So, the Imperial Knights codex is out. And in it, there are several examples of female Imperial Knights. Up until this point, they were rare to the point that the only female Knight we had in the fluff was masquerading as a man.
The Imperial Knight from DoW III was also operated by a high ranking female pilot.
There really is no reason not have any sufficiently skilled pilot operate a knight. IG drafts both men and women, why shouldn't the households do the same?
I'll be annoyed if they ever do female marines because the male/masculine aesthetic is so important for them. Having marines without it would be lame, and having female marines with it would be silly. But I've got no objections to females in any other role, even if its not super realistic. Pilots makes more sense then infantry, but even that doesn't particularly bother me.
I don't want female marines because it's been such a big part of the lore the whole time, and space marines are pretty much the biggest part of 40k, at least on the surface. Would I be happy with women in literally any other role? Absolutely. The lore on knights and titans is considerably lesser than that of marines. I wasn't even aware that the bonding rituals may have prevented women being pilots.
casvalremdeikun wrote: Let me make myself clear, I like the change. But up until this point, there were less than a handful of female knights. I find it refreshing.
Thing is a lot of the stuff we put on the table is limited in number of even unique. Tabletop games are not your rank and file battle army; they are basically elite armies often fighting key battles. Heros of galactic importance come down to do battle.
So even if there's only a couple of female knight pilots its makes sense that they would appear on players battlefields because, lets face it, you've got a Primaris down there fighting the Swarmlord with a Malanthrope in the background. That's already 3 totally individual creatures in the whole galaxy in the same battlefield; that you've also got one of the elite knights pilotted by a female is, well, accepted.
Honestly I wish we could go back a few years to say when Sisters of Battle first game out and there wasn't a huge argument about women in a 40K game as models. It was "ooh cool I want those!". One of the downsides of the net is that it seems to spread and generate its own misery quite readily and far more so than excitement and enjoyment (esp in the very active adult population).
No female knight pilots was an odd thing they put in for no apparent reason in the initial release then promptly had a female pilot in the novel that came out with it
The reasons given intially were purely cultural and so would at most be limited to specific Knight worlds / Households.
In particular Mechanicus aligned households should just be picking the bes candidate as they really don;t care about gender.
Up until this point, they were rare to the point that the only female Knight we had in the fluff was masquerading as a man
Nope - Fall of Cadia supplement at end of 7th Ed had Baroness Vardus leading her household of House Raven into battle on that planet- that was in the GW main source books for the campaign. Andy Clark's novels have plenty of female pilots
casvalremdeikun wrote: Let me make myself clear, I like the change. But up until this point, there were less than a handful of female knights. I find it refreshing.
Ever since the lancer came out and I painted it, mine has been piloted by a woman in my fluff... so... meh?
If your saying “sweet, they have finally mentioned something that woman pilot knights, even though that’s always been the case... yay”
Then I agree with you, I’ve always been of the mind that just because sometbkng isn’t explicitly mentioned, doesn’t mean it’s not there and female knights come under this category for me, it’s bloody stupid to think and say that only men would be pilots when we have female planetary governors etc. Etc.
Well done to GW for mentioning the obvious, next time can they do it from the start though eh?
Reading Kingsblade I assumed that it was a local Knight House attitude against female 'pilots' as there were several in other books. It goes back to 30k as well - House Vyridion was led by a Baroness in Master of Mankind, for example.
my over all guess is they wanted to go with a GOT vibe initally, there was some blow back as people didn't much care for that so it was dropped.
one can do the whole knightly thing without having females be inelligable. Battletech's done the "big stompy robots in a feudal setting" thing sine day 1, and one of their most famous mechwarriors was the infamous Natasha Kerensky.
BrianDavion wrote: my over all guess is they wanted to go with a GOT vibe initally, there was some blow back as people didn't much care for that so it was dropped.
one can do the whole knightly thing without having females be inelligable. Battletech's done the "big stompy robots in a feudal setting" thing sine day 1, and one of their most famous mechwarriors was the infamous Natasha Kerensky.
Ah Natasha kerensky, probably one of us THE Most bad ass character in battletech... plus... she drove a warhammer too so that’s also awesome.
Formosa wrote: she drove a warhammer too so that’s also awesome.
No, Warhammers are Warhammers, Awesomes are Awesome. Warhammers are not Awesome. There is a whole PPC (and a few tons and secondary guns) difference between them.
But pedantic jokes aside, you are absolutely correct.
On topic, I’m glad to see gender equality where it should be. For the most part the IoM doesn’t care about your plumbing or the color of your skin, as long as you can do your job. That said, it’s a big place and far from homogenous. I wasn’t aware that there was gender bias written into the old Knight fluff. Seems a little unnecessary and silly. It’s one thing for marines, where genetic manipulation is core to their being, so being a boy’s only club makes some sense. But for the squishy bit in a giant stompy robot, less so.
If I'm honest I never gave a moments thought to whoever is riding around in the big stompy robots, much like I never gave a thought to the people driving the rhino or the Sister playing the exorcist cannon.
I think the sex of a pilot is irrelevant. What concerns me is the character itself. If a character is well designed, interesting, has a good backstory, or is charismatic and entertaining...the race/sex/etc. is of no concern. However, by the same token don't approach me with "Oh, isn't this cool...this character is a woman, tada!" kind of thing.
Maréchal des Logis Walter wrote: I couldn't care less about women in knights, mostly since you literally don't see them. If they want to put some, why not, but it's not important.
Actually the one thing that would be cool would be female IG infantry as far as I'm concerned. Others- I don't care.
Thankfully Victoria Miniatures can scratch that itch, she has an amazing line of female guardsman from different regiments. Its definitely worth the price!
As for the knights, its a great change, they even had a woman in the Knight commercial they made!
casvalremdeikun wrote: So, the Imperial Knights codex is out. And in it, there are several examples of female Imperial Knights. Up until this point, they were rare to the point that the only female Knight we had in the fluff was masquerading as a man.
What are your thoughts on this?
The Knight in Dawn of War is female, and open. There are plenty of others. I think remember hearing about at least one other in a book.
casvalremdeikun wrote: So, the Imperial Knights codex is out. And in it, there are several examples of female Imperial Knights. Up until this point, they were rare to the point that the only female Knight we had in the fluff was masquerading as a man.
What are your thoughts on this?
Machines have gender now? Shouldn't it be Imperial Knight Pilot?
Not a knight, but I have a Rhino named "Angel's" with a Pin-Up lady on a door. In my fluff, the Machine Spirit is a female, very focused on taking her bois in blue to the 12" range for rapid-fire. She's also very good at auto-repairing
casvalremdeikun wrote: So, the Imperial Knights codex is out. And in it, there are several examples of female Imperial Knights. Up until this point, they were rare to the point that the only female Knight we had in the fluff was masquerading as a man.
What are your thoughts on this?
Machines have gender now? Shouldn't it be Imperial Knight Pilot?
Important to make that distinction before Doc Thunder finds this thread and starts rolling two giant balls of greenstuff for his Dominus.
casvalremdeikun wrote: So, the Imperial Knights codex is out. And in it, there are several examples of female Imperial Knights. Up until this point, they were rare to the point that the only female Knight we had in the fluff was masquerading as a man.
What are your thoughts on this?
Machines have gender now? Shouldn't it be Imperial Knight Pilot?
Important to make that distinction before Doc Thunder finds this thread and starts rolling two giant balls of greenstuff for his Dominus.
To denote a boy Dominus or a girl Dominus? It can go either way
casvalremdeikun wrote: So, the Imperial Knights codex is out. And in it, there are several examples of female Imperial Knights. Up until this point, they were rare to the point that the only female Knight we had in the fluff was masquerading as a man.
What are your thoughts on this?
Machines have gender now? Shouldn't it be Imperial Knight Pilot?
Important to make that distinction before Doc Thunder finds this thread and starts rolling two giant balls of greenstuff for his Dominus.
To denote a boy Dominus or a girl Dominus? It can go either way
drbored wrote: I like it. This broadening of representation is fantastic, in my mind.
Is it a Broadening though? Did the old book say they were all men or something?
I kinda just assumed they were always there due to games and novels etc.
It did say that in inital codex and then as I said earlier they introduced a female pilot in the companion novel .
Unlike the Astartes or Sororitas its not a branch of the Imperium that there is any reason to be completley mono gender (although some cultures / households might be) so its been retconned to have both represented in the main fluff of the codex's as well as the novels - as its been with Guard (and Stormcast).
drbored wrote: I like it. This broadening of representation is fantastic, in my mind.
Is it a Broadening though? Did the old book say they were all men or something?
I kinda just assumed they were always there due to games and novels etc.
It did say that in inital codex and then as I said earlier they introduced a female pilot in the companion novel .
Unlike the Astartes or Sororitas its not a branch of the Imperium that there is any reason to be completley mono gender (although some cultures / households might be) so its been retconned to have both represented in the main fluff of the codex's as well as the novels - as its been with Guard (and Stormcast).
Jolly good thing too
Ah so the codex explicitly said knight pilots could only be men before and now it doesn’t, where as the novels and games always showed the mix, gotcha
My Knight Gallant is going to be called Black Betty with 2 similarly painted Armiger Helverins, the former will be piloted by a woman, I mean, it only makes sense to me.
generalchaos34 wrote: Thankfully Victoria Miniatures can scratch that itch, she has an amazing line of female guardsman from different regiments. Its definitely worth the price!
If you can though, go for the guns that go with arms attached. The universal arms + separate guns take a LOT of work to assemble right .
A real non-issue in my eyes since you never see the pilots. It's a bit like mentioning that there are female baneblade crew members. Ok? So what? Tbh it hadn't been something I'd considered, given the whole medieval nobility angle they were taking.
Wha?! Is that really a black man for you? You know theres a great range of colours between whites and blacks, don't you?
Sorry but that just pisses me off, today you are white or black, when that guy is more brown than anything. Many people here would think hes just tanned, I have "white" friends that are naturally darker than him. That obsesion with skin colour, using the label black in anybody without a white-milk skin is just infuriating. So typical of people at the north of the Pyrenees...
Wha?! Is that really a black man for you? You know theres a great range of colours between whites and blacks, don't you?
Sorry but that just pisses me off, today you are white or black, when that guy is more brown than anything. Many people here would think hes just tanned, I have "white" friends that are naturally darker than him. That obsesion with skin colour, using the label black in anybody without a white-milk skin is just infuriating. So typical of people at the north of the Pyrenees...
Pretty sure what you did is known as virtue signaling.
Wha?! Is that really a black man for you? You know theres a great range of colours between whites and blacks, don't you?
Sorry but that just pisses me off, today you are white or black, when that guy is more brown than anything. Many people here would think hes just tanned, I have "white" friends that are naturally darker than him. That obsesion with skin colour, using the label black in anybody without a white-milk skin is just infuriating. So typical of people at the north of the Pyrenees...
Pretty sure what you did is known as virtue signaling.
SJ
It wasn't intended as that, at this point I'm just pretty sick of people calling all people with a slighly tanned/darker/brown skin tone "black". You can't go to Morocco or Lebanon or Egipt and start calling them blacks. As I said, I have seen people from Spain darker than that guy, or at least as dark, and they are all considered "white". Is very typical for people from central or northern europe to do that.
But this is offtopic, so I'll stop here. Sorry.
Wha?! Is that really a black man for you? You know theres a great range of colours between whites and blacks, don't you?
Sorry but that just pisses me off, today you are white or black, when that guy is more brown than anything. Many people here would think hes just tanned, I have "white" friends that are naturally darker than him. That obsesion with skin colour, using the label black in anybody without a white-milk skin is just infuriating. So typical of people at the north of the Pyrenees...
Yeah, he's not black. A little tan, but not black.
CREEEEEEEEED wrote: A real non-issue in my eyes since you never see the pilots. It's a bit like mentioning that there are female baneblade crew members. Ok? So what? Tbh it hadn't been something I'd considered, given the whole medieval nobility angle they were taking.
Well they are now making pilot models - well one so far but FW may make more
Mr Morden wrote: It did say that in inital codex and then as I said earlier they introduced a female pilot in the companion novel .
I don't remember it saying that - would you happen to remember the page (in the Codex)?
The very first thin Codex - which went much much more into the society of the Knight Worlds - page 8
When he is old enough, a son of the household who is designated to become a Noble is fitted with the sacred neural sockets
page 16
All Nobles have a high born consort, it being considered vital that the Noble has sons to inherit their name and titles and daughters to marry as consorts to marry as consorts.....
It was quite an interesting read and as a counterpoint they talk about the power and influence of the consorts, I do however like that its now an noble scion of a house, so it will depend on the son or daughter - if they are worthy.
I've only skimmed through the so far but from what I can see they don't really make it a huge deal whether the pilot is male or female. They just simply refer to the pilots accolades as him or her and even then, it doesn't really matter too much. It's inclusion without making it a thing if that makes sense and I kinda like that.
CREEEEEEEEED wrote:But the lack of hate in this thread is clearly not enough to stop some budding virtue signallers.
You mean stuff like this, right?
Phobosftw wrote:As long as it isn`t part of some forced, poorly written SJW political propaganda, it`s all good..
How is this virtue signaling again?
The SJW virus is REAL
THEY DESTROYED STAR WARS, the comics industry has been hit hard, we got gamergate, and let`s not forget the state of western universities atm, oh also; CANADA!
JohnnyHell wrote: Came in expecting misogyny. Found people discussing what to call different “shades” of people. Jeez, guys.
This is a wargaming forum where one paints the miniatures. How else would one discuss the different color palettes, if one didn't have words for different shades?
phillv85 wrote: It makes sense that there are women just as capable as men at piloting a knight.
Allegedly the ritual of bonding prevented women from becoming Imperial Knight pilots. Glad to see that was walked back.
Now, what I REALLY want is another pilot like Sir Hekhtor, only it is a woman instead.
The great thing about the IoM is its aversion to reason and sticking to dogma from a long dead age, maybe a high ranking Tech-Priest crowbarred the 'no gurls' idea post-HH and everyone just went along with it, well besides isolated worlds and the actual machines who didnt give a fig regarding the configuration of their pilots
phillv85 wrote: It makes sense that there are women just as capable as men at piloting a knight.
Allegedly the ritual of bonding prevented women from becoming Imperial Knight pilots. Glad to see that was walked back.
Now, what I REALLY want is another pilot like Sir Hekhtor, only it is a woman instead.
The great thing about the IoM is its aversion to reason and sticking to dogma from a long dead age, maybe a high ranking Tech-Priest crowbarred the 'no gurls' idea post-HH and everyone just went along with it, well besides isolated worlds and the actual machines who didnt give a fig regarding the configuration of their pilots
It did seem to be cultural rather than anything else.
It simply is a cultural thing. Backwards and Feral worlds mostly have the men fighting for the same reason humanity on Earth up to even the present day does, you need more women than men to keep the population stable. Men are, for lack of a better word, more disposable than women are. It's a horrible reality and I hate that it is true, but the truth hurts. With the scales of the Imperium, most "doctrine" worlds simply have no reason to hold onto that anymore.
BaconCatBug wrote: It simply is a cultural thing. Backwards and Feral worlds mostly have the men fighting for the same reason humanity on Earth up to even the present day does, you need more women than men to keep the population stable. Men are, for lack of a better word, more disposable than women are. It's a horrible reality and I hate that it is true, but the truth hurts. With the scales of the Imperium, most "doctrine" worlds simply have no reason to hold onto that anymore.
Agreed to a certain extent - although Nobilitiy and and does have variable requirements - also we know that the Imperium has a huge variety of social structures, population compositions and downright oddities. I think if the original had just said "most worlds or many worlds" it would have been fine.
Also at that time there did seem to be an aversion to women being mentioned in the non BL fluff even when appropriate - thats gone so all good.
BaconCatBug wrote: My hypothesis on the lack of women in the past is best summed up the the Galbrush Paradox.
?
Donlt kniw what that is.
Top result in Google mate. The gist of it is that you can give a male character traits, but if you give a female character the exact same traits, you risk a backlash from a certain vocal clique. Thus, to avoid the backlash all together, you don't bother including female characters.
Another great example came from the Altered Carbon TV adaptation. They changed one scene from a woman being tortured to a man being tortured because, to quote the showrunner, "It’s going to turn into some torture porn thing, and I wasn’t comfortable with that." Because males are socially considered to be worth less than women.
So to wrap it up, there was nothing stopping you having female knight pilots in the past, GW has included official Female Knight pilots in the past, this is a non-issue.
BaconCatBug wrote: My hypothesis on the lack of women in the past is best summed up the the Galbrush Paradox.
?
Donlt kniw what that is.
Top result in Google mate. The gist of it is that you can give a male character negative traits, but if you give a female character the exact same negative traits, you risk a backlash from a certain vocal clique. Thus, to avoid the backlash all together, you don't bother including female characters.
Ahh I see - wierd - I see it that if you don't give female characters negative traits thats as bad as no positive traits
CREEEEEEEEED wrote: A real non-issue in my eyes since you never see the pilots. It's a bit like mentioning that there are female baneblade crew members. Ok? So what? Tbh it hadn't been something I'd considered, given the whole medieval nobility angle they were taking.
Well they are now making pilot models - well one so far but FW may make more
Mr Morden wrote: It did say that in inital codex and then as I said earlier they introduced a female pilot in the companion novel .
I don't remember it saying that - would you happen to remember the page (in the Codex)?
The very first thin Codex - which went much much more into the society of the Knight Worlds - page 8
When he is old enough, a son of the household who is designated to become a Noble is fitted with the sacred neural sockets
page 16
All Nobles have a high born consort, it being considered vital that the Noble has sons to inherit their name and titles and daughters to marry as consorts to marry as consorts.....
It was quite an interesting read and as a counterpoint they talk about the power and influence of the consorts, I do however like that its now an noble scion of a house, so it will depend on the son or daughter - if they are worthy.
I don't think it was intentional, but in the early days some of the alien codex seemed to be written from the imperial view. Even imperial codex where scribed from a narrow perspective. When a change was made it could be written off as a misunderstanding or intentional misinformation. Reading the 3rd ed imperial guard codex you could get the impression that there were no female guard members, but for two woman in the last chancers and two regiments with woman represented by artwork in the list of regiments.
JohnnyHell wrote: Came in expecting misogyny. Found people discussing what to call different “shades” of people. Jeez, guys.
Gatekeeping what skin colour qualifies as a PoC is important. Otherwise how will we know when the hobby is sufficiently diverse?
Take that gak elsewhere dude
Let’s not let this thread degenerate into yet another alt right and SJW off please
I have to explain myself. What I said is not because some alt right/SWJ crap, virtue signaling or gatekeeping or whatever. I just had an injustified burst, motivated by the tiresome trend of people from northern/central europe calling black anybody that is a little darker than themselves.
I know not everybody is like that, and probably the original poster had the best of the intentions with his post. I also know if you aren't from mediterranean countries you probably wouldn't know what I'm talking about. Or a country that for many people is Mexico 2.
But I apologize nonetheless, I shouldn't have said what I said.
phillv85 wrote: It makes sense that there are women just as capable as men at piloting a knight.
Allegedly the ritual of bonding prevented women from becoming Imperial Knight pilots. Glad to see that was walked back.
Now, what I REALLY want is another pilot like Sir Hekhtor, only it is a woman instead.
The great thing about the IoM is its aversion to reason and sticking to dogma from a long dead age, maybe a high ranking Tech-Priest crowbarred the 'no gurls' idea post-HH and everyone just went along with it, well besides isolated worlds and the actual machines who didnt give a fig regarding the configuration of their pilots
Or maybe the tech priests knew that women have a worse hand to eye coordination, and slower reaction times to movment then man. Not to mention the physical strain a knights body has to undergo, specially in combat situation. A woman lighter skeleton would mean they take more internal damage when the knight is hit, comparing to a man.
I don't think the tech priests whink in terms of sjw or not, seems like a dead philosophy in the w40k world.
I’ve gotten the impression after ready Kingsward that Mechanicus aligned Houses tend to buck tradition and ignore gender for most things, putting the best person for the job in the job regardless of gender with the only exception being the High King.
On the other hand, we see Imperial Knight Households are much more traditional, and view female pilots as an aberration, i.e., not unheard of but definitely not the excepted standard. However, Knight Consorts of Imperial Houses seem to wield vastly more power than the Mechanicum House equivalent.
SJ
PS - also, Kingsward read more like a Battletech novel with demons than it did a 40k novel, while Knights of the Imperium read like a hard 40k novel.
Are males and females in w40k breed the same way clan warriors are? As in do they have changed bone and muscle structure when comparing to a normal human/
phillv85 wrote: It makes sense that there are women just as capable as men at piloting a knight.
Allegedly the ritual of bonding prevented women from becoming Imperial Knight pilots. Glad to see that was walked back.
Now, what I REALLY want is another pilot like Sir Hekhtor, only it is a woman instead.
The great thing about the IoM is its aversion to reason and sticking to dogma from a long dead age, maybe a high ranking Tech-Priest crowbarred the 'no gurls' idea post-HH and everyone just went along with it, well besides isolated worlds and the actual machines who didnt give a fig regarding the configuration of their pilots
Or maybe the tech priests knew that women have a worse hand to eye coordination, and slower reaction times to movment then man. Not to mention the physical strain a knights body has to undergo, specially in combat situation. A woman lighter skeleton would mean they take more internal damage when the knight is hit, comparing to a man.
I don't think the tech priests whink in terms of sjw or not, seems like a dead philosophy in the w40k world.
Imagine, if you will, a really loud, visceral OOF sound. That's what's in my head. I don't detract what I said earlier about Mr early bird, but this is quite oof level stuff.
jeffersonian000 wrote: I’ve gotten the impression after ready Kingsward that Mechanicus aligned Houses tend to buck tradition and ignore gender for most things, putting the best person for the job in the job regardless of gender with the only exception being the High King.
On the other hand, we see Imperial Knight Households are much more traditional, and view female pilots as an aberration, i.e., not unheard of but definitely not the excepted standard. However, Knight Consorts of Imperial Houses seem to wield vastly more power than the Mechanicum House equivalent.
SJ
PS - also, Kingsward read more like a Battletech novel with demons than it did a 40k novel, while Knights of the Imperium read like a hard 40k novel.
Andy Clarks Knight novels are very BattleTech with a 40K overlay - probably why I really enjoyed them.
Karol wrote: Are males and females in w40k breed the same way clan warriors are? As in do they have changed bone and muscle structure when comparing to a normal human/
Depends on which planet. A hive world? Probably not. A Forge world? Probably so.
Karol wrote: Are males and females in w40k breed the same way clan warriors are? As in do they have changed bone and muscle structure when comparing to a normal human/
Not that I've ever read.
One of the main reasons the military is hesitant to have female combat soldiers now is not sexism but biology.
A soldier has to carry up to 60 lbs (30kg) in their back packs, add to that body armour and weapon that's a fair weight for a man, women however due to the shape of their hips can suffer long term damage to their knees from carrying that kind of weight over protracted periods and there's no good answer how to fix the issue.
Maybe the guard has much lighter backpacks? Lifespan of a trooper isn't that high to begin with perhaps they are just issued the bare minimum and sent off to die.
For a knight pilot it wouldn't matter, same with tank crew and fighters it just does not require the same muscle mass and difference in skeletal structure is also irrelevant.
Imagine, if you will, a really loud, visceral OOF sound. That's what's in my head. I don't detract what I said earlier about Mr early bird, but this is quite oof level stuff.
me<=low level english. What is an oof?
One of the main reasons the military is hesitant to have female combat soldiers now is not sexism but biology.
Yeah I thought it was based on something like todays army/navy stuff. Females deal with concussions. So if something is going to be slamed in to with anti tank projectile weapons, a male pilot, if he has around the same bone density and muscle mass as todays man, would be a better option. I thought that they maybe changed the pilots, considering they are puting the same neural links as marines and titan pilots have. And clan female pilots are kind of that and double that for elementals. I don't think that muscle mass is unimportant. Muscles, as cruel as it may sound, help people survive blast that don't outright kill them or sever arteries. The more you have the lower the chance that imporant stuff under the muscles gets reaped. It is also why in combat situations female soldiers suffer a lot more from EXP then male soldiers.
A soldier has to carry up to 60 lbs (30kg) in their back packs, add to that body armour and weapon that's a fair weight for a man, women however due to the shape of their hips can suffer long term damage to their knees from carrying that kind of weight over protracted periods and there's no good answer how to fix the issue.
yeah we something like military classes post school, and there was a fair number of girls in them, until we started to run with backpacks. We weren't running with 30kg, but everyone had water, food etc. Few girls ever finished those runs, all that did had their stuff carried by the instructors or us.
I am sure a female Knight pilot will have perfectly adequate muscle mass for the purposes withstanding blasts. These are not average people, these are people who have trained for this from the childhood and possibly enhanced cybernetically. Just like the SoB, the Knight pilots would be comparable to world class athletes.
Primark G wrote: In Master of Mankind the leader of a household is a young woman and I think it’s cool.
I have no problem with it being a woman, but being young is silly... Unless everyone else was murdered or something. 40k has rejuvination proceedures, a matriarch would hold a family for AGES.
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Crimson wrote: I am sure a female Knight pilot will have perfectly adequate muscle mass for the purposes withstanding blasts. These are not average people, these are people who have trained for this from the childhood and possibly enhanced cybernetically. Just like the SoB, the Knight pilots would be comparable to world class athletes.
do they need to be athletes? The 'pilot' in a dreanought is basically a dessciated old corpse
Primark G wrote: In Master of Mankind the leader of a household is a young woman and I think it’s cool.
I have no problem with it being a woman, but being young is silly... Unless everyone else was murdered or something. 40k has rejuvination proceedures, a matriarch would hold a family for AGES.
It is a hereditary position. This can easily happen.
Strg Alt wrote: I am not surprised. Isn´t your run of the mill mecha pilot a gorgeous female, clad in cheesecake armour and struts around in tactical high-heels?
This is what female description of elementals is
" Designed and bred over dozens of generations to operate Clan Battle Armor, Elementals are the largest and strongest of the three common Clan warrior phenotypes. Elementals average 2-2.5 meters in height and are disproportionally muscular compared to even the strongest Inner Sphere warrior. While generally used as shock troops, Elementals have found use in other military roles as well, such as security personnel or marines. "
do they need to be athletes?
you can arm 12 year old ones with AKs and RPGs, but does it mean that army made out of them is going to be good?
Please, not another discussion where basic biology is relevant to the pilot of Giant Armoured Robots that are killing Alien Monstrosities with 4 meter Chainswords.
If you apply verosimilitude, realism, and strict following of biology you try to do it as much as possible, or you don't. Other, more realistic universes could have this into account, but warhammer is not one of those.
We can't apply our suspension of disbelief to have women warriors because biology but we can to allow demons and Tyranids that broke all laws of termodinamics... yeah.
Biologically, women make better pilots than men in modern aircraft due to the ability to handle higher acceleration.
However, before modern times and fly-by-wire systems, men made better pilots than women due to the need for upper body strength to handle power assisted systems when the power was out.
Given fictional pilot-by-thought systems we see in Knights, men and women are at equal advantage biologically, as the differences between male and female brains are noticeable but negligible.
jeffersonian000 wrote: Biologically, women make better pilots than men in modern aircraft due to the ability to handle higher acceleration.
However, before modern times and fly-by-wire systems, men made better pilots than women due to the need for upper body strength to handle power assisted systems when the power was out.
Given fictional pilot-by-thought systems we see in Knights, men and women are at equal advantage biologically, as the differences between male and female brains are noticeable but negligible.
Which means it’s a cultural thing.
SJ
unless am wrong, which could be possible, I don't think the knights are moving at even sub sonic speed. They are more like tanks or Armored carriers. Sure they don't have tracks, but being stuned while in one is still a problem. It is even a problem to tank crews today. You more or less would have to have knights that always outrange and out shot the opposing "armored" units and have airial superiority. Which is possible for some armies on earth today, it does not seem to be the case of in the w40k universe. Am not saying that a female would not be able to pilot a knight, but that in a knight household this would be something more kin to Onna-bugeisha. And those outside of legends were never expected to be front line troops unless something REALLY bad happened or someone droped the ball on defense.
Also child soldiers are considered ok, but breeding programs which clearly exist in the fluff are not
We can't apply our suspension of disbelief to have women warriors because biology but we can to allow demons and Tyranids that broke all laws of termodinamics... yeah.
I have no problem with that. I showed that this does exist in mech warrior univers. What my questions were, was how? How is the interesting part to me. The something X happens is boring. I could write that primaris space marine have the ability to create a copy of themselfs through cell division, and everyone would be interested in the how the most, and not the fact that they do. The fact female knights exist is clear as day, they are in the codex, they are in the fluff. It would be interesting though to know how it works. Are female pilot knights better armored or are they gene modified like marines, titan pilots, assasins or nobles, to survive the strain of being in the field.
Those are imo very interesting questions, and I have no idea why they are somehow how considered to be mysogenic.
The noble sons only thing in the first Codex was hopefully just GW sticking to closely to the source with the medieval knights in spaaace trope. The 2nd Codex IIRC just failed to mention it at all. But its nice to see the 3rd book(hard to believe IK have had so many books already) explicitly altering the fluff in this way before there is to much inertia behind the concept to change things.
Re nobles biology Another bit of fluff from the first Codex did mention that a combination of genetic alteration and re-juve treatments allowed nobles to live much longer than baseline Humans. Not sure if that has since been dropped or contradicted though. But having the pilots adapted for there role beyond the implantation of mind impulse connectors would not surprise me.
See this is what I was asking. They are gene moded, and they probablly harvest the eggs from the female pilots, so their deaths don't drop number of possible future pilots.
To be surogate mother to such a pilot could even be a way for a lower cast knight planet female to boost her family status.
And there could be some cool mech warrior style stuff, like free born knights that are from "normal" birth that aren't gene moded. IMO it could be a good source of stories.
Strg Alt wrote: I am not surprised. Isn´t your run of the mill mecha pilot a gorgeous female, clad in cheesecake armour and struts around in tactical high-heels?
Nope, I think you have them confused with the Sisters of Battle ;D
Also on a side note I love how some people are trying to treat GW fluff as being a thing of consistency in this thread of great win,
Strg Alt wrote: I am not surprised. Isn´t your run of the mill mecha pilot a gorgeous female, clad in cheesecake armour and struts around in tactical high-heels?
Nope, I think you have them confused with the Sisters of Battle ;D
Also on a side note I love how some people are trying to treat GW fluff as being a thing of consistency in this thread of great win,
I was thinking of anime mechas but I have to admit that I am not an expert in this field. By the way, apart from those chainsaw loonies, SOB wear proper boobplate and not cheesecake armour.
I would also like to point out to everyone quoting 'Biology', it's 32 THOUSAND years in the future, for all we know women could have titanium muscle strands.
TheoreticalFish wrote: I would also like to point out to everyone quoting 'Biology', it's 32 THOUSAND years in the future, for all we know women could have titanium muscle strands.
In there defence the setting does often treat the events of the Horus Heresy as if they happened two weeks ago last Tuesday
TheoreticalFish wrote: I would also like to point out to everyone quoting 'Biology', it's 32 THOUSAND years in the future, for all we know women could have titanium muscle strands.
There aren't as many changes between us and the people leaving in paleolitc times, I think you over estimate how fast evoultion works for hominids. To get something like chimps or gorilas have it would take a lot more time then 38k years.
The Warlord Titan princeps in the Priests of Mars trilogy was withered and without limbs. He lived in a jar of fluid.
It would be a good idea. direct uplink to the brain would work faster then trying to use some sort of human-machine nervous system hybrid, and a gel enviroment would help greatly against armor transmited shock. The only problem would probably, how to keep the brain from going insane. The body is integral to human well being, and even the prospect of losing part of body can generate a large does of stress. I guess they could clone the brains, there would be problems with teachning them how to see the world. Humans without a body interaction, specially children under 2 years, just wither and die. They did tests on kids like that in Rumania in the 70-80s. I guess the machine part of a knight/titan would have to teach the brain how to work. It would have to be a very sofisticated machine, and the brain would have to be very specific too, because a normal human brain, the way we have them now would not work.
Karol wrote: The only problem would probably, how to keep the brain from going insane
lol, I really dont think anyone in the 40k imperium cares all that much if a giant death robot goes a little flying rodent gak.
Nah why would anyone worry about a heavily armed death machine going nuts even if it does happen to have a can of instant sunshine on its shoulder and an itchy trigger finger!
TheoreticalFish wrote: I would also like to point out to everyone quoting 'Biology', it's 32 THOUSAND years in the future, for all we know women could have titanium muscle strands.
Human evolution has largely ended because we've stopped letting people die to disease and congenital problems.
Survival of the fittest no longer applies we became the apex predators when we learnt how to fashion tools.
So even 38 thousand years from now well mostly be the same because we use tools to supplement our forms.
TheoreticalFish wrote: I would also like to point out to everyone quoting 'Biology', it's 32 THOUSAND years in the future, for all we know women could have titanium muscle strands.
Human evolution has largely ended because we've stopped letting people die to disease and congenital problems.
Survival of the fittest no longer applies we became the apex predators when we learnt how to fashion tools.
So even 38 thousand years from now well mostly be the same because we use tools to supplement our forms.
The use of tools and the change in our diets has already changed us in evolutionary terms, to think they'll leave us in an evolutionary stasis seems a bit naive. Death through disability or disease and thus exclusion from the gene pool is only one of a myriad of selection factors! We are much more likely to destroy our species or be destroyed by an external factor than stay in an evolutionary limbo... which funnily enough would also result in our deaths.
Galas wrote: Wha?! Is that really a black man for you?
Ahah you know, before writing the message, I went back to look at a still of his face and wondered if he was black in the US sense (aka had *some* sub-Saharan African descent that made people view him and treat him differently, rather than exactly the shade of his skin) or from the Indian peninsula, or something else, and thought it was hard to tell because of the lightning, and then I got like “Wait why am I doing thing noone will ever care about such details lol just stop wondering and just call him black!” Seems I was dead wrong .
Anyway someone mentioned discussing how to paint different shade of skins as a joke, but if there's some tutorial on that I'd be interested! Because I mostly use the same shade of black for my Sisters (mostly close to some sub-Saharan African population I guess, can't give more details I never did research on this I just painted them in ways that looked good to me ) but now that I have tons of Victoria Miniatures imperial guardsmen and guardswomen from 4 different regiments I got a lot of room to experiment!
Galas wrote: I know not everybody is like that, and probably the original poster had the best of the intentions with his post.
I certainly didn't have bad intentions with my post .
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Sasquatch wrote: Nah why would anyone worry about a heavily armed death machine going nuts even if it does happen to have a can of instant sunshine on its shoulder and an itchy trigger finger!
Can I point out that the Imperium literally strap HERETICS, and crazed one at that, to a GIANT machine OF DEATH with FLAMETHROWERS and GIANT BUZZSAW already? I really want to to it!
Karol wrote: The only problem would probably, how to keep the brain from going insane
lol, I really dont think anyone in the 40k imperium cares all that much if a giant death robot goes a little flying rodent gak.
Nah why would anyone worry about a heavily armed death machine going nuts even if it does happen to have a can of instant sunshine on its shoulder and an itchy trigger finger!
yeah that. They would probablly would have some sort of fail safe mechanism that lets them either "flush" the brain real fast or just kill it, with lower level protection in form of drugs or electric shock. you can erase short term memory with electric shocks even today. They would probablly have 2 or more brains per walker though. One main pilot and one "brain" in training that is mostly offline or just watchs through an uplink .
The use of tools and the change in our diets has already changed us in evolutionary terms, to think they'll leave us in an evolutionary stasis seems a bit naive. Death through disability or disease and thus exclusion from the gene pool is only one of a myriad of selection factors! We are much more likely to destroy our species or be destroyed by an external factor than stay in an evolutionary limbo... which funnily enough would also result in our deaths.
For example humans in more developed countries specially those that got smart phones first have longer fingers, then those that live in other areas, or even they own paranets or grand parents. Some even say that the fact that there is both a group of people that can eat anything and those that get fat from looking at foot, is part of a "leming" kill switch in the population, and that it is not just the food that is making people fat, but also the percived stress or to be even more precise the ability to deal with it without farmaceutical help.
Galas wrote: Wha?! Is that really a black man for you?
Ahah you know, before writing the message, I went back to look at a still of his face and wondered if he was black in the US sense (aka had *some* sub-Saharan African descent that made people view him and treat him differently, rather than exactly the shade of his skin) or from the Indian peninsula, or something else, and thought it was hard to tell because of the lightning, and then I got like “Wait why am I doing thing noone will ever care about such details lol just stop wondering and just call him black!” Seems I was dead wrong .
Anyway someone mentioned discussing how to paint different shade of skins as a joke, but if there's some tutorial on that I'd be interested! Because I mostly use the same shade of black for my Sisters (mostly close to some sub-Saharan African population I guess, can't give more details I never did research on this I just painted them in ways that looked good to me ) but now that I have tons of Victoria Miniatures imperial guardsmen and guardswomen from 4 different regiments I got a lot of room to experiment!
I was actually referring to all color tones, not just skin, but anyway.
There's quite a few tutorials on youtube.
There's one by GW about painting darker skin tones
Doctor Faustus does have one as well, but its with Vallejo
Oh boy, I see we descended into "Men strongest there is" territory. Please take a moment and remember that giant robots are a very impractical idea compared to conventional military vehicles. If you want to bring in biology then you should probably bring in basic physics, look at what your arguing about, and realize you probably shouldn't have tried to bring science into a discussion around giant robots. The Tau did exactly this. They started out saying no to giant robots because they're dumb but now look at them with Riptides, Stormsurges, and the FW one.. Admittedly the Tau were heavily motivated by GW wanting to make more money because giant robots are cool.
The only time this should probably be a thing is if someone wants to write a story of a new knight pilot of gender A having to deal with the machine spirit that is heavily engrained towards excepting gender B due to the previous pilots and their world's culture. Beyond setting up a conflict in a story, is there really a need for it to be limited to either male or female?
As an aside, I once got to see one of my friends in a sparing match against a woman around our age. My friend was 6'2", around 280lbs, and studied martial arts for years. She was about 5'2" and around 100lbs. Each bout was nasty, brutal, and short. To quote my friend "she was very polite and didn't break both my arms". She was on the Olympic Judo team and ranked in single digits in the world at that time. My friend had all the physical advantages, yet he got his butt kicked by someone with superior skills.
TheoreticalFish wrote: I would also like to point out to everyone quoting 'Biology', it's 32 THOUSAND years in the future, for all we know women could have titanium muscle strands.
There aren't as many changes between us and the people leaving in paleolitc times, I think you over estimate how fast evoultion works for hominids. To get something like chimps or gorilas have it would take a lot more time then 38k years.
Completely wrong. You missed the fact that in these 38K years there was 20K long period where genetic code was casually rewritten, edited, and enhanced at a whim. That alone will produce vast increase of evolution speed undreamt of before, hell, even something as simple as deletion of DNA related diseases and replacement of damaged and 'buggy' genes with well working ones would be enough to produce biggest change humans ever known, in as little as generation or two.
To put things in perspective, it's like claiming from say 5000 BCE to 1500 CE, nearly 7K years, humans barely mastered stone, iron, and writing, showing little progress in all of these things, so logically speaking, going forward a mere 10% of the above period, 700 years, from from 1500 CE to 2200 CE, will mean humans will still do what they did through this period, ride horses, most of world's population will work in manual agriculture, and there will be maybe a dozen books published each year, if that, because anyone claiming otherwise would "over estimate how fast progress works for hominids"
Also, people arguing women are weak because "muh biology" fail to grasp you internalize modern cultural roles and their assumptions. Yes, women might be slightly weaker, but consider this - what are boys expected to do when young? Why, play outside, football, baseball, etc, etc, competitive sports. What are girls supposed to do? Why, yes, even thought it's changing, the expectation is they will stay inside, play with dolls, do chores, learn how to cook, etc, etc. Gee, it's no wonder than a group that is encouraged to develop physically will be, on average, far stronger than one that is heavily discouraged from being so (seeing term Tomboy is still considered an insult or at least something wrong and to be eliminated even today).
If you had hypothetical mirror culture with girls being encouraged to compete in aggressive sports and boys being the ones told to be proper and meek you'd now have women laughing at male weakness and presumptions of grandeur because it would be obvious women are stronger, eh? Not only because they would be the ones getting more fit in formative years, but also because in such a culture evolutionary pressure over sufficiently long period would reinforce social roles (there is a lot of examples of that actually but they are kinda beyond the scope of this thread).
Anyway, back to knights. Seeing nobles don't cook or sweep floors anyway, children of both genders would obviously have similar upbringing - because the fortune of a Household leans on a quality of its pilots, and only an utter idiot would deliberately leave half of potential pool off the table. Not only would be female knights much closer in fitness to their male counterparts, the difference would be small enough to be decided by mental faculties and skill (much like in Battletech) - something that doesn't in any way depend on gender.
CthuluIsSpy wrote: I was actually referring to all color tones, not just skin, but anyway.
There's quite a few tutorials on youtube.
Spoiler:
There's one by GW about painting darker skin tones
Doctor Faustus does have one as well, but its with Vallejo
Girlpainting has one as well
Thanks <3.
The Girlpainting one is the most interesting because she acknowledge various possible shades, but I think it could be cool to have some big tutorial library for more skin tones than just Caucasian and Black, like painting the various shade of east-Asian, or the shades from the Indian subcontinent that looks different from sub-Saharan African ones and the shades of native Americans and Mediterranean people and …
CthuluIsSpy wrote: I was actually referring to all color tones, not just skin, but anyway.
There's quite a few tutorials on youtube.
Spoiler:
There's one by GW about painting darker skin tones
Doctor Faustus does have one as well, but its with Vallejo
Girlpainting has one as well
Thanks <3.
The Girlpainting one is the most interesting because she acknowledge various possible shades, but I think it could be cool to have some big tutorial library for more skin tones than just Caucasian and Black, like painting the various shade of east-Asian, or the shades from the Indian subcontinent that looks different from sub-Saharan African ones and the shades of native Americans and Mediterranean people and …
Yeah, most tutorials are to paint people with black skin or white, but other colours like native-american, arabic, etc... ufff... i ended up experimenting by myself, and people from my FLGS helped me, but on the internet theres not that much information.
Well, there are a few tutorials for painting olive skin, so I guess you can use that as a base and go from there. But yeah, if you are looking for a comprehensive guide on painting every shade of human skin, you aren't going to have much luck.
TheoreticalFish wrote: I would also like to point out to everyone quoting 'Biology', it's 32 THOUSAND years in the future, for all we know women could have titanium muscle strands.
There aren't as many changes between us and the people leaving in paleolitc times, I think you over estimate how fast evoultion works for hominids. To get something like chimps or gorilas have it would take a lot more time then 38k years.
Completely wrong. You missed the fact that in these 38K years there was 20K long period where genetic code was casually rewritten, edited, and enhanced at a whim. That alone will produce vast increase of evolution speed undreamt of before, hell, even something as simple as deletion of DNA related diseases and replacement of damaged and 'buggy' genes with well working ones would be enough to produce biggest change humans ever known, in as little as generation or two.
To put things in perspective, it's like claiming from say 5000 BCE to 1500 CE, nearly 7K years, humans barely mastered stone, iron, and writing, showing little progress in all of these things, so logically speaking, going forward a mere 10% of the above period, 700 years, from from 1500 CE to 2200 CE, will mean humans will still do what they did through this period, ride horses, most of world's population will work in manual agriculture, and there will be maybe a dozen books published each year, if that, because anyone claiming otherwise would "over estimate how fast progress works for hominids"
Also, people arguing women are weak because "muh biology" fail to grasp you internalize modern cultural roles and their assumptions. Yes, women might be slightly weaker, but consider this - what are boys expected to do when young? Why, play outside, football, baseball, etc, etc, competitive sports. What are girls supposed to do? Why, yes, even thought it's changing, the expectation is they will stay inside, play with dolls, do chores, learn how to cook, etc, etc. Gee, it's no wonder than a group that is encouraged to develop physically will be, on average, far stronger than one that is heavily discouraged from being so (seeing term Tomboy is still considered an insult or at least something wrong and to be eliminated even today).
If you had hypothetical mirror culture with girls being encouraged to compete in aggressive sports and boys being the ones told to be proper and meek you'd now have women laughing at male weakness and presumptions of grandeur because it would be obvious women are stronger, eh? Not only because they would be the ones getting more fit in formative years, but also because in such a culture evolutionary pressure over sufficiently long period would reinforce social roles (there is a lot of examples of that actually but they are kinda beyond the scope of this thread).
Anyway, back to knights. Seeing nobles don't cook or sweep floors anyway, children of both genders would obviously have similar upbringing - because the fortune of a Household leans on a quality of its pilots, and only an utter idiot would deliberately leave half of potential pool off the table. Not only would be female knights much closer in fitness to their male counterparts, the difference would be small enough to be decided by mental faculties and skill (much like in Battletech) - something that doesn't in any way depend on gender.
I think your absolutly right that biology really shouldn't play a part in the selection of a knight pilot. If your gonna educate people though you shouldn't use a widely disproven theory on play preferences as you'll sound every bit as ideologically driven as those that say women can't be a mech pilot because of biology!
"Muh biology" as you term it is a very real factor in the developmental differences between men and women. as an example we know for a fact that testosterone has a huge impact on muscle development and it is this, not early age play preferance that is the primary force in building the physique of a person. From muscle mass to the higher bone density this necessitates.
Males with a testosterone deficiency will struggle fruitlessly to build muscle mass unless treatment is provided. females with high testosterone levels will develope much higher muscle mass than the average. This is why some female athletes with high testosterone levels have to take drugs to lower there testosterone to be allowed to compete so as to level the playing field and its why formally male athletes that have transitioned have to use drugs to lower there testosterone and have to wait for 2 years for there body adjust to its new testosterone level in order to take part in regulated sports. (this is to allow there muscle mass and bone density to drop)
Now your hypothetical is more grounded in reality though it leaves out that the real life cases of this are almost exclusively the result of a rigorously and violently enforced docility in the male members of the society. This by the women who act in concert to keep the males subservient.
The women don't become any more physically capable than average in these societies (though they do tend to mock the men as inferior) and the men while having lower testosterone scores than average are still within normal bounderies and will still physically out perform the women. The point on societal norms tends to hold true though and as you suggest the societal power is neccesarily held at a matriarchal level and the males treated as a subservient class.
There are many, many! reasons biology shouldn't be a factor in the chosing of a knight pilot. But to argue that its impacts are minimal in our development/behaviour is bloody silly.
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hobojebus wrote: I'm confused I don't see people arguing against female pilots for knights but we have People posting as it there were.
I think there was one or two. But there's the image of the fanbase as a bunch of dyed in the wool sexists to uphold so here we are.
Prospero burns has a part where an AI claims that the humans are not actually human, something like 600 odd differences between “real” humans and it’s own populace, funny if it’s true that the imperials are not actually human as they think they are, just the surviving human template they are forcing on others.
Formosa wrote: Prospero burns has a part where an AI claims that the humans are not actually human, something like 600 odd differences between “real” humans and it’s own populace, funny if it’s true that the imperials are not actually human as they think they are, just the surviving human template they are forcing on others.
That is not really that hard to imagine. For example in UK a catholic isn't a full human being, can't hold a lot of offices for example. In china non han people are second class citizents, and middle east is more or less in medival times as far as what is a human question.
Completely wrong. You missed the fact that in these 38K years there was 20K long period where genetic code was casually rewritten, edited, and enhanced at a whim. That alone will produce vast increase of evolution speed undreamt of before, hell, even something as simple as deletion of DNA related diseases and replacement of damaged and 'buggy' genes with well working ones would be enough to produce biggest change humans ever known, in as little as generation or two.
I have seen such lore where can I read about it?
To put things in perspective, it's like claiming from say 5000 BCE to 1500 CE, nearly 7K years, humans barely mastered stone, iron, and writing, showing little progress in all of these things, so logically speaking, going forward a mere 10% of the above period, 700 years, from from 1500 CE to 2200 CE, will mean humans will still do what they did through this period, ride horses, most of world's population will work in manual agriculture, and there will be maybe a dozen books published each year, if that, because anyone claiming otherwise would "over estimate how fast progress works for hominids"
that is not the same. Being able to learn a skill spreads really fast. often because most population that don't want to or can't lear it are wiped out. Biology on the other hand works different, even if you actually breed people, and I mean like we do animals, it still takes a hell lot of time to get even the smallest results. Because of how slow humans develope. 100 years is only 4 generations, that is really not a lot to get enough changes. In a normal evolutionary state it takes a lot of time, for example check long it takes for a new blood type to develope.
Also, people arguing women are weak because "muh biology" fail to grasp you internalize modern cultural roles and their assumptions. Yes, women might be slightly weaker, but consider this - what are boys expected to do when young? Why, play outside, football, baseball, etc, etc, competitive sports. What are girls supposed to do? Why, yes, even thought it's changing, the expectation is they will stay inside, play with dolls, do chores, learn how to cook, etc, etc. Gee, it's no wonder than a group that is encouraged to develop physically will be, on average, far stronger than one that is heavily discouraged from being so (seeing term Tomboy is still considered an insult or at least something wrong and to be eliminated even today)
First of all they are slightly weaker, and even then your comparing the general population. For thing like soldiers/warriors you would have to pick to top people from both sex, and at the top the difference between a male and female is huge. Have you seen the double male/female matchs in tenis a few years ago? Those were brutal, people like Serena Williams, who is the best female tenis players we ever had in the history of tenis, was not able to return or even recive balls from best tenis players. And this is just tenis. I mean I suck physicly wise comparing to the guys on my team, but put me in a female wrestling competiion and I would be king of my weight. And do you know how I know? I wrestled down the coach of the female team and she has 20 years of expriance more then me,she competed at the olimpic level and I weight 8kg less then her.
If you had hypothetical mirror culture with girls being encouraged to compete in aggressive sports and boys being the ones told to be proper and meek you'd now have women laughing at male weakness and presumptions of grandeur because it would be obvious women are stronger, eh? Not only because they would be the ones getting more fit in formative years, but also because in such a culture evolutionary pressure over sufficiently long period would reinforce social roles (there is a lot of examples of that actually but they are kinda beyond the scope of this thread).
But that is not how the strenght difference between male and female works. Sure it can get bigger because of it, as most girls don't want to do sports, at least at my school. But the main difference is that a dude has more testosteron, making him more agrresive and have more dense muscle mass, his bone structure is stronger from the get go, and he doesn't have to deal with ostheoporsis like all females do etc. And this is just avarge male and avarge female. the higher up the rankings of strenght, resiliance etc you go the larger the gap between the sex. I mean are you seriously saying that a female MMA fighter from the same weight group is going to have a 50/50 win rate against males? I mean there is a reason why we have split competition in sports.
Anyway, back to knights. Seeing nobles don't cook or sweep floors anyway, children of both genders would obviously have similar upbringing - because the fortune of a Household leans on a quality of its pilots, and only an utter idiot would deliberately leave half of potential pool off the table. Not only would be female knights much closer in fitness to their male counterparts, the difference would be small enough to be decided by mental faculties and skill (much like in Battletech) - something that doesn't in any way depend on gender.
I get the story, but unless the genetics of the female knights are drasticly different to a point of making them not realy female any longer, it is hard for me to imagine how given a pool of male and females to be pilots, a female would be picked. The gene therapis seem to explain it all, and it does fit the world with its marines, navigators etc
casvalremdeikun wrote: So, the Imperial Knights codex is out. And in it, there are several examples of female Imperial Knights. Up until this point, they were rare to the point that the only female Knight we had in the fluff was masquerading as a man.
What are your thoughts on this?
In the Emperor of Mankind HH novel, not only is there a female knight pilot, she’s also the head of her Knight House
hobojebus wrote: I'm confused I don't see people arguing against female pilots for knights but we have People posting as it there were.
It's the darndest thing. Almost as if there was a group of people trying to portray a false image of the community to push an agenda.
You guys probably missed the fact that mods deleted the worst bits... It was just one poster as far as I noticed, but it happened. But yes, overall I am happy to see how little pushback there was.
casvalremdeikun wrote: So, the Imperial Knights codex is out. And in it, there are several examples of female Imperial Knights. Up until this point, they were rare to the point that the only female Knight we had in the fluff was masquerading as a man.
What are your thoughts on this?
In the Emperor of Mankind HH novel, not only is there a female knight pilot, she’s also the head of her Knight House
And given it was released in 2016 you'd think there would of been outrage back then if it was going to happen at all.
hobojebus wrote: I'm confused I don't see people arguing against female pilots for knights but we have People posting as it there were.
It's the darndest thing. Almost as if there was a group of people trying to portray a false image of the community to push an agenda.
Much like this 'outrage' over some childrens' books. It's almost as if elements of the community feel the need to fabricate an outrage to justify their own paranoia.
Either way, I kinda always thought 'female knights' were part of it, considering I never saw anything like the Astartes' 'men only'. Also not sure why it's a big deal when most all of these models are big walking robots.
Just for spite, I'm putting 3 Werther's Original in my knights. My pilot is now three pieces of butterscotch hard candy, fight me bigot.
TheoreticalFish wrote: I would also like to point out to everyone quoting 'Biology', it's 32 THOUSAND years in the future, for all we know women could have titanium muscle strands.
Human evolution has largely ended because we've stopped letting people die to disease and congenital problems.
Survival of the fittest no longer applies we became the apex predators when we learnt how to fashion tools.
So even 38 thousand years from now well mostly be the same because we use tools to supplement our forms.
I think between 2000 and 30.000 will be lot of gene-enhanced evolution.
hobojebus wrote: I'm confused I don't see people arguing against female pilots for knights but we have People posting as it there were.
It's the darndest thing. Almost as if there was a group of people trying to portray a false image of the community to push an agenda.
Much like this 'outrage' over some childrens' books. It's almost as if elements of the community feel the need to fabricate an outrage to justify their own paranoia.
Either way, I kinda always thought 'female knights' were part of it, considering I never saw anything like the Astartes' 'men only'. Also not sure why it's a big deal when most all of these models are big walking robots.
Just for spite, I'm putting 3 Werther's Original in my knights. My pilot is now three pieces of butterscotch hard candy, fight me bigot.
Werther's are the candy of the privileged old white male.
Not if you get them from Grandma. Checkmate, Microaggressor.
But on topic, I think some novelty female knight pilot models would be pretty cool.
My grandparents always had the squares of caramel, I loved those
I have one of my pilots as female, at the moment it really doesn't matter since the majority of kits don't even have a knight for you to see int he cockpit. But It would be nice to have the variety. I like that AoS is putting in more female sculpts, it kind of breaks up the sameness of the units.
My grandparents always had the squares of caramel, I loved those
I have one of my pilots as female, at the moment it really doesn't matter since the majority of kits don't even have a knight for you to see int he cockpit. But It would be nice to have the variety. I like that AoS is putting in more female sculpts, it kind of breaks up the sameness of the units.
The caramels were awesome, too- especially if it was cold and you couldn't just chew them up right off the bat.
I kinda like the AoS female Stormcast, TBH. It does add some flavor. I wish they'd stuff them in some of the other kits.
It boggles my mind when I read threads like these and I see people attempting to apply science and logic to a miniature range.
Firstly, I can't think of a single reason why in a vast sci-fi universe like 40K there wouldn't be human pilots of both sexes. This is the same universe that just a year ago served us a "newer better, bigger" space marines and now it's part of the lore. Any part of the story can change suddenly, so if the argument is that female pilots were never in the lore before, they may as well have been. Reading the lines about "women athletes not having the same endurance/strength" etc is a non sequitur, because again this is a miniature range. If you're looking for a real world counterpart ask yourself; are there women pilots in the air-force? Yes
Why are there now a lot more women depicted in the art and represented in figures on the tabletop? Because GW is a company that is succeeding and making bigger profits (looking at their financial reports) and has new management which appears more concerned with public relations and the image of the company. The truth of it is that there really needed to be a shift in the company away from "30+yo neck-beards playing with toy soldiers", and the shift is obvious in the releases and the art for the last 3 or so years.
I remember when all the press releases that came out used to depict a bearded 20 something dude, and recently all the banners at Warhammer Community and all the art has been featuring men and women playing with miniatures.
It makes sense to branch out and we are simply seeing the range and lore reflect this. Personally I can't wait to see my updated Cadians as I'm sure there will be members of both sexes represented bringing us ever closer to a true "Starship Troopers" scenario.
Hive City Dweller wrote: It boggles my mind when I read threads like these and I see people attempting to apply science and logic to a miniature range.
Firstly, I can't think of a single reason why in a vast sci-fi universe like 40K there wouldn't be human pilots of both sexes. This is the same universe that just a year ago served us a "newer better, bigger" space marines and now it's part of the lore. Any part of the story can change suddenly, so if the argument is that female pilots were never in the lore before, they may as well have been. Reading the lines about "women athletes not having the same endurance/strength" etc is a non sequitur, because again this is a miniature range. If you're looking for a real world counterpart ask yourself; are there women pilots in the air-force? Yes
Erm I think the only person that mentioned female athletes in this thread was myself and that was in a post bookmarked at both ends with the statement that biology shouldn't be a factor in pilot selection. You seem to be tilting at windmills here.
Man this thread has some pretty outlandish responses.
No one was really sexist, and no one was really outraged, but that hasn't seemed to stop people who are ideologically inclined to pretend people were outraged from playing pretend anyway.
It's like you're participating in a different thread than everyone else.
Ouze wrote: Man this thread has some pretty outlandish responses.
No one was really sexist, and no one was really outraged, but that hasn't seemed to stop people who are ideologically inclined to pretend people were outraged from playing pretend anyway.
It's like you're participating in a different thread than everyone else.
A thread like this carries the weight of all the other similar threads. The lines are well drawn and most know which posters are on which sides. It just two groups circling each other waiting for the other to give them the chance to act outraged. Change Imperial Knight to Ghostbuster or Jedi and there would already be feces on the walls.
Ouze wrote: Man this thread has some pretty outlandish responses.
No one was really sexist, and no one was really outraged, but that hasn't seemed to stop people who are ideologically inclined to pretend people were outraged from playing pretend anyway.
It's like you're participating in a different thread than everyone else.
A thread like this carries the weight of all the other similar threads. The lines are well drawn and most know which posters are on which sides. It just two groups circling each other waiting for the other to give them the chance to act outraged. Change Imperial Knight to Ghostbuster or Jedi and there would already be feces on the walls.
What do you mean “imperial” “knight” “ghostbuster” and “Jedi”
The Imperium is not sexist like ancient Europe (or as it was 10 years ago where GW didn't care about feminism). So female Knight pilots are nothing special. The newest short story about the Imperial Knights also features a female champion leading 12 other Knights against the Necrons.
Also, people arguing women are weak because "muh biology" fail to grasp you internalize modern cultural roles and their assumptions. Yes, women might be slightly weaker, but consider this - what are boys expected to do when young? Why, play outside, football, baseball, etc, etc, competitive sports. What are girls supposed to do? Why, yes, even thought it's changing, the expectation is they will stay inside, play with dolls, do chores, learn how to cook, etc, etc. Gee, it's no wonder than a group that is encouraged to develop physically will be, on average, far stronger than one that is heavily discouraged from being so (seeing term Tomboy is still considered an insult or at least something wrong and to be eliminated even today). .
Playing outside and sports are not reason why teenager boys and adult men are stronger than girls and women. I have physically athletic daughter and nerdy boy, but because hormones boy is much more stronger and faster. But athletic girls endures prolonged exercise far more than non-athletic boy. And yes, I was too nerdy non-athletic boy when I was young. Still I was pretty agile and strong, but running and other aerobic exercise were problem. Then if both are athletic males are much stronger. That is why we are different competitions in athletics for men and women. In my opinion we do not need those although.
Of course what comes to pilot you do not need those muscles. And if there is some professions where you need strength, there is always cybernetics and other enhancements in 40K. Even nowadays women can bee soldiers or polices like men. Only being firefighter is problematic.
I don't get this thread. Is there any particular reason why there shouldn't be female imperial knight pilots? There isn't any reason why a female can't pilot an imperial knight.
I find it great that we can have female IK pilots.
Eldenfirefly wrote: I don't get this thread. Is there any particular reason why there shouldn't be female imperial knight pilots? There isn't any reason why a female can't pilot an imperial knight.
I find it great that we can have female IK pilots.
The initial fluff for the Imperial Knights, in their first codex, stated that only men could undergo the Ritual of Bonding. That has been changed. That is why this thread exists.
Draco wrote: Playing outside and sports are not reason why teenager boys and adult men are stronger than girls and women. I have physically athletic daughter and nerdy boy, but because hormones boy is much more stronger and faster
Training do make a difference. Would you even try to arm wrestle Madeleine Leander?
Of course what comes to pilot you do not need those muscles. And if there is some professions where you need strength, there is always cybernetics and other enhancements in 40K. Even nowadays women can bee soldiers or polices like men. Only being firefighter is problematic.
But that is not true. All shock from weapons gets transmited to crew inside. A stronger bone structure and more dense muscle mass, the type males have, would let a male pilot both take less damage from shock and avoid injuries a female pilot would not. To give a job example you see 0 women working with stuff like heavy duty drills etc In some countries, for example my, companies aren't even allowed to hire female workers to do those jobs, based on how much harmful they are to them, then male workers.
Training do make a difference. Would you even try to arm wrestle Madeleine Leander?
Comparing to a untrained person, and if she is peak training yes. But if you took an avarge male wall climbers, he would have a much stronger grip then her. No amount of training is going to let you ignore basic biology.
Is there any particular reason why there shouldn't be female imperial knight pilots?
A male is much more suited to be the pilot of a walker/tank. The same way a female is more suited to fly a high end fighter jet that requires you to multi task. On the flip side an older type of jet plain that is "easier" to fly favors the male pilots, because of less advanced cabins or even fighter jet overalls.
Draco wrote: Playing outside and sports are not reason why teenager boys and adult men are stronger than girls and women. I have physically athletic daughter and nerdy boy, but because hormones boy is much more stronger and faster
Training do make a difference. Would you even try to arm wrestle Madeleine Leander?
Spoiler:
Training does make a difference but not anywhere near as much as you would think.
I knew this couple a while back, He was a body builder (and was bloody huge!) and she had started weight training and the like about 2 years before this story takes place and was really showing results! (I think at the time she was contemplating moving into body building competitively but till then it was just something she'd enjoyed doing with her boyfriend.)
But anyways this day we'd all met at the pub and were just enjoying the evening when for a laugh his girlfriend had challenged me to an arm wrestle. Now I didn't fancy my chances because at 5 foot not a lot and with an excercise regime that involved the occasional set of stairs and lifting a few pints of a weekend! I really expected to be sent pinwheeling across the bloody room by the lady of amazonian stature sitting across the table from me! But thinking it would be a laugh at least, I put my arm on the table and was then plenty shocked when in the end I won.
Now she had worked bloody hard to get where she was at the time but unfortuantly that wasn't enough to get past the fact that my short average arse has been shaped by evolution to be naturally stronger than her.
Now don't get me wrong here I still think physical strengh has nothing to do with whether woman can pilot a knight but I'm tired of people constantly telling women that they are, physically on a level playing field with men. Because I've seen first hand the destruction of friends confidence and self esteem (not related to the above story) as reality has, sometimes literally hit them square in the face.
Reality doesn't care how supportive you want to be to a friend or daughter or that you only want the best for them! If you give someone unrealistic expectations or feed them false hope all you are doing is setting them up for failure!
So what are the physical requirements of piloting a giant robot again? Excellent eyesight like a fighter pilot might be, assuming that you don't have some neural connection that just feeds sensory information to your brain. Superior dexterity would be a help, unless you aren't just jacked into your IG stompy robot. Being big and beefy to handle impacts? Well, chances are your pilot compartment is going to need some serious shock absorption since you probably want to build it so that, if your 10 story tall should fall over, your pilot can survive.
So can we stop this stupid talk about who's more qualified to pilot giant robots now? The answer for a knight passing on said robot is that it will probably go to the best choice of those in their direct bloodline, whether girl or boy.
If strength and endurance were the be all and end all of things, Neanderthals would have replaced us. In most physically demanding jobs in modern countries, if you meet the demands of that job you can do the job. My last roommate was a firefighter and she passed all of her physical tests with flying colors. Alternatively, you can hone yourself physically in order to train for being a fighter pilot, but if you don't have exceptional eyesight then you won't be one.
Of course what comes to pilot you do not need those muscles. And if there is some professions where you need strength, there is always cybernetics and other enhancements in 40K. Even nowadays women can bee soldiers or polices like men. Only being firefighter is problematic.
But that is not true. All shock from weapons gets transmited to crew inside. A stronger bone structure and more dense muscle mass, the type males have, would let a male pilot both take less damage from shock and avoid injuries a female pilot would not.
I have a hard time believing muscle mass makes men better tank operators. I mean, if there are really some statistics here i'd be interested to see them, but it sure seems like gender wouldn't make much of a difference. If there's that much concussive force happening inside the cabin, I'd think you'd have bigger things to worry about.
Draco wrote: Playing outside and sports are not reason why teenager boys and adult men are stronger than girls and women. I have physically athletic daughter and nerdy boy, but because hormones boy is much more stronger and faster
Training do make a difference. Would you even try to arm wrestle Madeleine Leander?
Spoiler:
Training does make a difference but not anywhere near as much as you would think.
I knew this couple a while back, He was a body builder (and was bloody huge!) and she had started weight training and the like about 2 years before this story takes place and was really showing results! (I think at the time she was contemplating moving into body building competitively but till then it was just something she'd enjoyed doing with her boyfriend.)
But anyways this day we'd all met at the pub and were just enjoying the evening when for a laugh his girlfriend had challenged me to an arm wrestle. Now I didn't fancy my chances because at 5 foot not a lot and with an excercise regime that involved the occasional set of stairs and lifting a few pints of a weekend! I really expected to be sent pinwheeling across the bloody room by the lady of amazonian stature sitting across the table from me! But thinking it would be a laugh at least, I put my arm on the table and was then plenty shocked when in the end I won.
Now she had worked bloody hard to get where she was at the time but unfortuantly that wasn't enough to get past the fact that my short average arse has been shaped by evolution to be naturally stronger than her.
Now don't get me wrong here I still think physical strengh has nothing to do with whether woman can pilot a knight but I'm tired of people constantly telling women that they are, physically on a level playing field with men. Because I've seen first hand the destruction of friends confidence and self esteem (not related to the above story) as reality has, sometimes literally hit them square in the face.
Reality doesn't care how supportive you want to be to a friend or daughter or that you only want the best for them! If you give someone unrealistic expectations or feed them false hope all you are doing is setting them up for failure!
Were they body builders or weight lifters? There's actually a fair difference between the two a body builder may look impressive but they've actually little strength and stamina compared to weight lifters.
Many a time I've gone to use a machine after some super ripped guy to find he's doing half what I do, and I know from the computer I'm in the top 10% hardest working members.
Not to diss body builders it takes a lot of work to look like that.
Well to be true, I always thought that bodybuilders suffer from some sort of body dysphoria. And what shocked me the most is that when they look "the best" they are in their weakest state, because of dyhadration etc I think the best difference is when someone compares body builders and strongman. It is like a totally different type of body. Same thing with crossfit guys. Lean and strong, and able to do really cool stuff, but no one is going to claim they can lift or bench press as much as a strongman.
I have a hard time believing muscle mass makes men better tank operators. I mean, if there are really some statistics here i'd be interested to see them, but it sure seems like gender wouldn't make much of a difference. If there's that much concussive force happening inside the cabin, I'd think you'd have bigger things to worry about.
I remember my dad reading me an article about male and female soldiers and suffering from IED in afganistan and Iraq. I will try to find it.
Why didn't Knight Solaria from Dawn of War 3 not close this conversation like 5 pages ago?
I don't think lady knights are common at all in a feudalistic society, one which the Imperium seems intent on mimicking. But lack of swarms of female knight pilots does not demonstrate an absence of them. Solaria proves they are a thing, which proves that either the Rite of Bonding can be taken by a hardy enough human (man or woman), or her knight was not equipped with a proper machine spirit to wrangle... and that sounds like some sort of heresy there.
Anyways, I'll let everyone continue to argue about something that was already disproved. Please enjoy
Edit: Also, if females can be Catachan Jungle Fighters in 40k... what the heck are we suggesting they cannot do that normal human men can do? Space Marines are the exception because of being built off of specific genetic material and a technology that was lost long ago. Though Primaris may even call that into question. If it is possible to unlock the gene seed code enough to get to Primaris levels, they should have a decent enough understanding to work on the gender problem if they wish. That would probably circle back to "feudalistic society" constraints, though.
I recall reading a statement by a US general regarding women in war, I forget the reference or who said it though. The upshot was that the issue wasn't with physical strength, but with how men mentally reacted to women being injured. IT had a huge effect on how they behaved as they shifted into a full "protect the woman" mentality instead of following their training; which could make situations worse because the soldiers were not following orders and instead were reacting to the more "instinctive here and now". Of course part of that is going to be their upbringing, but it was an interesting statment to my mind on women in war that wasn't focused on the macho "best of the best of the best of the strongest". Because lets face it, even in the army people are not at their most physically perfect - way above average (esp by today standards) but they are not superhuman to a point where women can't in any way perform.
Purifying Tempest wrote: Why didn't Knight Solaria from Dawn of War 3 not close this conversation like 5 pages ago?
Cause then we get into a whole debate on what counts as official lore within the franchise - which further gets broken down as even if the company has given an official answer people will argue their case anyway.
Personally I see 40K as being birthed in the 80s ish era when we had women like Ripley on the TV beating back scary Xenos and being the toughest. So it stands to my mind that women in the wartorn 40K world works without any problem what so ever. Heck we've got Sisters of Battle who are an all female force.
Also don't forget MOST of the best and most elite (marines) are wearing massive power-armour suits. They are physically impressive creatures within them, but with power armour and heck full cybernetic parts the whole gender equation is thrown out the window. We can throw it even further out the window if we consider genetic manipulation within the 40K world as well. Even a MAN in the 40K world isn't good enough (strong) and has to be augmented to function at a continuous higher level.
Honestly I'm surprised that there are so many pages to this, the Lore as GW crafts it has women in titans, that's kind of the end of it really. They can enhance them in any number of ways like the males; and lets face it there's been tens of thousands of years of further evolution of mankind. Humans of the 41st millennium will not be similar to humans of today.
I have a hard time believing muscle mass makes men better tank operators.
Actually, tank crew is a pretty physically demanding job. Maintenance on the tank often involves large heavy components. Track repair in the field is a git of a job which involves muscling several tons of track into position (each link is 50+ pounds).
Even getting ammo and water in and out of the tank (which is usually done by hand) is a pretty tough slog.
casvalremdeikun wrote: So, the Imperial Knights codex is out. And in it, there are several examples of female Imperial Knights. Up until this point, they were rare to the point that the only female Knight we had in the fluff was masquerading as a man.
casvalremdeikun wrote: So, the Imperial Knights codex is out. And in it, there are several examples of female Imperial Knights. Up until this point, they were rare to the point that the only female Knight we had in the fluff was masquerading as a man.
What are your thoughts on this?
Literally the first fething post in the thread.
But who are you telling to "get over it"? Get over what?
Overread wrote: I recall reading a statement by a US general regarding women in war, I forget the reference or who said it though. The upshot was that the issue wasn't with physical strength, but with how men mentally reacted to women being injured. IT had a huge effect on how they behaved as they shifted into a full "protect the woman" mentality instead of following their training; which could make situations worse because the soldiers were not following orders and instead were reacting to the more "instinctive here and now". Of course part of that is going to be their upbringing, but it was an interesting statment to my mind on women in war that wasn't focused on the macho "best of the best of the best of the strongest". Because lets face it, even in the army people are not at their most physically perfect - way above average (esp by today standards) but they are not superhuman to a point where women can't in any way perform.
Women infantry burn out faster than males, and they sustain more injuries. People don't grasp that the military is about CAPABILITY, not equality. You have INFANTRY drilled at what has been combat tested/proven requirements for physical endurance and said requirements push men to their limits, and people wonder why women can't, or more hilarious, think that women can do it.
I've linked reports/stats from field exercises with women and mixed units here in Dakka but no one cares because it doesn't suit their world view, even more recent the USMC tests proved that female marines in mixed male/female units performed worse than all male, and males without infantry training were more accurate with their weapons than females who had completed infantry training...
Eldenfirefly wrote: I don't get this thread. Is there any particular reason why there shouldn't be female imperial knight pilots? There isn't any reason why a female can't pilot an imperial knight.
I find it great that we can have female IK pilots.
The initial fluff for the Imperial Knights, in their first codex, stated that only men could undergo the Ritual of Bonding. That has been changed. That is why this thread exists.
And then a giant warp storm tore a giant ass hole into regular space like 400 years ago and caused mayhem and havoc.
So these things are piloted by a single human? I thought there were crews inside, at least one person per weapon. Also I remember from epic, that there was supposed to be a pilot for each limb and so on... at least for titans. Being operated more like a battleship than a battlesuit. Scale-wise, knights may be smaller than titans, but they are bigger than most tanks.
HMint wrote: So these things are piloted by a single human?
I thought there were crews inside, at least one person per weapon.
Also I remember from epic, that there was supposed to be a pilot for each limb and so on... at least for titans. Being operated more like a battleship than a battlesuit. Scale-wise, knights may be smaller than titans, but they are bigger than most tanks.
That's Titan's even then the models we have are a bit small for Even titans to have the amount of crew they have in the Fluff. The models don't have a lot of space that's not already full of Gubbins and the like
And then a giant warp storm tore a giant ass hole into regular space like 400 years ago and caused mayhem and havoc.
Yep but also its been positively retconned as there are many historic female pilots, High Queens, nobles etc. All good from my point of view.
Karol wrote: Comparing to a untrained person, and if she is peak training yes. But if you took an avarge male wall climbers, he would have a much stronger grip then her. No amount of training is going to let you ignore basic biology.
She isn't a climber. She is in calisthenics. Also, as someone who knows average climbers, I can say "feth no, the average climber can't do what's being done in this video". In general, she does stuff that my brother, who went to a professional circus/acrobatic school for 2 years, and love climbing, could only stand in awe of, even when he was at peak performance. Sure, the best men in calisthenic certainly do better, I guess. But they aren't "average" by any mean. No amount of wishful thinking is letting you ignore basic biology, including the basic biological fact that training makes you stronger.
Sasquatch wrote: Training does make a difference but not anywhere near as much as you would think.
I knew this couple a while back, He was a body builder (and was bloody huge!) and she had started weight training and the like about 2 years before this story takes place and was really showing results! (I think at the time she was contemplating moving into body building competitively but till then it was just something she'd enjoyed doing with her boyfriend.)
But anyways this day we'd all met at the pub and were just enjoying the evening when for a laugh his girlfriend had challenged me to an arm wrestle. Now I didn't fancy my chances because at 5 foot not a lot and with an excercise regime that involved the occasional set of stairs and lifting a few pints of a weekend! I really expected to be sent pinwheeling across the bloody room by the lady of amazonian stature sitting across the table from me! But thinking it would be a laugh at least, I put my arm on the table and was then plenty shocked when in the end I won.
Cool story bro. But I just need to look at the video above to know that you and I both would be utterly incapable of reaching a fraction of what Maddelisk can do. Have you looked at it? Maddelisk isn't a bodybuilder. She doesn't look at how large her muscle have become. She just look at what weight she can lift and what exercise she can do.
Isn't the whole Rite of Bonding more about subduing the psychic impressions left by the other knights in the Machine Spirit of the Knight?
It is more about indomitable will and being able to be accepted by the former pilot spirits than it is about physical, mental, or psychic stature?
Are there knights with pilots who would be offended by being usurped by a woman pilot? Sure, but if she is willful enough, she should be able to suppress those and find herself worthy being the new pilot.
If she were weak-willed and a coward, though, I doubt she would ever be able to best the Machine Spirit.
At least this argument is based more in areas where 40k clearly separates from reality. And it isn't genetics or strength or anything related to gender that does or does not make a knight pilot. Pure willpower and strength of spirit (ideals, values, etc.).
Women infantry burn out faster than males, and they sustain more injuries. People don't grasp that the military is about CAPABILITY, not equality. You have INFANTRY drilled at what has been combat tested/proven requirements for physical endurance and said requirements push men to their limits, and people wonder why women can't, or more hilarious, think that women can do it.
I've linked reports/stats from field exercises with women and mixed units here in Dakka but no one cares because it doesn't suit their world view, even more recent the USMC tests proved that female marines in mixed male/female units performed worse than all male, and males without infantry training were more accurate with their weapons than females who had completed infantry training...
Nuff said.
Actually, there is something to be said, by the USMC:
Seems strange that they'd be actively trying to recruit women, possibly into active combat roles, after all you just posted...
Of course it makes little difference to this thread, seeing as we are discussing fantastic elements in a fantasy game about little toy soldiers. No military is ever going to build a forty foot tall humanoid robot. They are just way too impractical. If they did, what would the physical requirements be to pilot them anyways? The closest thing we have to compare it to for complexity would be a jet fighter and there are already female pilots that meet the rigorous standards for those. Furthermore, the places you actually see giant robots, female pilots aren't uncommon. Battletech has had a long history of ace female mechwarriors for example. The fact that a modern company trying to sell to as broad a market as possible would slip in that "only men can pilot knights is a big head scratcher. The fact that it was immediately missed/ignored by other writers and actively retconed in the new codex makes me think that the bias was from the writer of that codex and not something GW proper even really thought about. Hell, I only looked at this thread because I thought "is there actually a reason GW thinks there wouldn't be"? I kind of get the impression most of GW thought the exact same thing.
Listen, women warriors have existed in real life. Yes, they might be rare, so what? 40k is a fantasy game, so why doesn't giant robots make people bat an eye but women warriors as a fantastic element make people try to break out the science books? It's like trying to defend only men can be men can be SM due to testosterone levels, muscle mass, and other "science". Sorry, SM are made from magic space organs designed by psychojesus and only work on men because GW says so. Acceptable defenses are "it was the 80s", "they didn't think hulking women in heavy armor would sell", "they didn't think they could do a good enough job modeling them when SM proper came along", or "removing the restriction now would cause a massive backlash against GW". Honestly, trying to use "science" in a fantasy setting as to why girls shouldn't do X is pointless when some writer could easily add in a world where women were genetically engineered there to be better in every way than men, thousands of years ago for reasons. GW kind of already has that with the Escher gang.
Women warriors might not be your cup of tea but it's a fantasy setting, in your version you can pretend they don't even exist. On the other hand a female player might want to put down a badass female hero that represents her in the game because that's her fantasy. Mine might mean all my SM are painted with bright purple skin and sky blue hair, which the inquisition is good with because they wish they looked that cool. Ultimately the more people GW opens their setting up to, the better it is for business.
I'll be honest. I assumed the average knight was piloted by a like a group of Power Rangers. You can't have the Power Rangers without the Pink Ranger, so... yeah.
If you change the lore, and no one really cared what it was in the first place, does a fanboy still make a sound?
The current push to recruit females for combat roles in the US has more to do with the lack of good male candidates than it does with capability to carry a ruck. The fact that other countries field women in combat roles also has an effect. However, all told, the US needs warm bodies, willing candidates to fill needed roles on more than a thousand military installations worldwide. That’s why DARPA is funding research into powered exoskeletons to offset the weight of gear needed for the modern combat role. No one cares if you got tits if you can do the job, especially if the job is designed for anyone to do it.
Don't the Israelis have huge problems with their female recruits? Much higher drop out rates, and higher injury in same recruit groups. Plus mixed units seem to suffer a lot more wounded and dead then non mixed ones. I understand why Israel uses female soldiers, makes huge sense in their very specific situation. But I doubt all female line units would fly in any euro country. The political backlash from losing such a unit would be huge, that no politician would want to risk it.
I don't understand the Escher argument, they are stronger then escher man, who are gene defected because of a virus. But they are clearly inferior to any of the great houses, even the orlocks are better, and that says something about how "good" they are.
Karol wrote: Don't the Israelis have huge problems with their female recruits? Much higher drop out rates, and higher injury in same recruit groups. Plus mixed units seem to suffer a lot more wounded and dead then non mixed ones. I understand why Israel uses female soldiers, makes huge sense in their very specific situation. But I doubt all female line units would fly in any euro country. The political backlash from losing such a unit would be huge, that no politician would want to risk it.
I don't understand the Escher argument, they are stronger then escher man, who are gene defected because of a virus. But they are clearly inferior to any of the great houses, even the orlocks are better, and that says something about how "good" they are.
Okay, so what does Israel's drop out rate for women in basic have to do with giant humanoid warmachines that no real military would actually build, from a fictional future? Tell me what the qualifications are for being a good giant robot pilot? So far the one thing I've seen people say is muscle and bone mass to absorb shock. Here is the thing with that, if you have a giant walking robot that can walk around in all terrain and not fall over reliably (walking isn't exactly a stable form of locomotion) and doesn't just sink into the ground, you will need great shock absorption on the pilot compartment. If you don't, then your pilot won't be happy when your 30 or 40ft tall knight falls over regardless of if they are a boy or a girl. Also there would probably a lot of motion sickness caused by the simple act of the thing walking and having to resist hits from lots of people shooting at something that is 30 to 40ft tall that they can all see. If damage from impacts is a major concern for a pilot, then you shouldn't build a giant robot. If you say that they have this technology for proper shock absorption you can also claim that because of a female pilot's genetic and cybernetic enhancements that she could stand at one end of a sports field and throw you through the goal at the other end. Also her nanotite colony can easily heal her of anything short of massive trauma. Are you seeing what I'm getting at? Giant robots are a particularly fantastic element of fiction, any pilot of one is fantastic by default.
I know that you are new to 40K, having read several of your posts in threads like the one about the GK being the worst. I don't know where you got your information about the Escher in Necromunda but I really suggest you study up on them. The big difference between gangs in Necromunda, mechanically, is in the equipment access and what bonuses they are more likely to get when they advance in a campaign. Escher are the physical equals of the other gangs with their stats. As far as background goes, their men are pretty much useless and yet they remain one of the major factions and aren't listed as one of the background houses that got wiped out at some point. If they were as weak as you claim then the other houses would have fallen on them and carved up their territory. Of course my actual argument was that any GW author could come along and write about a world were women for whatever reason were the physically superior sex, even better than normal imperial standards. The Escher are just an example of a group of women who are specifically the equals of the other factions in their setting which are predominantly represented by men, so they were worth mentioning along with this.
Now you can go on about how bad women are as soldiers are and cite things like military branches that have them, like the USMC, have different standards for women then men. This has nothing to do with the topic though. The first codex said no to female knights, it was completely ignored by GW staff, and the new codex retconed them so female knights are a thing.
As an aside, I mentioned my last roommate is a female firefighter. It is a very physically demanding job that has the exact same requirements for women as it does men, which my roommate passed with flying colors (https://www.unitedwomenfirefighters.org/faqs). If you don't think there are women who can be the physical equals of men then your sadly mistaken.
Skaorn wrote: As an aside, I mentioned my last roommate is a female firefighter. It is a very physically demanding job that has the exact same requirements for women as it does men, which my roommate passed with flying colors (https://www.unitedwomenfirefighters.org/faqs). If you don't think there are women who can be the physical equals of men then your sadly mistaken.
I have a problem with statements like that, because if the male requirements are too low then there is no point to what you just said.
Second, a lot of people get hung up on the idea that the Military or people like I, think women cannot be as physically strong as men, and that misses the point.
If you take 1 male, and 1 female, both at equal capabilities, and have them as infantry, the result will be 100% that the female body will burn out long before the male body does. This is why women can be strong enough to actually enter special forces training but can never actually pass, this is why women keep sustaining injuries, can't carry all the necessary kit etc. And yes there are a handful of GI JANES that do exist, but these women can 'soldier' for a couple of days or more before they need to be taken off deployment to rest or their bodies will break.
If they said all Knights were piloted by females because the tech inside required intense micro-management and females were better suited, I wouldn't want to see a male pilot later down the track just to appeal to my gender because it would be stupid to recruit mentally slower pilots, even if the difference was minor, why would they bother for second best when they have enough female pilots for the job?
Except it doesn't, because society values males more and places the expectation that they're the ones to do the "real" jobs. Giving representation to the group who's not in the spotlight is different from giving representation to the groups people expect to be there.
Or to put it another way saying upholding the status quo and not upholding the status quo are the same thing is a false equivalency.
Another thing to consider is that the "best person for the job" is simply not getting selected on a knight World - many of them are based on a feudal system so you are selecting from the sons and daughters of the ruling class which is pretty small gene pool.
Now there will be some selection in that can the noble actually control and pilot the thing but its unlikely that the first born child will not get to be a pilot unless there is a major problem, it would be damaging to the House's reputation - both internally and externally if they were not.
Ginsu33 wrote: If they said all Knights were piloted by females because the tech inside required intense micro-management and females were better suited, I wouldn't want to see a male pilot later down the track just to appeal to my gender because it would be stupid to recruit mentally slower pilots, even if the difference was minor, why would they bother for second best when they have enough female pilots for the job?
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