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Well, the simple explanation is... the Emperor was about to do that.

When he handed over the reigns of the crusade to Horus, he headed back to Earth to work on some great project. It was genetically modified superhuman women on par with the male Space Marines.

Horus figured out what he was up to, blew a gasket, and now we have this.

Sir Arun wrote:Well they never show an Adepta Sororitas without armor now, do they? [...]

Coincidentally, the Dark Eldar prisoner model does have a sixpack.

Though I don't suppose they'd be so wide, just going by the armour profile.
Personally, I always thought this to be a good approximation - a sort of middle ground between normal and extreme that still befits the "angelic" image - but obviously it comes down to interpretations and personal preferences:

 Sir Arun wrote:

squidhills wrote:
The Emperor designed the geneseed to affect only the Y chromosome, for whatever reason. Probably because he did not want the SMs to replace humanity. They were a tool to him, nothing more. Without females of their own, they would be unable to reproduce unaided, thus making them reliant on the Imperium and it's infrastructure for their continued existence.

Also; GW is scared of girls. No, really. Why do you think they have so much trouble sculpting attractive female models? Because girls have cooties and the staff at GW don't like looking at them for too long because it makes them feel funny in their naughty place.

fkin sigged

Yes! After 900+ posts, I finally type something witty/amusing enough that somebody wants to sig it! You can't see me, but I'm totally doing the Snoopy Dance right now.

At work.

In front of my boss.

 Sir Arun wrote:

Umm...wot? No girl can wear a plate of armor without breast-bulges, else she'd have difficulty breathing. And Adepta Sororitas are wearing armor, not combat fatigues like the girls in today's modern armies (e.g. Israel).

Thats not true at all.

In a real suit of armor, unless we're talking double Ds, you'd never even notice a bulge. And sculpting boobs onto the armor is a BAD idea because the curved breast section would deflect hits towards the center of the chest, creating a fatal weak spot. Real armor deflect blows away from center mass.

Compare an average man to an average women of roughly the same height. The women's breasts won't be bulging out much beyond a man's chest relative to both their backs. So they could wear the exact same suit of armor. Remember that real armor isn't form fitting. Its got several layers of padding between steel and skin and is shaped to deflect blows, as opposed to the human body which is not shaped to deflect blows.

Even in modern combat fatigues, its difficult to tell men from women apart from height and the way they walk.

 Sir Arun wrote:
Well they never show an Adepta Sororitas without armor now, do they?

Oh god that second one looks like some deviantart gak.
And I assume they've never shown a naked SOB because that would be the final straw and people would be like.
"Woah GW calm down a bit tho."

... under her armor, a Sister is wearing a plug-suit, which is a bodyglove with all the neural-induction links that tell her PA to move when she moves.

There's also the fact that the Ecclesiarchy is forbidden, by the Decree Passive, of maintaining "men under arms". Due to the fact that the Decree Passive is written in High Gothic, and there are apparently specific words to refer to men and women in High Gothic, the Ecclesiarchy gets around the fact that they are not allowed to have a military by putting women under arms.

The armor of the Sisters is meant to be overtly, explicitly and obviously female, to show off the fact that the Ecclesiarchy is abiding by the Decree Passive... and it's covered in gold leaf and fancy bits to show off the fact that the Ecclesiarchy is richer than you are, and always will be.

Although Vandire allegedly had a hand in designing their uniforms, so the feminine shape may very well be due to his influence...

Apparently it still protects just as well, though. Thankfully the "shot trap" argument does not really apply anymore in a setting with AP-ammo and laser weapons.

 Logan8tor wrote:
So if the Imperium could spend valuable resources to make a bunch of dudes walking tanks that have the ability to wear massive suits of power armor that weigh literal tonnes, eat the goddamn memories of their enemies, survive in space with nothing but their bald heads, SEAL UP THEIR donkey-caves THROUGH SHEER MUSCULAR FORCE, be able to withstand bullets thanks to a massive fething wall of bone in their chests, have two hearts, lives for hundreds and hundreds of years, spit goddamn poison, and can stay awake for weeks at a time...

Why couldn't they just feth with the female genes so they could do it to?

I always ask this question: Why bother?

We know a big part of the evolutionary process that made males bigger and stronger than females was the natural production of testosterone. If all you need to do to make Space Marines is to accelerate and enhance the natural male growth process, and only need a million of them, why go through the effort of trying to replicate the process with the female anatomical limitations?

Let's be very clear. There's no shortage of Space Marine candidates.. Yes, only a small fraction of people can accept the process, but there's only a million or so Space Marines.. [b]One Hive World could supply enough recruits for every chapter in the galaxy, and its ecosystem wouldn't even bat an eyelash at the loss of that many young males. This is a galaxy of gajillions and the Space Marines represent .00014% of the population of modern day Earth.

Considering you build Space Marines, and not breed them, you don't need female ones for reproduction. Heck, they may have intentionally omitted females to prevent Space Marines from potentially breeding. In the end, despite all the bellyaching about this topic, the bottom line is that female Space Marines would be more effort to create and maintain, and tthey aren't needed.

I know this thread is 2 weeks old but I'm almost itching to contribute to the discussion here.

 Mynameisalie wrote:
I know this thread is 2 weeks old but I'm almost itching to contribute to the discussion here.

Makes a comment about contributing...doesn't contribute.

Lol, dat image of the muscle woman tho. I wonder about the creators of the warhammer 40k universe. Sometimes, there choices seem little gay.

I'm getting a bunch of vect girl models to throw on my imperial bastion outpost. The troops need the morale boost. It doesn't look like GW is interested in the fairer sex.

 Vigilant wrote:

 Mynameisalie wrote:
I know this thread is 2 weeks old but I'm almost itching to contribute to the discussion here.

Makes a comment about contributing...doesn't contribute.

I was kind of looking for a 'go ahead'.

Honestly, why not FSMs? Sure, they'd be ripped and probably amazonian (without the huge chest) but I don't particularly care. By excluding an entire gender you're essentially cutting out half of the potential recruits. That's not very sound, logically and strategically.

If you were to get a bit more in-depth with the reasons why there are no FSMs (which - canonically - there are), there are quite a few to consider. GW has specifically stated that the geneseeds for the Space Marines are specifically keyed to XY chromosomes. It's very possible that the Big E considered that the use of a female-oriented geneseed wouldn't be necessary: the Crusade to reclaim the Primarchs would be completed, he could go back to his Webway project, and the whole thing would supposedly go smoothly. Of course, that didn't happen. So now, humanity is faced with a declining pool of geneseed-compatible males, which could be very quickly bolstered by integrating an XX geneseed into the mix.

The technology the Imperium used to create these geneseeds is long gone, we all know that. Modifying an existing geneseed is more reasonable, but that unto itself is difficult. The main problem would stem from trying the get the genes to work with what is essentially a 'reduced' instruction set. More than 95% of all the genetic material in the Y chromosome is entirely male-specific. That's why the geneseeds are currently incompatible with females: they try to modify genes that aren't there. That's obviously going to go horribly wrong. You'd need to find a way of getting some of the modifications to target specific genes within the X chromosome as opposed to the Y chromosome.

Now, females actually don't use their second X. It's entirely inactive until damage in the first one requires the second one to step in. A male's Y lacks a lot of this genetic material (and that's why males are much more likely to develop red/green colourblindness: we lack the backup for it). The main difference is the marker gene SRY, which is responsible for the formation of a male's testes, and increased hormone levels commonly attributed to males. So, to engineer a female-compatible geneseed, you would essentially be flicking a helluva bunch of switches and cutting out a fair portion specifically designed to target and nullify male traits pertaining to sex drive, like increased testosterone levels and the like. This is a gross oversimplification but hopefully it gets the point across.

However, Female Space Marines do exist in canon. If you're surprised, don't be. What, you really didn't consider that Slaanesh - and all his Warpfethery - would have somehow managed to do a gender flip on some of his followers? That's not explicitly stated in canon, but there's a larger than 99% chance this has happened. It's Slaanesh, for Pete's sake.

Canonically, FSMs are - and I quote from 1d4chan here - "bloated, twisted, undying, insane, mutated pregnant mother-slaves only alive because they're in the Eye of Terror.". I'll just post a link if you want to look at this in more detail. Do be aware that this is 4chan, and should therefore be considered NSFW, as the copious - yet impotent - amounts of rage they spew onto any article they create usually takes the form of a veritable torrent of curses.

That's my 2 cents.

If this topic had a proper heading I might have bothered reading what it was about

Since this is hardly a bump, the title does need rewording.
I pop into anything vague, just in case, but this kind of thing needs a proper title.