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 Melissia wrote:
Yeah, women are constantly subjected to unnatural beauty standards from a very early age, I won't deny that, but these sorts of things aren't really all that popular.

M, you're sounding a bit detached from reality. Go to a magazine rack at the grocery store. Hell, just turn on your TV as Lynata suggested above.

 Manchu wrote:

easysauce wrote:
men are under just as much pressure to conform to what sociaty thinks they should be like as women are

Maybe so but that misses the point. Our social expectations of men regarding appearance are not nearly as severe as our expectations of women, at least measured in the amount of thought and effort it takes on the part of the individuals attempting to meet those expectations.

Social restrictions on men tend to take the form of exclusions rather then expectations. Men don't cry, men don't care how they look, men shouldn't be tender. Things like that and I would argue that the effort men go through to suppress and these traits they aren't allowed to express are quite harmful. Though I'm not going to even try and compare them to the expectations women get forced to conform to.

 Manchu wrote:

 Melissia wrote:
Yeah, women are constantly subjected to unnatural beauty standards from a very early age, I won't deny that, but these sorts of things aren't really all that popular.

M, you're sounding a bit detached from reality. Go to a magazine rack at the grocery store. Hell, just turn on your TV as Lynata suggested above.

I'm looking at the ratings for various programs. The number of actual viewers compared to tv shows that have content other than "oh look she's pretty".

Everything I said was true. Yes, we're inundated by societal pressures to "look pretty for the men". But these kinds of shows are not very popular despite the inundation.

 Manchu wrote:

 Melissia wrote:
Yeah, women are constantly subjected to unnatural beauty standards from a very early age, I won't deny that, but these sorts of things aren't really all that popular.

M, you're sounding a bit detached from reality. Go to a magazine rack at the grocery store. Hell, just turn on your TV as Lynata suggested above.

Advertisers try to pander to women with these models. That dosen't mean advertising is reality. Like do you go out and dress up like the annoying guys in the axe advertisements? Do those ads speak to you?

 Melissia wrote:
Yes, we're inundated by societal pressures to "look pretty for the men". But these kinds of shows are not very popular despite the inundation.

Again, I point out that the type of women you see on shows like Sex and the City and America's Next Top Model generally do not have the body type that men find attractive. Again,

BlaxicanX wrote:

Your average model looks like this. Very skinny, no ass, no breasts, no hips.

Research of the type of porn men watch the most shows that, when they're fantasizing about women, their ideal women tend to look like this, and this. Wide hips, decent sized breasts, pretty thick all around. Hardly "the average woman", but closer to average than the first picture, imo.

I think that's primarily an issue with outsourced fiction and the fanbase. GW's own website wrote: "As the Chamber Militant of the galaxy-spanning Ecclesiarchy, the Sisters of Battle are fierce warriors that are equals to their brother Space Marines. What the Sisters lack in genetic enhancement they make up for in faith and devotion."

Nominally weaker due to missing genetical augmentation, they possess the ability to temporarily push past what a Marine can do, thus in the grand scheme of things evening it out. And their equipment is the same, at least as per GW's books. Again, some non-GW books disagree.
It's just whenever you bring up that line quoted above you have a hundred Marine fans screaming out how GW was "wrong" writing that.

Great post.

However, the second bolded point Im unsure of, from a strategic, long term POV and Galaxy spanning numbers/attrition/deployment.

Interesting though.

 Melissia wrote:
Everything I said was true. Yes, we're inundated by societal pressures to "look pretty for the men". But these kinds of shows are not very popular despite the inundation.

You're talking about a market. Products only exist because they sell. So if they aren't selling, how do you explain their existence? Perhaps you had better stop looking at the how well each product sells separately and consider that you are in a store the size of the world filled with literally uncounted products of the same variety, i.e., the "looking like X makes you worthwhile" variety.

BlaxicanX wrote:
Again, I point out that the type of women you see on shows like Sex and the City and America's Next Top Model generally do not have the body type that men find attractive.

Which completely and utterly misses the point of my post.


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 Manchu wrote:

 Melissia wrote:
Everything I said was true. Yes, we're inundated by societal pressures to "look pretty for the men". But these kinds of shows are not very popular despite the inundation.

You're talking about a market.

Markets aren't perfect representations of the desires of the populace being marketed to. They never have been and they never will be.

Possible thread split needed to TV and then 40k related?

Lynatas post was very interesting.

nomotog wrote:
Like do you go out and dress up like the annoying guys in the axe advertisements? Do those adds speak to you?

That's a great example. To me (and apparently also to you) those advertisements are pretty irritating. Why is that? Now imagine, if we're irritated by a commercial like that (of which there are pretty few, at least as transparent as that), imagine how irritated women must feel flipping through the channels or the pages of a magazine.

Also, Axe is not selling a particular look. At least, the guys in Axe commercials explicitly do not look very different from guys I know in real life. Is that true of the women in a Victoria's Secret commercial as opposed to the girls you're around in real life?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Melissia wrote:
That's nothing more than a cheap cop-out.

Please don't start. You know as well as I do that products that don't sell don't continue to exist. The idea that a few shows are not individually getting a hundred million on Nielsen's charts is the actual cop-out.

 Manchu wrote:
Please don't start. You know as well as I do that products that don't sell don't continue to exist. The idea that a few shows are not individually getting a hundred million on Nielsen's charts is the actual cop-out.

Acting like the industry doesn't have a huge amount of cultural baggage is really ignoring the complexity of the situation.

 Melissia wrote:
Acting like the industry doesn't have a huge amount of cultural baggage is really ignoring the complexity of the situation.

Exactly, I am asking you to stop ignoring the complexity. Step number one is not ignoring what's obvious.

 Lynata wrote:
One could almost say that WW is some sort of "gender infiltrator", trying to subtly undermine a reader's opinion by first luring him with a skimpy outfit and then going "look what I can do!

The man who created WW believed that the survival of decent human society depended on men submitting to women. He created WW explicitly as a role model for girls and created images designed to show boys that it is good to be bound and dominated by women.

For more, see http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page=article&id=7921

In the end I think it's more or less equal, sure women may be stereotyped in some ways but have you ever seen a female Ogryn?
I don't think GW really intends to be sexist (regardless of whether they are or not). It's just something that if it is, it just kind of happened.
Also depending on when the sisters of battle were added it could be said that GW did it to try and appeal to women who want to play the TT

 Melissia wrote:

BlaxicanX wrote:
Again, I point out that the type of women you see on shows like Sex and the City and America's Next Top Model generally do not have the body type that men find attractive.

Which completely and utterly misses the point of my post.

Don't really care about your tangents, I'm just pointing out that women's obsession with America's Next Top Model and other shows really doesn't have anything to do with "what men want".

You post is not relevant, then, BlaxicanX.

 Manchu wrote:

 Melissia wrote:
Acting like the industry doesn't have a huge amount of cultural baggage is really ignoring the complexity of the situation.

Exactly, I am asking you to stop ignoring the complexity. Step number one is not ignoring what's obvious.

What's "obvious" to you may not actually exist in th real world.

Unlike you, I'm arguing off of facts instead of opinions.

The idea behind VS is slightly different, though. The VS Fashion Show is not targeted to women, it's targeted to men who will be buying these things for women. The VS fashion line, however, *is* targeted to women. The philosophy tends to be not that "you want to look like this" but, rather, "wear this and you can be as attractive as this".

Actually what are we arguing about? I think I lost track. I know I was arguing that advertising dosen't reflect peoples real life feelings so when you see a magazines pushing the image of the unreal skinny women that dosen't mean many women actually subscribe to that image.

 Melissia wrote:
Unlike you, I'm arguing off of facts instead of opinions.

We're both arguing from facts. You're saying X show doesn't get high ratings. I'm saying there's more than just X show, there're hundreds of similar shows with similar ratings, there are books and magazines and commercials and so on -- and these things all factually exist -- to the same or similar effect as these shows insofar as female body image is concerned.

You are coming off as arguing to argue when you say that our culture is "inundated" by these things but that they "aren't popular."

 Manchu wrote:
our culture is "inundated" by these things but that they "aren't popular."

You act like this is inherently contradictory.

There have been numerous examples of societies, governments, and non-government organizations attempting to inundate a populace with an idea that really is only attractive to a small portion of the populace.

Well they are cable shows, so they can't be that popular.

 Melissia wrote:
You post is not relevant, then, BlaxicanX.

Maybe not to your tangent but is very relevant to the thread.

The topic here is whether 40k products are misogynistic by portraying women (1) rarely and (2) in a sexually objectified manner. The assumption seems to be that GW is calling on a set of misogynistic imagery created by males to depreciate and control women. BlaxicanX makes the argument that even if there is imagery that depreciates women, women also play a role in generating it. I think his point is, there is no evil plan by men -- and specifically the men running GW -- to offend, devalue, and objectify women.


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 Melissia wrote:

 Manchu wrote:
our culture is "inundated" by these things but that they "aren't popular."

You act like this is inherently contradictory.

When talking about things that only exist to the extent that they are consumed, it is.

Ratius wrote:However, the second bolded point Im unsure of, from a strategic, long term POV and Galaxy spanning numbers/attrition/deployment.

Oh, I may have worded that in a flawed manner.
That was more referring to what an individual can do on the spot in a single battle or campaign - not the organisation and galactic history as a whole. The 2E Codex has a lot of background on the Orders Militant, not only talking about their numbers (which are rather low compared to the Marines, somewhat giving an in-universe reason as to why they do not show up as often in the fluff) but also about the high attrition the Orders are subjected to.

In a way, many Sisters of Battle are like the Living Saints - they burn bright, but short. For prolonged endurance, I definitively agree that the Space Marines have the upper hand, as their enhanced bodies just grant them a far greater survivability.
With Battle Sisters, it's more a case of even the ones mortally wounded refusing to die before having killed a few heretics more or knowing that the relic is safe etc. The whole dramatic martyrdom shpiel.

Manchu wrote:The man who created WW believed that the survival of decent human society depended on men submitting to women. He created WW explicitly as a role model for girls and created images designed to show boys that it is good to be bound and dominated by women.
For more, see http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page=article&id=7921

Huh, that's interesting, and I (obviously) had not heard of this before. Thanks.

 Manchu wrote:
When talking about things that only exist to the extent that they are consumed, it is.

Except it's not. You have a very bizarre and unrealistic view of the "free" market.

 Melissia wrote:
You post is not relevant, then, BlaxicanX.

 Manchu wrote:

 Melissia wrote:
Acting like the industry doesn't have a huge amount of cultural baggage is really ignoring the complexity of the situation.

Exactly, I am asking you to stop ignoring the complexity. Step number one is not ignoring what's obvious.

What's "obvious" to you may not actually exist in th real world.

Unlike you, I'm arguing off of facts instead of opinions.

No you're not. Your stating facts, and then making inferences... inferences which are IMO incorrect.

 Melissia wrote:
You have a very bizarre and unrealistic view of the "free" market.

This is where you start to get in trouble. You're not making an argument, you're just making an attack. Post some substance or take a break.

So I think the best step GW can make to make 40k less male dominated would be to include female SM. They could do other things like add more female charters to the other sides. Two female SC in the IG would go a long long way, but the setting is getting more and more SM focused. You could give every other army tons of female characters and have no one notice because most stories are about the big buff SMs. The reason that women can't be SMs has always been kind of silly anyway.

How about SM stay all male and 40k becomes less SM-centric?

I think that could actually drive sales beyond the rather hypothetical female demographic.

nomotog wrote:So I think the best step GW can make to make 40k less male dominated would be to include female SM. They could do other things like add more female charters to the other sides. Two female SC in the IG would go a long long way, but the setting is getting more and more SM focused. You could give every other army tons of female characters and have no one notice when most stories are about the big buff SMs. The reason that women can't be SMs has always been kind of silly anyway.

Personally, I'd not want to see FeMarines happen - my love for consistency gets in the way, and I rather liked the idea of two elite forces in the Imperium being gender-exclusive yet equal in combat prowess and mutual respect. I'd much rather GW would raise more awareness in regards to the Sisters - they are still left out on way too many instances where one should expect them to show up, or at least where GW would have a chance to showcase them. Truth be told, I think the focus on SM hurts the hobby as a whole, as many other armies also suffer from it.

 Manchu wrote:

easysauce wrote:
men are under just as much pressure to conform to what sociaty thinks they should be like as women are

Maybe so but that misses the point. Our social expectations of men regarding appearance are not nearly as severe as our expectations of women, at least measured in the amount of thought and effort it takes on the part of the individuals attempting to meet those expectations.

women likely do have more pressure just on their looks alone, and I know about 3 girls who had eating disorders to every one guy I knew who had a steroid problem,

but there are more issues then just looks,
women can join mens groups, but not vice versa,
women are allowed to break gender roles and do manly stuff, men cannot do girly stuff (again, just sociatle pressures here, men and women in actually can do whatever they want)

usually in issues of money/power/feelings wize,

there is more pressure on men,

also the whole "disposable male" thing

i think over all its roughly equal, my point is both sexes have roughly the same amount of absurd things they are "supposed" to be according to the media,

and that neither has to bow down to what the magazines/tv ads tell them to do



a person being bred to be a space marine, and used only as a tool of war, is being objectified as a "war" object, or as a weapon,



its just a nuance that men are more often objectified for these "manly" reasons, whereas women are objectified for more "womanly" reasons (which are not really reasonable at all IMO)

I agree that there are more issues than looks. But looks are the one to hand in a thread about GW's (few) female models.