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Kain wrote:[inside jokes]Melissa may not be a troll, but her avatar depicts one in an entirely different context.[/inside jokes.]

Speaking of inside jokes, this is by far the best thing to ever happen ever.

Kain wrote:And some people are just obstinate

I'm obstinate about a lot of things, but I've never actually planned to make female space marines personally. I just find the arguments against them to be silly.

ContemplativeSphinx wrote:Er huh?

The zygotes are keyed to male hormones and tissue types?

Is there anymore explanation to that written in the book?

The geneseed "zygotes" is what they're referring to, not the human zygotes. That's without getting in to the fact that there's technically no such thing as male or female hormones (both genders use both "kinds"), and a good number of women have more testosterone in their system than the average man in modern times.

nomsheep wrote:

Vladsimpaler wrote:

Deathwatch RPG, page 15 wrote:
They must be male, because zygotes are keyed to male hormones and tissue types, hence the need, for tissue compatibility tests and psychological screening.

That's from the most recent background. Arbitrary or not, that's the way it is.

So if someone really wanted to, then they could manipluate the zygotes to work for females?

Nom

I don't really understand what the heck they are claiming. A zygote is merely a fertilized egg.

It hasn't even committed to the process of differentiation yet. IE: the Cells are still Totipotent.

ContemplativeSphinx: See my post right above yours.

@melissia: that link is made of win.


Nom

nomsheep wrote:On topic: Can you produce a source vet sarge?

A source for what? I've said nothing that requires a source. If you want to prove what I said was wrong, you have to provide a source that your belief of gender equality exists. I cannot prove to you that something doesn't exist. Simple and vague pastiches aren't sources, lol. A source is a specific example that can be verified. I understand not everyone goes to college, but I'm not going to start arguing at an elementary school level just to be fair.

The old saying really does ring true "Any thread about female space marines shall garner at least 100 posts." Huh...

Veteran Sergeant wrote:

nomsheep wrote:On topic: Can you produce a source vet sarge?

A source for what? I've said nothing that requires a source.

You said that women in 40k aren't as martially capable as men in 40k, to the direct contradiction of established 40k lore.

nomsheep wrote:I tend to skim til I see something interesting and then go from there. I tend to forget whats in these kind of threads that are nearly a weekly ritual...

@Frazzled: you are honsetly the first person I know of that has done that.

Nom

I think that is good, but I was hit by a barrel Friday so I may be a bit...off.

Melissia wrote:The geneseed "zygotes" is what they're referring to, not the human zygotes. That's without getting in to the fact that there's technically no such thing as male or female hormones (both genders use both "kinds"), and a good number of women have more testosterone in their system than the average man in modern times.

Wow.. I thought Hollywood took a lot of liberties with science. Heck, even George Lucas makes a better case with his Mitochondria-That-Produce-the Force...


And yes it is a very irksome but popular conception that men and women only produce one type of sex hormone.

Adrenal Cortex produces some androgens, not enough to make a difference to males due to the existence of the testes..but quite important for women esp. if the AC is thrown out of whack.

Frazzled wrote:I think that is good, but I was hit by a barrel Friday so I may be a bit...off.

As in, actually hit by a barrel physically, or you drank a barrel of beer and still haven't recovered...

... or both?

Frazzled wrote:

nomsheep wrote:I tend to skim til I see something interesting and then go from there. I tend to forget whats in these kind of threads that are nearly a weekly ritual...

@Frazzled: you are honsetly the first person I know of that has done that.

Nom

I think that is good, but I was hit by a barrel Friday so I may be a bit...off.

How did you pull that off? lol

ANd it's good It makes you original (to me) in world where no-one is. XD

Nom

Melissia wrote:

Veteran Sergeant wrote:

nomsheep wrote:On topic: Can you produce a source vet sarge?

A source for what? I've said nothing that requires a source.

You said that women in 40k aren't as martially capable as men in 40k, to the direct contradiction of established 40k lore.

If I remember, Amberly Vail was able to defeat a Broodlord in more or less single combat, yes there were others, but if IIRC they were busy holding off the rest of the genestealers. Admittedly she was encased in heavy artificer armour and had a power fist and a heavy bolter, but a Broodlord is something more than capable of simply pulling a Space marine's arms out of his sockets and clubbing him to death with them.

Melissia wrote:

Frazzled wrote:I think that is good, but I was hit by a barrel Friday so I may be a bit...off.

As in, actually hit by a barrel physically, or you drank a barrel of beer and still haven't recovered...

... or both?

Hit by a barrel-one of those street warning barrels to be precise. They had a squall come through downtown Friday. I tride to get downstairs and on the bus a few minutes before It came in but oo late. Hurricane level winds came through downtown for a few minutes send ing everything flying around, inlcuding a barrel that smacked your humble servant while he was hiding in the corner of a a building laughing like a mad hatter. Now saturday I helped bottle the Wife's wine, and that was being hit by a whole different barrel.

Considering last week was caught in a storm and had to run back to the house with the dogs, cradling Tbone like a football Heisman style its been a weird weather month for me.

Kain wrote:

Melissia wrote:

Veteran Sergeant wrote:

nomsheep wrote:On topic: Can you produce a source vet sarge?

A source for what? I've said nothing that requires a source.

You said that women in 40k aren't as martially capable as men in 40k, to the direct contradiction of established 40k lore.

If I remember, Amberly Vail was able to defeat a Broodlord in more or less single combat, yes there were others, but if IIRC they were busy holding off the rest of the genestealers. Admittedly she was encased in heavy artificer armour and had a power fist and a heavy bolter, but a Broodlord is something more than capable of simply pulling a Space marine's arms out of his sockets and clubbing him to death with them.

Pfff. you don't even have to get so complicated with the matter.

Shira Calpurnia, just your "normal" adeptus arbites, could snap the majority of men i know IRL in two.

Same with the two lesbian guardswomen in the Cain books for that matter.

One of them dropped a Tallarn company's prize brawler in less than a second.

Mind you, Sandy Mitchel likes writing badass female guardsmen. A pity he can't write Sisters to save his life.

Melissia wrote:

Veteran Sergeant wrote:

nomsheep wrote:On topic: Can you produce a source vet sarge?

A source for what? I've said nothing that requires a source.

You said that women in 40k aren't as martially capable as men in 40k, to the direct contradiction of established 40k lore.

Negative. What I said was that there is no evidence that, in general, females are physically equal to their male counterparts in 40K fluff.

At least we've identified the friction point. You don't even understand what's being debated.

Melissia wrote:The geneseed "zygotes" is what they're referring to, not the human zygotes. That's without getting in to the fact that there's technically no such thing as male or female hormones (both genders use both "kinds"), and a good number of women have more testosterone in their system than the average man in modern times.

They're most likely referring to the Y Chromosome which only men have.
Also you're gonna have to cite the "women having more testosterone than men" claim. Of course, you're most likely referring to exceptions. Hey, there are also some men that are emotional or better artists than the average women. Doesn't mean anything. It's an exception, not the norm.

Also if you're gonna quote some random female being able to punch out some dude, then I will never feel bad about Sisters sucking in 40k ever again. Dumb crap like that makes me lose respect for arguments that women are equal to men in terms of strength.

:edit: Just saw your above post about the lesbian dude knocking out the Tallarn. Mind=blown.

Kind Regards,
Vladsimpaler

Melissia wrote:

DogOfWar wrote:[... ] 40k fluff does a great job of equalling the sexes in terms of combat, the realism of such equality is unlikely.

Uh.

Wait.

What?

You do realize we have women in our military forces today, right?

The 40k fluff describes humans as basically the same height, weight and build as they are now, so using modern day comparisons is perfectly reasonable.

You said specifically that the differences between the sexes in average, non astartes, humans is negligible in combat. That is a flatly false statement.

DoW

He's got a point...
If he claims there isn't any evidence supporting the idea that females aren't as physically capable as men in 40k it's gonna be hard to come up with evidence for it... since... you know his point is that there isn't any evidence...

We've got transexuals in beauty pageants NOW.

If people can blur gender lines like that with existing tech, it pretty much doesn't matter where you start in 40k. Maybe the Astartes process works on anyone, but just, for all practical purposes, makes you "male". A male that can't reproduce and has no instinctive desire to anyway, no less.

Hell, a great many marines barely remember who and what they were before the transformation. Its blocked, burnt, wiped out of their minds as a side effect, or even intentionally. Maybe some of them started as sweet little girls who happened to fit the proper physical requirements to be a marine, then they're put through training and mind-wiped to the point they just don't even remember properly what they were born as.

But seriously, once they're decked out in power armour, bulked up, and generally radically different than a base human any way, who cares what they started as? They're all gonna look like the incredible hulk anyway.

ContemplativeSphinx wrote:Shira Calpurnia, just your "normal" adeptus arbites, could snap the majority of men i know IRL in two.

Actually no. She was easily physically restrained by a Navy cadet until she was able to get her power maul into him. She even admits that if she didn't have her weapon, she would have been dead.

She's very skilled, agile, aerobically fit and tenacious, absolutely but it's clear that she is not physically stronger than an average male, let alone a Guardsman.

DoW

DrimGark wrote:We've got transexuals in beauty pageants NOW.

If people can blur gender lines like that with existing tech, it pretty much doesn't matter where you start in 40k.

I always thought it was some sort of unofficial policy by GW/BL to try and steer clear of issues like gender-bending or sex in fiction for that matter.

So it may be a matter of "As Long as we don't acknowledge it, it therefore doesn't exist."


Automatically Appended Next Post:

DogOfWar wrote:

ContemplativeSphinx wrote:Shira Calpurnia, just your "normal" adeptus arbites, could snap the majority of men i know IRL in two.

Actually no. She was easily physically restrained by a Navy cadet until she was able to get her power maul into him. She even admits that if she didn't have her weapon, she would have been dead.

She's very skilled, agile, aerobically fit and tenacious, absolutely but it's clear that she is not physically stronger than an average male, let alone a Guardsman.

DoW

But the majority of men i know in real life aren't Imperial navy cadets.

Melissia wrote:

MarcoSkoll wrote:an evolutionary pressure that targets just women would affect men too.

This is not necessarily the case, as proven by the existence of medical conditions and mutations that are unique or near-unique to women.

If a something is an evolutionary pressure on women, then it affects how many children they pass their genetics on to (on average) - and those children can be either gender - whether or not that pressure exists for men.

It is true that some conditions do take hold in only one sex, but the genetics that relate to physical performance are shared by both men and women. Hence, a pressure that caused a positive correlation between genetic disposition for physical performance and the number of offspring borne by women (but which somehow had negligible correlation with the average offspring of men), that genetic disposition would be passed on to (and take effect in) both male and female descendants.

While it is true that there is very little genetic difference between a male and a female, Astartes fanboys claim that this relatively insignificant difference is enough to disqualify all women

Canonically, yes it is. Or at the very least, that's what everyone in-universe believes and thus has no reason to waste their time finding out.

In all black library stories with male and female guardsmen, there is no noted difference between them as far as physical capabilities go

Why would they choose to note the difference? I can just see that as a footnote: "We thought we should point out what any sane person would be taking for granted just so that someone doesn't try and use our omission as 'evidence' on an internet forum in a few years: The men are stronger than the women. kthxbye".

Perhaps I should also cite the general lack of statements regarding how much 40k males menstruate as part of a statement about how well the Imperial sanitary towel industry must be doing?

In the FFG roleplaying game, there is zero difference at all between male and female characters save social differences.

That's just because most of the GIRLs (Acronym: Guy In Real Life) would pitch a fit if they actually had to take a penalty for acting out their weird fantasies.

All of the -4 STR stuff from the old D&D got dropped for this reason, and most RPGs have since also decided to avoid gender based stat penalties/bonuses.

You said that women in 40k aren't as martially capable as men in 40k, to the direct contradiction of established 40k lore.

You said that women are as martially capable as men, to the direct contradiction of all modern evidence.

40k has nothing to do with it. Women simply are NOT built as strong as men due to the different shaping of their bodies - an essential difference to allow childbirth.

ContemplativeSphinx wrote:
But the majority of men i know in real life aren't Imperial navy cadets.

Yeah, and the majority of women you know in real life aren't Adeptus Arbites. Go figure.

Kind Regards,
Vladsimpaler

Melissia wrote:Not really, I've only been halfway reading the thread (taking this topic seriously is never a sign of sanity). What other part?

Translation: When I come across points I can't refute, I ignore them and/or act like the whole conversation was beneath me in the first place.

Veteran Sergeant wrote:

Melissia wrote:

Veteran Sergeant wrote:[snip]

Unlike you, I provided sources. Your assertion is essentially pulled right out of your arse.

I've told you before that simply being obstinate does not allow you to win arguments, lol.

You've got to be one of my favorite trolls on this site. You're absolutely unwavering.

Basically.

Melissia wrote:A good number of women have more testosterone in their system than the average man in modern times.

Case in point? Maybe.

Anyway, I don't see how this is relevant. A good number of men have bigger tits than the average woman in modern times, too. So there you go, if you want marines with bewbs, they all recruit from a planet full of fatties, and a flaw in the geneseed doesn't strip them of their moobs. The end.

Melissia wrote:Mind you, Sandy Mitchel likes writing badass female guardsmen. A pity he can't write Sisters to save his life.

It's probably quite Freudian. "Waah, I got a girl's name so people call me a wimp. I'm going to write a bunch of super-tough women to prove that even if you have a girl's name, you can still be tough!"

Vladsimpaler wrote:
Also if you're gonna quote some random female being able to punch out some dude, then I will never feel bad about Sisters sucking in 40k ever again. Dumb crap like that makes me lose respect for arguments that women are equal to men in terms of strength.

:edit: Just saw your above post about the lesbian dude knocking out the Tallarn. Mind=blown.

Kind Regards,
Vladsimpaler

Hilarity.

Vladsimpaler wrote:They're most likely referring to the Y Chromosome which only men have.

That itself is not entirely true (not only men have it, and indeed there's things on the X and Y genes that code for the same thing...), but regardless, the unique parts of the Y chromosome code for little more than the presence and regulation of the male genitalia. Which the Marines do not use.

Vladsimpaler wrote:Of course, you're most likely referring to exceptions.

Nope! My entire point was that the difference between male and female isn't as great as people think it is, and most of it is artificially inflated due to cultural enforcement. Women are expected by society to be softer and weaker, and society tries to enforce this expectation on children as they grow up.

The Imperium as a whole has no such limitation due to its desire to maximize the use of its population and its hatred for weakness, and indeed it has numerous worlds where women are the dominant power or where everyone pulls their weight equally, meaning that it is very likely that the women would have on average more testosterone than, or an equal amount to, the men simply due to psychological reasons (the bodies of women who become competitive and develop a drive naturally produce more testosterone, as seen in soldiers and businesswomen).

Vladsimpaler wrote:Also if you're gonna quote some random female being able to punch out some dude, then I will never feel bad about Sisters sucking in 40k ever again. Dumb crap like that makes me lose respect for arguments that women are equal to men in terms of strength.

My point was that the argument that women in 40k are less martially competent than men is a junk argument. If this position offends you

... I couldn't care less. Be offended all you want.

MarcoSkoll wrote:You said that women are as martially capable as men

In 40k.

Which is true

Vladsimpaler wrote:Just some interesting stuff from the Deathwatch RPG which is some of the most recent stuff on Space Marines.

Deathwatch RPG, page 13 wrote:
These (feral) worlds are often technologically backward with strong militaristic societies, where male children who show potential are pushed harder and harder, that they may one day
have a chance to join the ranks of the Space Marines

Deathwatch RPG, page 15 wrote:
They must be male, because zygotes are keyed to male hormones and tissue types, hence the need, for tissue compatibility tests and psychological screening.

That's from the most recent background. Arbitrary or not, that's the way it is.

Kind Regards,
Vladsimpaler

I never said it wasn't they way it was. I simply stated there was no fluff reason it had to be. The whole Astarte creation took so much knowledge of human anatomy and technology to say it was stumped byt Hormones is laughable.

Omegus wrote:
It's probably quite Freudian. "Waah, I got a girl's name so people call me a wimp. I'm going to write a bunch of super-tough women to prove that even if you have a girl's name, you can still be tough!"


Kind Regards,

Actually Sandy Mitchell's real name is Alex Stewart, why he uses that pen name is beyond me. Maybe because Alex Stewart is honestly kind of a generic name.

Maybe he just likes the name Sandy Mitchell better.

Hunterindarkness wrote:
I never said it wasn't they way it was. I simply stated there was no fluff reason it had to be. The whole Astarte creation took so much knowledge of human anatomy and technology to say it was stumped byt Hormones is laughable.

Well, it is fantasy genetics. I suspect attempting to marry 40K Science! to real world Science would probably close off a few doors of creativity to writers....that and bog them down in a topic that probably doesn't garner a lot of interest to the folks playing 40K (excluding those engaged in the natural sciences or medicine as a profession of course).