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Ha! Manchu, I understand your trepidation.

I have had more than one female point out that in the scheme of things for sustaining the species, men are rather overabundant.

I guess it depends where human gestation is performed in 40k. If genetic samples are taken, an "optimal" combination determined, then the resultant life stuck in a jar till born: females would be no more valuable than men. Believe me, I could see this being even more impersonal than what first was surmised.

You know, I am unsure I want to explore the possible "family unit" of 40k or how the babies from the jars are raised.

I guess I find this "wrong kind of equality" interesting, where the government cannot be bothered to differentiate race or sex: we are all made to fit a generic role assigned.

 Pouncey wrote:
They could probably do it. They'd probably even have an official prosthetic for the Eldar men who do so.

That would make sense to me. If you think about it, IRL women soldiers are technically "cross-dressing" as the modern military uniform is descends from, and largely is assumed to be, a masculine costume. (Arguably, the only reason we can perceive BDUs as gender-neutral is because we already accept, in the context of battle, that masculinity is the default standard.) Basically, male Banshees would simply be doing the same thing.


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@Talizvar - I think that kind of technology is lost or mostly lost in M42. There are hints that DKOK do something like that but ... darkly enough ... there is speculation that the "jars" in question are actually living female bodies. Talk about dystopian!

 Manchu wrote:
[@Talizvar - I think that kind of technology is lost or mostly lost in M42. There are hints that DKOK do something like that but ... darkly enough ... there is speculation that the "jars" in question are actually living female bodies. Talk about dystopian!

Yeah, the classic servitors are all well and good until we get into those topics which I am happy for GW to never explore...

 Manchu wrote:
@Talizvar - I think that kind of technology is lost or mostly lost in M42. There are hints that DKOK do something like that but ... darkly enough ... there is speculation that the "jars" in question are actually living female bodies. Talk about dystopian!

Yeah, that part about the DKoK is a bit of a squick moment for me and it's one of the reasons I will never play them.

Fortunately there are other planets in the Imperium who don't do stuff like that, so I can still have fun with the Imperial Guard. : D

 Pouncey wrote:

 Manchu wrote:

 Talizvar wrote:
With how the dark millennium is portrayed, it would be obvious that women would be employed in any capacity equally to men because the imperium does not care as long as what is required is carried out..

I hesitate to go any further down this path but ... just as a matter of logic, women are much more valuable than men if what the state needs is a growing/sustainable population in order to, for example, replenish the ranks of a military formation during wartime. And what could be darker, in terms of sheer misogynistic objectification, than to reduce the worth of female persons to their capacity for reproduction? Still, even in those terms, given what I am sure are widespread issues of undernourishment, environmental poisoning, and other such factors, not a few women would be barren and therefore be simply objectified by the Imperium in the same way that it objectifies its male subjects; i.e., as trigger squeezers/bullet absorbers. I suppose in a truly dystopian setting, barren women would be "demoted" (at least in terms of how the state values them) to canon fodder, the traditional role of men. Of course, in that role, they might have a chance to rise through the ranks of their units. A good example of this would be Furiosa from Mad Max Fury Road.

People who are concerned about the Imperial Guard casualties being able to be replenished, resulting in a need for fewer women on the battlefield, simply have never done the math about the Imperium.

If you work out the official data on the Imperium's planets and their populations, you come to the conclusion that the Imperium probably has more than 20 quadrillion people living in it.

To demonstrate how many people that is, if you take every human being on Earth right now, and clone each of them one billion times, you will not end up with as many people as even half of the population of the Imperium of Man.

And of those 20 quadrillion, only 200 billion at most actually serve in the Imperial Guard. One in every one hundred thousand humans becomes an Imperial Guardsman. No more.

Replenishing casualties is NOT. A. PROBLEM. Regardless of what gender your Guardsmen are. You could have ALL of your Guardsmen being female, across the entire Imperium, for the past 10,000 years, and it would not significantly slow down how quickly your population is replenished.

And even more to the point, female Guardswomen becoming pregnant while in the field and giving birth is one of the intended ways to reinforce an Imperial Guard regiment. Because IG regiments are essentially never going home again. Those children will grow up and be trained and eventually become members of their parents' regiments. This is not only allowed by the Imperium, but they've developed special command structures for those children to be trained under.

^ I think that is a gross oversimplification. If a planet is invaded, the PDF is going to potentially require every man, woman and child to fight for survival. The Russians and Germans (and to a lesser extent british) all did it during the war, many African countries still do. Then look at worlds like Cadia?

And yes only one in a hundred people join the guard, but that military population comes from a smaller selection of worlds, if you have a particular sector invaded they could very easily run low on manpower. It takes a long time to travel across the imperium, if your reinforcements arrive at all. It's why generally regiments stay fairly local to their originating sector.

 Talizvar wrote:
Ha! Manchu, I understand your trepidation.

I have had more than one female point out that in the scheme of things for sustaining the species, men are rather overabundant.

I guess it depends where human gestation is performed in 40k. If genetic samples are taken, an "optimal" combination determined, then the resultant life stuck in a jar till born: females would be no more valuable than men. Believe me, I could see this being even more impersonal than what first was surmised.

You know, I am unsure I want to explore the possible "family unit" of 40k or how the babies from the jars are raised.

I guess I find this "wrong kind of equality" interesting, where the government cannot be bothered to differentiate race or sex: we are all made to fit a generic role assigned.

I think the IoM just lets most of is citizens do the reproducing for them on their own without trying to influence it. There are too many people in the IoM to actually enforce an unusual method of reproduction on everyone, and really there's no point anyways since it wouldn't affect the total number of people produced. And the Imperium of Man is actually extremely egalitarian out of a state of apathy. They simply don't care if you're male or female - you're human so you'll do. There's even lore about how IG regiments supply some of their own reinforcements through their soldiers becoming pregnant and giving birth, which means that there is some percentage of female IG who are actually going into combat during various stages of pregnancy.


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 Baldeagle91 wrote:

 Pouncey wrote:

 Manchu wrote:

 Talizvar wrote:
With how the dark millennium is portrayed, it would be obvious that women would be employed in any capacity equally to men because the imperium does not care as long as what is required is carried out..

I hesitate to go any further down this path but ... just as a matter of logic, women are much more valuable than men if what the state needs is a growing/sustainable population in order to, for example, replenish the ranks of a military formation during wartime. And what could be darker, in terms of sheer misogynistic objectification, than to reduce the worth of female persons to their capacity for reproduction? Still, even in those terms, given what I am sure are widespread issues of undernourishment, environmental poisoning, and other such factors, not a few women would be barren and therefore be simply objectified by the Imperium in the same way that it objectifies its male subjects; i.e., as trigger squeezers/bullet absorbers. I suppose in a truly dystopian setting, barren women would be "demoted" (at least in terms of how the state values them) to canon fodder, the traditional role of men. Of course, in that role, they might have a chance to rise through the ranks of their units. A good example of this would be Furiosa from Mad Max Fury Road.

People who are concerned about the Imperial Guard casualties being able to be replenished, resulting in a need for fewer women on the battlefield, simply have never done the math about the Imperium.

If you work out the official data on the Imperium's planets and their populations, you come to the conclusion that the Imperium probably has more than 20 quadrillion people living in it.

To demonstrate how many people that is, if you take every human being on Earth right now, and clone each of them one billion times, you will not end up with as many people as even half of the population of the Imperium of Man.

And of those 20 quadrillion, only 200 billion at most actually serve in the Imperial Guard. One in every one hundred thousand humans becomes an Imperial Guardsman. No more.

Replenishing casualties is NOT. A. PROBLEM. Regardless of what gender your Guardsmen are. You could have ALL of your Guardsmen being female, across the entire Imperium, for the past 10,000 years, and it would not significantly slow down how quickly your population is replenished.

And even more to the point, female Guardswomen becoming pregnant while in the field and giving birth is one of the intended ways to reinforce an Imperial Guard regiment. Because IG regiments are essentially never going home again. Those children will grow up and be trained and eventually become members of their parents' regiments. This is not only allowed by the Imperium, but they've developed special command structures for those children to be trained under.

^ I think that is a gross oversimplification. If a planet is invaded, the PDF is going to potentially require every man, woman and child to fight for survival. The Russians and Germans (and to a lesser extent british) all did it during the war, many African countries still do. Then look at worlds like Cadia?

And yes only one in a hundred people join the guard, but that military population comes from a smaller selection of worlds, if you have a particular sector invaded they could very easily run low on manpower. It takes a long time to travel across the imperium, if your reinforcements arrive at all. It's why generally regiments stay fairly local to their originating sector.

IG regiments don't actually wait for reinforcements from their homeworld at all. They simply recruit reinforcements from local populations and their own women giving birth.

No, no, not one in a hundred people join the Guard. One in a hundred THOUSAND.

The Imperium of Humanity cares not for your sexuality or your gender. The Imperium cares only that you worship the God-Emperor and that you die in His service.

Anyone who isn't a mutant, a traitor, or a heretic is A-OK with the High Lords of Terra and the various Imperium-wide organisations.

Which, of course, brings us back to the point that we should have more variance in the Imperial Guard range!

 Pouncey wrote:
Yeah, that part about the DKoK is a bit of a squick moment for me and it's one of the reasons I will never play them.

It's certainly gross! But no grosser than what anyone with anything to with Chaos gets up to. I'm happy for GW to vaguely hint at such things. It would be too much, for me at least, if this kind of stuff was the central premise of a faction. DKoK's premise, however, is the obliteration of individual ID both as penitence for disloyalty (understood as a facet of ego) and as an unwavering commitment to duty, which is really about as fascist and dark as 40k needs to get IMO.

 Pouncey wrote:
There are too many people in the IoM to actually enforce an unusual method of reproduction on everyone, and really there's no point anyways since it wouldn't affect the total number of people produced.

As a parody of 20th-century authoritarianism, I would not put it past the Imperium to desire and even attempt to control every aspect of its subjects lives. And - for the same reason, namely it being a parody - the Imperium does not care that doing so is mostly impossible and, even where it is theoretically possible, the labyrinthine bureaucratic constitution of the state and the vast scales involved render it absurdly improbable. For that reason I disagree with your conclusion that

 Pouncey wrote:
the Imperium of Man is actually extremely egalitarian out of a state of apathy

Arguably, no government could care more about even the innermost thoughts and desires of its subjects (in this case, "bad thoughts" can actually result in planetary disasters). The black humor of the Imperium is premised on the "facts" of the 40k setting fully justify authoritarianism even considering that authoritarianism in 40k, just like IRL, is itself ultimately not only futile but also self-defeating.

 Manchu wrote:

 Pouncey wrote:
There are too many people in the IoM to actually enforce an unusual method of reproduction on everyone, and really there's no point anyways since it wouldn't affect the total number of people produced.

As a parody of 20th-century authoritarianism, I would not put it past the Imperium to desire and even attempt to control every aspect of its subjects lives. And - for the same reason, namely it being a parody - the Imperium does not care that doing so is mostly impossible and, even where it is theoretically possible, the labyrinthine bureaucratic constitution of the state and the vast scales involved render it absurdly improbable. For that reason I disagree with your conclusion that

 Pouncey wrote:
the Imperium of Man is actually extremely egalitarian out of a state of apathy

Arguably, no government could care more about even the innermost thoughts and desires of its subjects (in this case, "bad thoughts" can actually result in planetary disasters). The black humor of the Imperium is premised on the "facts" of the 40k setting fully justify authoritarianism even considering that authoritarianism in 40k, just like IRL, is itself ultimately not only futile but also self-defeating.

Okay, so they might do that, if I understood one word you were even trying to say.

Now point me to the lore that says they DO do that.

 Pouncey wrote:
Now point me to the lore that says they DO do that.

All I mean is, this is a state whose propaganda is along the lines of "blessed is the mind too small for doubt." That the Imperium wants to control bodies is a given considering it is obviously trying to control minds.

 Manchu wrote:

 Pouncey wrote:
Now point me to the lore that says they DO do that.

All I mean is, this is a state whose propaganda is along the lines of "blessed is the mind too small for doubt." That the Imperium wants to control bodies is a given considering it is obviously trying to control minds.

Not good enough.

You're trying to say that the Imperium enforces some form of bizarre method of reproduction on all its citizens. Now you have to actually prove it.

No he doesn't.

He's already shown his thinking, plus there's real world evidence to support that the State can and does get involved in reproduction.

But there's nothing in the background to show that this is the case even slightly; unlike the Tau, for example, who are paired off via algorithms that seek to ensure Caste purity, humans are very much left to it - that of course, depends on the world in question. Some worlds may well have vat-bred humans, others might not. But from the worlds we see in books like the Inquisition War, Eisenhorn, Ravenor, Titanicus, and so on and so forth, people very much have kids the old-fashioned way.

 Azreal13 wrote:
No he doesn't.

He's already shown his thinking, plus there's real world evidence to support that the State can and does get involved in reproduction.

He's proved with his reasoning that they might hypothetically try (though really the Imperium is more utilitarian than authoritarian), but simply proving that they might theoretically try doesn't actually prove that they actually are. For that you need to find a piece of official lore that says they are.

I'm looking for a piece of lore that states that the Imperium actually does enforce a bizarre, unnatural method of reproduction on every citizen in the Imperium. If they actually are doing so, the lore should exist somewhere that says they're doing it. Find me that lore.

If you're willing to simply accept that "hypothetically they might" and "they actually are" are the same thing... that's a bigger problem than just 40k lore for you and I'm not sure it's a very safe situation.

No, but I'm capable of talking in hypotheticals without demanding proof of every fething theory. Like a person.

 Desubot wrote:

 SolarCross wrote:
Eldar need to be redone completely to make them less human; giving them more human breasts just makes them more human. They should have three eyes, beaks, long prehensile necks and be covered in crystalline spines. All their warriors should be female as the males are too small for any use on the battlefield as they only evolved to be the size of a dildo as befits their sole purpose in eldar society. Also no breasts at all, for Darwin's sake, Eldar are egg layers!

Well to be fair, in lore the humans are the ones that look more like eldar

To be even more fair, that is another thing that will need to be re-done.

 Azreal13 wrote:
No, but I'm capable of talking in hypotheticals without demanding proof of every fething theory. Like a person.

Clearly I need to go back and re-read stuff, because I thought someone wasn't speaking hypothetically about it.

Somehow I very, VERY much misinterpreted that.

Sorry.

 Pouncey wrote:
You're trying to say that the Imperium enforces some form of bizarre method of reproduction on all its citizens.

Well, more like I am saying that we have every reason to believe that the Imperium would want absolute control over its subjects lives, quite apart from whether or to what degree that is even possible, including regarding reproduction - and in fact that the Imperium would arguably be very interested in reproduction. I think we might be talking across one another insofar as you mention "some bizarre method of reproduction." All I am saying is, the Imperium would be likely to value fertile women as baby factories because the Imperium is pretty awful and the conditions of M42 are pretty awful, etc., no real argument from me about what exactly that entails so far as how women are impregnated or whatever. The Imperium is big enough that there must be many, many sets of customs about mating and sexuality. But over and above all of that, the Imperium does demand a certain percentage of the population do X, Y, and Z - including service in its endless, grinding wars.


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 Pouncey wrote:
I was assuming that the kind of person who would have an issue with their new IG coming with some female bits instead of all male bits, despite the lore of the game saying that should be the case, strongly enough to quit, would have some serious issues with women, either in general or when they intrude on the hobby.

TBH I agree with you when it comes to the subject of IG. I would have a lot more sympathy with someone getting to that level of disgust over something like Femarines. Excluding female IG models makes no sense because women serve in the IG. I don't know that this was ever not the case, at least theoretically. While GW could easily pay someone to retcon the 40k fluff so that some Space Marines are ladies, and pretend that this has always been the case, we'd all know that's false and I can't think of any reasonable argument in favor of doing so (I just don't think it makes the hobby more inclusive, really). But yes, going back to where we agree, if someone wanted to ragequit over models that depict a totally clear element of the canonical setting, i.e., that women serve in the IG, then I guess it probably would be a reasonable indicator that they have some problem with women.

 Pouncey wrote:
So maybe that's just a bad idea in general to have both male parts and female parts in the same kit, unless you could create the kit as fully either gender without needing to buy anything else..

I really think any new IG kit needs to have both male and female figures. At this point, it seems totally non-contentious that, by default, IG regiments can recruit from both sexes and it is the ones that only recruit one or the other sex that are the exceptions rather than the other way around. That is just the most logical approach overall. If, for whatever reason, you want a IG army made up of all women from planet Amazonia, fine, do exactly what you would do to get a SM army who all wear Power Armor Mark whatever.

 Manchu wrote:

 Pouncey wrote:
You're trying to say that the Imperium enforces some form of bizarre method of reproduction on all its citizens.

Well, more like I am saying that we have every reason to believe that the Imperium would want absolute control over its subjects lives, quite apart from whether or to what degree that is even possible, including regarding reproduction - and in fact that the Imperium would arguably be very interested in reproduction. I think we might be talking across one another insofar as you mention "some bizarre method of reproduction." All I am saying is, the Imperium would be likely to value fertile women as baby factories because the Imperium is pretty awful and the conditions of M42 are pretty awful, etc., no real argument from me about what exactly that entails so far as how women are impregnated or whatever. The Imperium is big enough that there must be many, many sets of customs about mating and sexuality. But over and above all of that, the Imperium does demand a certain percentage of the population do X, Y, and Z - including service in its endless, grinding wars.

Generally, I think the Imperium favors its utilitarian side when it comes to people's reproduction, not it's authoritarian side. The latter would say, "Control them!" and the former would say, "Why? The people they're pumping out on their own is more than sufficient to fill every need for human life we have, with a tremendous surplus. Controlling them would only cost resources to fix something that's not broken. Maybe if the population levels become a problem, but they're fine now. What is the gain?" And the authoritatian side would have no answer to the utilarian gain, since there isn't one.

Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Pouncey wrote:
I was assuming that the kind of person who would have an issue with their new IG coming with some female bits instead of all male bits, despite the lore of the game saying that should be the case, strongly enough to quit, would have some serious issues with women, either in general or when they intrude on the hobby.

TBH I agree with you when it comes to the subject of IG. I would have a lot more sympathy with someone getting to that level of disgust over something like Femarines. Excluding female IG models makes no sense because women serve in the IG. I don't know that this was ever not the case, at least theoretically. While GW could easily pay someone to retcon the 40k fluff so that some Space Marines are ladies, and pretend that this has always been the case, we'd all know that's false and I can't think of any reasonable argument in favor of doing so (I just don't think it makes the hobby more inclusive, really). But yes, going back to where we agree, if someone wanted to ragequit over models that depict a totally clear element of the canonical setting, i.e., that women serve in the IG, then I guess it probably would be a reasonable indicator that they have some problem with women.

 Pouncey wrote:
So maybe that's just a bad idea in general to have both male parts and female parts in the same kit, unless you could create the kit as fully either gender without needing to buy anything else..

I really think any new IG kit needs to have both male and female figures. At this point, it seems totally non-contentious that, by default, IG regiments can recruit from both sexes and it is the ones that only recruit one or the other sex that are the exceptions rather than the other way around. That is just the most logical approach overall. If, for whatever reason, you want a IG army made up of all women from planet Amazonia, fine, do exactly what you would do to get a SM army who all wear Power Armor Mark whatever.

My point was more to take into account that while there would be a large number of women in the IG, each individual regiment would have its own ratio of men to women, since it's not something the IG actually standardizes. So it would be up to each player to decide what kind of regiment they're playing, since the lore options are varied enough to accommodate anything from all-male to all-female. Including a specific number of male models and a specific number of female models would create the average number, and anyone who wants to play a regiment with an average mix would be happy. But non-average mixes would also exist, and having a kit make 5 males and 5 females means that if you want to make, say a regiment that happens to be all-female, half your models in every kit would be useless to you and you'd have to pay twice as much just to make the same army. Even if you simply want a non-average mix that's not all one way or the other, say 25% male and 75% female, then after you've reached those 25% being male, you'd have only one-third of the female ones you need and all the male ones in your future boxes are going to waste.

Essentially I'm saying that as much as having only male or only female models for an IG regiment is often unrealistic, dictating the ratio of male to female models you get with each purchase restricts you to that ratio, and forces you to pay more to do anything different.

The bizarre fantasy about the Imperium basically having legalized rape isn't shown to be true in any of GW's lore.

 Pouncey wrote:
Generally, I think the Imperium favors its utilitarian side when it comes to people's reproduction, not it's authoritarian side. The latter would say, "Control them!" and the former would say, "Why? The people they're pumping out on their own is more than sufficient to fill every need for human life we have, with a tremendous surplus. Controlling them would only cost resources to fix something that's not broken. Maybe if the population levels become a problem, but they're fine now. What is the gain?" And the authoritatian side would have no answer to the utilarian gain, since there isn't one.

I think that the answer has nothing to do with some hypothetical debate over whether utilitarianism or authoritarianism is better, it's simply about how inefficient the Imperium's bureaucracy is. This is the setting where entire planets can be forgotten because of a paperwork mistake, the Imperium simply can't have any meaningful policy on reproduction. As long as you are meeting your production quotas and there aren't any reports of treason or heresy you're pretty much left alone. I'm sure the Imperium's bureaucracy would like to control everything about reproduction (along with everything else in life) and enforce strict obedience with threats of exterminatus, but it just isn't possible.

Essentially I'm saying that as much as having only male or only female models for an IG regiment is often unrealistic, dictating the ratio of male to female models you get with each purchase restricts you to that ratio, and forces you to pay more to do anything different.

But, as pointed out previously, that's how GW does it. You don't usually get enough extra parts to make a full squad of whatever you want (just ask anyone who has had to pay $9999999999 for special/heavy weapon bits on the secondary market). GW wants to force you to buy lots of extra stuff for those conversions you want, they aren't going to hand you all the stuff for free because why should they give up easy money? The most obvious way to implement female guardsmen, by far, is that GW will give you some ratio of male to female parts and if you want some other ratio you'll have to buy more kits to get the necessary parts.

The Imperium doesn't seem very practical to me; or rather, it seems like practicality is pretty far down the list of priorities. Witness the prevailing attitude toward technology, even beyond Martian-derived culture. The reality of the Imperium is first and foremost ideological (probably also true for us IRL but that's another story) and the content of the ideology is best summed up as authoritarian. I think on these boards over the years, socially liberal fans have developed an apology regarding the Imperium that while it may be insane and genocidal it respects people's sexuality and gender. But does that honestly make any sense? So the same folks have seized on a few lines here in there (such as Sandy Mitchell's comedy novels) to suggest that the Imperium can't be bothered with such petty concerns. Actually, the Imperium, or rather one bureaucracy or another of the Imperium, is bothered with the pettiest of concerns, like insufficiently zealously crossed t's and crypto-heretically dotted i's. Not too mention that indifference to something like sexuality/gender or, more likely, failure to create and enforce an effective policy regarding sexuality/gender, absolutely does not equate to a respectful and inclusive attitude.

 Peregrine wrote:

 Pouncey wrote:
Generally, I think the Imperium favors its utilitarian side when it comes to people's reproduction, not it's authoritarian side. The latter would say, "Control them!" and the former would say, "Why? The people they're pumping out on their own is more than sufficient to fill every need for human life we have, with a tremendous surplus. Controlling them would only cost resources to fix something that's not broken. Maybe if the population levels become a problem, but they're fine now. What is the gain?" And the authoritatian side would have no answer to the utilarian gain, since there isn't one.

I think that the answer has nothing to do with some hypothetical debate over whether utilitarianism or authoritarianism is better, it's simply about how inefficient the Imperium's bureaucracy is. This is the setting where entire planets can be forgotten because of a paperwork mistake, the Imperium simply can't have any meaningful policy on reproduction. As long as you are meeting your production quotas and there aren't any reports of treason or heresy you're pretty much left alone. I'm sure the Imperium's bureaucracy would like to control everything about reproduction (along with everything else in life) and enforce strict obedience with threats of exterminatus, but it just isn't possible.

Also good.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Manchu wrote:
The Imperium doesn't seem very practical to me; or rather, it seems like practicality is pretty far down the list of priorities. Witness the prevailing attitude toward technology, even beyond Martian-derived culture. The reality of the Imperium is first and foremost ideological (probably also true for us IRL but that's another story) and the content of the ideology is best summed up as authoritarian. I think on these boards over the years, socially liberal fans have developed an apology regarding the Imperium that while it may be insane and genocidal it respects people's sexuality and gender. But does that honestly make any sense? So the same folks have seized on a few lines here in there (such as Sandy Mitchell's comedy novels) to suggest that the Imperium can't be bothered with such petty concerns. Actually, the Imperium, or rather one bureaucracy or another of the Imperium, is bothered with the pettiest of concerns, like insufficiently zealously crossed t's and crypto-heretically dotted i's. Not too mention that indifference to something like sexuality/gender or, more likely, failure to create and enforce an effective policy regarding sexuality/gender, absolutely does not equate to a respectful and inclusive attitude.

I don't think it actually respects anyone's sexuality, gender, race or anything else that egalitarians love.

I think it just doesn't view those things as important enough to be worth considering as a factor in any way.

 Pouncey wrote:
Essentially I'm saying that as much as having only male or only female models for an IG regiment is often unrealistic, dictating the ratio of male to female models you get with each purchase restricts you to that ratio, and forces you to pay more to do anything different.

Why wouldn't a 50/50 ratio be standard, assuming that the IG at large is indifferent to the gender of recruits? In other sci fi miniatures games (e.g., Gates of Antares), you see units that have male and female members and no one needs to bring up some argument from the IP about sex ratios. I don't see why the IG in 40k should be any different, honestly. If you want an all-male or all-female force in those games, by all means, make it happen - but you have no argument as to why the manufacturer should cater to your idiosyncratic preference on this point.

 Pouncey wrote:
I think it just doesn't view those things as important enough to be worth considering as a factor in any way.

And I counter that the no personal detail is too minuscule for the reach of his arch-authoritarian mindset, whether The Powers That Be can be can actually enforce their will at that level or not, and that considerations of reproduction are absolutely not an example of a minuscule detail anyhow.

 Manchu wrote:
The Imperium doesn't seem very practical to me; or rather, it seems like practicality is pretty far down the list of priorities.

It's not about priorities and wanting to be practical, it's that the Imperium has to be practical to a degree. You can't micromanage every detail of how a planet is run in the same bureaucratic system that can lose entire planets for thousands of years because some scribe copying information onto parchment scrolls dropped an ink blob on the planet's name. The sheer size of the Imperium limits control to imposing production quotas (including IG recruitment) and threats of mass executions if there are any reports of disloyalty.

I think on these boards over the years, socially liberal fans have developed an apology regarding the Imperium that while it may be insane and genocidal it respects people's sexuality and gender. But does that honestly make any sense?

It makes a lot of sense. It's not that the Imperium is respectful and tolerant, it's that it just doesn't give a about its citizens as anything more than abstract numbers. Who cares what you have in your pants or what you want to do in bed, you're just one more consumable item to be expended in the war. Guardsmen Regiment, mechanized. Lasgun batteries, crate of 1000. Standard rations, crate of 1000. Package it all up, send it off to the nearest warzone. Your inevitable death will be noted with no more concern than the use of an artillery shell, just one more item that needs to be supplied to continue the fight.

The real issue here is that certain people have decided that the Imperium's awful things must mirror real-world awful things, even though there's a gap of 40,000 years and unimaginable cultural changes. Real-world religious zealots hate gay people, so the fictional religious zealots must hate gay people. Hitler was racist, therefore space-Hitler must be racist. Etc. And they overlook the fact that the things that drive those awful beliefs in the real world don't exist anymore. Real-world religions do not exist in 40k, so why should real-world religious beliefs about homosexuality continue to exist? Real-world concepts of race do not exist in 40k, so why should real-world white supremacists?

Gen.Steiner wrote:
Some worlds may well have vat-bred humans,

Isn't that heresy? I could have sworn I read that cloning and invitro was seen as abhorrent and tended to be avoided.

 Peregrine wrote:
certain people have decided that the Imperium's awful things must mirror real-world awful things

I think you are also doing this, by just assuming that (for example) the High Lords of Terra conceive of values and persons in practically the same way we do here in the "late-Capitalist" real world; namely as liquid commodities. But we're actually talking about a deeply religious set of institutions where language about the individual destiny and worth of the soul is quite common, even if the thrust of the propaganda is that there's no better way to spend one's unworthy life than in humble, self-effacing service to the God-Emperor of Mankind. When Imperial subjects exclaim "the Emperor protects!" they mean that He protects them, no just humanity as recorded in some kind of galactic census. In many ways, the Imperium is a riff on medieval Western European institutions, or at least a certain memory of them, where the practical dimension of enforceability of policy was not, as it might be today, the principal consideration, especially in the matters of faith and morality. Whether you can actually make someone do what you want is not really relevant to the claim that you are the one who decides what people should be doing, as far as that mindset goes.

pm713 wrote:

 Selym wrote:

 Azreal13 wrote:
So, you're happy to say this..

 Pouncey wrote:

 Desubot wrote:
Are there male banshees? is that a thing? is it a choice they can actually make?

(my eldar lore is pretty lacking)

I have heard that they are uncommon compared to females but do still exist in enough numbers their miniatures should exist.

Despite just yesterday I posted this

Banshees are almost exclusively female, a male one would be a notable rarity,

in a direct response to one of your posts, which is supported by this..

40K Lexicanum wrote:Unique to the Howling Banshees is the fact that they are almost always female, for the banshee of legend is itself a female spirit

You're going to keep insisting that somehow male Banshees need to be included?

The CWE codex has it that male banshees take on a female personality while serving as one. They'd probably just take the boob plate. I mean, it's hardly pressing against anything.

Where does it say that?

Had a skim through the codex again and either I can't find it or I'm misattributing sources again.

Pheh.

I think it seems neat that Eldar are comparatively, er, gender-fluid if that's the right term.

 Manchu wrote:

 Pouncey wrote:
Essentially I'm saying that as much as having only male or only female models for an IG regiment is often unrealistic, dictating the ratio of male to female models you get with each purchase restricts you to that ratio, and forces you to pay more to do anything different.

Why wouldn't a 50/50 ratio be standard, assuming that the IG at large is indifferent to the gender of recruits? In other sci fi miniatures games (e.g., Gates of Antares), you see units that have male and female members and no one needs to bring up some argument from the IP about sex ratios. I don't see why the IG in 40k should be any different, honestly. If you want an all-male or all-female force in those games, by all means, make it happen - but you have no argument as to why the manufacturer should cater to your idiosyncratic preference on this point.

 Pouncey wrote:
I think it just doesn't view those things as important enough to be worth considering as a factor in any way.

And I counter that the no personal detail is too minuscule for the reach of his arch-authoritarian mindset, whether The Powers That Be can be can actually enforce their will at that level or not, and that considerations of reproduction are absolutely not an example of a minuscule detail anyhow.

Enforcing a standardized ratio of men to women is the opposite of being indifferent about the troops' genders altogether.