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Space marines are all male because on a power armor miniature, a female lower torso would have to be distinct from a male model. So would the upper torso front AND back, meaning that arms too would not be interchangeable. In fact, a female backpack would need to be different too.

Keep in mind that this is partly because the male players demand sexy females, rather than female heads on male bodies.

Contrast with slim elvish bodies (eg kabalites), where male and female bits can be interchanged, with only a front upper torso swap.

How's THAT for a reason

 Lord Tarkin wrote:
And from what you say, you prefer that SMs be all female. Why? Show me the logic? You're just arguing for fun I assume, as what you're saying makes 0 sense.

No, I never said that I want all marines to be female. I just pointed out the absurdity of talking about how "only male marines make sense" when the entire process of creating a space marine is technobabble. There's nothing inherently more appropriate about male marines compared to female marines, it just happens to be the case that GW said "male only". Any justification beyond "GW said so" is just nonsense.

Did GW ever adequately explain why Imperial Knight pilots can't ever be female?

 Peregrine wrote:

 Lord Tarkin wrote:
And from what you say, you prefer that SMs be all female. Why? Show me the logic? You're just arguing for fun I assume, as what you're saying makes 0 sense.

No, I never said that I want all marines to be female. I just pointed out the absurdity of talking about how "only male marines make sense" when the entire process of creating a space marine is technobabble. There's nothing inherently more appropriate about male marines compared to female marines, it just happens to be the case that GW said "male only". Any justification beyond "GW said so" is just nonsense.

lol it's not technobabble, it's common sense. The male and female bodies are so different from eachother that the Imperium would need to create two procedures rather than just one, which is just unnecessary.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Man, why can't there be male SOB? That's a serious question, why not? Apparently there can be female SMs so why no male SOB? GW being sexist towards men there.

 Lord Tarkin wrote:
lol it's not technobabble, it's common sense. The male and female bodies are so different from eachother that the Imperium would need to create two procedures rather than just one, which is just unnecessary.

IOW, you don't understand what "technobabble" means. WHY would there have to be two separate procedures? GW could easily say "the same procedure works on both men and women" and that would be no more or less realistic than "it only works on men". The whole process is essentially "the space wizards cast a magic spell on the marine" no matter what sex/gender it is applied to.

Man, why can't there be male SOB? That's a serious question, why not?

Because that's what GW decided.

(Fluff-wise SoB exploit a loophole in a ban on having "men" under the command of the church.)

 Lord Tarkin wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:

 Lord Tarkin wrote:
And from what you say, you prefer that SMs be all female. Why? Show me the logic? You're just arguing for fun I assume, as what you're saying makes 0 sense.

No, I never said that I want all marines to be female. I just pointed out the absurdity of talking about how "only male marines make sense" when the entire process of creating a space marine is technobabble. There's nothing inherently more appropriate about male marines compared to female marines, it just happens to be the case that GW said "male only". Any justification beyond "GW said so" is just nonsense.

lol it's not technobabble, it's common sense. The male and female bodies are so different from eachother that the Imperium would need to create two procedures rather than just one, which is just unnecessary.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Man, why can't there be male SOB? That's a serious question, why not? Apparently there can be female SMs so why no male SOB? GW being sexist towards men there.

Because they'd no longer be the Sisters of Battle. Instead, the Holy Trinity would be wielded by the...... Co-genders of Battle? Some has got to have a better word then Co-genders. Suggestions, people?

Seriously, the Sisters of Battle being gender specific makes more sense then marines being male only, fluff wise. Smart ass clergy. That being said, you can understand why the game developers made marines male only, especially given the age of the universe. Generic males more athletic, traditionally soldiers, blah blah, not saying anything about its morality, or PC, but that is what it is.

It is a game system that people use to chill out and have fun. Multiculturalism and gender equality is great, and something to be strived for, but at the end of the day, I'm sure the world isn't going to suffer if people paint their miniatures white.

 Peregrine wrote:

 Lord Tarkin wrote:
lol it's not technobabble, it's common sense. The male and female bodies are so different from eachother that the Imperium would need to create two procedures rather than just one, which is just unnecessary.

IOW, you don't understand what "technobabble" means. WHY would there have to be two separate procedures? GW could easily say "the same procedure works on both men and women" and that would be no more or less realistic than "it only works on men". The whole process is essentially "the space wizards cast a magic spell on the marine" no matter what sex/gender it is applied to.

It's less like magic and more like just stuffing a bunch of extra organs into a person under the impression that "more organs = stronger", from what I can tell.

Yeah, the male and female bodies do have some physical differences, obviously, but the way some people talk you'd think women were like fething aliens or something. Like they're so completely different that it's a wonder we're even compatible at all, really!

 Peregrine wrote:

Man, why can't there be male SOB? That's a serious question, why not?

Because that's what GW decided.

(Fluff-wise SoB exploit a loophole in a ban on having "men" under the command of the church.)

Aren't the "male Sisters" technically the Militarum Tempestus Scions? Admittedly I don't know a whole lot about Imperial fluff so I might be entirely wrong.

Scions are IG spec ops

Only speaking for my own locality but I rarely see women, apart from wives looking at their watches or mums looking at the prices in GW stores. But truthfully I rarely see any other race but whites playing the games either. I can't recall seeing any other races employed by GW on the customer facing front line. The models reflect the demograph that play. Maybe it's more diverse elsewhere? Also black skin is a lot more difficult to paint.

Dark skin is only hard to paint if you're unfamiliar with it. A little study and practice and you're good to go.

Knockagh wrote:
Only speaking for my own locality but I rarely see women, apart from wives looking at their watches or mums looking at the prices in GW stores. But truthfully I rarely see any other race but whites playing the games either. I can't recall seeing any other races employed by GW on the customer facing front line. The models reflect the demograph that play. Maybe it's more diverse elsewhere? Also black skin is a lot more difficult to paint.

Well actually, I do know a black guy who goes to my store, he's cool. I know women who go too but really, people make it a bigger deal than it needs to be. If you want a couple of your IG black, then paint them as such! You don't HAVE to paint your models the way GW has them displayed. Like I've said earlier in the thread, I have painted some of my Chaos Marines black. However, I do feel GW should find a way to include some female choices among the IG box sets. maybe GW is worried that if they include 10 choices for females and 10 male choices that people will take advantage of the 10 unit size box sets and turn them into 20, thus practically getting 2 squads in one (Referring to a normal 10 man/woman strong IG infantry squad). If that isn't the problem though then I don't understand why they can't do it.


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 Crimson Devil wrote:
Dark skin is only hard to paint if you're unfamiliar with it. A little study and practice and you're good to go.

With GW paints, mixing Chaos Black with a dab (maybe more) of Mournfang Brown does the trick just fine.

I think something we'd do well to remember is that 40k is a Mary Sue game.

There's a reason you constantly see overpowered special characters pop up in Proposed Rules. The 40k ruleset encourages you to use your Warlord to represent yourself on the battlefield, and adds mechanics like Warlord Traits and Challenges to put further emphasis on your Warlord and the other characters.

You even start to care for your common footsoldiers. If nothing else, you've spent a significant amount of money on them, and time, and effort. That makes you care.

So if you feel like you'd want to be represented with an inhuman monster, that is fine. We have Tyranids.

If you feel like you'd want to be represented with a man, that is fine too. Literally every faction in the game aside from Tyranids has either predominantly to solely male characters, or decisively masculine characters.

IF you feel like you'd want to be represented with a woman, that works less well. Not every faction has any female models at all, and of the minority that does, they tend to be one-off special characters or otherwise very rare.

It's very easy to think there are no problems because you have been catered to for so long so any other situation becomes difficult to relate to. It's something you really must take into account.

Now, not everyone is affected by this. Just as some men are fine with playing SoB, I am 100% fine with my all-male Chaos Space Marines, and I think the fact that they are all male only makes them even more exotic from my perspective. I still think that the white male is overrepresented among the factions where more diversity should exist, such as IG and Inquisitors.

I think at least updating SoB, throwing in a female inquisitor and a female IG model here and there would do no harm.

I noticed in the Witch Hunters book as I was flipping through it earlier that there used to be a female Inquisitor model (had some wild hair, though), but that's apparently gone now.

I would have loved to see a model like this one come out in a female version. I think they kinda did that for Dawn of War 2: Retribution, might have been on the title screen or the box art I can't remember, but I remember seeing a female Inquisitor with that same kind of outfit, and the badass hat, too. Looked fething awesome to me, I love that kinda stuff. Hell, I want to play Bloodborne almost entirely because of the outfits and because you play as that kind of badass monster hunter character...and being a spiritual successor to Dark Souls kinda helps too, but still.

 Bobthehero wrote:
Scions are IG spec ops

I dunno, in the Witch Hunters book it said battle sisters were orphans raised by the Schola Progenium, and stormtroopers were recruited from the Schola Progenium. It makes it sound like they're related but I guess that could have changed in new fluff or I'm just not understanding it right. The way the Imperium is organized is just confusing to me and I never really bothered trying to figure it out.

Peregrine wrote:

Plumbumbarum wrote:
If you go back though, people were implying that half the sm chapter with knight/ monk references being women would be ok because you can dig up the odd chapter that recruited 100 and the odd women knight somewhere else or how gender is not a part of knight reference. You know like those thousands of females in plate armour clashing on medieval battlefields.

Why are you so obsessed with sex and race matching the source material? Who cares how many women were on medieval battlefields, a female knight is still a knight. And if making a gender swap would ruin the reference for you I don't know how you can tolerate things like "knights" being armed with bolters and chainsaw swords.

I dont think drawing hard conclusion based on prognostics for next 38 thousands of year for a ridiculous space fantasy setting is a way to go.

But that's exactly what you're doing. You're assuming that not only will the Imperium be racist, it will be racist in the exact same ways that people are racist in 2015. And you're complaining that the plausibility of the setting would be destroyed if they aren't racist like that.

2. I don't but I dont think black face fits that particular uniform. The world didnt crumble when a black actor (that I am a fan of) was cast as Heimdall but there was a significant laughing response from many people watching it. Fething Polish bigots, initiate obligatory gender studies, no tolerance to intolerance! Mythology correction inbound.

This makes absolutely no sense. DKoK have no real-world cultural inspiration (and no, borrowing details from a bunch of different WWI uniforms doesn't count as "culture"), so how can you say what race "fits" them?

 Lord Tarkin wrote:
And from what you say, you prefer that SMs be all female.

And I was supposed to be stretching your point? Are you being serious?

 Lord Tarkin wrote:
lol it's not technobabble, it's common sense.

A space marine can gain the memory of someone by eating him. Your argument is therefore irrelevant.

Sheesh. This whole thread makes me roll my eyes.

If it's that big a deal play Adeptus Mechanicus and say all the Skiitari are women. Err...horribly, horribly mutilated and irradiated women, unfortunately.

Then go to Victoria miniatures and paint up a bunch of cool female Cadians or Ghosts.

 Sidstyler wrote:
I would have loved to see a model like this one come out in a female version. I think they kinda did that for Dawn of War 2: Retribution, might have been on the title screen or the box art I can't remember, but I remember seeing a female Inquisitor with that same kind of outfit, and the badass hat, too. Looked fething awesome to me, I love that kinda stuff.

Should deffo recieve a model.

 Ashiraya wrote:

 Sidstyler wrote:
I would have loved to see a model like this one come out in a female version. I think they kinda did that for Dawn of War 2: Retribution, might have been on the title screen or the box art I can't remember, but I remember seeing a female Inquisitor with that same kind of outfit, and the badass hat, too. Looked fething awesome to me, I love that kinda stuff.

Spoiler:

Should deffo recieve a model.

Throw in a 2nd Lt. Mira model and I'd be peachy.

@Plumbumbarum

Maybe this will sound like a grumpy intellectual (which I am, but my excuse is that it comes with the work), but GW don't produce things to match archetypes. They produce things that calls to archetypes. For exemple, if SoB were all female Space Marines belonging to a close knit group of successor chapters all very zealous living a monastic lifestyle of holy crusaders, they would still call to the exact same cultural reference, use the same basic archetypes which is the same than the Space Marines (the monastic knights of the feudal era). The only difference is that the SoB are all clones of a single perticular historical figures that probably grew up learning about mythical knights and biblical myths. That wouldn't even be a big change of fluff for the Sisters. You need to dig to found actual differences between Sisters of Battle and Black Templars beside gender and body modifications. The two armies are like twin brother and sisters.

The second problem I see, is that if when I was a teen, stereotypes of knights, vikings, WW I and II, Viet-Nam, etc. were filling my imagination, when I started to study history, practice martial arts, trained in the army for a few years and basically turned into an adult, I reallised that those stereotypes were either wrong, diminutive or blatantly miss interpretated.

You can't have a fictionnal order of knights and paladin without a women and a black guy. The mother of all fictionnal order of knights and paladin had one black guy and three women. The paragon of chivalry in the first writen form of the Code of Chivalry was a muslim kurde named Saladin and he was their ennemy (that's how much they respected him). More than a hundred women were actual knights (with all the privilege and obligation that comes with it).

You can't have vikings inspired culture without warrior women. that's one of their defining cultural trait. it would be like having a brittain inspired fictionnal country without a parliement, a queen or king and a Victorian attitude. That's a rather big stretch. Heimdall needed to be black because the Myth tells that his skin was in bronze and bronze is pretty much a dark colour. that's why I say that many prejudice and stereotypes are kept alive by ignorance. Many people know of Heimdall has a Norse god, but don't know that his skin was made of bronze (and act all surpsied when he is portayed by a black guy), just like most people know Lancelot and Perceval, but don't know who Enid, Evelyn or Luciel are (and would think that seeing their characters in a King Arthur movie has a shamless PC thing, while they were there for centuries). They know who his King Richard Lionheart, but don't know he was french of origin (his family name is Plantagenet) and not many know who Saladin was. In the same fashion they know of that thing called chivalry, but would be unable to talk in length about it's origin, it's cultural aspirations or even about the specific tenets of that code.

In the same fashion, people don't know or see mutch of those light infantrie regiments that came from algeria or morocco to fight in world war I and II, but they faced more battle and casualties then actual French or Brittish since they were deemed sacrificial. Just like a minority of American Indians lived in tippies (most lived in long houses and didn't wear feathers) neither do they had more respect for nature than europeans of the time. You also experimented that feelling when you saw the bear riders. When I see or hear people saying things along the lines of «only men were knights», «chivalry is a eurepean and white men thing», «they call to arthurian myths and legends so of course they are all white men», «they are supposed to represent vikings so they are big rowdy and favor huge axes», «most soldiers in the two World Wars were white», etc. My reaction is facepalming all the time.

I personnaly start to think that it's not to remain true to a cultural product and stereotype that diversity is low in many wargame like this one, but because they seek a young audience. Kids and teens are by nature rather ignorant and proud to be. I will have to live with the fact that I can't get what I want and keep producing my own headcanon to fill the voids. I guess like Dany Glover said: «I'm too old for this gak.»

This is an issue that doesn't need to be addressed in a game. You have the unpainted plastic, do with it as you will. If it is such an important issue to you, prove it and make your own army diverse. And, if you don't like that GW's own artist tend to exclude certain racial groups, vote your displeasure by not buying their products.

 Gridge wrote:
And, if you don't like that GW's own artist tend to exclude certain racial groups, vote your displeasure by not buying their products.

This doesn't work in practice. Even if a substantial amount of players ceased to buy GW products for this reason (which they may already have), it would just tell GW that their profits are decreasing, not why.

Maybe GW would think they just need to add more bling to their Space Marines.

@Gridge

Then give me better paint to make darker shade of skins and tutorials for me (an idiot of an artist) to do it more quickly and better. Than give me my female models so that I can play in my local GW (I have an army of Scions with female stormtroopers form another company, but can't play there because of store policies of course). Since I don't have either of these, my ambitions are a bit thwarted. I need to make my own mix of paint which makes my black guy look more dirty or camo than actual black and my females makes my army impossibl to play at my local gaming store and slightly affect the entire army homogeneity when it comes to sculpt style and uniforms. Can we complain to improve products instead of dropping them whithout trying first?

As if that's a real problem. I have been painting the occasional "African" skin-tones on my models for more than 15 years with just Scorched Earth with Dark Flesh and Bestial Brown highlights. Because those are also my go-to leather and earth layering colors, they were the first colors I had to go out and find analogues of when GW changed their stupid color line.

But at the same time, while I absolutely love how my "black guys" look on the tabletop, I can't for the life of me take a good picture of them where they don't just have a monotone skin color with no details showing. Light tones, no problem.

Hell I have the old metal Catachan female with grenade launcher model, who I also painted as an African American.

Seriously, the lack of models in GW products is really only an issue in GW stores or if you want female Space Marines really, really bad. Because third-party groups make female guardsmen that are higher quality than GW can attain with their humongously proportioned Cadians.

Or if you want to play in a GW store, I guess.

@epronovost

Thank you for that lesson but believe me or not, you told me little new. Saladin for example is one of my favourite historical figures and I used word indoctrinated on purpose when mentioning noble savage.

The warrior women defining the viking culture are new though, from what I now the sources are few and scattered and women presence on the battlefield might have been flukes not really the trend. Give me sources though I'll gladly read.

Where we differ is the interpretation of all this. Yes they call to archetypes, I wrote functioning archetypes each time but sterotype maybe is a better word. So they call to stereotypes but that's good. That was what I meant about second part of what I wrote about hussars, it doesnt matter whether they used wings in battle or not until 100% ruled out because the stereotype and the image of the charging winged warrior works great. I dont think 100 female knights warrant a change of the stereotype either because that's an exception not the rule and if you want historical accuracy, put three women and one black guy into sm chapter instead of, what others suggested, making half of chapter women and all of them racialy diverse. You want arabic knights based chapters, make one or ask GW because BT or DA are not. I dont really find an analogy between my reaction to bear cavalry and you facepalming at viking being rowdy and having big axes or white male knights, it's different kind and level of mixup. Well white male knights in context of mediavel Europe is not a mixup at all imo.

Where I facepalm is the calls for changing all those stereotypes and shouting ignorance and prejudice because you can dig up the odd exception If 90% of Polish people were thieves, showing 10% that are not wouldnt make the Polish thieves stereotype less useful. You dont sound like grumpy intelectual but one with a bias for me tbh and lot of what you posted as facts is debatable. Not sure I want to open that can of worms here though heh.

And if you want to show skin made of bronze, you go for CGI not a black actor and it wasnt what Marvel meant anyway, they threw in black elves and are shoehorning diversity everywhere, female Thor etc. Maybe they just didnt like the sound of 'whitiest of the gods' heh.

Plumbumbarum wrote:
and if you want historical accuracy

But the point is we don't want historical accuracy, because it's a reference, not a literal copy. That's why space marines are armed with bolters and chainsaws, not swords and lances. That's why marines wear power armor instead of plate armor. That's why marines ride bikes and Rhinos, not horses. That's why marines slaughter in the name of the Emperor, not Christianity and the king. Etc.

And that is why it would be okay if GW one day decided female Marines exist. Because the reference remains intact.

@plumbumbarum

I think you misunderstood the issue I was trying to raise. The fact is these stereotypes exist, they probably won't change much over time. People are going to remember Lancelot and not Evelyn and people are going to think that vikings were rowdy, savage warriors with a greataxe has a favorite weapon despite the fact that real vikings fought in orderly close formation called shieldsrtom and their favorite weapon was the long spear. The axe was the favorite weapon of their saxons cousins. I will still find those stereotype stupid, dated and ignorant of their own roots because I know a lot of thing that can challenge them. They could change if people knew more about history and litterature, but one thing is shure thow. Stereotypes won't change because Space Marines become more ethnically divers. Imperial Guard won't lose their flavor because they have women models.

The product of GW won't affect the state of the stereotypes they draw from, just like Evelyn or Luciel won't dissapear from king Arthur court despite your possible ignorance of them. If suddenly half the space marines turned into girls (or worst completly) and 75% became non white, they would still be inspired by the very same, unchanged, stereotypes. They would be just has historically accurate then those we have now (not at all if we want to be honest since Space Marines have nothing really in common with medieval knights or Imperial Guard with WW II veterans). The only difference would be how they look like a bit different than before.

New miniatures, movies, games, plays, pictures, etc. would still be influenced by stereotypes of knights has a brotherhood of noble and honorable warriors (even if they were never a brotherhood, had a few sisters here in there and many of them had questionnable honor). Vikings in popular culture would still be portayed with horned helmets and large axes despite the fact that horned helmets were not a viking thing and large axes were more often tool for carpentry than weapons of war.

Stereotypes that you may like, and for a long while a liked them too, won't be lessen by a change in GW product or of any other company. They may be changed by people like me writting books and articles about their sources and teaching my findings to my students who will themselves hopefully transform them so that stereotypes can evolve. To paraphrase your exemple. If 90% of the polish were thieves, it would be correct to call them dishonest and stereotype them has criminal. But, the 10% that rest would really like to have some representation because they were polish and honest and they had a hard time being called thieves and crook all the while being honest. The best stereotype would then be polish are largely thieves, but some of them are surprisingly honest.

 Peregrine wrote:

Plumbumbarum wrote:
and if you want historical accuracy

But the point is we don't want historical accuracy, because it's a reference, not a literal copy. That's why space marines are armed with bolters and chainsaws, not swords and lances. That's why marines wear power armor instead of plate armor. That's why marines ride bikes and Rhinos, not horses. That's why marines slaughter in the name of the Emperor, not Christianity and the king. Etc.

Yes but if you slap too much on your reference, it might get silly or unrecognisable or sth. On that example, adding a small percent of females or different skin colours to the chapter referencing crusader knights, the reference will be, I dont know, stronger than it would be if it was shown as diverse, especialy that they already wear power armour instead of plate armour and ride bikes not horses. That it's a reference doesnt mean it cant get silly.

We're talking in circles btw.

Plumbumbarum wrote:
Yes but if you slap too much on your reference, it might get silly or unrecognisable or sth.

So why does adding female knights just cross that line and make the reference silly or unrecognizable, while adding things like Land Raiders and chainsaw swords is just fine? By any reasonable standard those other changes are much more significant. So where's your campaign to get rid of bike marines and replace them with horses, because otherwise they aren't really knights in space?

We're talking in circles btw.

Yes, because you keep making absurd claims and never defending them with more than "it's a reference".