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 Manfred von Drakken wrote:

 AldarionTelcontar wrote:

 StudentOfEtherium wrote:
i'm a big fan of breaking down the barriers between genders. there's no meaningful differences between men, women, or anything else, anyway, so it shouldn't really matter on the tabletop, either

That is just a big fat lie. There are MASSIVE differences between men and women in terms of physical capability. For example, punching: the weakest-hitting male still hits far harder than the strongest-hitting female. There is literally no overlap (and that was a study of college kids, not trained athletes where differences would be even greater).

Men have larger hearts and larger lungs, which means that they can sustain high degree of effort for longer.

Men have different muscle insertions, especially in the upper body and shoulders. This means that they can exert larger forces in terms of punching, grappling and carrying.

Lower body structure is also significantly different. Structure of the hips and knees in particular means that women are more capable of e.g. sideways movement, but men are better and more efficient at running and jumping. And this increased range of motion women have is not necessarily a good thing, as it leads to more injuries.

All and all, it is frankly a better idea to employ early pubescent men in combat than it is to employ adult women.

And if you say "but this is fiction"!!! Yes, it is. But if you think that is a permission to do anything, why would it matter that Space Marines are all male? You already have female Space Marines anyway, and they are called Sisters of Battle.

I really thought this was going to be satire, since "For example, punching: the weakest-hitting male still hits far harder than the strongest-hitting female. There is literally no overlap" is one of the dumbest and most ignorant things I've ever heard. I mean, watching Ryan Dunn get his ass kicked in the first Jackass movie is all you need to disprove this alleged thought.

While, yes, men may have some subtle advantages by nature, pretty much the only one that can't be overcome with sufficient training is the ability to write your name in the snow.

That is what she wees are for.

 Tyran wrote:
Marines being the poster faction is the root of like 99% of the settings lore and game design problems, most of which don't have to do with gender.

This is something I would absolutely agree with.

 Wyldhunt wrote:
Personally, I don't mind some factions being gender-locked. I'm not in a rush to add guys to the sororitas for instance. That said, gender-locking factions doesn't really add anything either. If sororitas had been made up of guys and girl when I started collecting them, I'd still have started collecting them because being all-girls wasn't really a main selling point of them. I'd still collect them tomorrow if GW retcon'd them to have contained dudes among their ranks the whole time. Retcons are always mildly awkward, but they're not inherently bad.

I still think there's a bit of a false equivalence between the all-male Marines and all-female Sisters, and it is NOT the silly idea that Sister ARE female Marines.

If you were to describe Space Marines to someone who knew nothing about 40kyou'd describe them as genetically-enhanced super-soldiers. You might even go into a lot of their attitudes and drawbacks, but you probably wouldn't mention them being all-male in casual conversation.

When describing Sisters to someone, chances are their gender is one of the first things to come up, especially since it's right in the name.

 vipoid wrote:

 Tyran wrote:
Marines being the poster faction is the root of like 99% of the settings lore and game design problems, most of which don't have to do with gender.

This is something I would absolutely agree with.

I can second/third that.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Manfred von Drakken wrote:

 Wyldhunt wrote:
Personally, I don't mind some factions being gender-locked. I'm not in a rush to add guys to the sororitas for instance. That said, gender-locking factions doesn't really add anything either. If sororitas had been made up of guys and girl when I started collecting them, I'd still have started collecting them because being all-girls wasn't really a main selling point of them. I'd still collect them tomorrow if GW retcon'd them to have contained dudes among their ranks the whole time. Retcons are always mildly awkward, but they're not inherently bad.

I still think there's a bit of a false equivalence between the all-male Marines and all-female Sisters, and it is NOT the silly idea that Sister ARE female Marines.

If you were to describe Space Marines to someone who knew nothing about 40kyou'd describe them as genetically-enhanced super-soldiers. You might even go into a lot of their attitudes and drawbacks, but you probably wouldn't mention them being all-male in casual conversation.

When describing Sisters to someone, chances are their gender is one of the first things to come up, especially since it's right in the name.

This makes me suddenly appreciate that One Page Rules calls Marines "Battle Brothers".

Guys, I haven't played current 40k in about 20 years. Anything new? Oh my...

 Manfred von Drakken wrote:
I really thought this was going to be satire, since "For example, punching: the weakest-hitting male still hits far harder than the strongest-hitting female. There is literally no overlap" is one of the dumbest and most ignorant things I've ever heard. I mean, watching Ryan Dunn get his ass kicked in the first Jackass movie is all you need to disprove this alleged thought.

Wait, are you actually citing Jackass as scientific research?

"I saw it on Jackass, so it is incontrovertibly true," is a heck of a take.

While, yes, men may have some subtle advantages by nature, pretty much the only one that can't be overcome with sufficient training is the ability to write your name in the snow.

No, the advantages are pretty significant, and it's well-documented at this point. The US Women's Soccer team rather (in) famously got crushed by some 15-year old boys. Physiology matters.

If you want to argue for breaking "gender barriers" in a medieval society based on rigid social structure and fanatical obedience to ancient rules, okay, fine.

But as the late, great Daniel Patrick Moynihan once said: "We're entitled to our own opinions but we aren't entitled to our own facts."

So, because the women’s powerlifting record is over 700 kilograms, that means any random guy can lift more than that?
After all, there’s no overlap between women’s strength and men’s, according to Aldorian.

Commissar von Toussaint wrote:
Guys, I haven't played current 40k in about 20 years. Anything new? Oh my...

Well, not regarding this topic. 20 years ago there was no limitation on Custodes' gender and today there isn't either.

 Insectum7 wrote:

A.T. wrote:

 morganfreeman wrote:
...and, if we're being honest, Sisters of battle. They're built on male power fantasies of being soldier that're supposed to appeal to little boys who like playing soldier.

I have no words.

But i'm bugged that every article keeps using the word gender instead of sex when it's not what they mean.

Really? I think there's a case to be made for it. Teenage boys like girls. Teenage boys like playing soldier. Here's a line of girls in sexualized outfits playing soldier.

I don't know if that's the intention, or if the intention was something else, but I don't think it's a particularly strange interpretation of the SoBs.

i think the intention of SoB was to be both eyecandy for the guys and cool badass female representation for the girls. so there's the sexualized aspect (especially playing into the nun fetish thing), but also, they're still just as competent as warriors as any man. i don't have a source off-hand, but i remember one of the artists in the 80s or early 90s mentioning that the SoB art he created was meant to give us women something to see ourselves in ... but also the boob armor cannot be overlooked

i think it's fine that it's both, but when we talk about one half of that intent (cool badass warrior women for the female players to see themselves in) we should also talk about the other half (boob armor fetish nuns)

Commissar von Toussaint wrote:
Wait, are you actually citing Jackass as scientific research?

"I saw it on Jackass, so it is incontrovertibly true," is a heck of a take.

It was just the first thing that popped into my head. The outrageous stupidity of Jackass being used counter the outrageous stupidity of that comment apparently worked better in my head. Not my proudest moment, in immediate retrospect.

My point stands, tough: trying to claim that there is 'literally no overlap' in the relative punching power of men and women is, at best, foolish.

 morganfreeman wrote:


I also very intentionally used the term gender rather than sex, as the various hostilities which women face in hobby spaces are magnified ten fold for trans persons in those same spaces (much like how my minority group faces a shocking amount, but women face far more descrimination than I).

And intersectionality compounds discrimination. A trans person will be harassed and discriminated against, but a trans person of colour gets it worse; a trans person of colour with a visible disability gets it worse; a trans person of colour with a visible disability approaching retirement age worse still. The black and brown chevrons were added to the progress flag to reflect the fact that often, black and brown members of the 2slgbtqia crowd are on the receiving end of disproportionate violence and hate due to their intersectional status.

 morganfreeman wrote:

 Wyldhunt wrote:

Probably a hot take, but I personally never found sisters to be especially sexualized? Sure, they have boob plate and corsets (do corsets even work as corsets over the top of power armor?), but I don't recall ever seeing them give "fanservice" vibes the way that, for instance, female superheroes often do in comics.

SoB are absolutely sexualized. Boob plate in and of itself is a huge indicator, but there’s many more things like form fitting power armor, garter insignias, tactical heels, so on and so forth. And that’s without touching on repentia.

So yeah they’re not as sexualized as comic book super heroes, but Starfire isn’t exactly a good bar for when sexualization becomes problematic.

I do agree with Morgan on this one- they are still sexualized- but I'd like to take a moment to celebrate the progress on this front. The original metal Repentia were heavily sexualized- almost fetishized in fact. The new ones are modest by comparison. Escher too have become more muscular and imposing and less sexualized; Lelith looks more like a warrior now than a centerfold. All of these changes were met with negative reactions from a large chunky of the male player base (though certainly not all of them- some few did actually applaud the change).

And here's the thing- people can fall back on lore for exclusion of women from factions, but it's harder to claim the motivation isn't pure sexism when the complaint moves from "No Femmarines" to "Lelith looks fat" - though some certainly tried even then.

To get back to topic, I do like some of the suggestions made here for diminishing the impact of female exclusion- things like putting less exclusive ranges forward as the poster-faction for the franchise, or normalizing combined marine/ sister forces to balance the gender or sex imbalance that would be present in a monoforce. Not going as far as making it mandatory of course, but normalizing the idea of it.

 Manfred von Drakken wrote:

Commissar von Toussaint wrote:
Wait, are you actually citing Jackass as scientific research?

"I saw it on Jackass, so it is incontrovertibly true," is a heck of a take.

It was just the first thing that popped into my head. The outrageous stupidity of Jackass being used counter the outrageous stupidity of that comment apparently worked better in my head. Not my proudest moment, in immediate retrospect.

My point stands, tough: trying to claim that there is 'literally no overlap' in the relative punching power of men and women is, at best, foolish.

It worked perfectly well as an example. You were providing a counter-example that disproved the extreme assertion that all men are stronger than all women. Using a comedic example served to highlight the ridiculousness of the initial assertion.

EDIT: JNA's powerlifting example makes the same point with a less comedic effect.

PenitentJake wrote:

I do agree with Morgan on this one- they are still sexualized- but I'd like to take a moment to celebrate the progress on this front. The original metal Repentia were heavily sexualized- almost fetishized in fact. The new ones are modest by comparison. Escher too have become more muscular and imposing and less sexualized; Lelith looks more like a warrior now than a centerfold. All of these changes were met with negative reactions from a large chunky of the male player base (though certainly not all of them- some few did actually applaud the change).

So, just to throw another wrench in the mix. While I totally get the desire to desexualize the feminine representation in 40k, I have reconcile that with pop culture icons like Niki Minaj releasing music videos like Anaconda to mixed audiences. Presumably mostly female?

Reminds a bit of that Mythbusters episode where they tested whether women with larger breasts were tipped more, and I think the takeaway was that they were tipped more by both men and women. It's been a few years now, but that's my recollection at least.

My sense is that sexualization being empowering vs. oppressive is a bit of a sensitive debate within feminist circles. I imagine much of it boils down to agency, and rightly so.

I would say that yes, agency is a big important part.

I can see the argument that Slaanesh is empowering sexualization... for those that are capable of relating to gender fluid rape daemons of space hell. There is some degree of agency there.

But with Sisters it is harder because they aren't a textually or thematically sexual in-universe. Sure the models are pretty to look and boob armor and all that, but space nuns with guns isn't something that make much sense to be sexual in nature. The few times I have read a Sister character, they don't seem to be people to wield their sexy looks, nor does it seem to add anything to them.

Admittedly I have come around to their boob armor as the IoM being silly dumb IoM and the in-universe need to make it clear to everyone involved the SoB are women because the whole stupidity surrounding the Decree Passive.
Still sometimes their armor is depicted as way too thin to offer real protection, the damn thing almost seems leather in some depictions.

 Wyldhunt wrote:

 Manfred von Drakken wrote:

Commissar von Toussaint wrote:
Wait, are you actually citing Jackass as scientific research?

"I saw it on Jackass, so it is incontrovertibly true," is a heck of a take.

It was just the first thing that popped into my head. The outrageous stupidity of Jackass being used counter the outrageous stupidity of that comment apparently worked better in my head. Not my proudest moment, in immediate retrospect.

My point stands, tough: trying to claim that there is 'literally no overlap' in the relative punching power of men and women is, at best, foolish.

It worked perfectly well as an example. You were providing a counter-example that disproved the extreme assertion that all men are stronger than all women. Using a comedic example served to highlight the ridiculousness of the initial assertion.

EDIT: JNA's powerlifting example makes the same point with a less comedic effect.

I knew a woman boxer who was on the cusp of going pro, and she said that she didn't think women would get the respect they deserved in the sport until a woman fought a man in the ring. She said it would have to be six round exhibition in order to preserve male ego in the event that the woman won, and she said it would only ever work at lower weight classes where the capacity of the male frame to support upper body muscle mass would be limited by the weight class. Conversely, the woman with the smaller frame would likely be able to carry a greater proportion of muscle. I would never call a maximized for super featherweight boxer a weak man, but a woman who reaches the the upper limit of a man's weight class with lean muscle mass is a monster. A woman fighting at men's lightweight is 2 pounds shy of welterweight in the women's division.

She also said the biggest threat wasn't strength at all- it was range. A skilled boxer would try to keep a woman at his extended range, making it harder to land a blow- so the woman would have to be fearless about getting inside that range- so close that he couldn't go full extension to maximize the effect of weight behind the punch, but she could. It's a sweet spot, and once she finds it, it's hard to maintain... But it works when it works.

Finally, she said the object would not be to win: the woman could become a hero by doing a combination of these things:

1. Make it to the end of the fight.
2. Not get knocked down at all.
4. Have one good round.
5. Knock him down.

You wouldn't need to do all 5, but number 1 is almost essential.

The other thing that needs to be kept in mind about comparing athletes is the systemic inequalities in training, marketing, youth mentoring, sponsorships, scholarships, team infrastructure... Virtually all aspects of the sport.

We groom boys to become athletes from preschool; there are more numerous participation opportunities both in school and extra-curricular, and often better coached and funded. They're less likely to be scouted in high school, less likely to be offered scholarships, and when they are offered, they are less favourable than those awarded to men; training and coaching budgets are lower on both pro and amateur circuits, fewer teams are supported and fewer sponsorships are offered.

It is starting to shift, but these disparities have existed since the dawn of sport and it's worse the further back you go- in fact, you don't have to go back very far to get to the place where ZERO participation in sport was allowed for women. It would take take a generation of 100% equality in all aspects of sport to generate a level playing field. This makes the success of female athletes (in male dominated sports) even more profound- it isn't just that they kick ass, it's that they do it with 30-70% less investment and infrastructure.

 Tyran wrote:
I would say that yes, agency is a big important part.

I can see the argument that Slaanesh is empowering sexualization... for those that are capable of relating to gender fluid rape daemons of space hell. There is some degree of agency there.

But with Sisters it is harder because they aren't a textually or thematically sexual in-universe. Sure the models are pretty to look and boob armor and all that, but space nuns with guns isn't something that make much sense to be sexualized in universe. The few times I have read a Sister character, they don't seem to be people to wield their sexy looks, nor does it seem to add anything to them.

It's another example of false equivalence fallacy that pervades this kind of discourse. People think that them pushing sexualisation onto women and women choosing the sexualise themselves are the same thing because the end result is the same, but it is trivially simple to understand why it's not equivalent. Those men understand agency well when there's a threat of rape on them by other men, or their girlfriend wants to peg them... they just don't care about agency unless it's their own.


There is also a lot of cross talk in this discourse, where in-universe and out-universe conversations get conflated. There's how sisters are treated and act in 40k, and there are how they are presented to the consumer. They can be sexualised to the consumer and not in-universe without it being contradictory. You could create a society in fiction for example where nudity is the norm and clothes are salacious. In the internal logic of the setting. nudity is inherently not sexualised. But it's naïve or wilfully ignorant to use that to claim that to the external consumer, such a society isn't sexualised for their enjoyment/consumption.

 Tawnis wrote:
3. Sisters of Battle: This one is not genetic, but in the setting, is surprisingly more fixed than Space Marines. While you can hand waive some techno mumbo jumbo to get Cawl to make female Space Marines, the sisters are a little trickier. Because their order is based on Faith, and having been established for so long, part of their power comes from the belief that only they can do what they do. Dramatically changing anything about them, would shake those foundations.

I've never seen anything in the Sisters' background that specifically ties their faith to them being women. The only reason they are all women is the Decree Passive, which restricts the Ministorium from maintaining a force of 'men under arms'. So they have Battle Sisters, because, (hur hur), they're not men.

So the only thing that would be needed to add men to the ranks of the Ecclessiarchy's army is to remove the Decree Passive. Which would be a good move, because it's a stupid joke, and doesn't fit the setting. In universe, it's either a mistake based on nobody involved in the crafting of it spotting that 'men under arms' was a gender-specific term in an Imperium that doesn't have a gender divided military (which makes no sense), or it was a deliberate choice of wording in order to sneak in an allowance for the Ecclessiarchy to keep some of their army... in which case the moment someone tried to argue 'But there's a loophole!' the High Lords would have had them executed and rewritten the decree.

It worked (...ish) in the '90s when it was first introduced because back then everyone still though men were the 'default' for soldiers. But in this day and age, it's just silly.

 Don Savik wrote:
I disagree that the concepts of Brotherhoods and Sisterhoods are inherently wrong and need changing. Nobody in the real world cares about making female buddhist monks or male nuns. .

I'm not seeing how having mixed gender forces removes the concept of Brotherhood or Sisterhood. Adding women to a previously all-male group doesn't remove the men.

(And, just for reference, there are female buddhist monks.)

 Hellebore wrote:

It's another example of false equivalence fallacy that pervades this kind of discourse. People think that them pushing sexualisation onto women and women choosing the sexualise themselves are the same thing because the end result is the same, but it is trivially simple to understand why it's not equivalent. Those men understand agency well when there's a threat of rape on them by other men, or their girlfriend wants to peg them... they just don't care about agency unless it's their own.

There is also a lot of cross talk in this discourse, where in-universe and out-universe conversations get conflated. There's how sisters are treated and act in 40k, and there are how they are presented to the consumer. They can be sexualised to the consumer and not in-universe without it being contradictory. You could create a society in fiction for example where nudity is the norm and clothes are salacious. In the internal logic of the setting. nudity is inherently not sexualised. But it's naïve or wilfully ignorant to use that to claim that to the external consumer, such a society isn't sexualised for their enjoyment/consumption.

Eh to be fair even if done with good intentions, it is a very tricky balancing act that will likely fall flat with some people.

And there are people that will react negatively to any sexualization.

And it is also important to remember that we are talking about fiction. Pushing sexualization onto real women is very fethed up and can cause real damage, pushing sexualization onto a fictional depiction of a woman (or man, or NB, or whatever else) is not. Do let people have their sexualized products for their personal enjoyment.

 Tyran wrote:

 Hellebore wrote:

It's another example of false equivalence fallacy that pervades this kind of discourse. People think that them pushing sexualisation onto women and women choosing the sexualise themselves are the same thing because the end result is the same, but it is trivially simple to understand why it's not equivalent. Those men understand agency well when there's a threat of rape on them by other men, or their girlfriend wants to peg them... they just don't care about agency unless it's their own.

There is also a lot of cross talk in this discourse, where in-universe and out-universe conversations get conflated. There's how sisters are treated and act in 40k, and there are how they are presented to the consumer. They can be sexualised to the consumer and not in-universe without it being contradictory. You could create a society in fiction for example where nudity is the norm and clothes are salacious. In the internal logic of the setting. nudity is inherently not sexualised. But it's naïve or wilfully ignorant to use that to claim that to the external consumer, such a society isn't sexualised for their enjoyment/consumption.

Eh to be fair even if done with good intentions, it is a very tricky balancing act that will likely fall flat with some people.

And there are people that will react negatively to any sexualization.

And it is also important to remember that we are talking about fiction. Pushing sexualization onto real women is very fethed up and can cause real damage, pushing sexualization onto a fictional depiction of a woman (or man, or NB, or whatever else) is not. Do let people have their sexualized products for their personal enjoyment.

Sure but there a few factors at play:

1 people are free to be sexualisation enjoyers
2 people are free to find enjoying sexualisation cringy
3 ficitonal settings are free to incorporate sexualisation of fictional characters
4 companies that own those settings are free to decide they want to sell it to a wider demographic and rather than telling women they should enjoy the product with all its sexualisation intact and be happy about it, they modify the product to reduce those components
5 companies can decide that sexualisation is their main selling point and refuse to change, catering to the people in 1 only.

What we have are people in 1 who are telling companies in 4 they want them to be companies in 5 and complaining about the free opinions of the people in 2....

They made 2 female warriors in “space marines” armor in rogue trader in 1988 before there were anything called space marines. They also had Amazon warriors. They made another unreleased female space marine in 1993. The custodes thing is a real stretch and the original fluff said the emperor would grab “…children in late infancy…mix his dna with them…” Children can be interpreted as boys, girls, or both. Here’s some pics of them including the original custodes model.

Good God that last one is terrible looking.

I mean, the 1s two aren't sculpts to be proud of. But that last one....

These sculpts are by far the strongest argument for "there should be no female marines" that I've ever seen.

 insaniak wrote:

 Tawnis wrote:
3. Sisters of Battle: This one is not genetic, but in the setting, is surprisingly more fixed than Space Marines. While you can hand waive some techno mumbo jumbo to get Cawl to make female Space Marines, the sisters are a little trickier. Because their order is based on Faith, and having been established for so long, part of their power comes from the belief that only they can do what they do. Dramatically changing anything about them, would shake those foundations.

I've never seen anything in the Sisters' background that specifically ties their faith to them being women. The only reason they are all women is the Decree Passive, which restricts the Ministorium from maintaining a force of 'men under arms'. So they have Battle Sisters, because, (hur hur), they're not men.

So the only thing that would be needed to add men to the ranks of the Ecclessiarchy's army is to remove the Decree Passive. Which would be a good move, because it's a stupid joke, and doesn't fit the setting. In universe, it's either a mistake based on nobody involved in the crafting of it spotting that 'men under arms' was a gender-specific term in an Imperium that doesn't have a gender divided military (which makes no sense), or it was a deliberate choice of wording in order to sneak in an allowance for the Ecclessiarchy to keep some of their army... in which case the moment someone tried to argue 'But there's a loophole!' the High Lords would have had them executed and rewritten the decree.

It worked (...ish) in the '90s when it was first introduced because back then everyone still though men were the 'default' for soldiers. But in this day and age, it's just silly.

 Don Savik wrote:
I disagree that the concepts of Brotherhoods and Sisterhoods are inherently wrong and need changing. Nobody in the real world cares about making female buddhist monks or male nuns. .

I'm not seeing how having mixed gender forces removes the concept of Brotherhood or Sisterhood. Adding women to a previously all-male group doesn't remove the men.

(And, just for reference, there are female buddhist monks.)

Deliberate loophole- Sebastian Thor both came up with the Decree Passive and formed the Adepta Sororitas to get round it.

But the High Lords were in a shambles post Vandire and Thor was the most influential person in the Imperium having led the campaign to overthrow Vandire and was in the process of reforming the Imperium in general and Ecclesiarchy in particular so no one was going to tell him no.

Down the line it’s now an Imperial institution and considered the holy will of the Emperor so there’s no force to unpick it.

ccs wrote:
Good God that last one is terrible looking.

I mean, the 1s two aren't sculpts to be proud of. But that last one....

I kinda like the last one. It's a bit like those primitive "goddess of fertility" idols, except with weapons and John Blanchian hair. It's got that 40K mish-mash-of-things to it.

shortymcnostrill wrote:
These sculpts are by far the strongest argument for "there should be no female marines" that I've ever seen.

30 year old models that were poor even by the sculpting standards of the time are hardly a useful gauge of how female marines would like now.

I think part of that is the paintjob, myself. The sculpt is a limiting factor on how good those can look, though.

Grzzldgamerps5 wrote:
They made 2 female warriors in “space marines” armor in rogue trader in 1988 before there were anything called space marines

They were part of the adventurer range - space marines were already a thing and had their own distinct line.

However this was the rogue trader 40k era where space marines were roided up monks (and only monks as an in-universe reason for the GM to have their scattered monasteries to pop up in any scenario). There were plenty of humans in power armour such as these adventurers and also the original sisterhood who were the roided-up nun counterparts to the marines. The whole decree-passive stuff exists to maintain the male/female faction split after the original reason (monks and nuns) was lost as the marines became full on superhumans and the sisters didn't.

 Insectum7 wrote:
While I totally get the desire to desexualize the feminine representation in 40k, I have reconcile that with pop culture icons like Niki Minaj releasing music videos like Anaconda to mixed audiences. Presumably mostly female?

Reasearch into the subject of representation in online and game avatars usually show that people say they want a choice.
When given the choice most pick conventionally or exaggeratedly attractive avatars - for many and speculative reasons.

As for sexuality - the old sisters models got the same complaints and they were armoured head to toe lantern-jawed potato heads in Edna Mode wigs. I guess it's in the eye of the beholder.

A.T. wrote:

As for sexuality - the old sisters models got the same complaints and they were armoured head to toe lantern-jawed potato heads in Edna Mode wigs. I guess it's in the eye of the beholder.

People's impressions of the more classic model ranges tended to come more from the artwork than the models.

Yes, I remember thinking at the time RT came out that the models were kind of crude. Their early plastics were pretty terrible by the standards of historical kits.

 insaniak wrote:
People's impressions of the more classic model ranges tended to come more from the artwork than the models.

It has varied from edition to edition. The 3e cover sister was wearing rigid-looking angled metal armour, the 6e cover sister was wearing skin-tight leather, and the 2e cover sister was... shall we say conservative for a John Blanche piece.

From the first post 'fem-marines' may have been used to describe female marines, but 'misters of battle' was historically used as commentary on GWs rather poor face sculpting efforts.

SoB are a bit fetishy. They're fetish nuns with guns. Which is fine, except if that is your main avenue of female representation.

More representation there is, less pressure there is for each instance to be the representation rather than just a representation.