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Made in gb
Incorporating Wet-Blending




U.k

 some bloke wrote:
 Mentlegen324 wrote:
 some bloke wrote:

I suppose, really, this boils down to personal opinion. I think that retro-fitting the lore to suit a new change is unnecessary, particularly when they have such a clear opportunity to say "primaris works on female candidates too, doubling the recruitment opportunities for space marines". As it will also be driven by sales, there is a delicious irony in the phrase "doubling recruitment opportunities", as it can represent the potential target audience being expanded to include women. But that's just a bonus.


I don't really see why the lore aspect of "more recruitment candiates" is something that makes a difference when the reason for their numbers in the first place place wasn't really to do with struggling to find recruits but the difficulty around acquiring the necessary organs and such.


Twice as many candidates, twice as many failures - twice as many organs to harvest

Thanks to pointing that out though, I didn't know that was the reason. I thought becoming Astartes just had a fairly high failure rate!


It has been and still is that the reason for recruit tests and rituals is that it is difficult to find suitable candidates. Then even more fail. Just just physically, but mentally too. Most fail long before they need any organs. THAT is in all the current texts. So having the ability to choose women too would double the number of potential recruits. They could be even more selective before implanting any organs.
   
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 Mentlegen324 wrote:
 some bloke wrote:

I suppose, really, this boils down to personal opinion. I think that retro-fitting the lore to suit a new change is unnecessary, particularly when they have such a clear opportunity to say "primaris works on female candidates too, doubling the recruitment opportunities for space marines". As it will also be driven by sales, there is a delicious irony in the phrase "doubling recruitment opportunities", as it can represent the potential target audience being expanded to include women. But that's just a bonus.


I don't really see why the lore aspect of "more recruitment candiates" is something that makes a difference when the reason for their numbers in the first place place wasn't really to do with struggling to find recruits but the difficulty around acquiring the necessary organs and such.


I seem to remember like 3-4 times recently where 'oh no, our primary recruitment population has been decimated' was a major plot point. Fenris, at the very least, and Baal, and some of the worlds surrounding Ultramar.

"Got you, Yugi! Your Rubric Marines can't fall back because I have declared the tertiary kaptaris ka'tah stance two, after the secondary dacatarai ka'tah last turn!"

"So you think, Kaiba! I declared my Thousand Sons the cult of Duplicity, which means all my psykers have access to the Sorcerous Facade power! Furthermore I will spend 8 Cabal Points to invoke Cabbalistic Focus, causing the rubrics to appear behind your custodes! The Vengeance for the Wronged and Sorcerous Fullisade stratagems along with the Malefic Maelstrom infernal pact evoked earlier in the command phase allows me to double their firepower, letting me wound on 2s and 3s!"

"you think it is you who has gotten me, yugi, but it is I who have gotten you! I declare the ever-vigilant stratagem to attack your rubrics with my custodes' ranged weapons, which with the new codex are now DAMAGE 2!!"

"...which leads you straight into my trap, Kaiba, you see I now declare the stratagem Implacable Automata, reducing all damage from your attacks by 1 and triggering my All is Dust special rule!"  
   
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Andykp wrote:


It has been and still is that the reason for recruit tests and rituals is that it is difficult to find suitable candidates. Then even more fail. Just just physically, but mentally too. Most fail long before they need any organs. THAT is in all the current texts. So having the ability to choose women too would double the number of potential recruits. They could be even more selective before implanting any organs.


This is the sort of reason I prefer to build on the lore rather than wipe it clean and start again. This adds to the setting, rather than just shifting it sideways.

12,300 points of Orks
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I am Thoruk, the Barbarian, Slayer of Ducks, and This is my blog!

I'm Selling Infinity, 40k, dystopian wars, UK based!

I also make designs for t-shirts and mugs and such on Redbubble! 
   
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some bloke wrote:
Sure, but *why* do we even need to make that distinction in the lore? I get your point, I do, but I don't understand why we even need to act like it wasn't possible in the first place in lore, aside from arbitrary reasoning?

It's worth remembering that everything in the lore is arbitrary, except perhaps the basics like "there are humans". They made a decision to make necrons into robots, not skeletons or shellfish-people or just people full of nanobots to heal them or any number of things which would have fitted their lore and playstyle. Murder robots was decided, arbitrarily, so murder robots is what they are.
Oh, absolutely, but when you're arbitrarily excluding representation of *real humans*, that's quite something different.

Arbitrary artistic decisions in how you design your fictional aliens is totally fine, but the problem is that Space Marines are too human still, and if they're looking visibly "male" and not visibly "female", it begs the question "why is only one getting shown"?

I suppose, really, this boils down to personal opinion. I think that retro-fitting the lore to suit a new change is unnecessary, particularly when they have such a clear opportunity to say "primaris works on female candidates too, doubling the recruitment opportunities for space marines". As it will also be driven by sales, there is a delicious irony in the phrase "doubling recruitment opportunities", as it can represent the potential target audience being expanded to include women. But that's just a bonus.
I totally recognise that Primaris represented a great chance to add women Astartes: after all, it really *was* Primaris that shifted my stance from opposed to women Astartes to pro-woman Astartes (as I believe one user pointed out!) - it's just that I personally don't see any benefit in having a "pre-women Astartes" and "post-women Astartes" distinction in the lore, especially when it ends up still limiting representation in things like the Horus Heresy.

I just feel like, as it stands, the lore of the game is a bit contradictory but generally fits with the novels and all the fluff. If they retcon the fluff, then anything written before that retcon becomes wrong. If they build on it, then anything written before it simply becomes old - you can read it, learn it, and it may not still be valid, but it won't be wrong.
The problem is that there's already *loads* of stuff that's retconned and outdated - it's just stuff that you just have to gloss over, or treat each book as it's own snippet of 40k.

There's already plenty of "wrong" lore out there - when this one can cause so much net good, I think it's okay adding one more.

I think that's the crux of it for me. If you're presented with two options - one of which makes every space marine book published thus far wrong, and one which simply makes them set before female marines, then I feel like the respectful way to approach it is the second way.
It doesn't make them *wrong* (unless they're one which mentions how no women can be Space Marines, which very few touch on) - it just makes them unrepresentative. In much the same way as older stuff makes no reference to things like Hunters, Stalkers, Centurion warsuits, or Stormravens, it's not that those things didn't exist - it's just that we don't see them represented.

And while that might be a little counter to my goal of visible representation, in terms of cost/benefit, updating all the old Space Marines books to feature women wouldn't be cost-effective - but later just including them in other books, both set pre- and post-Primaris would be fine.

I understand your frustration at "why should it have been this way", but nothing short of a time machine will change the fact that being all male is something which space marines have been presented as for the lifetime of the game, and as such everything about them is written about that fact. Regardless of the reasons for making the decision, the decision was made, and that is why there's no mention of a female Astartes anywhere in the lore right now. We can respectfully say "that was not a good thing, so we've improved the setting", or we can say "actually that never happened", and then have a generation of people asking why there are no female space marines in any of the books.
Agreed, nothing will change what has already been presented in the real world - but we don't have to abide by those rules within the chronology of the setting.

I really don't think we'd end up with a generation of people asking why there are no women Astartes in the books any more so than we have people asking why the Astra Militarum are called the Imperial Guard in older books - and if anyone did, then you could just point to the date it was published and say "yeah, this was before we included women Space Marines, our bad".

Obviously for the lack of female models in guard & such, where there's nothing backing up the decision except needing to make more models, they can just say "we've finally made models that represent the female guard". That's not such a big issue.
True, but the point stands that guardsmen, for all realistic purposes, also presented as an all-male faction, despite not being so. Hence my point that just because all Space Marines present as male doesn't mean that it's an integral part of their design any more so than guardsmen presenting as all-male did.

Mentlegen324 wrote:I don't really see why the lore aspect of "more recruitment candiates" is something that makes a difference when the reason for their numbers in the first place place wasn't really to do with struggling to find recruits but the difficulty around acquiring the necessary organs and such.
Again, still an arbitrary reason, and as Cawl has evidenced, it's totally possible to have a surplus of geneseed and repurposing it.

To be honest, GW haven't exactly been 100% clear on exactly why there are a limited number of Astartes. Sometimes it's because the Codex restricts Chapter sizes, other times it's because of a shortage of geneseed, other times a shortage of suitable recruits, other times because the High Lords artificially keep Astartes numbers low, out of fear of a second Heresy.

some bloke wrote:Twice as many candidates, twice as many failures - twice as many organs to harvest
Not even that, but twice as many fleshy meatbags to turn into hypno-indoctrinated soldiers - quite my reasoning too.


They/them

 
   
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 Mentlegen324 wrote:

I don't really see why the lore aspect of "more recruitment candiates" is something that makes a difference when the reason for their numbers in the first place place wasn't really to do with struggling to find recruits but the difficulty around acquiring the necessary organs and such.


Depends on the chapter though doesn't it. A chapter that has a high rate of combat attrition will need more aspirants and if they could double the pool why wouldn't they?
Or what about a chapter that recruits from a planet with a low population?
Chapters do dumb things like that.
And the whole "Space Marines are a dying breed" thing was played up quite a bit recently as a signifier of the "End of Days".
How many chapter homeworlds were devastated or destroyed when the Rift opened? How many chapters got hammered and lost hundreds of Astartes, vehicles and Aspirants?

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2021/06/24 14:57:41


 
   
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U.k

 some bloke wrote:
Andykp wrote:


It has been and still is that the reason for recruit tests and rituals is that it is difficult to find suitable candidates. Then even more fail. Just just physically, but mentally too. Most fail long before they need any organs. THAT is in all the current texts. So having the ability to choose women too would double the number of potential recruits. They could be even more selective before implanting any organs.


This is the sort of reason I prefer to build on the lore rather than wipe it clean and start again. This adds to the setting, rather than just shifting it sideways.


There’s a lot of ways that the addition of female marines could add to the setting. How they would go about it is very much personal preference. You said they should have it as a new thing, good time to do that, I’d be happy however they did it.
   
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Sesto San Giovanni, Italy

An Ultramarine Successor Chapter with an Amazon theme is something I could get definitely interested in from a modelling point of view.
The same with Space Wolves and Valkyries.
Both exclusively female of course.

(And I'm someone who sworn to never purchase loyalists again: I've already more than enough).

I can't condone a place where abusers and abused are threated the same: it's destined to doom, so there is no reason to participate in it. 
   
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I am a REALLY big believer in the Rainbow Space Marines that have been getting painted for the Trevor Project. Here is a video of the one by Goobertown Hobbies:

https://youtu.be/X2SkCHrqWxo

Please give us Rainbow decals for pride marines!

   
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Hacking Interventor





FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
I am a REALLY big believer in the Rainbow Space Marines that have been getting painted for the Trevor Project. Here is a video of the one by Goobertown Hobbies:

https://youtu.be/X2SkCHrqWxo

Please give us Rainbow decals for pride marines!



Yanno, I was wondering what colors to use on this handful of 3d printed pony marines I put together here. Beginning to look like the answer was "All of them."

"All you 40k people out there have managed to more or less do something that I did some time ago, and some of my friends did before me, and some of their friends did before them: When you saw the water getting gakky, you decided to, well, get out of the pool, rather than say 'I guess this is water now.'"

-Tex Talks Battletech on GW 
   
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 Cybtroll wrote:
An Ultramarine Successor Chapter with an Amazon theme is something I could get definitely interested in from a modelling point of view.
The same with Space Wolves and Valkyries.
Both exclusively female of course.

(And I'm someone who sworn to never purchase loyalists again: I've already more than enough).


Artemis/Diana would be my obvious choice- goddess of hunters, and known to carry bow, arrow, quiver and hunting knives.

Virginity/assexuality were also part of her attributes (more related to purification rituals prior to hunting, apparently) but the bits I've read seemed to suggest these related to her power and independence, and at least according to wiki, there was a nice bit stating this 'signals Artemis as her own master, with power equal to that of male gods'.

Thankfully, gw steers clear of anything sex related (so obviously, the 'virginity' aspect can be completely ignored) and I'd strongly urge that this needs to be maintained.

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"Punch your fist in the air and hold your Gameboy aloft like the warrior you are" 
   
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Its so easy to avoid talking about sex related stuff so I really don't see why that would be an issue.
If I can read Greek myths when I was a young un' and not have a single mention of how Zeus was a massive perv or how a core aspect of the origin of the Gorgon's was how Poseidon did the naughty with them in Athena's temple, then I think GW can implement female SM without any thoughts to "but would they bang?".
Funnily enough you can write things for kids and adults.
   
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Longtime Dakkanaut




 Gert wrote:
Its so easy to avoid talking about sex related stuff so I really don't see why that would be an issue.
If I can read Greek myths when I was a young un' and not have a single mention of how Zeus was a massive perv or how a core aspect of the origin of the Gorgon's was how Poseidon did the naughty with them in Athena's temple, then I think GW can implement female SM without any thoughts to "but would they bang?".
Funnily enough you can write things for kids and adults.


Sadly, I think you have more faith in some members of our community than I do.

I hope you are right though. As I mentioned, gw is pretty good at sidestepping 'that kind of stuff' in their IP or at least having a different spin on it. My concern isn't necessarily with them. But this is going o/t.

greatest band in the universe: machine supremacy

"Punch your fist in the air and hold your Gameboy aloft like the warrior you are" 
   
Made in gb
Preparing the Invasion of Terra






Oh I gave zero faith in the community and I would fully expect very crass or inappropriate remarks.
That being said, I would think the majority would either grumble a bit then get over it or just not mind. I think it be would the exact same situation as Primaris.
   
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What would we expect GW to pull the first female astartes from? My guess is either Salamanders or Blood Angels. Although with the problems in their region it might be difficult to come up with a lore justification as to how they made it. Maybe Imp Fists?

I also like the idea of the Astartes Chapter Master personally over seeing the creation and giving their stamp of approval. If Marneus Calgar says the person is good enough to be a Space Marine, who's gonna call them a liar?
   
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Ultramarines because poster faction.

Oh right you want a serious answer. TBH I would say some kind of new Primaris chapter thrown in as reinforcements to a battle. Leader takes helmet off and its not a dude. Very cliché I know but clichés work.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2021/06/24 19:28:22


 
   
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If they went down the "Cawl's found a new way to introduce them!" route, and not just a whole new Chapter, I'd say Blood Angels. The BA got hammered *hard* at Baal, and so I can see Dante being very eager to get his Chapter up to full strength again. Plus, it's Dante - arguably the second most powerful man in the Imperium right now. No-one's going to dispute his word on the matter or call him into question.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2021/06/24 19:30:03



They/them

 
   
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U.k

All sound good to me. Ultras would seem to be the obvious choice cos of poster faction. I’d still like to see it done with little fan fair. No one reacting massively to it in the stories.
   
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 Sgt_Smudge wrote:
If they went down the "Cawl's found a new way to introduce them!" route, and not just a whole new Chapter, I'd say Blood Angels. The BA got hammered *hard* at Baal, and so I can see Dante being very eager to get his Chapter up to full strength again. Plus, it's Dante - arguably the second most powerful man in the Imperium right now. No-one's going to dispute his word on the matter or call him into question.


The hard part is they've built a literal wall of undescribable Chaos fluff blocking off the southern half, at least i think it's the southern half. Nihilus, it's blocking that off. And it's literally impassible according to Avenging Son, until Gman literally passes it in the next book. My point is I don't think he'd have a good time getting a new batch over the wall.
I could see Dante having a meeting with his entire chapter planet and being like, "We are going to start recruiting women, because the women of this POS planet are JUST AS TOUGH as the men are. Send your daughters for the trials.

And since he is literal reagent of his entire half of the imperial galaxy, not even the Inquisition could stop him. I would really love the Sons of Sanguinius being the first to do that. The sons of Russ would likely be second, as they don't give a toss about rules, or fluff. A Space wolf female Astartes Captain would make a awesome book.
   
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FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
What would we expect GW to pull the first female astartes from?


Primaris Lt sculpt.
   
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Dudley, UK

If it's setting-innovative, the Space Wolves.

If it's a matter of not-forgrounded till now, Ultramarine. Not like Guilliman lacks for a formative female presence in his life, is it?


Automatically Appended Next Post:
And on the Chaos side of things, the Word Bearers are right there after Monarchia with the iconoclasm and their own Saint.

Likewise, Angron's rebellion was gender-integrated, so would make sense as a finger towards Bad Dad.

The Emperor as a sexist atop the rest of his personal failings also tracks with the Custodes being essentially the Sacred Band of Thebes.

This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2021/06/24 23:18:01


 
   
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Catulle wrote:Likewise, Angron's rebellion was gender-integrated, so would make sense as a finger towards Bad Dad.

The Emperor as a sexist atop the rest of his personal failings also tracks with the Custodes being essentially the Sacred Band of Thebes.
The Emperor being a sexist I can understand, and that gels well with the Custodes being what they are - especially as the Emperor has much more direct hand in creating the Custodes.

The Space Marines, on the other hand, weren't really much of the Emperor's invention, and more of Amar Astarte's, so him being sexist doesn't mean that the Space Marines need to be all-men any more so than the Imperial Army were all male.


They/them

 
   
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 Sgt_Smudge wrote:
Catulle wrote:Likewise, Angron's rebellion was gender-integrated, so would make sense as a finger towards Bad Dad.

The Emperor as a sexist atop the rest of his personal failings also tracks with the Custodes being essentially the Sacred Band of Thebes.
The Emperor being a sexist I can understand, and that gels well with the Custodes being what they are - especially as the Emperor has much more direct hand in creating the Custodes.

The Space Marines, on the other hand, weren't really much of the Emperor's invention, and more of Amar Astarte's, so him being sexist doesn't mean that the Space Marines need to be all-men any more so than the Imperial Army were all male.


Well, quite, and it's a difference of degree rather than type anyway. I'd rather the not-foregrounded-till-now approach, but accounting for the intransigence of the shareholders seemed prudent...
   
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 insaniak wrote:

Going by the abstract, that study doesn't say what you claimed. It says that the study found that books by male authors tended to have more powerful characters, and books by female authors didn't. Doesn't seem to be addressing who is actually interested in those stories at all.


One can assume that people write the kinds of stories they'd be interested in reading. And let's be clear - it said that male authors wrote *more powerful female characters*.

 insaniak wrote:
And that's ignoring the fact that it's based on a statistically insignificant pool of authors (30 different series) and even within that they admit that the differences in many cases were not statistically significant.


N=30 is oftentimes statistically significant. If I do 30 replicates of a molecular biology procedure, that's oftentimes plenty good.

macluvin wrote:
They already answered that question. Female miniatures didn’t sell in the 80’s. They sell now. Their reasoning for why they codified that is not valid anymore.


If that was the case, why the female Eldar? I think there's some misinterpretation on your part going on here.

 Gert wrote:
Obviously I emphasised some parts for the joke but the reality is that if you make your Orks look like WW2 Wehrmacht or have your custom Chapter be obsessed with "genetic purity", that's perfectly OK. But if you dare to make SM women then you've crossed a line. Where's the logic in that?


Orks intentionally play towards the humorous part of the setting, and the Imperium itself is obsessed with "genetic purity," to the point of killing people born with physical disabilities, intersex, etc at birth (though they're obviously too stupid to tell if those disabilities or other conditions are the result of genetics or the amount of toxins they skeet into the environment with their rampant overindustrialization, natch.)

Like I said, I'm fine with people kitbashing female space marines. So your strawman is pretty overbearing there.

Andykp wrote:
I have kitbashed female marines so please don’t talk rubbish about my motivations. Your argument seems to be that it wouldn’t improve the setting because you wouldn’t like it. There’s no reason for that, you just wouldn’t. Please explain further if I’m wrong on that but that appears to be the case from what you have said.


No, I wouldn't like it because it wouldn't improve the setting. In many ways a given setting is defined by its idiosyncracies rather than anything else. Having an all-male contingent of future warrior monks is along those lines.

Andykp wrote:
We cannot give you evidence of females having been made because that’s the point. They are banned by an outdated piece of fluff that doesn’t appear in any codexs. That’s what we are arguing for. Yes folk can kitbash them and head canon them but the6 may get death threats if they do. So let’s change the rules. Write out the bit of old fluff that these horrible people use to justify their threats and make the community a nicer place for all.


And I don't think that bit of fluff is outdated. And I know some horrible, despicable people who think female marines are a good idea, so that argument doesn't work for me.

Andykp wrote:
As for this being a core part of marines identity, it was first brought up by your side and then thoroughly debunked by ours. It’s not core at all. Every codex for marines ever, from 2nd edition when they started up to now has a section on the creation of a marine. None of them, not one ever, has stated they have to be male only. That “fact” is not in print now and has not been since it was in WD in 2017, it has only ever been in WD and and in anthologies of WD articles. It is so peripheral to marines that it does not make it into their books and isn’t in print anywhere now. Now, you are claiming it is core to them.


The process is clearly intended to only work on male humans. You haven't debunked gak, you're just mistaking your fantasies for reality.

Andykp wrote:
Why shouldn’t it change?


You need to show why it should. And I haven't heard anything convincing.



You are vastly misrepresenting my point and trying to imply that I'm bringing a puerile angle into this discussion. Anyone with a shred of intellectual integrity can tell you're misrepresenting my words, and I'll stick to discussing things with people who aren't lying in the hopes of earning white knight points.

 the_scotsman wrote:
it can't be that there's a tendency for female authors to create less physically powerful, physically confrontational protagonists because males grow up in our society bombarded by stories of men solving their problems through physical confrontation and women are not, it must be that women are hard coded by their monkey dna to want to submit to a dominant alpha male who can overpower other masculoids with his big stronk monkey muscles! Nobody is ever influenced by stories they read and watch to create similar stories and narratives, that's crazy talk!


Whether it's something innate or not, the tendency is there, so the push for female "warrior women" is more about satisfying a particular kind of man than women.

Andykp wrote:

It has been and still is that the reason for recruit tests and rituals is that it is difficult to find suitable candidates. Then even more fail. Just just physically, but mentally too. Most fail long before they need any organs. THAT is in all the current texts. So having the ability to choose women too would double the number of potential recruits. They could be even more selective before implanting any organs.


They are also often limited by available gene-seed anyway, and the process is only described as working on male humans.
   
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Hecaton wrote:
One can assume that people write the kinds of stories they'd be interested in reading.

You know what they say about assumptions... sometimes they're wrong.

Some authors have the freedom to write the kinds of stories they would be interested in reading. The rest write stories that their publishers are willing to publish.


And let's be clear - it said that male authors wrote *more powerful female characters*.

Which means nothing more than that those male authors, from their massive pool of 30 authors, wrote more powerful female characters. Again, that doesn't tell us whether or not those characters were more well received amongst male or female readers, whether those authors wrote the characters that way due to innate biological predilection, socially-imposed predilection, because they thought that was what their readers wanted, or because their editor and/or publisher told them to write the characters that way.

You're taking the fact that Coca Cola Co released New Coke as a sign that people wanted new Coke. The information provided simply doesn't give us enough information to make that judgement.


N=30 is oftentimes statistically significant.

Sure. Not when you're trying to establish whether we have an inbuilt gender bias as a species, however. 30 is a ludicrously low sample size for that.

 
   
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 insaniak wrote:

You know what they say about assumptions... sometimes they're wrong.

Some authors have the freedom to write the kinds of stories they would be interested in reading. The rest write stories that their publishers are willing to publish.


It's specious to suggest that publishers aren't willing to publish works written by female authors with powerful female characters but *are* willing to do so for male authors.


 insaniak wrote:

Which means nothing more than that those male authors, from their massive pool of 30 authors, wrote more powerful female characters. Again, that doesn't tell us whether or not those characters were more well received amongst male or female readers, whether those authors wrote the characters that way due to innate biological predilection, socially-imposed predilection, because they thought that was what their readers wanted, or because their editor and/or publisher told them to write the characters that way.

You're taking the fact that Coca Cola Co released New Coke as a sign that people wanted new Coke. The information provided simply doesn't give us enough information to make that judgement.


Well it's infinitely more evidence than "Here's this blog post that says that powerful warrior women is what women want in their fantastical fiction."


 insaniak wrote:

Sure. Not when you're trying to establish whether we have an inbuilt gender bias as a species, however. 30 is a ludicrously low sample size for that.


Pretty common in psychological studies. And if you're able to make statistically significant claims with it, then that's fine. Sample size is taken into account when determining significance.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2021/06/25 05:27:27


 
   
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Hecaton wrote:
It's specious to suggest that publishers aren't willing to publish works written by female authors with powerful female characters but *are* willing to do so for male authors.

It's also impossible to make that judgement based on thirty authors who may or may not be published through the same publishers.

All we know is that in this study they observed a trend for male authors to write more powerful female characters, while also admitting that in many cases there was no significant difference.



Well it's infinitely more evidence than "Here's this blog post that says that powerful warrior women is what women want in their fantastical fiction."

It's admittedly been a while since I did high school maths, but I'm fairly sure that one thing is a reasonable distance from being 'ínfinite' anything...


Sample size is taken into account when determining significance.

Sure. And here we have a study of thirty samples in which many of the results were stated as being statistically insignificant.



This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2021/06/25 05:49:28


 
   
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Lets not forget this guy also assumes that wanting female marines means you find all-male marines repulsive.

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It's very difficult to determine, just by sampling novels, what might be causing any gender bias that is present.

For example, if someone is basing their story on medieval times, when women were literally property, then it is going to be influenced by the fact that men were the fighters and women were not. That's not necessarily any reflection of the authors bias, because the historical period they picked is one where women and men were not treated equally. Take Game of Thrones - the majority of women in there were either of the "oh, please send a man to help me!" vein or they were simply passed without mention. A couple of token women fighting, and them being regarded as the exceptions to the rules anyway, further highlights this. That's not necessarily because GRR is sexist, because it's based on a medieval fantasy world, and the medieval times would have been considered Sexist, if that had even been a considered thing back then.

Similarly, you cannot claim that any of the black library writers who write books about space marines are themselves sexist for not writing in strong female characters, when the book is based around characters which are all male by necessity of being a space marine.

Then you also have comedic books which play on stereotypes, which might portray a woman as the stereotypical dead-weight screaming at the wrong moments kind of thing, but using that trope to play for laughs at the absurdity of it rather than to claim that is what women are like. These need to be discounted as you cannot accurately say where satire ends and prejudice begins.

By the time you filter out all the books with any inspiration from history, and any books playing the stereotypes, then you'll be left with pure fiction, where there's no influence from the real world at all, and then the decisions about male and female roles in the world become entirely arbitrary, and as such cannot be right or wrong. Furthermore, in a world where everyone is treated equally, and everyone can do anything, with no oppression whatsoever and all that - how dull are the stories going to be? Darker worlds tend to make better stories for heroes - otherwise they can't fight anyone!

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The Federation has equality and Star Trek still manages to find stories to write. Men and women are treated equally in the Federation yet every single Star Trek series is multiple seasons long and tells stories about Starfleet Officers.
The Klingons nominally view all Warriors as equals but a woman isn't allowed to lead a House without special dispensation. So we have the notion of equality but in practice not so much.
The Ferengi Alliance is incredibly sexist and then multiple Ferengi stories in DS9 have female Ferengi being just as good at earning profit as male Ferengi. Here we have enforced inequality but then in practice not so much either.
Equality between sexes/genders doesn't mean a perfect world where nothing goes wrong ever.
The Federation despite being a nominally peaceful state exists only because of the Earth-Romulan War which united Earth, Andoria, Tellar, and Vulcan. The Klingon Empire has more internal strife than should be possible but men and women are generally equal. Same with the Cardassians.
I'm using ST as the example because it is generally the "hope and happiness" universe of SciFi.

This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2021/06/25 14:58:23


 
   
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Spoiler:
Hecaton wrote:
 insaniak wrote:

Going by the abstract, that study doesn't say what you claimed. It says that the study found that books by male authors tended to have more powerful characters, and books by female authors didn't. Doesn't seem to be addressing who is actually interested in those stories at all.


One can assume that people write the kinds of stories they'd be interested in reading. And let's be clear - it said that male authors wrote *more powerful female characters*.

 insaniak wrote:
And that's ignoring the fact that it's based on a statistically insignificant pool of authors (30 different series) and even within that they admit that the differences in many cases were not statistically significant.


N=30 is oftentimes statistically significant. If I do 30 replicates of a molecular biology procedure, that's oftentimes plenty good.

macluvin wrote:
They already answered that question. Female miniatures didn’t sell in the 80’s. They sell now. Their reasoning for why they codified that is not valid anymore.


If that was the case, why the female Eldar? I think there's some misinterpretation on your part going on here.

 Gert wrote:
Obviously I emphasised some parts for the joke but the reality is that if you make your Orks look like WW2 Wehrmacht or have your custom Chapter be obsessed with "genetic purity", that's perfectly OK. But if you dare to make SM women then you've crossed a line. Where's the logic in that?


Orks intentionally play towards the humorous part of the setting, and the Imperium itself is obsessed with "genetic purity," to the point of killing people born with physical disabilities, intersex, etc at birth (though they're obviously too stupid to tell if those disabilities or other conditions are the result of genetics or the amount of toxins they skeet into the environment with their rampant overindustrialization, natch.)

Like I said, I'm fine with people kitbashing female space marines. So your strawman is pretty overbearing there.

Andykp wrote:
I have kitbashed female marines so please don’t talk rubbish about my motivations. Your argument seems to be that it wouldn’t improve the setting because you wouldn’t like it. There’s no reason for that, you just wouldn’t. Please explain further if I’m wrong on that but that appears to be the case from what you have said.


No, I wouldn't like it because it wouldn't improve the setting. In many ways a given setting is defined by its idiosyncracies rather than anything else. Having an all-male contingent of future warrior monks is along those lines.

Andykp wrote:
We cannot give you evidence of females having been made because that’s the point. They are banned by an outdated piece of fluff that doesn’t appear in any codexs. That’s what we are arguing for. Yes folk can kitbash them and head canon them but the6 may get death threats if they do. So let’s change the rules. Write out the bit of old fluff that these horrible people use to justify their threats and make the community a nicer place for all.


And I don't think that bit of fluff is outdated. And I know some horrible, despicable people who think female marines are a good idea, so that argument doesn't work for me.

Andykp wrote:
As for this being a core part of marines identity, it was first brought up by your side and then thoroughly debunked by ours. It’s not core at all. Every codex for marines ever, from 2nd edition when they started up to now has a section on the creation of a marine. None of them, not one ever, has stated they have to be male only. That “fact” is not in print now and has not been since it was in WD in 2017, it has only ever been in WD and and in anthologies of WD articles. It is so peripheral to marines that it does not make it into their books and isn’t in print anywhere now. Now, you are claiming it is core to them.


The process is clearly intended to only work on male humans. You haven't debunked gak, you're just mistaking your fantasies for reality.

Andykp wrote:
Why shouldn’t it change?


You need to show why it should. And I haven't heard anything convincing.



You are vastly misrepresenting my point and trying to imply that I'm bringing a puerile angle into this discussion. Anyone with a shred of intellectual integrity can tell you're misrepresenting my words, and I'll stick to discussing things with people who aren't lying in the hopes of earning white knight points.

 the_scotsman wrote:
it can't be that there's a tendency for female authors to create less physically powerful, physically confrontational protagonists because males grow up in our society bombarded by stories of men solving their problems through physical confrontation and women are not, it must be that women are hard coded by their monkey dna to want to submit to a dominant alpha male who can overpower other masculoids with his big stronk monkey muscles! Nobody is ever influenced by stories they read and watch to create similar stories and narratives, that's crazy talk!


Whether it's something innate or not, the tendency is there, so the push for female "warrior women" is more about satisfying a particular kind of man than women.

Andykp wrote:

It has been and still is that the reason for recruit tests and rituals is that it is difficult to find suitable candidates. Then even more fail. Just just physically, but mentally too. Most fail long before they need any organs. THAT is in all the current texts. So having the ability to choose women too would double the number of potential recruits. They could be even more selective before implanting any organs.


They are also often limited by available gene-seed anyway, and the process is only described as working on male humans.


This is just stupid. You are basically sticking your fingers in your ears and saying “nah nah nah, can’t hear you”. We have laid out time and time again our arguments. And all you can say is that you disagree, not why yiu disagree, no counter argument. You are basically doing a yeah, no based argument. Your scientific study yiu have quoted doesn’t stand up to even the slightest scrutiny. You have no case for maintaining the status quo other than you like it. That’s no misrepresentation by the way it’s what you are actually saying. Never mind anyone else’s feelings or thoughts. You wouldn’t like it. Never mind that we have shown how irrelevant this bit of background that you love so much is and how out of date it is. Out of date as in not in print or in any current source material and out of date as in totally of of touch with current cultural norms. What other definition do you want to use. You claim it is important because it is. End of. That is no way to conduct any kind of meaningful discussion and leads me to think that you either have altering motives for not wanting the change or don’t want a meaningful debate on it.

You might be happy for people to kit bash and head canon female marines but by refusing to acknowledge the need for change to the out dated background and trying to prop up flimsy arguments around how it’s designed to only work and men and it’s a quirk of the setting, you are enabling those who send threats and hate to people who do do that. As long as this sexist and pointless bit of old background is not corrected the. The hate mongers and bigots in the community will feel empowered to spew that hatred. It has happened on this thread. It happens every time it’s discussed. But only ever around this issue.

Monks are not all male,

Marines are not all warrior monks, and if they were monks are not all male.

The science is entirely made up. It’s absolute nonsense. It has no grounding it real world science at all. A science argument does not stack up at all. In fact it’s laughable.

They are not fraternity either. If they are it’s only because of this outdated stupid and pointless line of text.

There is NO credible argument to say that the official addition of female marines would do the setting any harm. None. If it would damage the setting to you and you place that higher than the damage been done by hatred and death threats then you need look at yourself and your motives. Why does it bother you?

That’s my argument for why we should change. You might not be convinced but again that’s speaks of yiu and your motives. Now please stop dodging the question and say why you think maintaining the status quo, where people are threatened and harassed is ok?

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