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I know.
This sounds very similar to the constant outcry for female Space Marines, but I can't, as a very poor AdMech expert, see any reason why a Skitarius couldn't be female.

Besides, under all those implants, does the gender matter?

Yes, possible.
No, the gender does not matter.

Thought so. That's great, thank you!

Why would you think it similar to the "outcry for female Space Marines"?

Skitarii are just normal people stripped of their identity and clad in a pressure suit, armor, and robes.

Skitarii varies. Some are just people with mild augmentations like Ciaphas Cain describes. Others are like the guys McNeil has described who were formerly human. Gender is not an issue as far as I know as the Space Marines had to be men or die on the operating table.

The lead Skitarii in The Zheng Cipher, Alpha 6-Friest, is female.

With all the Augmetics its hard to tell. That and the Robes, Radiation Damage (Vangaurd), integrated armor, cybernetics and so on make it even harder.

You could always just ask...

The usual thing to assume is that if it's not clearly mentionned that there is a sex restriction for a perticular army or unit, then they can be of both sex. So there certainly is a decent number of female (and male) Skitarii, Scions, Commissars, Guardsmen, Chapter Serfs, Magos, Inquisitors, Assassins, Servitors, etc. The only exceptions would be that there is no female Space Marines and no male Sister of Battle. The only issue for those two would be about transexual and hermaphrodite persons. I wonder how they are considered be each organisation?

You'd think that once you are augmented enough, gender ceases to be relevant and visible.

You speak in Microsoft Sam and you look like a robot either way. After a while, you become 'it'.

Considering most Skitarii in the new model range seem to no longer even be human, gender doesn't exist anymore. This is the admech, all that's left is part of a torso and a brain.

Aye, more importantly, would the Skitarii care? In the cases progressing so far beyond the physical and identity, are there male Skitarii?

I feel there's a gender binary pun waiting to be written...

 Buttery Commissar wrote:
Aye, more importantly, would the Skitarii care? In the cases progressing so far beyond the physical and identity, are there male Skitarii?

I feel there's a gender binary pun waiting to be written...

"Though some might disagree, not all things are binary."

After a certain level of augmented systems and tech add , armour, robotics, servo limbs, you cannot tell there sex, there just a mass of metal and advanced techno wizardry.

They may look female or male at start but by end there no longer human as such.
Plus all the mental tech, conditioning, there just a code by the end in cases.

The only reason there aren't any female Space Marines is because Gene-seed implants are perhaps the most picky pieces of biotech ever. You're already at risk of losing a male initiate as it is.

Skitarii, on the other hand, only need some augmentics and a gun.

 RaptorusRex wrote:
Skitarii, on the other hand, only need some augmentics and a gun.

"Only"? Some seem more robot than human, and they have guns the likes of which even the richest or most powerful men in the IoM can only dream of possessing. I suspect the really heavily enhanced Skitarii could be worth more raw money than an average rank-and-file space marine.

As for the OP, nothing says male only. Augmetics should work just as well on females, and the AdMech isn't likely to care what the servants marching into battle have in their pants. (They could probably provide a good cybernetic replacement anyway.) They're also not likely to place any extra value on a female's life over a male, unless she has more tech knowledge than a man. And then she'd be a TechPriest or something instead of a cyber-enhanced soldier.

 carabine wrote:

 Buttery Commissar wrote:
Aye, more importantly, would the Skitarii care? In the cases progressing so far beyond the physical and identity, are there male Skitarii?

I feel there's a gender binary pun waiting to be written...

"Though some might disagree, not all things are binary."

this point is fuzzy logic!

Spetulhu wrote:
I suspect the really heavily enhanced Skitarii could be worth more raw money than an average rank-and-file space marine.

Mind you, they are still expendable soldiers, even though they are FAR more valuable than guardsmen. Their squad can get hit by mortars at any time and take heavy casualties, and then those super-plasmas and radium guns are not good for much.

This may be by the standards of the Imperium's elite, but Skitarii seem quite expendable for that reason.

epronovost wrote:
The only issue for those two would be about transexual and hermaphrodite persons. I wonder how they are considered be each organisation?

For marines, since it is about getting the implants to work correctly, I do not think they would take the risk. And beside, they are jerks.
For Sisters… no idea. But they tend to be bigoted, so…

 Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote:

epronovost wrote:
The only issue for those two would be about transexual and hermaphrodite persons. I wonder how they are considered be each organisation?

For marines, since it is about getting the implants to work correctly, I do not think they would take the risk. And beside, they are jerks.
For Sisters… no idea. But they tend to be bigoted, so…

Marines, doubt it would work. Transitioning does not change your genetics.

For Sisters, doubt it would work. WayyyYyyYyY too crazy. Would torch you before you finish the sentence.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Buttery Commissar wrote:
are there male Skitarii?

The machine is pure etc.

They probably replaced their weenus with an extra radium pistol or something.

@Ashiraya

Considering the excuse for the Space Marines male only requirements doesn't make much sense from a genetical point of view, I think post operation transexuals turned into Space Marines are still a subject of debate. Albeit one that very few players will ever ask themselves. As for hermaphrodites, that's an even bigger question for even smaller group of persons.

Ironicaly, Skitarii might have issues with gender considering they would need to adapt some of their implants like those that would replace the kidney and the heart to persons of various sex. I pretty shure the Mechanicus doesn't mind doing custom jobs to be more efficient and at some point even if they recruited form people of the same gender they would have too, but it still consume more time and ressources.

Has for Sisters and transexuals and hermaphrodites, I am not to sure. They are zealots, but they aren't zealots of any modern Earth religion. We have no clue on what are the eddicts of the Ecclesiarchy about sexuality, if they even have some. We don't know if they support any kind of gender role like most modern and ancient religions do. We don't even know if they celebrate marriage or have some ritual to mark adulthood or official entry in their creed. On top of that the Sisterhood isn't orthodox. It's a monastic sect with it's own perticularities, rules and traditions. Maybe they got nothing against hermaphrodites (transexuals are another thing considering where they select their recruits).

Considering the vision of the Adeptus Mechanicus about humanity, I think pretty much everybody agree that even if the recruits where of dibious or unknown gender, they would fit in the mold rather nicely. When your stripped of free will, personnality and partially transform into a combat cyborg, your sex becomes a long lost concept.

epronovost wrote:
We have no clue on what are the eddicts of the Ecclesiarchy about sexuality, if they even have some.

The only clues about that are from Codex: Sisters of Battle from v2. The Scola Progenium used to be run in a very licentious manner before the Reign of Blood, and after Sebastian Thor became Ecclesiarch, they went super puritan and strict, with a lot of gender separation and stuff.

 Ashiraya wrote:

 Buttery Commissar wrote:
are there male Skitarii?

The machine is pure etc.

They probably replaced their weenus with an extra radium pistol or something.

I think at the point that you start worshiping the machine god you stop becoming either male or female.

 Ashiraya wrote:

 Buttery Commissar wrote:
are there male Skitarii?

The machine is pure etc.

They probably replaced their weenus with an extra radium pistol or something.

More like some tube that sends all those bodily fluids right back into their system, considering it says that all bodily waste is put back into the body again.

Let's not forget that there are biotechnicians among the Mechanicum. Granted they're the red-headed stepchildren of Mars (wait, wouldn't that be a good thing?), but not all scions of the Machine God are sexless cyber-constructs of gleaming metal. Gene enhanced soldiery other than Space Marines are mentioned in official fluff from time to time.

There could easily be pure bioenhanced Skitarii out there, particularly on Forgeworlds where Genetors are dominant. They'd probably have some means of linking into communications, technical and tactical cogitators networks, but that could well use a less efficient human interface of some sort.

Gene-eered Skitarii might still have functional gender organs. Breeding could even be a deliberate part of the design if some Tech Magos decided it would somehow be more efficient than vat-grown Skitarii or augmentation of existing humans. I'd expect birth control to be rigorously enforced for reproduction-capable Skitarii in any case; pregnancy on order only, and most likely in vitro to ensure maximum DNA control.

Personally I can't envision why taking an augmented, trained female Skitarii offline for pregnancy, birth and (perhaps, but probably not) rearing would make sense, but the Imperium is a big place - someone somewhere almost certainly has tried it.

I can't imagine such a thing being common, or even particularly efficient/successful, but it could happen.

My random thoughts, hopefully two cents worth.

Seems pretty irrelevant what the original meat body was, given the level of augmentation.

I know this is bordering to threadomancy,
but I just wanted to add in that the main character of the quite recent Adeptus Mechanicus short story "The Zheng Cipher", is the female Alpha 6-Friest.
So there are Skitarii of both genders, and there is nothing saying otherwise. The flesh is weak anyway, and should be augmented

-end of threadomanctic transmission-

Blessed be the Omnissiah

Yeah, I'm pretty sure the adeptus mechanicus has plenty of female techpriests, magos, etc. I just read Greater Good, one of the more recent Ciaphas Cain novels, and one of the supporting characters was a female magos. Anyways, I'm sure that plenty of the Skitarii are female, and would probably keep the same physical profile of the models GW made for it as well.

Why would you even bother about female Skitarii? Anyway any female or male feachers would be surgicaly removed and you would have no way to tell initial sex of skitarii under all this armour and robes.

I've not really read of anything that specifies gender restriction in the fluff. For all we know, the only ones portrayed or written about happen to not be female, which is very different from a perspective of "there are no such thing as female XYZ".

Ecclesiarchal views on sexuality will vary from planet to planet, though the general rule of thumb seems to be that anything between consenting adults (average age in the Imperium, again from various sources: 16) is fine. Anything involving Xenos or non-humans? Not fine.