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So in 40 000 years bar from a few minor mutations in a minority of humans, humanity as a whole will be physically no different to what it is today. That to me seems more weird.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

 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".

People have mentioned the burly women thing but it's not like you can even see how burly they are on the miniatures, since they're all in this huge chunky power armour. What would make more sense to me would be "we'll write room for them in the fluff and then never bother making a model for them."

 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.

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.

I am at a disadvantage here due to lack of current knowledge of Space Marine lore, but when you're surgically and genetically altering people the idea that you have to recruit for physical capability is dubious at best.

 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.

Oh, as far as it goes my major problem with Space Marines would be that they're a really rich concept that's even relevant to our world today but it just gets lost in the "omg they are so kewl!!1" stuff.

When Warhammer Online came out I tried the open beta and gleefully rolled a female dwarf engineer. The character design was all sorts of awesome and I really enjoyed it. Some months later I ended up on their forums for some reason and happened upon a thread of people completely enraged that female dwarves were playable in the game. And I was like The dwarf lore (from what understanding I gained of it from the game and that thread, having never played WFB) actually hits the same notes as the Space Marine lore in that regard.

Sisters of Battle have always sort of annoyed me because they come across as "special girl space marines who aren't as good." I know that's not the totality of them and they have their own unique stuff that's cool too and would like to ask the Sisters players to please not kill me.

In any event, Tyranids remain the premiere feminine faction of the setting and the Space Marines are all going to get et anyway so it's all pretty academic.

 Madcat87 wrote:
So in 40 000 years bar from a few minor mutations in a minority of humans, humanity as a whole will be physically no different to what it is today. That to me seems more weird.

It really is. Especially when humanity was broken up during the Age of Strife/Long Night. Even over a course of a couple thousand years, beneficial traits can start to emerge. Ten thousand or more? People should be a lot more distant from mainline human than they are in W40K.

As for Astartes, they only recruit the strongest aspirants, of both mind and body. I highly doubt there are many baseline humans that can kill a small dragon or a wolf of Fenris.

Also, I'm not familiar at all with WFB, but aren't their Dwarves Tolkien-like? There are female Tolkien dwarves. I don't see why they would be enraged.

I've heard somewhere that sexual dimorphism in humans is decreasing over time. I don't know if that's true, but it could have an impact if we're still around in the year 40,000!

Maybe women recognize SoB as a potential pink ghetto and steer away. Anyway, as I pointed out, the female fans of SoB have not merely assumed GW's take on them but seemingly recast them in a less ... shall we say, Blanchesque light.

Use escher models for sm scouts!

 Manchu wrote:
Anyway, as I pointed out, the female fans of SoB have not merely assumed GW's take on them but seemingly recast them in a less ... shall we say, Blanchesque light.

May the Emperor ever curse his name.

 HiveFleetPlastic wrote:
I've heard somewhere that sexual dimorphism in humans is decreasing over time. I don't know if that's true, but it could have an impact if we're still around in the year 40,000!

Likely untrue on that part. However, humans have been noticeably been increasing in height since the emergence of our species, likely due to better nutrition and slow breeding over time.

 HiveFleetPlastic wrote:
I've heard somewhere that sexual dimorphism in humans is decreasing over time. I don't know if that's true, but it could have an impact if we're still around in the year 40,000!

Seems to be the opposite if anything; however the abilities of athletic ability and size of humans could be rather dramatic by then.
I'd love proper female guard and I'd love to somehow make them all Tzeentchy... I mean, would it hurt the lord of change to have a change of gender for his sorcerers?

 Melissia wrote:
I'm by far the most American person here, since I'm from Texas.

Cool a fellow Texan, wheres about are you?

I think the point that were missing here is that even without models to compare or yell about, even without fluff allowing or disallowing, there's still a immense amount of interest in these existing This isn't the first forum post to appear that bring all the boys to the yard. It seems a rather easy thing for GW to make the models and then profit. The amount of scratchbuilders who go to ridiculous lengths (myself included) to make a good looking female space marine is ....really impressive. And lets all take a look at how successful Raging Heroes KS was (despite their many many missteps). There a demand.....why not supply it?

And to say that then all the people would abandon GW at that point doesn't work, cause they've done plenty to wreck consumer faith and were all still here.

 rayphoton wrote:

 Melissia wrote:
I'm by far the most American person here, since I'm from Texas.

Cool a fellow Texan, wheres about are you?

I think the point that were missing here is that even without models to compare or yell about, even without fluff allowing or disallowing, there's still a immense amount of interest in these existing This isn't the first forum post to appear that bring all the boys to the yard. It seems a rather easy thing for GW to make the models and then profit. The amount of scratchbuilders who go to ridiculous lengths (myself included) to make a good looking female space marine is ....really impressive. And lets all take a look at how successful Raging Heroes KS was (despite their many many missteps). There a demand.....why not supply it?

And to say that then all the people would abandon GW at that point doesn't work, cause they've done plenty to wreck consumer faith and were all still here.

Well given GW don't even see the point in updating SoB, I doubt they think there's much of a market for female Space Marines either.

 rayphoton wrote:
There a demand.....why not supply it?

Fool! We must not breach any of the Nine Blood Vows sworn to the Ancient Lords of the Before lest they reawaken!

Well, that's as close as I can figure anyway.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
Well given GW don't even see the point in updating SoB

Untrue, they do. They've tried to create plastics of them before.

 Troike wrote:

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
Well given GW don't even see the point in updating SoB

Untrue, they do. They've tried to create plastics of them before.

That old rumour that it was technically not possible to make them? Yeah I don't really believe they put all that much effort in to it.

The current models are 17 or 18 years old, they could legally drink now I find it hard to believe they've put much effort in to making plastic sisters after all that time.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
That old rumour that it was technically not possible to make them? Yeah I don't really believe they put all that much effort in to it.

It's not exactly old, Phil Kelly said the same last year. As for effort, they would have put in about as much effort as any other army, but realised that they couldn't get them into plastic the way they wanted at the time, so likely put the Sisters on the backburner for the time being.

My Two pennies....Given what Space Marines are....I don't think the female frame could take the burden.



Otherwise, do what you like have females if you like. Although for an Astartes Breasts would be redundant?



Compare this physique with the Male equivalent...



It's the shoulders....Space Marines are all about Shoulders and Pauldrons.

I hate looking at bodybuilders, it's repulsive.

Also remember Females have much lower testosterone, and Marines are all about Testosterone , Aggression Muscle bulk etc, Women Body Builders take synthetic Testosterone to bulk up, men can as well but generally don't need to if they follow an extreme exercise regime.

insaniak wrote:

 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.

Well, I thought I was a boy when I chose Sisters as my secondary army (Necrons were my first), so I can't really comment on that... but the other women I know went for 'nids, Eldar and (strangely, in the accountant's case) Slaaneshi Daemons.

Melissia wrote:

 Manchu wrote:
Anyway, as I pointed out, the female fans of SoB have not merely assumed GW's take on them but seemingly recast them in a less ... shall we say, Blanchesque light.

May the Emperor ever curse his name.

Actually, I don't think Blanche is a sexist. I just think he has a serious fetish for high heels.

If he only drew sexualised women and burly men, I think you might have a case... but he draws sexualised men and burly women, too. As far as heels go, he's something of an equal opportunity cobbler.

Although yeah, I do wish that particular image hadn't been the cover art for the original Codex: Sisters of Battle. That one image is the source of so freaking many 'sisters in high heels' comments that it really did more harm than good. About the only thing I do approve of there is the complete lack of those damn Inquisitors in it.

Sisters in heels -- the most unbelievable thing about 40k.

 Manchu wrote:
Sisters in heels -- the most unbelievable thing about 40k.

Irony aside, I think the most unbelievable thing about 40k is that it's so successful with such a flamebait ruleset. :p

There are Female space marines.

They are just..kinda half male and half female, The Dark Prince's Gift and all. (Which can indeed happen in the rpg book Black Crusade )

 Manchu wrote:

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.

Still don't get it. I can say that 40k makes totalitarian regimes look cool and that reinforces wrong ideas in people's heads, or that it mocks religion showing people worship a rotten corpse so reinforces contempt that young people have for it. It's just about what you personaly put an emphasis on, imo.

When I talk about how 40k or any ther sf/ fantasy world authors portray females, I am still talking about fictional worlds. Especialy sf should have the priviledge to say anything, be it a book about a future where women are men servants in chains or men growing full blown fur again and women resistance fighting them to save humanity. You know, freedom.

Negative portrayal of women, positive portrayal of psychopats droping bombs at people, I don't really see a difference. And neither should be censored.

 Manchu wrote:
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.

Don't know about that, I met legion of board gamers, pc gamers, tabletop gamers and can't think of a single one that was a sexist or misogyn. Console gamers yes a few but they were also heavy drinkers and far into drugs at the time, pretty mad guys and half of them were dead before reaching 30. I don't know maybe it's different here, we also don't have everyone labeled, nerd/ geek culture, geek pride and other bs, general idea is I like football you play your pc 14 hours a day, great let's go buy vodka and have fun. I guess it will change soon as we import your labels along with your products but in our youth the girls were fine with rpgs, boardgames, larps etc and no sexism emerged afair.

 Manchu wrote:

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.

Well I'm white but no longer young with wife and kids and they still cater to me, in a way that they don't let overblown issues ruin their setting i.e. spoil the space marines monks in spaaace theme by letting women in out of some misguided gender equality sense.

I don't even think 40k is sexist because men and women lives are equaly worthless there. But if there was sexism, it would fit the mood of opressive totalitarian regime and be a good addition to the setting, not a problem imo.

 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.

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.

Or maybe, just maybe, when you take any supposed influence on 40k, World War I and II, medieval times, knight orders etc, the pattern emerges... armies there consisted only of men. Female Dark Angels, female Black Templars? You'd kill half the mood they have to them.

I think you read too much into it.

They can get some realism there though and show the major role of women in war close to the front which historicaly was being prostitutes. Oh imagine the equality brigade outrage if space marines were to carry a brothel ship around, yet would be entire in line with war practice.

 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.".

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.

"Armies predominantly consist of males"?

 Manchu wrote:
Sisters in heels -- the most unbelievable thing about 40k.

Certainly not the most unbelievable, but still pretty dumb, in its own particular way.

 ZebioLizard2 wrote:
They are just..kinda half male and half female, The Dark Prince's Gift and all. (Which can indeed happen in the rpg book Black Crusade )

Ha. How very Slaanesh.

 DarkTraveler777 wrote:

1. DAUMM! just joking.
2. that picture is pretty cool, but the midriff ruins it ALOT.
3. again about the midriff, if she got shot by a bolt she would pretty much be cut in half because of how skinny she is.

 BrotherHaraldus wrote:

 Savageconvoy wrote:
Tau don't distinguish from genders, only rank their caste from what I remember. Kroot are impossible to distinguish male from female by humans and GW never listed physiological differences for Tau, so the models could be female or male for all we know.

And the only book that touches on female Tau that I'm aware of is the Shadowsun book, but I won't touch that. The synopsis makes it seem like her hardest decision she's ever had to make was.... Being the leader of the empire's army or... going home and making babies... Because she's a woman...

Wow.

Just...

Wow.

agreed.
and I'm a guy.

it seems to me, the problem comes down to three things.
1. people who have been told something for twenty years and suddenly told they are wrong, they don't like it, see Christians and Galileo
2. the people who convert them tend to... umm... emphesise the girls' *cough* bits...
3. realistically, if a female was made a space marine, there would probably be absolutely no difference, perhaps some might grow longer hair.
please, I'm not trying to insult any one here, don't take it that way if I have said anything to insult anyone.



Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Furyou Miko wrote:

insaniak wrote:

 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.

Well, I thought I was a boy when I chose Sisters as my secondary army (Necrons were my first), so I can't really comment on that... but the other women I know went for 'nids, Eldar and (strangely, in the accountant's case) Slaaneshi Daemons.

Melissia wrote:

 Manchu wrote:
Anyway, as I pointed out, the female fans of SoB have not merely assumed GW's take on them but seemingly recast them in a less ... shall we say, Blanchesque light.

May the Emperor ever curse his name.

Actually, I don't think Blanche is a sexist. I just think he has a serious fetish for high heels.

If he only drew sexualised women and burly men, I think you might have a case... but he draws sexualised men and burly women, too. As far as heels go, he's something of an equal opportunity cobbler.

Although yeah, I do wish that particular image hadn't been the cover art for the original Codex: Sisters of Battle. That one image is the source of so freaking many 'sisters in high heels' comments that it really did more harm than good. About the only thing I do approve of there is the complete lack of those damn Inquisitors in it.

love this post.

 ZebioLizard2 wrote:
There are Female space marines.

They are just..kinda half male and half female, The Dark Prince's Gift and all. (Which can indeed happen in the rpg book Black Crusade )

Slaanesh Hermaphrodites aren't really what one would even count as 'human' anymore.

 Wyzilla wrote:

 ZebioLizard2 wrote:
There are Female space marines.

They are just..kinda half male and half female, The Dark Prince's Gift and all. (Which can indeed happen in the rpg book Black Crusade )

Slaanesh Hermaphrodites aren't really what one would even count as 'human' anymore.

Spoiler:

Well if they get it first before all...Wow he's gotten alot of gifts there.

Though he looks more like a Possessed one..Hm.

In my own personal interpretation of the setting, there are no female space marines. But, I hold no-one ill will if they want to go in the other direction with it, and if the Studio itself decided tomorrow that 'hey, yeah, there really are female space marines", I'd be pretty accepting of it (I might roll my eyes a bit). If they took out the SOB at the same time . . . my rage would be incandescent.

Anyway, had it been me, I would have handled the "in fluff" reasoning for the 'no female Space Marines' differently. I would have made it a decision based on the idea that they could not get the gene-seed to reliably produced sterile marines, and consequently; had they created legions with both genders it would not have been long before there were baby marines (who would likely have inherited their parent's lack of sterility), and pretty soon you have a population of post-human warriors that did not need regular humans to perpetuate themselves. So it was all a part of tying the Space Marines to the rest of humanity.

That's how I would have handled it.

 Pendix wrote:
In my own personal interpretation of the setting, there are no female space marines. But, I hold no-one ill will if they want to go in the other direction with it, and if the Studio itself decided tomorrow that 'hey, yeah, there really are female space marines", I'd be pretty accepting of it (I might roll my eyes a bit). If they took out the SOB at the same time . . . my rage would be incandescent.

Anyway, had it been me, I would have handled the "in fluff" reasoning for the 'no female Space Marines' differently. I would have made it a decision based on the idea that they could not get the gene-seed to reliably produced sterile marines, and consequently; had they created legions with both genders it would not have been long before there were baby marines (who would likely have inherited their parent's lack of sterility), and pretty soon you have a population of post-human warriors that did not need regular humans to perpetuate themselves. So it was all a part of tying the Space Marines to the rest of humanity.

That's how I would have handled it.

herecles strangled two snakes.
goo goo marine strangled twenty rippers.

All the Girls I know that play 40k play Chaos.

Why did the implant ages matter BTW?

In the Dark Angels book they Implanted the Lions men even tho they were 30 to 50 and they said have of them survived. it was more than they expected. They probably implant at an early age just for higher survival rates so as not to waste time, but in the fluff they could take older candidates.

@the shrouded lord

3. realistically, if a female was made a space marine, there would probably be absolutely no difference, perhaps some might grow longer hair.
please, I'm not trying to insult any one here, don't take it that way if I have said anything to insult anyone.

As some one who believes in equality I want to agreed, but i cannot.

The shape of Females makes a huge difference to their performance and also to their ability to be adapted. The female skeleton is different to the male, it is has evolved differently for very specific reasons.

This is not to say females are less, they aren't but the sexes are different. I find it very interesting that the USAF found that Female Combat Pilots were better able to withstand higher G then males. A pretty interesting decisive edge in certain circumstances...

The problem is more about the fundamental size, shape and frame of a Male is better suited to carrying the bulk. The female form especially at the hip level has evolved specifically for Child birth,



There is also the additional work required to remove certain Female Glands which would be entirely redundant on an Astartes, obviously most Male Astatres have their genetalia removed because it is redundant. This is relatively simple for a Male, much more complex for a Female.

I would agree that Male and Female Astartes would be similiar, but I think they would be smaller on average, and would require a slightly different armour because their smaller shoulder width would mean that Chest Plastons and Pauldron would need to be different.

Otherwise, I think they would need an extra gland for testosterone else you will have some well balanced Astartes, and they are bred for War not to be balanced.

I interpreted that last post as "I cannot imagine a large framed, genetically augmented woman therefor no one can". Which really just made my eyes roll, that's more your problem than mine. I can very easily think of such a thing. It's really not all that hard, especially since we're talking about a science fiction wherein plenty of illogical, unscientific things happen on a minute by minute basis. Hell, I did it in Shadowrun (and she was Human, not Troll), and that's a setting that didn't have half the fantastic stuff 40k has.

And considering we're talking about taking preteens and pumping them full of hormones and chemicals to artificially enhance their growth patterns and make them in to bulky, unreasonably large killing machines, before implanting various artificial organs to enhance their biological process... yet you're looking at the skeleton of a normal human adult? I'd like to point out that Space Marines are not normal or humans post-recruitment, and they aren't adults pre-recruitment, so that comparison simply doesn't work.