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 Irbis wrote:

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.

All I will say is ... "good retcon!"

 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?

 Draco wrote:


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.

 Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote:

 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.

Karol wrote:

 Draco wrote:


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.

 Sasquatch wrote:

 Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote:

 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.

The Largest Titan at Helsreach by ADB was piloted by a female.

The leader of the Knight house in The Emperor of Mankind was female.

It’s cannon. Get over it.

 kronk wrote:
The Largest Titan at Helsreach by ADB was piloted by a female.

The leader of the Knight house in The Emperor of Mankind was female.

It’s cannon. Get over it.

No ones opposed to it.

They are just discussing the difference between the two genders and the benefits gained from the biology of each.

 Insectum7 wrote:

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.

hobojebus wrote:

 kronk wrote:
The Largest Titan at Helsreach by ADB was piloted by a female.

The leader of the Knight house in The Emperor of Mankind was female.

It’s cannon. Get over it.

No ones opposed to it.

They are just discussing the difference between the two genders and the benefits gained from the biology of each.

This topic needs to stay open forever so that it can show who doesn't read threads before posting.

hobojebus wrote:

 kronk wrote:
The Largest Titan at Helsreach by ADB was piloted by a female.

The leader of the Knight house in The Emperor of Mankind was female.

It’s cannon. Get over it.

No ones opposed to it.

They are just discussing the difference between the two genders and the benefits gained from the biology of each.

About the qualification to pilot giant robots. In a game with space wizards. With guys who can spit acid thanks to magic space organs.

hobojebus wrote:

 kronk wrote:
The Largest Titan at Helsreach by ADB was piloted by a female.

The leader of the Knight house in The Emperor of Mankind was female.

It’s cannon. Get over it.

No ones opposed to it.

They are just discussing the difference between the two genders and the benefits gained from the biology of each.

Ah, so they’re off topic. You should report them.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Sim-Life wrote:

hobojebus wrote:

 kronk wrote:
The Largest Titan at Helsreach by ADB was piloted by a female.

The leader of the Knight house in The Emperor of Mankind was female.

It’s cannon. Get over it.

No ones opposed to it.

They are just discussing the difference between the two genders and the benefits gained from the biology of each.

This topic needs to stay open forever so that it can show who doesn't read threads before posting.

It seems I am the only on topic poster then. You are welcome

I love how after 24 years the biggest divider and talking point in 40k is STILL toys with tits being on the table.
Never mind everything else.

Skaorn wrote:

hobojebus wrote:

 kronk wrote:
The Largest Titan at Helsreach by ADB was piloted by a female.

The leader of the Knight house in The Emperor of Mankind was female.

It’s cannon. Get over it.

No ones opposed to it.

They are just discussing the difference between the two genders and the benefits gained from the biology of each.

About the qualification to pilot giant robots. In a game with space wizards. With guys who can spit acid thanks to magic space organs.

Which only came up because some people are pushing progressive politics in a game about toy soldiers.

Misinformation was being spread so people brought up facts to counter.

 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.

 kronk wrote:

 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?

Anyone that feels otherwise. It is almost like I don’t answer to you. Crazy, huh!?!

 kronk wrote:
Anyone that feels otherwise. It is almost like I don’t answer to you. Crazy, huh!?!

Feels what otherwise? No one is disputing that they exist or that they shouldn't. You're angry at your own imagination.

I am not angry about anything.

Not sure what your problem is, guy.

 kronk wrote:
I am not angry about anything.

Not sure what your problem is, guy.

Then you need to work on your sentence structure and choice of words because your tone is very aggressive.

 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...

Nuff said.

These are toys. Why does it matter? Toys don't suffer fatigue.

Its probably a thread that should be in the background forum actually.

Its now a reality that Knight pilots are both male and female same as in most sci-fi games with Mecha or equivalent.

Personally I am happy with that.

A thread on whether and in which military roles male and females are best employed is probably worth its own thread?