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BlaxicanX wrote:


it is more nuanced than that, but yeah, I think women judge themselves, and other women, very harshly, and very unfairly.

It's certainly unhealthy, imo.

How is it unhealthy to judge yourself harshly. IMO your should be your own harshest critic. The ability to willfully and voluntarily improve ourselves is what separates man from the beasts... it's what makes us human.

If no one judged themselves than no one would improve.

furthermore I should note that we have to compare ourselves to each other, not just to some invisible standard. More specifically we should always try to compare ourselves to people we find superior to ourselves. If that means admiring people who are "prettier" than you, GOOD!

I've been involve in martial arts since I was a young child, and I've had many opportunities to spar and train with a variety of people. I can tell you with 100% certainty that I've never improved my own skills by competing against people who were not as good as me. I learn the most when I engage in contest with someone who is clearly more skilled than I.

The reason I so strongly disagree with this line of reasoning is that the world is VERY large. It's full of nameless, faceless human beings numbering in the billions that you and I will never meet. Not all of them will be geniuses. Not all of them will be star athletes. Not all of them will be doctors or scientists, etc etc... many people just are.

It's a truly harsh reality, and it can sound cold and closed off, but ultimately if we try and level the playing field for humanity to for msome kind of "equal" state. You destroy those people that are truly spectacular.... you'll never have star athletes. You'll never have great thinkers or philosophers. You'll end up in a fugue world of faceless, nameless, "equals". You'd bring an end to diversity.

Those people are that a "prettier" than you are, HAVE to exist. There HAS to be inequality. Or everything is meaningless and there is no sense in us trying to better ourselves.

To bring this back to WH40k... this game is just one little piece of humanity. It's a hobby shared by a very small few people on the grand scale, and it is under no obligation to conform to some standard of equality. If there are too few female models here for your taste, go mold/cast your own. GW doesn't care as long as you aren't trying to sell it

En Excelsis wrote:
How is it unhealthy to judge yourself harshly.

You picked "harshly" instead of "unfairly." He said both.

 Manchu wrote:
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.

How about both? I think at the very least they should include women in the Sm codex even if they aren't SM. Like how the sisters have that old guy HQ. You could give one of the chapters a female inquisitor as a SC.

Because the rest of my post was an attempt to explain that it was not in fact, unfair

nomotog wrote:
You could give one of the chapters a female inquisitor as a SC.

Because the Inquisition is not a part of any Marine formation (GK aside, where there is a female SC) -- as opposed to the chambers militant of the Inquisition. The SM are monastic orders. That means all male by definition. They are also highly autonomous so including SCs from other factions in their book makes little sense.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

En Excelsis wrote:
Because the rest of my post was an attempt to explain that it was not in fact, unfair

He didn't say a harsh judgment was an unfair one. He said women judge themselves harshly AND unfairly.

nomotog wrote:


How about both? I think at the very least they should include women in the Sm codex even if they aren't SM. Like how the sisters have that old guy HQ. You could give one of the chapters a female inquisitor as a SC.

GW is pretty backlogged on their list of codices. They still need to update the Tau, the Eldar, the SoB, and a lot more besides. But those 3 in particular are full of opportunities for female characters.

Well before this thread was started they released the DE codex, which (as has been said already) is among their more gender diverse publications. I personally didn't expect to see any female models or characters in the last few codices, give that they are either Space Marine (Chaos) themed, or just full of monsters (Chaos Daemons).

I actually do expect to see some females in the Tau, & Eldar books... and obviously the SoB if they ever get around to them. I little patience is in order....

En Excelsis wrote:
hey still need to update the Tau, the Eldar, the SoB, and a lot more besides. But those 3 in particular are full of opportunities for female characters.

Excellent, excellent, excellent point! It would be great to see, as with the DE, Tau and Craftworld Eldar mixed-gender units.

 Manchu wrote:

nomotog wrote:
You could give one of the chapters a female inquisitor as a SC.

Because the Inquisition is not a part of any Marine formation (GK aside, where there is a female SC) -- as opposed to the chambers militant of the Inquisition. The SM are monastic orders. That means all male by definition. They are also highly autonomous so including SCs from other factions in their book makes little sense.

Lets change that. Lets make SM less insular. That gives them more verity more room to include more kinds of people.

 Manchu wrote:

He didn't say a harsh judgment was an unfair one. He said women judge themselves harshly AND unfairly.

Semantics.

Women judge themselves harshly and unfairly

Women judge themselves harshly, and they judge themselves unfairly.

Two different statements.

i agree there, GW and 40kare not mysonigyst (sorry spelling)

they just need more/better female models,

but the exaggerated breasts on some GW minis are no worse then the exaggerated muscles on all of the male figures that represent normal men, as opposed to say
a huge mucle bound space marine or ork,

but the run of the mill men/women should look normal IMO,

no more volutuous women or steroided out catachans

its kind of a chicken and egg thing though,

men predominatly buy the figs and play with them,

men predominatly make, sell, and desgin the figs,


so do we need more girl players, or more girls making figures?

im not sure more girl figures would lead to more girl players, I think more girl players WOULD lead to more girl figs,
I think more women on the advertising/merch/developement team MIGHT up the # of girls playing the game...

I have played for 14 years, and have played 2 games agains a girl,

I have only met 3 or 4 female players, ever

I wish there were more girls into this hobby, I think I would really mix things up play wise and socially

Trouble is, the SM are an interesting concept as they are. Changing them just to cram in some women does not necessarily make them more interesting.

On the other hand, all SM all the time is also not interesting. There doesn't need to be more room inside of the SM concept. There needs to be more room in the franchise for products featuring characters other than the SM.

And actually, BL has been very good about that. Now Citdadel needs to follow suit.

nomotog wrote:


Lets change that. Lets make SM less insular. That gives them more verity more room to include more kinds of people.

No please. They retcon enough of this game as it is.

If they start to change the fundamental properties of the Space Marines Legions (being a fraternal and monastic organization). I will wash my hands of the hobby. You cannot destroy the existing content in a haphazard attempt to add new content.

easysauce wrote: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

I'd say that you have a point with many of those things you listed, but I would not agree on it being equal overall. There are still many groups where women cannot join, or even where they can join are still treated differently based on their sex - sometimes by excluding them from actually becoming a part, sometimes by dropping sexist remarks or going into rutting mode, sometimes even by abuse.
Also, the "disposable male" thing sounds a bit made-up, considering that a woman that sleeps with many men is commonly called "slut", but a man who sleeps with many women is called "successful".

Manchu wrote:

nomotog wrote:You could give one of the chapters a female inquisitor as a SC.

Because the Inquisition is not a part of any Marine formation (GK aside, where there is a female SC) -- as opposed to the chambers militant of the Inquisition. The SM are monastic orders. That means all male by definition. They are also highly autonomous so including SCs from other factions in their book makes little sense.

Actually, he's not too far off. There is indeed some fluff about some few Chapters that closely cooperate with individuals not of their own order. Relictors and Inquisitor DeMarche are an example from the Index Astartes.

I'm not saying that GW should do this, though, just that the option is there.

En Excelsis wrote:

 Manchu wrote:

He didn't say a harsh judgment was an unfair one. He said women judge themselves harshly AND unfairly.

Semantics.

Women judge themselves harshly and unfairly

Women judge themselves harshly, and they judge themselves unfairly.

Two different statements.

Semantics?

No, my friend. You assumed he meant that the judgment was unfair simply because it was harsh. That is not what he meant, at least as a matter of syntax.

Fair enough. I'll chalk that one up to a syntactical error and keep stride

 Manchu wrote:
Trouble is, the SM are an interesting concept as they are. Changing them just to cram in some women does not necessarily make them more interesting.

On the other hand, all SM all the time is also not interesting. There doesn't need to be more room inside of the SM concept. There needs to be more room in the franchise for products featuring characters other than the SM.

And actually, BL has been very good about that. Now Citdadel needs to follow suit.

I don't think they are interesting as they are now. They are a little too bland for me. Having fewer SMs would be nice though.

What you're proposing will, in effect, be a meritocracy wherein money determines who has the merit. If you wanna be stronger... yeah, you could hit the gym... or you could take performance-enhancing chemicals *and* hit the gym. Wanna be prettier? Surgery is your only option (and the zydrate comes in a little glass vial...). Wanna be smarter? Science hasn't caught up to that, yet. If you weren't born smart? You're SOL.

This also gets into areas where, because of economics (and a host of other factors mostly beyond the control of the individual), those who may have the raw ability are not afforded the opportunities to display those abilities. Someone can be highly intelligent, and yet very poorly educated. Someone can be a star athlete... but live in an area where schools lack the funding to develop sports programs, or may be a star athlete, but was unfortunately born female, and so is only permitted to play Powder Puff League, rather than on the boys' team, which receives the vast lion's share of funding (and attracts the talent scouts and such, because the professional leagues are male-only).

What's worse, though, is that in areas outside of things dependent on natural ability or talent, women are still paid less than men for doing the same job. This no longer holds true in *every* occupation, but it still holds in *most* occupations. Women are often denied promotions and career advancements because they might become pregnant. Not that they have expressed interest in having children, thus diverting attention from the company, but simply that they *might*.

This has nothing at all to do with "natural preselection", but entirely to do with a societal belief, long-ingrained, that women are somehow second-class citizens. This is complete bull-gak.

... this is also very much getting outside the scope of the topic. It's established in the GW fluff that, with infrequent exceptions, women should be as equally represented on the table-top as men. GW has yet to produce miniatures to fit this aspect of their universe, and also has been rather slow in maintaining what female miniatures, and the armies they're for, that they have historically produced.

One of my theories is that either Legion 2 or 11 changed it so the gene-seed could be implanted in women, but to the Emperor it was seen as trying to change the basic human form to something the Primarch thought would be better. The Emperor thought that changing humanity so radically would make the whole notion of unifying humanity against xenos threats irrelevant because there would no longer be pure humans. So when he discovered female marines he simply destroyed them, not because he hates the idea of female marines, but because to him the Adeptus Astartes were meant to last longer than Thunder Warriors but also be a temporary measure. I don't have any evidence, it's just an interesting thought.

it is an interesting thought, but falls apart at the fundamental level. Two siblings, male and female, are more genetically compatible than two men (or two women) from different families. There's no reason, other than GW said so, that the geneseed should not work in a female.

This is fine, though, really. I have no problems with Space Marines being male-only, so long as the Sisters of Battle exist and their fluff continues to support them as "the equal of the Adeptus Astartes", with equipment and skills on par with the Astartes, minus the bio-enhancement gubbins.

What bothers me is that we have tons of fluff supporting women in all manner of roles in the Imperium, but few to no models from current direct channels to represent them. I don't particularly think that GW is being intentionally or maliciously misogynist or sexist, but I do think that the lack of these models indicates a lack of market awareness within the company, and, perhaps, a lack of awareness on changing societal norms.

Including models of awesome women doing awesome things makes the H-H-Hobby more welcoming for women. Though I've got to admit I'm not sure whether being ignored entirely is better than having a bad representation that comes across as aimed at men (boob-plate, battle heels, ridiculous poses, etc). Maybe it is.

Still, though, it seems like a pretty straightforwards and obvious positive change to include both characters and generic soldiers who are female.

Aesthetic choices for models is going to be a more-complicated issue, as the "boob plate and battle-heels" thing is not as divisive (rather, not as divisive in the same way) as their total lack is. As I've noted earlier, I personally know several women who nearly *demand* that kind of model for their various RPG characters and what-not.

I don't disagree, though I will point out that an environment that heavily promotes boob plate & heels will naturally select players who like that aesthetic.

I would love to see a variety of similarly-designed male models, if only for how uncomfortable they'd make male players. Turnabout is fair play, right? But generally speaking, the problem isn't that such models exist; it's that they're:

a) the majority, or
b) the only option

It's the same problem as asking questions like "is character depiction X problematic?" I'm comfortable saying characters are never problematic or not in a vacuum. Context is all-important, and no one piece of media, alone, forms the whole. There's plenty of room in our culture for media that would be problematic if it was the primary message. The core reason it's problematic is it's predominant.

You have a good point there, HFP. Sexualised imagery is not a problem in itself, sexualised imagery of just one gender is. This is common problem in computer games: male warrior gets a real armour, female warrior gets chainmail bikini. (Tera Online is amusing exception, everyone has totally porntastic outfits. My GF loves it.)

Not that I think that 40K imagery is terribly sexualised, even though SoBs and DE certainly have clear BDSM overtones. DE line could probably use few half naked prettyboys for balance, though.

HiveFleetPlastic wrote:I would love to see a variety of similarly-designed male models, if only for how uncomfortable they'd make male players.

Is that actually possible? Emphasis on male characteristics is generally seen as "manly" rather than "sexy", and we already have the Catachans... Ironically, I could imagine that a lot of fans would be way more disturbed by GW scaling back the chest and arm size of Space Marine minis.

On a sidenote, I have never actually seen a GW mini that has a boob plate and heels. Sisters have the former, Assassins the latter (and in both cases it can be excused) ... but does anyone recall a mini that has both?

Crimson wrote:DE line could probably use few half naked prettyboys for balance, though

Well, the old DE Wyches had these boys:

Fabulous.

Indeed. I would love to do a few squads of Slaaneshi Cultists as leather-bois and bears (perhaps as a Spawn Pack + Handler counts-as or something)... but I'm stuck, currently, using DE as the basis, and then converting them, which doesn't quite get the same look.

Though the beefcake/cheesecake thing is a staple to fantasy art, going as far back as fantasy art has ever been done (which is a couple thousand years plus, at this point), but even within the range of the 20th and 21st centuries, it's predominant... though the beefcake aspect was predominant in the early years as well (as the original Conan, the Barbarian, from the 1920s, informs us).

Then we get into the issue of whether a character's depiction is in keeping with the setting and the character's personality. Personally, I think that a female character who dresses in a way inappropriate to the culture of the setting (not inappropriate to the setting overall, but to views and beliefs within the setting) and is doing it on purpose, is confident doing it (and is confident in spite of it as well), and is competent in her chosen field is fine. If she's, say, an agile swashbuckler/gunslinger in a Weird West setting, the fact that she wears boots, a thong, a cowboy hat and a smile is perfectly in keeping with the setting, even though she causes quite the ruckus amongst the "respectable women" of Little House on the Agri-World.

Psienesis wrote:Indeed. I would love to do a few squads of Slaaneshi Cultists as leather-bois and bears (perhaps as a Spawn Pack + Handler counts-as or something)...

Like so?

It's a shame, there's so much cool stuff in the background that does not have proper minis. Frateris militia are no longer produced, either.
Have you considered Necromunda gangs as Cultists? Probably somewhat expensive, but it might be closer to the look you are trying to achieve:
http://www.games-workshop.com/gws/catalog/productDetail.jsp?catId=cat490066a&prodId=prod1120105
http://www.games-workshop.com/gws/catalog/productDetail.jsp?catId=cat490066a&prodId=prod1120135

 Lynata wrote:

On a sidenote, I have never actually seen a GW mini that has a boob plate and heels. Sisters have the former, Assassins the latter (and in both cases it can be excused) ... but does anyone recall a mini that has both?

I don't think there's such a model. The female inquisitor has no heels either. This is an outrage, I demand this to be fixed ASAP!

Well, the old DE Wyches had these boys:

Spoiler:

Fabulous.

Those would qualify as sexualised male models! Too bad the sculpts are old and horrible.

I have to say, I still like them (all of them) more than the new ones. The new Wyches look so ... "tame" in comparison.

Yes, the overall quality is better. But the design is worse, imho. And I have a feeling they did it to make the franchise more "kids-friendly", just like with the new Daemonettes.

Crimson wrote:You have a good point there, HFP. Sexualised imagery is not a problem in itself, sexualised imagery of just one gender is. This is common problem in computer games: male warrior gets a real armour, female warrior gets chainmail bikini. (Tera Online is amusing exception, everyone has totally porntastic outfits. My GF loves it.)

Not that I think that 40K imagery is terribly sexualised, even though SoBs and DE certainly have clear BDSM overtones. DE line could probably use few half naked prettyboys for balance, though.

I agree. 40k has always given me more of a "girls are icky" vibe! But I wouldn't be surprised if, like many of the other companies people cite as having more balanced representation in their miniatures lines, that was the result.

I don't think it even has to come from a bad place, either - it can just come from male-as-default. Okay, we're making a female miniature now. How do we do that? Well, we have to make it identifiably female, obviously, or there would be no point! How do we do that? By emphasising secondary sexual characteristics and maybe clothing. Suddenly, boob-plate.

If you discard male-as-default or the idea that the miniature has to be identifiably female because it is female then that process gets derailed, but it's easy to see where it comes from even without "mua ha ha ha we must make this mini as sexy as possible to pander to our male customers! Making our female customers uncomfortable is a small price to pay if we can titillate the male ones *twirls moustache*".

Lynata wrote:

HiveFleetPlastic wrote:I would love to see a variety of similarly-designed male models, if only for how uncomfortable they'd make male players.

Is that actually possible? Emphasis on male characteristics is generally seen as "manly" rather than "sexy", and we already have the Catachans... Ironically, I could imagine that a lot of fans would be way more disturbed by GW scaling back the chest and arm size of Space Marine minis.

Well, part of that is our society hasn't spent a long time fetishising male vulnerability, so it doesn't map entirely. One of the things that disempowers female characters is that attempt at emphasising vulnerability, which is a key part of why battle-heels are dumb. When someone tries to make an attractive female character they might play up that vulnerability but that probably won't be part of a depiction of an attractive man. That's not to say that women can't find male vulnerability attractive, because that would be ridiculously untrue. Given plenty of what we find attractive seems to be culturally imprinted I don't think it's hard to imagine a culture where that was the case.

But er, anyway! In general, Beefcake 9000 isn't the idealised male body shape for women. Maybe it can be attractive in its way (YMMV, obviously) but I think your typical idealised man is somewhat muscular, but not overly so. That's part of the thing, here - the women are designed to appeal to men, and the men are designed to appeal to men.

Lynata wrote:

Crimson wrote:DE line could probably use few half naked prettyboys for balance, though

Well, the old DE Wyches had these boys:

Spoiler:

Fabulous.

I'm not sure I'd call them fab or prettyboys, but they seem to fit in with the other wyches pretty well!

Yeah, finding some of the old miniatures can be challenging. You can get lucky at the Bays of E, but not always.

ETA: And GW has been hitting the pipe if they think I'm spending $40 for 7 random figs.