Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Well, there was this part about how it was supposed to be facetiously reflective of how strange it is for people to demand so vehemently to have female "Battle Brothers", and how ....ah, nevermind. I must just be stupid.

 Furyou Miko wrote:
I just assumed Mr. Grimm was being facetious about the idea of female Space Marines...

Same. And you know, ask a silly question, &etc.

See....I GOT where you were coming from....

 AegisGrimm wrote:
Well, there was this part about how it was supposed to be reflective of how strange it is for people to demand so vehemently to have female "Battle Brothers", and how ....ah, nevermind.

It's not at all strange, especially given the male-dominated nature of our society. Brotherhood, as in "the bonds of", is commonly used without regards to gender in quite a few organizations; masculine is assumed by default in the English language, with "he" being used to refer to someone whom you don't know the gender of.

Don't get me wrong, I agree that it's stupid. But it's still true.

Furthermore, given that Space Marines take up an absurdly high amount of focus in the lore, it's only natural that some fans wish that Space Marines were more inclusive of minorities, instead of being a bunch of screaming old bald white guys. There is no serious, honest complaints about Sisters of Battle made in the same fashion because Sisters receive so little focus to begin with, that many people don't even have exposure to the idea of their existence.

It's not strange at all once you think about it. Personally, I don't care, I find non-augmented humans to be cooler than Space Marines anyway, so it's not my thing. But I don't look down on the people that DO care.

I don't have any problem with female marines. All the people who say, well the fluff blah blah blah need to realize the fluff really boils down to "a wizard did it" and that GW can (and does) change it all the time, no problem. It's not a stone tablet ex cathedra.

I would prefer that SM remain male because they are an analogue of warrior monks but either way I'm not fussed, as they say.

The bee in my bonnet is there are not female Guardsmen. That's just equal parts weird and lame. Cadia, who has a synonymous recruitment rate and birth rate, has no women depicted in styrene? Come on. The closest analogy to Cadia in modern times is Israel, and they've been recruiting women for almost 60 years.

 Melissia wrote:
I find non-augmented humans to be cooler than Space Marines anyway, so it's not my thing

Me, too, which is why I wish GW would publish more on the SoB. Femarines are not the answer.

 Ouze wrote:
The bee in my bonnet is there are not female Guardsmen. That's just equal parts weird and lame. Cadia, who has a synonymous recruitment rate and birth rate, has no women depicted in styrene? Come on. The closest analogy to Cadia in modern times is Israel, and they've been recruiting women for almost 60 years.

Yeah, that bugs me more than the FSM thing.

 Melissia wrote:

 Ouze wrote:
The bee in my bonnet is there are not female Guardsmen. That's just equal parts weird and lame. Cadia, who has a synonymous recruitment rate and birth rate, has no women depicted in styrene? Come on. The closest analogy to Cadia in modern times is Israel, and they've been recruiting women for almost 60 years.

Yeah, that bugs me more than the FSM thing.

I think this bugs everyone. Well, who cares, anyway.

I have never really seen the need, as I have collected Space Marines and Sisters of Battle side-by-side since the Sisters debuted in 2nd edition.

 Melissia wrote:

 Ouze wrote:
The bee in my bonnet is there are not female Guardsmen. That's just equal parts weird and lame. Cadia, who has a synonymous recruitment rate and birth rate, has no women depicted in styrene? Come on. The closest analogy to Cadia in modern times is Israel, and they've been recruiting women for almost 60 years.

Yeah, that bugs me more than the FSM thing.

Big time. Even if women are physically weaker and slower, you'd think they still be able to fill vital support roles and command posts.

 AegisGrimm wrote:
I have never really seen the need

Then what exactly is your problem?

Why are you so dead set against me personally? Sheesh, it was a snarky comment based on how these threads constantly show up and consist of the exact same content. Nothing more, nothing less. I get to have an opinion, too.

And obviously I believe it was ill-thought snark.

 Melissia wrote:

it's only natural that some fans wish that Space Marines were more inclusive of minorities, instead of being a bunch of screaming old bald white guys.

Most idiotic one dimensional take on the entirety of the Space Marine lore and fiction.

P.s. If you'v got a problem with someone then ignore them or take it into private messages, no one wants to get drawn into a flamewar between two people.

 Manchu wrote:

Plumbumbarum wrote:
Yes and if there is a place for sexism in sf, it's in 40k. Along with racism, facism, church of rotten corpse, mass murder and other really bad things. "Oh they're killing untold billions there but what is important is that there is no gender equality" sounds a bit dumb imo.

40k cannot reinforce the real life murder of billions because there is no such thing. It is purely fictional. But sexism is a real thing that can be and is reinforced by the tropes of pop culture.

Here's a thing, executing one person is still worse than sexism. The latter is bad and boorish but still.

Let's say a small exteminatus though, 100 000 people. Relevant?

Bloody murder is a real thing too and can reinforced by the tropes of pop culture. We should remove violence from 40k.

 Melissia wrote:
Can we please not have yet another ignorant anti-feminist rant here?

Jegus H Tapdancing Christ do we not need another one of those.

Can we not have posters writing derogatory remarks about religion here?

I bet you require high standards and respect of people when it comes to woman equality issues, yet you have none for others it seems. No different than me throwing around sexist one liners to embollish my speech.

btw I'm not really anti feminist in a strickt sense, I don't need feminism personaly because I respect women and treat them equaly. There are a lot of issues than need adressing like insane numbers of date rapes in USA for example but the absurdities some feminist activists spout reached sky high and it's often no longer useful. Some here are friends with people who voted for girls having the right to star at porn films when they reach 15 of age, just because their fight with traditional family is more important than stoping the most women degrading industry in history.

Anyway what I have issue here is political correctness when it comes to works of fiction, especialy ones that have green fungus orks inside. It's killing the variety of art, leave those issues to political speeches and newspapers. Seriously every show I see lately contains obligatory gay, woman having a hard time and black/ Jewish/ gypsy/ whatever people fighting prejudice, it's tiring. I don't want 40k to become a gothic variation of Mass Effect.

 Melissia wrote:
And obviously I believe it was ill-thought snark.

Its funny how everywhere I encounter your posts you are acting passive agressive to another poster and yet holding your victim up to a higher standard. It shows in most arguments you make as well.

Melissia, I have understood by now that you possess a very strong dislike for Astartes-related factions in Warhammer 40.000.

But please, can you keep this a little more controlled?

There's adding a 'They are not one of my favourite factions, but...' or something like that. That won't come off as passive-agressive.

But overstereotyping and ridiculing the faction and, occasionally, its fans (Indeed, I have seen more than one unpleasant comment about 'fanboys') won't make anyone happy.

No offense, I'd just rather that this discussion be continued in friendship rather than a forum cold war.

SO, rather unsurprisingly, a discussion on female space marines turns ugly...

Can everyone please take a moment to remind themselves that we're taking about science fantasy toy soldiers here?

There is absolutely no need for the rudeness. Rule #1, folks.

I know we are all really busy hurting each others feelings and trying to be clever.

But would anyone actually refuse to play with/against someone who had Female Space Marines?

I wouldn't, but as I said, I really don't care either way anyway. FSMs don't offend me.

 26FireGuy0369 wrote:
I know we are all really busy hurting each others feelings and trying to be clever.

But would anyone actually refuse to play with/against someone who had Female Space Marines?

I wouldnt say no but boy I think they would be butt ugly. Huge hulking troll like women in armour, and I thought the normal Space marines where bad... shudder

 Ouze wrote:
I don't have any problem with female marines. All the people who say, well the fluff blah blah blah need to realize the fluff really boils down to "a wizard did it" and that GW can (and does) change it all the time, no problem. It's not a stone tablet ex cathedra.

I would prefer that SM remain male because they are an analogue of warrior monks but either way I'm not fussed, as they say.

The bee in my bonnet is there are not female Guardsmen. That's just equal parts weird and lame. Cadia, who has a synonymous recruitment rate and birth rate, has no women depicted in styrene? Come on. The closest analogy to Cadia in modern times is Israel, and they've been recruiting women for almost 60 years.

This, this so much. GW really needs to add female guardsmen for the next edition, just start making two female models with some slight differences (slimmer arms, maybe a female sergeant without a helmet with her hair tightly knotted up), because there really really really needs to be female guardsmen. In the fluff they're ripe with female guardsmen (Gaunt's Ghosts comes to mind) and make sense for most Guard regiments besides Kriegsmen. There's no reason why women can't be guardsmen, and in the fluff there isn't either, and it's ridiculous players have to go to third parties or use greenstuff to make them.

Plumbumbarum wrote:
Bloody murder is a real thing too and can reinforced by the tropes of pop culture. We should remove violence from 40k.

Well, I was hoping you'd get the point without me needing to go too far down the rabbit hole.

We can analyze any fictional text from at least two perspectives: (1) as if the setting is an organic-historical world and (2) as if the setting is context for text. When you talk about the "fact" of exterminatus in the 40k setting, you are talking about (1), which has no relevance to the real world. When we talk about how 40k authors portray females, we are talking about (2), which is necessarily relevant to real life because we are talking about the actual authors and publishers rather than some fictional world.

Now, I'd say you have a point about 40k reinforcing ultra-violent culture ... except that culture doesn't exist where 40k sells (despite what various intellectually bankrupt politicians and media sources will shriek at you). By contrast, there are strong cultures of sexism where GW sells and indeed the subcultures clustered around GW are stereotypically at least a bit more misogynistic than the ambient ideological temperature of their wider neighborhoods.

Plumbumbarum wrote:
I don't want 40k to become a gothic variation of Mass Effect.

Don't worry, the current management hate nothing more than expanding their business. As long as those old white guys are in charge, 40k will continue to be pretty much exclusively targeted to young(er) white guys.

What always bothered me about "no female space marines" is it didn't come across as something that made sense in the setting, it just came across as "ew, girls are gross, let's invent an excuse to keep them out of the story." (or perhaps more charitably: "our target demo thinks girls are gross; let's invent an excuse to keep them out of the story") But then, maybe that is me giving the rest of the setting too much credit and it's all similarly poorly thought-out.

ETA: I don't mean that as an attack on the setting. I mean I was a lot younger when I learned about it all for the first time and may not have been the most discerning literary critic.

 HiveFleetPlastic wrote:
What always bothered me about "no female space marines" is it didn't come across as something that made sense in the setting, it just came across as "ew, girls are gross, let's invent an excuse to keep them out of the story." (or perhaps more charitably: "our target demo thinks girls are gross; let's invent an excuse to keep them out of the story") But then, maybe that is me giving the rest of the setting too much credit and it's all similarly poorly thought-out.

I think it's more "our target demographic for Space Marines wants to play with action figures of big burly men or slender attractive females rather than big burly females".

 HiveFleetPlastic wrote:
What always bothered me about "no female space marines" is it didn't come across as something that made sense in the setting, it just came across as "ew, girls are gross, let's invent an excuse to keep them out of the story." (or perhaps more charitably: "our target demo thinks girls are gross; let's invent an excuse to keep them out of the story") But then, maybe that is me giving the rest of the setting too much credit and it's all similarly poorly thought-out.

Eh, it's so-so. From a logistical view, there's no reason for them to even attempt to recruit females, as while the average female may be stronger than many males, the strongest female still falls short of the strongest male, and for astartes, they want the strongest males. With a pool of trillions of citizens to draw from, they don't even need to use female recruits, let alone use the whole 'male Primarch geneseed is incompatible with females' weird bit.

What they should do is add something additional to Storm Troopers for the Guard, watered down augments that any member of either gender can use to create their own super soldiers. Something like more compact dreadnought armor whatever those space-marines-inside-a-space-marine things are called.

 HiveFleetPlastic wrote:
it just came across as "ew, girls are gross, let's invent an excuse to keep them out of the story.".

Are you ready for a male poster to step in with WAT THAT IS NOT TRUE AT ALL MY GF LUVS SM GTFO!!!111! In all seriousness, that's a great point and I'm glad you distinguished between what GW may have intended and what it communicates to a young woman. I think SoB were in some way an attempt to reach out to women, which kind of strikes its own sour notes, but you can see female fans have sort of built up their own images of Sisters and 40k generally so I guess it was at least kind of a meet you halfway moment, whereas with SM it's like the "no gurlz allowed" sign on the treehouse that is functionally invisible to the boys.

 Manchu wrote:
. I think SoB were in some way an attempt to reach out to women, which kind of strikes its own sour notes, but you can see female fans have sort of built up their own images of Sisters and 40k generally so I guess it was at least kind of a meet you halfway moment, whereas with SM it's like the "no gurlz allowed" sign on the treehouse that is functionally invisible to the boys.

Interestingly enough, I've found that the few women I've come across who actively played went more for Tyranids, Eldar or Space Wolves than for SoB.

 Wyzilla wrote:
Eh, it's so-so. From a logistical view, there's no reason for them to even attempt to recruit females, as while the average female may be stronger than many males, the strongest female still falls short of the strongest male, and for astartes, they want the strongest males. With a pool of trillions of citizens to draw from, they don't even need to use female recruits, let alone use the whole 'male Primarch geneseed is incompatible with females' weird bit.

I feel that I need to point out that you and many others are making these kind of points from your real life experience. 40k is a fictional setting where FTL is achieved by travelling through a literal demon infested hell, a marine's standard weapon fires minature grenades and a daemonic chaos god was born from space elves having one giant orgy.

This is all accepted without argument but the idea of a woman in 40k not being better than a man but merely being equal in a combat role is just too far fetched?

 Manchu wrote:

 HiveFleetPlastic wrote:
it just came across as "ew, girls are gross, let's invent an excuse to keep them out of the story.".

Are you ready for a male poster to step in with WAT THAT IS NOT TRUE AT ALL MY GF LUVS SM GTFO!!!111! In all seriousness, that's a great point and I'm glad you distinguished between what GW may have intended and what it communicates to a young woman. I think SoB were in some way an attempt to reach out to women, which kind of strikes its own sour notes, but you can see female fans have sort of built up their own images of Sisters and 40k generally so I guess it was at least kind of a meet you halfway moment, whereas with SM it's like the "no gurlz allowed" sign on the treehouse that is functionally invisible to the boys.

The hilarious thing is that every woman I know who plays W40K is either Nids or Chaos, not SOB.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Madcat87 wrote:

 Wyzilla wrote:
Eh, it's so-so. From a logistical view, there's no reason for them to even attempt to recruit females, as while the average female may be stronger than many males, the strongest female still falls short of the strongest male, and for astartes, they want the strongest males. With a pool of trillions of citizens to draw from, they don't even need to use female recruits, let alone use the whole 'male Primarch geneseed is incompatible with females' weird bit.

I feel that I need to point out that you and many others are making these kind of points from your real life experience. 40k is a fictional setting where FTL is achieved by travelling through a literal demon infested hell, a marine's standard weapon fires minature grenades and a daemonic chaos god was born from space elves having one giant orgy.

This is all accepted without argument but the idea of a woman in 40k not being better than a man but merely being equal in a combat role is just too far fetched?

If they're a baseline human? Yes. Humans seem to be just as normal as they are in the modern day, barring psykers or mutants. If they were a special offshoot of humanity, like the Chiss in Star Wars instead of a major off-shoot like Ogryn it might be normal, but base humans? Tad weird.

Maybe females from Nocturne might make a good choice, considering IIRC that all humans from Nocturne are stronger than most due to the gravity.