some of the conversation before jumping in at the very end.
The aggressive tone is unnecessary. As for reading and jumping in, I did read what came before. I only commented now because I felt I had something to add to the conversation.
And on the subject of mutants and mutations, they aren’t dirty words. There’s nothing wrong with having a mutation, whether that mutation causes webbed toes, blue eyes, Down’s syndrome or any other generic abnormality.
I don’t know you and your background just as much as you don’t know me or mine, so let’s not make assumptions?
I personally don’t have an issue with the horror-state of the 41st millennium persecuting innocents any more than I do with Brave New World and its dystopia or The Left Hand of Darkness commenting on gender.
Gert wrote: See the difference between someone with tentacles getting burned and someone with Downs Syndrome getting purged, is that people with tentacles AREN'T REAL.
By Hecaton's logic, the Imperium would also purge people modern society considers LGBTQ+ because they "deviate from the divine perfection of the baseline Human form in mind or body" as you put it.
You can portray the Imperium as a bad place without making people who already suffer stigmatism and difficulty in our society feel even worse about themselves.
THAT is the point I am objecting to here.
Should we also remove any reference to religion and gods, or the Emperors attempt to stamp out religion and the destruction of churches in the pre-heresy lore such as “the last church” too?
The whole point of the setting is how insanely awful the imperium is, and how any number of normal things in reality would get you summarily executed or worse in the dystopia of 40K.
They do.
That's exactly why.
The head writers at games workshop are not interested in placing politics into 40k, and portraying the imperium wiping out real-world religions, physical variations of humanity, or currently-recognized human races is placing politics into 40k precisely because a particular small group of folks is extremely interested in seeing the canon include those types of things.
That's the reason why the examples listed of what the humans in 40k view as 'mutations' is limited to stuff like mandibles, tentacles, and 12 foot hulks.
You may feel free to headcanon the imperium rounding up anyone with an intersex population and shooting them in the head if you want to, but it is precisely as officially recognized canon as the existence of female space marines.
And you wouldnt' want that, would you? Imagining a fictional imperium systematically purging people perceived as genetically aberrant is one thing, but open the door to such woke nonsense as female marines would be neo-fascism.
I assume you are addressing me since you quoted my post. FWIW, I am in favour of introducing female space marines, and said as much earlier in this thread, so I think you may have me mixed up with someone else.
The aggressive tone is unnecessary. As for reading and jumping in, I did read what came before. I only commented now because I felt I had something to add to the conversation.
And on the subject of mutants and mutations, they aren’t dirty words. There’s nothing wrong with having a mutation, whether that mutation causes webbed toes, blue eyes, Down’s syndrome or any other generic abnormality.
I don’t know you and your background just as much as you don’t know me or mine, so let’s not make assumptions?
I personally don’t have an issue with the horror-state of the 41st millennium persecuting innocents any more than I do with Brave New World and its dystopia or The Left Hand of Darkness commenting on gender.
Ok, I apologise for causing distress.
As for your point about mutants, firstly within the context of the Imperium being a mutant is a bad thing, and secondly, have you read or watched any X-Men media? That should give you a really good understanding of how the term is used by people. It doesn't matter if the mutants and their select allies see themselves as part of the wider humanity, enough people hate and fear them to make them "the baddies".
Do you understand how you can make something bleak and dark without also making it hostile to people who already have to deal with prejudice and discrimination IRL? 40k can be dark because humanity is enslaved to a vile regime that doesn't care who lives or dies, why add transphobia into the mix?
Justifying hatred with "but its grimdark" is a sad excuse and it lessens the hobby for everyone involved.
I am particularly baffled by the double standard for which in the 40k universe the genetic science is both like our own (when defining mutants, or what is a xeno) and at the same time it does work by unknowable criteria (about the possibility of a female space marine: then it b came the fantasy version of itself).
for it, well 
