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 Gert wrote:
Yeah, you aren't getting what I'm saying here chief.
Hecaton made an unfounded statement that has since been shown to be untrue and only true within their headcanon. Other people have decided that instead of saying "maybe you shouldn't make up nonsense", they jumped right on in to support a completely untrue statement.
I'm objecting to this untrue statement on the grounds of:
A - It's not true.
B - It can cause actual real harm to real people who already have to deal with loads of persecution anyway.

If you want to headcanon that the Imperium kills babies with disabilities, that is up to you just don't frame it as "official canon" then get mad because everyone, including the source you provided, says you're wrong.

I get it Gert. What you say is well intentioned but it's misplaced.

What hecaton says is not 'untrue' or 'unfounded'. Its not 'wrong' either. What he says here is no more 'unfounded' than your interpretation. He refers to an open ended statement by gw, and beyond that, it's left to your own imagination. Theres enough other statements in various places and enough hints and inferences and through various times that a reader is not exactly wrong for interpreting a very dark scenario from this. Gw have always painted in broad strokes like this. If you're looking for explicit admissions or references you won't find them- broad strokes. Doesn't mean there's not room for them, and flat out shouting, as you did, in ALL CAPS to SHUT UP and SHOVE YOUR OPINION UP YOUR [bleep] is rude, disrespectful and frankly, just as oppressive.

 Gert wrote:

Aash wrote:

The aggressive tone is unnecessary. As for reading and jumping in, I did read what came before. I only commented now because I felt I had something to add to the conversation.

And on the subject of mutants and mutations, they aren’t dirty words. There’s nothing wrong with having a mutation, whether that mutation causes webbed toes, blue eyes, Down’s syndrome or any other generic abnormality.

I don’t know you and your background just as much as you don’t know me or mine, so let’s not make assumptions?

I personally don’t have an issue with the horror-state of the 41st millennium persecuting innocents any more than I do with Brave New World and its dystopia or The Left Hand of Darkness commenting on gender.

Ok, I apologise for causing distress.
As for your point about mutants, firstly within the context of the Imperium being a mutant is a bad thing, and secondly, have you read or watched any X-Men media? That should give you a really good understanding of how the term is used by people. It doesn't matter if the mutants and their select allies see themselves as part of the wider humanity, enough people hate and fear them to make them "the baddies".
Do you understand how you can make something bleak and dark without also making it hostile to people who already have to deal with prejudice and discrimination IRL? 40k can be dark because humanity is enslaved to a vile regime that doesn't care who lives or dies, why add transphobia into the mix?
Justifying hatred with "but its grimdark" is a sad excuse and it lessens the hobby for everyone involved.

I take your point. For what it’s worth, I haven’t made a single reference to intersex, gender fluidity, transphobia or the like.

All I was ( evidently, quite poorly) trying to say is that although I’m not aware of specific reference to the imperium persecuting any existing real world mutation, I don’t think it’s a stretch to imagine they would, and that the very idea is horrifying.

To follow on from your reference to x-men, I think the mutant cause in those stories is a great example of holding a mirror up to the real world’s problems with discrimination ( race and gender specifically).

Edit- and yes, in the context of the imperium, being a mutant is a bad thing. Living in the imperium is “to live in the cruellest and most bloody regime imaginable” after all. They think mutants are bad, and they are wrong. That’s my point.

I am particularly baffled by the double standard for which in the 40k universe the genetic science is both like our own (when defining mutants, or what is a xeno) and at the same time it does work by unknowable criteria (about the possibility of a female space marine: then it b came the fantasy version of itself).

Pick one.

I don't think that 40k science is like our own for defining mutants. In real life, we define mutants as genetic disorders, The most common of which may change your eye or hair colour or make you fractionally more susceptible to sunburn. Such things are mostly there from birth, and are generally benign.

40k science defines mutants as people who have tentacles for limbs, insect-like jaws, multiple extra arms, becoming enormous, gaining psychic abilities, and other vastly exaggerated things, most of which have never actually happened (10 internets if someone finds someone who was born with a genuine, besuckered tentacle for an arm or a beak for a mouth!). The excerpts added earlier also explain that these can happen suddenly to fully grown humans due to local events like warp storms or ships emerging badly.



I also agree with the sentiment that there's no need to add any reference to real-life conditions which could upset people when you could say "this baby was born with one wing instead of an arm and speaking in tongues, so we killed it". The grimdark setting, for me, works better with more extreme situations. Reading about how the imperium purges the mutants can leave you thinking that they are doing the best they can to protect humanity, even if it's a bad thing to do. If they didn't do it, you have dangerous psykers killing people accidentally, so they have to either purge or train them. Can't really get behind that if you walk real-world conditions into the firing line.


In any case, it's all made up. the fact that they purge mutants, the fact that there are only male space marines, the giant green monster who's totally not named after Margeret thatcher (Ghazgul Mag-Uruk Thrakka), all of these are just decisions made once upon a time to create something. Perhaps it's a good explanation for the question "why is there something and not nothing". Perhaps I'm going too philosophical again.

Either way, you can have a fictional universe in which both magic juice only works on boys and people can recognize that having tentacles for arms isn't normal. But you can also have one where magic juice works on anyone, so we should just do that, because it would be cool.

(wondering if I should put a disclaimer in my signature that I'm for female marines so I don't have to iterate it every time I post and it seems like I'm against it again! XD)

Hecaton wrote:Well, the same section I was referring to said that something like one in 10,000 mutants were kept alive, that might account for what you're talking about. But given there are armies of abhumans... that means that anyone without a militarily useful suite of mutations is getting purged. Anyone.

The section you're referring to doesn't actually define what "mutants" are beyond the extreme side of things - ie, your 12 foot hulks of flesh and bone. Because realistically speaking, *all* humans are mutants, built up of hundreds of thousands of small minor mutations. Hair colour, eye colour, allergies, height, metabolism, hormone levels - all susceptible to mutation. What draws the line at what is an isn't an "acceptable" mutation - could someone be killed for heterochromia? Vitiligo? The colour of their skin? Albinism? Because GW never explicitly calls out any *real world* cases of what we might consider "major mutations" (a horribly clinical phrase, I do apologise), with their only examples being the extreme and fantastical cases.

So, I'm not convinced that "anyone without a militarily useful suite of mutations" is getting purged, until we can define what mutations GW are talking about.

Mmmm, it's worth noting that Klinefelter's syndrome (xxy sex chromosomes) isn't really "intersex,"

That's not the only form of intersex?

 Gert wrote:
I'm still waiting for the passage that says the Imperium kills babies with disabilities or who are intersex.
I mean I know exactly what is going to happen but still.

I told you where it was found. Do you want a screenshot?

Yes, we did, actually. Thank you for providing it later.

Hecaton wrote:

 Gert wrote:

I mean it further normalises fascism within a hobby that already has a problem with normalising fascism. "Oh but Orks are the comedy faction" doesn't hold up because the Orks aren't normalising fascism, the player who made them is.

The thing that people are dancing around is that portraying the senselessly cruel and oppressive Imperium as unironically heroic normalizes fascism in a way that an ork army painted like real-world fascists cannot, because basically everything that orks do is ironic.

I don't think anyone is dancing around that. If someone painted their Space Marines or Guardsmen like real world fascists, I'd equally have major issues with it.

No-one here is claiming the Imperium is supposed to be heroic or "good" - but simply including women Space Marines doesn't make a faction "good" or "heroic", it just means that the arbitrary restriction on women doesn't exist.

And I'm still going to say that orks dressed up as fascists is an issue, regardless if someone claims irony or not.

 Gert wrote:

Yeah, I want the direct quote from a GW publication that says the Imperium mandates the killing of babies with disabilities or who are intersex. It seems to me you're just applying the term "mutant" to people with disabilities or who are intersex despite knowing that when the Imperium talks about mutation, it means tentacle arms or goat legs.

The way "mutation" is used in 40k is not the scientific sense, but rather in the "abnormal physical phenotype" sense.

Is it? In the example you give, it only highlights the extreme cases - those with claws for hands, or third eyes, or 12 foot talk hulks of muscle. Not "I've got a cleft lip" or "I have an extra finger". You're adding that part in entirely on your own.

The relevant quotes (from p. 8 of the Rogue Trader KT book) are as follows:

Rogue Trader wrote:Amongst Humanity in the 41st millenium, mutations are commonplace. While many can be attributed to environmental conditions such as rad-pollution, the most insidious are those caused by the powers of Chaos...

...But for every sanctioned mutant that serves the Imperium ... there are a thousand lesser mutants that are slain outright, and another thousand that dwell hidden in the shadows, rightfully afraid to reveal themselves...

So what we can see here is that the Imperium doesn't distinguish between mutations caused by pollution and those caused by Chaos, and it kills 99.9% of mutants it can. The ones who aren't are mentioned - abhuman soldiers, navigators, psykers, etc.

Does it kill 99.9% of mutants? Because it actually more sounds like they kill 50%, and then another 50% escape ("a thousand lesser mutants that are slain... and another thousand that dwell hidden"). Not exactly this whole "culling from birth" thing you describe.

Also, would you care to explain how the Blood Angels get their recruits, if not from mutants? The inhabitants of Baal Secundus are all mutants, to a degree. They live in an irradiated wasteland, constantly bombarded by toxins and radiation. And yet, they are recruited in one of the most prestigious Chapters in the Imperium.
Strange, that.

Mutations caused by environmental toxins can cause things like extra or missing limbs or digits due to interfering with developmental genes, like the infamous case of thalidomide in the 20th century. This is consistent with the way mutations are depicted in 40k, with extra limbs being a common effect of mutation, and nowhere is it said that the Imperium distinguishes between mutation caused by environmental causes or Chaos.

I don't recall it actually saying that? It says how many mutations are attributed to the environment, how the worst are Chaos-inflicted, but in the quote you listed, I don't see at all where it says they don't distinguish between them. Additionally, it even says mutations are commonplace, but the examples it gives in the parts of the quote you omitted (thanks for the screenshot, by the way!) don't ever refer to "mundane" mutations being persecuted, but instead to the more extreme examples.

Basically, I think you're reading a lot into this text, and inferring things that don't actually exist there - namely that the Imperium has a "kill on birth" policy regarding all mutations (evidently, it doesn't, if thousands of mutants can escape into the slums), that the Imperium doesn't distinguish between different forms of mutation (because the only examples of ones being persecuted are the extreme cases, not the examples of sixth limbs, or albinism), and that the Imperium has a zero tolerance policy on people with mutations anyway (the Blood Angels recruits exclusively from mutant populations).

Do you really think I said that Klinefelter's was the only form of intersex characteristics, or are you joking around?

It's the only example you gave. That is all.

Yes, because all the results of the study were statistically insignificant. /s

You put a sarcasm sign on, but you're right - it *was* a statistically insignificant study.

Andykp wrote:
Smudge has covered all of the points I wanted to make so I will just say that it is painfully clear that you do not any case or argument and are not prepared to even pretend to have a discussion with any honesty at all. From what I can see you basically trolling now, not willing to provide any real constructive argument at all, just saying “nah” and “don’t care”. I do think you should have a good look at yourself though if you have an issue with those receiving death threats and online abuse and no empathy for them but have no issue at all with those giving it out. You are maybe on the wrong side of decency on this one? I would say so.

Smudge was misrepresenting my points

Such as?

As opposed to you quite literally just editing out my entire post to requote it as "lies"?

I'm not really sure you can argue that in good faith here.

Gert wrote:None of that says the Imperium kills kids with disabilities or who are intersex. You've projected your personal opinion on something and declared it fact.
GW is very clear about what they consider mutation and the very passages you've just sent show that.
...
When dogma comes face to face with reality, even in the Imperium, dogma backs down quite a bit.

Precisely. The quotes given don't support a position beyond "the Imperium hunts down people with wildly fantastical and fictional mutations, and even then, isn't perfect at it".

Mutation in 40k does not seem to count real world "mutations" in it's kill-list - and I think that's for good reason.

Andykp wrote:Smudge was not misrepresenting your words at all. He summed them and your argument up very nicely. It might be tricky to see from your view but he is not the discussing in bad faith. You have done than time and time again.

And those pics of text really do not say what you claim they do. That is not evidence of what you claim. And still you have not answered my question.

I appreciate the support, and I very much agree with how the quoted text from the Rogue Trader source absolutely doesn't support their claims, but I'm sorry, I do have to remind again on my pronouns again - it's only fair that I remind everyone fairly. It's not personal, just a reminder!

Deadnight wrote:There's better things to argue against than standing on a hill saying 'the imperium is not as horrible as you are implying' or 'how dare you say they do bad things to these people!'

At the same time, when someone is making blatantly *incorrect* posts, or inferring things that don't have evidence to support them, is it not acceptable to challenge that?

Most of this kind of stuff is heavily implied and inferred and left to your imagination rather than described in exacting detail in black and white.

Sure, but implication and inference aren't an exact art, and claiming that something *definitely happens* because of something you "inferred" is not a solid core for an argument.

I can "infer" that Space Marines are completely sexless and removed from all concerns of reproduction and suchlike (let's ignore that there are even sources in modern BL books that support this idea) - but evidently, it doesn't stop certain users here seeing women Space Marines as "temptresses" and "maternity leave", or how suddenly sex would be on their minds.

When going for this, we really can only make straight calls based on what GW describes in black and white, because we could infer many, MANY things - such as how that "purity" might not just be limited to mutations, but to race and ethnicity as well - something we explicitly *do not see happen*, yet could be inferred.

Youre talking, frankly about a medieval or dark age world view turned up to 11. Crippled kids were absolutely left out in the cold to freeze in our history. Not unheard of at all.

You're right, it absolutely is a horrible setting - but one where those same mutants are elevated into Astartes by the Blood Angels, where women serve on the front lines of battle, where ethnicity seems altogether ignored.
It's an awful place, but it's not awful everywhere. Rather, I think that the Imperium being so careless of human life that it simply *doesn't* distinguish between ethnicity, gender or even some body types is much more interesting than "they persecute minorities".

Mutation is more than just spikes and tentacles. Anything deviating from the baseline Human phenotypic state is technically a mutant.

That would imply that people with blue eyes are mutants. Hell, I seem to recall that everyone born on Cadia has violet eyes (I believe that was in The First Heretic?) - are they all mutants, because they deviate from the baseline phenotypic state?

It's the Imperium. Life is pretty cheap. And utterly horrible.

Exactly - which is why I tend to lean on the side that the Imperium simply don't care about minor mutations like vitiligo, or albinism, or polydactylism, or so on - because life is cheap, and it's just more meat for the grinder.

some bloke wrote:Regarding mutation and intersex or disabled children:

the writers are quite clearly referring to physical, unnatural mutation - 12 foot high monster people, people with mandibles instead of jaws, or insectoid limbs. They aren't scanning babies to see if they have extra or lacking internal organs. If a person cannot walk, then they aren't about to be purged - though they might end up on the wayside of society begging for scraps, but that's a different thing entirely. A lack of social support is an issue from the imperium being stretched thin and overpopulated, not from their inherent decisions. Someone born disabled in a hive city is getting a shorter shrift of life than one born into a more luxurious planet where their family can afford to look after them.

Exactly, very much agreed. When the text refers to mutations, it is invariably talking about the extreme cases - not ones that translate onto real life humans of now.

Gert wrote:See the difference between someone with tentacles getting burned and someone with Downs Syndrome getting purged, is that people with tentacles AREN'T REAL.
By Hecaton's logic, the Imperium would also purge people modern society considers LGBTQ+ because they "deviate from the divine perfection of the baseline Human form in mind or body" as you put it.
You can portray the Imperium as a bad place without making people who already suffer stigmatism and difficulty in our society feel even worse about themselves.
THAT is the point I am objecting to here.

Absolutely spot on.

The Imperium is awful, we can all agree on that - but we don't need it stigmatising against people who are stigmatised nowadays to showcase that. In fact, it's vastly more original and generic for it to completely abandon all sense of modern stigmas, but still be portrayed as utterly evil through its treatment of fictional people.

Aash wrote:Should we also remove any reference to religion and gods, or the Emperors attempt to stamp out religion and the destruction of churches in the pre-heresy lore such as “the last church” too?

I mean, it kind of *does*. There is only one state religion, and it's an entirely fictional one - even references to real world religions are hidden behind bastardised naming and intentional vagueness.

The whole point of the setting is how insanely awful the imperium is, and how any number of normal things in reality would get you summarily executed or worse in the dystopia of 40K.

Which you can show without needing to mindlessly copy existing prejudices from our time, surely?

Again - people saying that "the Imperium kills deformed babies and people with sixth fingers and just HATES women" are inferring things that simply don't exist. I have to wonder why they're making up those issues.

Aash wrote:My point is I don’t think that just because something is fictional it should flinch away from painful subjects.

And I don't think that those painful subjects need to be handled without a degree of allegory.

Take Chaos mutations, or the Imperium's xenophobia. While the Imperium itself may be mostly ignorant to dealing with minor mutations that would be eye-opening here, or uncaring of ethnicity, their responses to major mutations and against fictional aliens are still emblematic of those painful subjects *without having to go after real world people*.

The Imperium can still be shown as evil without needing to perpetuate those same evils done on real humans currently.

Automatically Appended Next Post:

Deadnight wrote:What hecaton says is not 'untrue' or 'unfounded'. Its not 'wrong' either. What he says here is no more 'unfounded' than your interpretation. He refers to an open ended statement by gw, and beyond that, it's left to your own imagination.

The issue is that Hecaton doesn't seem to think so - their comments are very much absolutist, very much "no! the Imperium DEFINITELY kills babies!!", not something which is perhaps left in the dark.

Again, all we're saying is that GW never describe the Imperium persecuting non-fictional "mutations", in much the same way as we don't see institutional racism or sexism. And while we can imagine they exist, I have to wonder why we need to do that?

The Imperium is clearly evil and dark and horrible - without needing to bring in real-world hatred. If the only way you can make your fictional empire evil is by perpetrating existing prejudices and intolerance, how much of that empire is fictional?

Aash wrote:To follow on from your reference to x-men, I think the mutant cause in those stories is a great example of holding a mirror up to the real world’s problems with discrimination ( race and gender specifically).

Absolutely right, because they use *allegory* - they use fictional characters to stand in in the place of persecuted groups to highlight that persecution, without explicitly putting real people on the line.

We know the Sentinels in X-men are bad, without them needing to go after homosexuals.

some bloke wrote:I don't think that 40k science is like our own for defining mutants. In real life, we define mutants as genetic disorders, The most common of which may change your eye or hair colour or make you fractionally more susceptible to sunburn. Such things are mostly there from birth, and are generally benign.

40k science defines mutants as people who have tentacles for limbs, insect-like jaws, multiple extra arms, becoming enormous, gaining psychic abilities, and other vastly exaggerated things, most of which have never actually happened (10 internets if someone finds someone who was born with a genuine, besuckered tentacle for an arm or a beak for a mouth!). The excerpts added earlier also explain that these can happen suddenly to fully grown humans due to local events like warp storms or ships emerging badly.

Exactly. Mutation in 40k is not the same as "mutation" IRL, and I think that's for the better.




Now, back on track, why can't women be Space Marines again?

Deadnight wrote:

I get it Gert. What you say is well intentioned but it's misplaced.

What hecaton says is not 'untrue' or 'unfounded'. Its not 'wrong' either. What he says here is no more 'unfounded' than your interpretation. He refers to an open ended statement by gw, and beyond that, it's left to your own imagination. Theres enough other statements in various places and enough hints and inferences and through various times that a reader is not exactly wrong for interpreting a very dark scenario from this. Gw have always painted in broad strokes like this. If you're looking for explicit admissions or references you won't find them- broad strokes. Doesn't mean there's not room for them, and flat out shouting, as you did, in ALL CAPS to SHUT UP and SHOVE YOUR OPINION UP YOUR [bleep] is rude, disrespectful and frankly, just as oppressive.

The source material states mutations that are common and it is widely accepted that mutation in 40k is crazy wacky stuff like tentacle arms and twenty eyes but good job in mixing and matching what I wrote to suit your post. Open-ended would be "there are many forms of mutation that range from mental deficiency to growing tentacle arms", none of the publications say this
Here's what I actually said:

And for the thousandth time in this cursed nightmare of a thread, YOU CAN SHOW THAT THE IMPERIUM IS BAD WITHOUT MAKING REAL PEOPLE FEEL BAD.

You've taken the final parts and decided all my posts are shouty rants. I'm using caps lock to identify the important part of this point. If an individual can't imagine a bad Imperium without adding in things that might be a thing but have never been stated in any GW publication, especially when those things can cause real harm to real people, I'm not going to say "well that's ok that's just your opinion".
As for the other part:

Just so we're 100% clear on the hypocrisy of the Imperium BTW, Space Marines are mutants, Ogryns are mutants, Ratlings are mutants, every shade of Psyker under the stars is a mutant and every single one is not only tolerated but seen as a vital part of the Imperium.

I've been in this thread for nearly two months and have seen some exceptionally rubbish arguments or arguments that are just dressing for people to be hateful. There is a line between dark and concerning and Hecaton crossed that line IMO (and others have agreed). To quote me:

40k can be dark because humanity is enslaved to a vile regime that doesn't care who lives or dies, why add transphobia into the mix?

I'd like to leave basically everything to Smudge because they are objectively better at this kind of thing than I am but it seems unfair to pin it all on one person.

That passage hecaton posted does not say, as he claimed, that disabled and intersex people are killed at birth in the imperium. It does not say they aren’t either but it most definitely does not say they are. That is a grey (very dark grey) area filled in by your own imaginations.

Somehow as well hecaton was using this imagined fact of disabled babies being killed at birth to justify only having male marines, ill be honest I cannot fathom how the two would be connected but that’s the state of affairs we are in at the minute with this discussion. I think we should leave mutant killing another thread. This one is about female marines, not mutants, just to be clear, being female is NOT a mutation.

Andykp wrote:
That passage hecaton posted does not say, as he claimed, that disabled and intersex people are killed at birth in the imperium. It does not say they aren’t either but it most definitely does not say they are. That is a grey (very dark grey) area filled in by your own imaginations.

Agreed. And while you can totally say that you think the Imperium does do those kinds of things, it's entirely headcanon, and not supported by GW's materials.

Somehow as well hecaton was using this imagined fact of disabled babies being killed at birth to justify only having male marines, ill be honest I cannot fathom how the two would be connected but that’s the state of affairs we are in at the minute with this discussion. I think we should leave mutant killing another thread. This one is about female marines, not mutants, just to be clear, being female is NOT a mutation.

Also very much agreed. I'm not entirely sure how this was related to the topic in the first place, especially when so many other points are being overlooked in the wake of this - most notably how apparently including women Astartes means that all the male Astartes would suddenly have sexual urges?

I'll be totally honest, I'm struggling to work out exactly what the reasons against including women Space Marines are now, with the range of arguments being presented ranging from preserving the sanctity of the lore, to some genuinely horrifically misogynistic-sounding takes.

At this stage it has only come down to posters either saying:
1 - I don't think there should be any female SM *cue misogynistic rant* (these are getting very rare which is a good sign).
2 - I don't care (not great and surprising considering that you're interested in the hobby enough to even post in the first place).
3 - I think it would be cool.
4 - I don't care, do what you want but GW shouldn't make it canon (thereby making the "I don't care" part irrelevant because if you don't want it in "canon" then you are invested in maintaining the status quo).

 Gert wrote:
At this stage it has only come down to posters either saying:
1 - I don't think there should be any female SM *cue misogynistic rant* (these are getting very rare which is a good sign).
2 - I don't care (not great and surprising considering that you're interested in the hobby enough to even post in the first place).
3 - I think it would be cool.
4 - I don't care, do what you want but GW shouldn't make it canon (thereby making the "I don't care" part irrelevant because if you don't want it in "canon" then you are invested in maintaining the status quo).

5 - I think it would be cool, but only do it because it would be a cool thing to do and not for the political inclusion reasons. Add to the lore, don't overwrite it, and expand the story.


Probably the most succinct statement of my viewpoint.

I would count your point 5 under my point 3. It doesn't matter if you want female SM for conflicting reasons because inevitably GW will make a botch job of introducing them and annoy literally everyone in the process

In the spirit of getting back on topic, were GW to introduce female space marines, what would be your preferred background justification?

Some examples off the top of my head are:

- Retcon, there always were female space marines.
- Cawl or someone else figured out how to do it recently, so there are now twice as many potential space marines in the population.
- it was always possible but there was some reason why it wasn’t done until now (what would be amazing interesting reason?)


Or any other suggestions?

 Gert wrote:
I would count your point 5 under my point 3. It doesn't matter if you want female SM for conflicting reasons because inevitably GW will make a botch job of introducing them and annoy literally everyone in the process

Fair point!

Aash wrote:

- Retcon, there always were female space marines.

Pass, this would annoy too many people and taint the introduction.

- Cawl or someone else figured out how to do it recently, so there are now twice as many potential space marines in the population.
- it was always possible but there was some reason why it wasn’t done until now (what would be amazing interesting reason?)

TBH these two are the same IMO. Most things are possible you just have to try and do it, so in my mind, someone could have made SM out of both sexes, it just wasn't the Emperor. The wider Imperium doesn't need to know that just like they don't know about Imperium Secundus or Daemons or the Fallen. Just lie and say "Oh yeah we found some of the Emperor's old records and now we can make female SM, praise be unto Him for his amazing foresight and genius!".

Aash wrote:
In the spirit of getting back on topic, were GW to introduce female space marines, what would be your preferred background justification?

Some examples off the top of my head are:

- Retcon, there always were female space marines.
- Cawl or someone else figured out how to do it recently, so there are now twice as many potential space marines in the population.
- it was always possible but there was some reason why it wasn’t done until now (what would be amazing interesting reason?)


Or any other suggestions?

Well, I'm firmly in camp 2. I don't think it wise to retcon the fluff for changes, especially when there's such a convenient reason for why it's suddenly an option! Adding to the fluff always trumps retconning to me. Retcon should be reserved for when they can't smoothly get to where they want to get to without it (like they had to with newcrons, or if we had oodles of fluff explaining how the emperor was fixed on only having boys and they are clones of him so boys and the third commandment of the emperor is "boys only", in which case yeah, that would need retconning out!)

Aash wrote:
In the spirit of getting back on topic, were GW to introduce female space marines, what would be your preferred background justification?

Some examples off the top of my head are:

- Retcon, there always were female space marines.
- Cawl or someone else figured out how to do it recently, so there are now twice as many potential space marines in the population.
- it was always possible but there was some reason why it wasn’t done until now (what would be amazing interesting reason?)


Or any other suggestions?

Any of the above. I don't mind retconning this - the only issue might come in books where characters explicitly talk about the lack of women Astartes, but as with many outdated 40k books, it's not hard to just say "yeah, that got retconned, just skip that whole bit".

I think Cawl and Primaris was the main catalyst for me changing my stance on women Astartes, and there was no reason that Cawl *shouldn't* have been able to make women Astartes a thing when Primaris were unveiled. I know that this is a fairly widely shared stance, and many hobbyists I know made mixed gender or even all-women Primaris Chapters because of this, myself included.

And yeah, as mentioned, the last two points really are kind of one and the same - either because Cawl was able to bypass an arbitrary biological restriction, or a cultural one.

I'm not really sure I have any other suggestions, other than it happening.

 Sgt_Smudge wrote:

Aash wrote:
In the spirit of getting back on topic, were GW to introduce female space marines, what would be your preferred background justification?

Some examples off the top of my head are:

- Retcon, there always were female space marines.
- Cawl or someone else figured out how to do it recently, so there are now twice as many potential space marines in the population.
- it was always possible but there was some reason why it wasn’t done until now (what would be amazing interesting reason?)


Or any other suggestions?

Any of the above. I don't mind retconning this - the only issue might come in books where characters explicitly talk about the lack of women Astartes, but as with many outdated 40k books, it's not hard to just say "yeah, that got retconned, just skip that whole bit".

I think Cawl and Primaris was the main catalyst for me changing my stance on women Astartes, and there was no reason that Cawl *shouldn't* have been able to make women Astartes a thing when Primaris were unveiled. I know that this is a fairly widely shared stance, and many hobbyists I know made mixed gender or even all-women Primaris Chapters because of this, myself included.

And yeah, as mentioned, the last two points really are kind of one and the same - either because Cawl was able to bypass an arbitrary biological restriction, or a cultural one.

I'm not really sure I have any other suggestions, other than it happening.

I suppose points 2 and 3 are very similar. I was thinking the distinction would for point 2, it wasn’t known until recently that it was possible/how to do it whereas point 3 was more it was a deliberate decision to go all male until know, or it was covered up that it was possible to make female marines.

While I’m not necessarily against just retconning it in that they were always there, I’d prefer to have them introduced. Cawl or the like figuring out how to do it would probably be easiest because Primaris, but I think it being deliberately hidden might have more scope to tell interesting stories.

Now all I have is an image of Cawl quickly stuffing drawings of female SM into his desk drawer because Guilliman walked into his lab.
"What are you doing Cawl?"
"NOTHING AT ALL NOPE NOTHING TO SEE HERE!"
"Mk, you're weird."

Sgt_Smudge wrote:

Also, would you care to explain how the Blood Angels get their recruits, if not from mutants? The inhabitants of Baal Secundus are all mutants, to a degree. They live in an irradiated wasteland, constantly bombarded by toxins and radiation. And yet, they are recruited in one of the most prestigious Chapters in the Imperium.

Strange, that.

Space Marine fiefdom is the simple answer to this. It’s a grey area in Imperial law. Space Marines can kind of do what they want. It’s the same reason SM fiefdoms don’t need to supply regiments to the Astra Militarum. In any case, they’re the Blood Angels. Are you going to tell them they’re wrong?

Sgt_Smudge wrote:

At the same time, when someone is making blatantly *incorrect* posts, or inferring things that don't have evidence to support them, is it not acceptable to challenge that?

He wasn’t exactly wrong here in what he said here. And I was commenting towards Gert, not Hecaton. Gert went to the opposite extreme and is as absolutist in characterising it repeatedly as ‘untrue’. it’s a grey area that is quite open to interpretation and inference. And then went and told people to shove their opinions up their [bleeps]. How about some politeness? You're quick to have a go at the folks on the other side of the debate for being rude etc, I don't think it's unfair to ask the same of you.

Sure, but implication and inference aren't an exact art, and claiming that something *definitely happens* because of something you "inferred" is not a solid core for an argument..

Fair, and by the same token claiming them as absolutely ‘untrue’ or 'unfounded' is equally, not a solid core for an argument.

Sgt_Smudge wrote:
When going for this, we really can only make straight calls based on what GW describes in black and white, because we could infer many, MANY things - such as how that "purity" might not just be limited to mutations, but to race and ethnicity as well - something we explicitly *do not see happen*, yet could be inferred.

Youre talking, frankly about a medieval or dark age world view turned up to 11. Crippled kids were absolutely left out in the cold to freeze in our history. Not unheard of at all.

You're right, it absolutely is a horrible setting - but one where those same mutants are elevated into Astartes by the Blood Angels, where women serve on the front lines of battle, where ethnicity seems altogether ignored.

It's an awful place, but it's not awful everywhere. Rather, I think that the Imperium being so careless of human life that it simply *doesn't* distinguish between ethnicity, gender or even some body types is much more interesting than "they persecute minorities".

I strongly disagree. In my mind, one of the best things about 40k, and especially the older stuff is it was absolutely not described in black and white. It was all inference, implied and left up to your own imagination. It made it 'yours'. Im absolutely OK with the Imperium being utterly uncaring about ethnicity etc, but the racism is simply directed elsewhere, towards the heretic, the mutants and the alien. They don’t care about the colour of your skin, necessarily, but if you’re skin is scaled or furry, you’re going to the pyre. Your family too.

Mutation is more than just spikes and tentacles. Anything deviating from the baseline Human phenotypic state is technically a mutant.

That would imply that people with blue eyes are mutants. Hell, I seem to recall that everyone born on Cadia has violet eyes (I believe that was in The First Heretic?) - are they all mutants, because they deviate from the baseline phenotypic state?

It's the Imperium. Life is pretty cheap. And utterly horrible.

Exactly - which is why I tend to lean on the side that the Imperium simply don't care about minor mutations like vitiligo, or albinism, or polydactylism, or so on - because life is cheap, and it's just more meat for the grinder.

Deadnight wrote:

He wasn’t exactly wrong here in what he said here. And I was commenting towards Gert, not Hecaton. Gert went to the opposite extreme and is as absolutist in characterising it repeatedly as ‘untrue’. it’s a grey area that is quite open to interpretation and inference. And then went and told people to shove their opinions up their [bleeps]. How about some politeness? You're quick to have a go at the folks on the other side of the debate for being rude etc, I don't think it's unfair to ask the same of you.

Hecaton was asked to prove their point with specific references to support their statement. They didn't do that. Without going into certain things, I put that specific part of the post (which has been rightly removed since it was out of line) because I'm very much sick of bad faith arguments like the one Hecaton posted. It doesn't matter if it might happen, they treated it as fact when the opposite is instead the case. I'd also like to point out that throughout this thread my opinions have been dismissed as leftist Marxist SJW nonsense and while that is mostly meaningless words, I haven't lied to make a point then get mad that my lie was called out.

I strongly disagree. In my mind, one of the best things about 40k, and especially the older stuff is it was absolutely not described in black and white. It was all inference, implied and left up to your own imagination. It made it 'yours'. Im absolutely OK with the Imperium being utterly uncaring about ethnicity etc, but the racism is simply directed elsewhere, towards the heretic, the mutants and the alien. They don’t care about the colour of your skin, necessarily, but if you’re skin is scaled or furry, you’re going to the pyre. Your family too.

Which part of having scales or fur relates to having a disability or being intersex? There is a big difference between letting someone decide whether history A or B of the Imperium is the correct one and allowing someone to use the background as justification for disparaging people with disabilities. This is literally what a chunk of this thread has been about, people using the lore to justify hateful attacks.

Same reason they included sticking the whole population of armageddon into concentration camps and sterilising them after armageddon.
Sometimes alluding to real world horror makes a far stronger point.

When was the last time you were put in a work camp because you witnessed Daemons from Hell invade your planet? Compare that with the last time a person with a disability was openly mocked or the numerous instances of hatred towards LGBTQ+ people.

It wasn’t shown to be untrue.Stating untrue repeatedly doesn’t make it so. It doesn’t say he’s wrong though either. Its open to interpretation. Saying its absolutely wrong as you do is just as incorrect.

Hecaton couldn't back up their statement with anything more than "grey area lore" and an "X, therefore, Y" argument, which to me isn't supportive of their argument. So in my opinion, they have posted something that is untrue

No. Youre deliberately mischaracterising me. Amongst others, I read the part where you were extremely rude and specifically commented on what you said which has since removed by a mod. I also said several times that I recognise that what you said came from a good intention, so let’s not pretend I’m a bad guy here looking for cheap shots.

As to ‘that’s just your opinion’, why the snark? ‘Just’? That’s a pretty snide doublespeak for ‘stfu’ where I come from and is extremely disrespectful. It doesn’t actually mean ‘you’re entitled to your opinion’ or ‘yeah I can see where you’re coming from’. if you’d actually said ‘yeah, I can see where/how this can be inferred’ that would be fine. Because fair is fair, it is a grey area. But you jump down hard on the polar opposite side and as much as I disagree or recoil from what Hecaton often says, I cannot agree with your position here.

My position is don't make stuff up then declare it as true, then fail to back up your position with anything more than "X, therefore, Y". What Hecaton said specifically is the problem I have with so many 40k hobbyists who use grey area lore to justify saying unacceptable things and present it as truth.

You can infer all you want with whatever "grey area lore" you want, I don't want to be part of that specific discussion, but as soon as people start passing it off as objective truth, then we have a problem because people will take whatever is said literally and use that as an excuse to attack people. We've seen examples in this thread where people think that having male only SM is vital to the hobby to specifically prevent women from joining.

Deadnight wrote:

Sgt_Smudge wrote:

Also, would you care to explain how the Blood Angels get their recruits, if not from mutants? The inhabitants of Baal Secundus are all mutants, to a degree. They live in an irradiated wasteland, constantly bombarded by toxins and radiation. And yet, they are recruited in one of the most prestigious Chapters in the Imperium.

Strange, that.

Space Marine fiefdom is the simple answer to this. It’s a grey area in Imperial law. Space Marines can kind of do what they want. It’s the same reason SM fiefdoms don’t need to supply regiments to the Astra Militarum. In any case, they’re the Blood Angels. Are you going to tell them they’re wrong?

Cool, so if Space Marines can kind of do what they want, why can't they recruit women Astartes?

Sgt_Smudge wrote:At the same time, when someone is making blatantly *incorrect* posts, or inferring things that don't have evidence to support them, is it not acceptable to challenge that?

He wasn’t exactly wrong here in what he said here.

Yes, they really were. They could totally have just left it as "I think that the Imperium do XYZ", but they instead went entirely absolutist in saying that it definitely did happen.

And I was commenting towards Gert, not Hecaton. Gert went to the opposite extreme and is as absolutist in characterising it repeatedly as ‘untrue’.

I believe that Gert was simply saying it was untrue that it was 100% confirmed - which is correct.

Unless I am mistaken, Gert was commenting how it was never confirmed to be the case, and that it was wrong to say that Hecaton's quote supported their claim. Not that "the Imperium WOULD NEVER DO THAT!!", but that "we have no evidence that the Imperium does, and that quote doesn't support it".

it’s a grey area that is quite open to interpretation and inference.

You're absolutely right that it is - and because it's up for interpretation and inference, it's rather useless for the purposes Hecaton was using it for. Again, let's not pretend like Hecaton wasn't the one to bring this topic up.

How about some politeness?

Sure. Please, remind me which poster redacted someone's entire comment and replaced it with the word "lies"?

I don't believe that was ever addressed.

You're quick to have a go at the folks on the other side of the debate for being rude etc, I don't think it's unfair to ask the same of you.

You know what - likewise.
And let's be completely transparent here - when I'm calling folks out for being rude, I'm not doing so about tone of perceived voice. I'm doing so because they're making direct personal attacks on users here, or otherwise making ridiculously sexist comments (which are being dealt with very well by mods).
There is a very strong difference in severity at play here.

Sure, but implication and inference aren't an exact art, and claiming that something *definitely happens* because of something you "inferred" is not a solid core for an argument..

Fair, and by the same token claiming them as absolutely ‘untrue’ or 'unfounded' is equally, not a solid core for an argument.

Oh, absolutely - but you seem to misunderstand that it was Hecaton who raised this issue in the first place. This isn't the cornerstone of any of the pro-women Astartes argument, largely because this isn't really anything to do with it.

Sgt_Smudge wrote:It's an awful place, but it's not awful everywhere. Rather, I think that the Imperium being so careless of human life that it simply *doesn't* distinguish between ethnicity, gender or even some body types is much more interesting than "they persecute minorities".

I strongly disagree. In my mind, one of the best things about 40k, and especially the older stuff is it was absolutely not described in black and white. It was all inference, implied and left up to your own imagination. It made it 'yours'.

The problem is when "yours" is quickly twisted into "you can't have women Space Marines because that goes against MY 40k".

"Yours", as evidenced by Hecaton's argument, quickly drops the "Y", and becomes "Ours" - except when not everyone supports that particular inference.

Im absolutely OK with the Imperium being utterly uncaring about ethnicity etc, but the racism is simply directed elsewhere, towards the heretic, the mutants and the alien. They don’t care about the colour of your skin, necessarily, but if you’re skin is scaled or furry, you’re going to the pyre. Your family too.

Yeah - because that's what we have shown to us. That's as far as GW goes on the topic of racism in 40k, because they don't need to infer that there's human-on-human ethnic tensions.

Why is the same not said for "mutation", or gender? Why is the Imperium uncaring about ethnicity, but suddenly caring about sex and gender, even when there's just as little evidence to suggest that they do? Why is it "inferred" in some cases, but not in others?

Mutation is more than just spikes and tentacles. Anything deviating from the baseline Human phenotypic state is technically a mutant.

That would imply that people with blue eyes are mutants. Hell, I seem to recall that everyone born on Cadia has violet eyes (I believe that was in The First Heretic?) - are they all mutants, because they deviate from the baseline phenotypic state?

Why would it? Citation that blue eyes are mutants to be exterminated.

That's my point! It's a mutation, is it not? So, by this whole "mutations are EVIL!!" logic, blue eyed people should be killed at birth, right?

I'm asking for this citation that intersex or polydactyly humans are killed, and all I'm being told is "oh, well, I guess it's inferred" - so should I not also infer that blue eyed humans are killed for their mutation?

Define the baseline phenotypic state.

I'm not the one who mentioned it! That's on whoever mention "baseline phenotypic state" to define, because that's a real doozy of a claim.

Oh, hang on - that was you who mentioned "baseline phenotypic state". Why don't you define it, as you brought it up?

I would assume there is a range of acceptabilities (because hey, people are varied).

That's what I've been saying - and I'm assuming that no-one really cares about albinism, or polydactlylism, or really any *real world condition* because they're never mentioned as being persecuted in the lore.

You're literally reading my argument back to me at this point.

Then again, I doubt the fanatics of, say, House Cawdor or any number of more backward worlds, priests of the ministorum or adepts of the various beurocracies would care too much about the specifics. They just see fuel for the pyre. The Imperium isn’t a hive mind.

Yes, agreed - which is why these claims from Hecaton that "the Imperium would just kill people with six fingers on sight" are so ridiculous, because the Imperium isn't a hive mind!.

It's like you're not actually reading the comments and the context they're in!

Sgt_Smudge wrote:The Imperium is clearly evil and dark and horrible - without needing to bring in real-world hatred. If the only way you can make your fictional empire evil is by perpetrating existing prejudices and intolerance, how much of that empire is fictional?

Same reason they included sticking the whole population of armageddon into concentration camps and sterilising them after armageddon.
Sometimes alluding to real world horror makes a far stronger point.

Allusion doesn't require repeating the same prejudices. See the comment made about the X-Men.

The Imperium's hatred of fictional mutants, deviants, and aliens is perfectly fine as an allusion to real world bigotry without perpetuating it.

In any case I was commenting towards gert.

And in any case, I'm responding to comments that I saw issues in.

Aash wrote:
In the spirit of getting back on topic, were GW to introduce female space marines, what would be your preferred background justification?

Some examples off the top of my head are:

- Retcon, there always were female space marines.
- Cawl or someone else figured out how to do it recently, so there are now twice as many potential space marines in the population.
- it was always possible but there was some reason why it wasn’t done until now (what would be amazing interesting reason?)


Or any other suggestions?

Funnily enough, if we make the 'lost' primarchs female (who were never lost), we could do all three at once!

Altima wrote:

Aash wrote:
In the spirit of getting back on topic, were GW to introduce female space marines, what would be your preferred background justification?

Some examples off the top of my head are:

- Retcon, there always were female space marines.
- Cawl or someone else figured out how to do it recently, so there are now twice as many potential space marines in the population.
- it was always possible but there was some reason why it wasn’t done until now (what would be amazing interesting reason?)


Or any other suggestions?

Funnily enough, if we make the 'lost' primarchs female (who were never lost), we could do all three at once!

Come on folks, let's get three birds with one stone!

 Sgt_Smudge wrote:

Cool, so if Space Marines can kind of do what they want, why can't they recruit women Astartes?
[

Something something arbitrary space magic?

The sealioning is not necessary. Nowhere in my post was I commenting on female marines. It's not necessary, and for the record, the last time I spoke on that, I stated I was pretty much OK with, and supportive of the idea.

 Sgt_Smudge wrote:

That's my point! It's a mutation, is it not? So, by this whole "mutations are EVIL!!" logic, blue eyed people should be killed at birth, right?

Depends on whether it's outside the norms of what's tolerated*, surely.

*and coloured by perceptions, dogma and biases etc.

 Sgt_Smudge wrote:

I'm asking for this citation that intersex or polydactyly humans are killed, and all I'm being told is "oh, well, I guess it's inferred" - so should I not also infer that blue eyed humans are killed for their mutation?

Is it outside the norms of what's tolerated?

 Sgt_Smudge wrote:

Define the baseline phenotypic state.

I'm not the one who mentioned it! That's on whoever mention "baseline phenotypic state" to define, because that's a real doozy of a claim.

Oh, hang on - that was you who mentioned "baseline phenotypic state". Why don't you define it, as you brought it up?

No doozy. Walk back that aggression and snark Smudge it's not needed. What I posted was the exact quote on the wiki. There's that, and plenty more similar quotes like this:

'the Imperium has little tolerance for any who deviate from the divine perfection of the baseline Human form in mind or body'

 Sgt_Smudge wrote:

- and I'm assuming that no-one really cares about albinism, or polydactlylism, or really any *real world condition* because they're never mentioned as being persecuted in the lore.

My Interpretation of the lore differs. I wouldn't 'assume'. There's no citation for it. I think plenty people would care, because the Imperium is a backwards and godawful place coloured by fear and superstition.

 Sgt_Smudge wrote:

It's like you're not actually reading the comments and the context they're in!

And you're reading too much into mine and too quick to attack.

 Sgt_Smudge wrote:


Allusion doesn't require repeating the same prejudices. See the comment made about the X-Men.

The Imperium's hatred of fictional mutants, deviants, and aliens is perfectly fine as an allusion to real world bigotry without perpetuating it.

Youre entitled to that pov. Personally, I disagree. Whether you, or anyone wants 40k to be a Saturday morning cartoon, or a dystopian horror, or anything in between, that's ok. 40k is a very personal thing. Personally, I feel grounding it in reality, or Iin historical events or actions makes the horror that bit more visceral, since we know how bad those things really are.

Aash wrote:


Edit- and yes, in the context of the imperium, being a mutant is a bad thing. Living in the imperium is “to live in the cruellest and most bloody regime imaginable” after all. They think mutants are bad, and they are wrong. That’s my point.

The reason why X-men is typically viewed differently from Warhammer 40,000 in this regard because the people who make the mutant-hunting murder robots in X-men are framed as wrong, while the people who make the mutant-hunting murder cyborgs in Warhammer 40,000 are framed as correct.

Very, very, very few times does any mutation portrayed in the narrative of the imperium not turn out to signify corruption by genestealers, corruption by chaos, or a degeneration in either mental capacity or physical strength. There are VERY few examples of the imperium going a'purgin' of them there mutants and not revealing that they were secretly summoning chaos daemons all along, or they were going to be sterilized by the evil conniving xenos all along, or they were spreading a deadly zombie plague all along, or...etc.

Because the imperium is almost always the protagonist faction, the imperial worldview is nearly always portrayed as "not nice, but necessary" by narrative contrivance.

X-men would still be a good allegory for racism/prejudice/homophobia/whatever, but if the mutants were consistently always portrayed as evil, sinister villains or the puppets of evil, sinister villains seeking to eradicate non-mutant humans, and all the mutants looked like Toad and Juggernaut and Nightcrawler while all the non-mutant humans looked like Clark Kent and Bruce Wayne and Natasha Romanoff, you'd probably end up with a lot of readers wondering exactly what side of that particular debate the writers were on.

Deadnight wrote:

 Sgt_Smudge wrote:

Cool, so if Space Marines can kind of do what they want, why can't they recruit women Astartes?
[

Something something arbitrary space magic?

My point exactly - it's utterly arbitrary. Why is that the case?

The sealioning is not necessary. Nowhere in my post was I commenting on female marines.

I'm sorry, am I mistaken on what the topic of this thread is, which I was trying to bring the conversation back towards?

 Sgt_Smudge wrote:

That's my point! It's a mutation, is it not? So, by this whole "mutations are EVIL!!" logic, blue eyed people should be killed at birth, right?

Depends on whether it's outside the norms of what's tolerated*, surely.

*and coloured by perceptions, dogma and biases etc.

So, would you care to shed some light on "what's tolerated", because I'm not seeing any indication that polydactylism or intersex individuals aren't tolerated in 40k.

 Sgt_Smudge wrote:

I'm asking for this citation that intersex or polydactyly humans are killed, and all I'm being told is "oh, well, I guess it's inferred" - so should I not also infer that blue eyed humans are killed for their mutation?

Is it outside the norms of what's tolerated?

That's my point - what *is* tolerated?

All we *do* know is that the extreme mutations are persecuted against, but we aren't aware at all about "mutations" that affect real life people. It's ultimately unknown, and so Hecaton's comments on how the Imperium 'definitely kills intersex and polydactyly humans' are not coming from a place of truth.

 Sgt_Smudge wrote:

Define the baseline phenotypic state.

I'm not the one who mentioned it! That's on whoever mention "baseline phenotypic state" to define, because that's a real doozy of a claim.

Oh, hang on - that was you who mentioned "baseline phenotypic state". Why don't you define it, as you brought it up?

No doozy. Walk back that aggression and snark Smudge it's not needed.

Neither was yours. I suggest you do the same.

What I posted was the exact quote on the wiki. There's that, and plenty more similar quotes like this:

'the Imperium has little tolerance for any who deviate from the divine perfection of the baseline Human form in mind or body'

That's not a definition of "baseline phenotypic state" or "divine perfection of the baseline human form". As you so brought it up, define what that actually means, because you have still not done so.

 Sgt_Smudge wrote:

- and I'm assuming that no-one really cares about albinism, or polydactlylism, or really any *real world condition* because they're never mentioned as being persecuted in the lore.

My Interpretation of the lore differs. I wouldn't 'assume'. There's no citation for it.

You're right there's no citation for it - and that swings both ways. And in the case of things where I don't hear about it happening, I'm not going to pretend that it does.

Just because I don't hear that the Imperium holds ceremonies in honour of Saint Waluigi doesn't mean I should assume they do.

I think plenty people would care, because the Imperium is a backwards and godawful place coloured by fear and superstition.

And yet, women serve in the military, ethnicity seems entirely ignored, and there's enough mutants running around that House Van Saar have plenty of political power in Necromunda.

The Imperium is a backwards and godawful place, but not in everything. Why do we need to invent further atrocities?

 Sgt_Smudge wrote:

It's like you're not actually reading the comments and the context they're in!

And you're reading too much into mine and too quick to attack.

"Reading into yours"? You outright misrepresent what my comments are addressing, and are repeating my own argument back to me like I oppose them.

I'm fully agreed that there's a great deal of blank space on how the Imperium treats "mutations". But I'm not the one who's claiming that there's a concrete answer on the matter, drawn from pretty inconclusive evidence - I've already mentioned who this user is.

40k is a very personal thing.

Agreed - and that's my underlying argument about women Space Marines, to bring this back on topic.

40k should be a setting that provides space for everyone to interpret it how they want to, with a variety of takes and interpretations - so when there's hard limits in the setting about, say, how women *definitely* can't be Space Marines, and you're entirely wrong if you do make them, that's not allowing 40k to be a personal thing for people.

And before anyone says it - including women Space Marines in the canon doesn't mean that anyone would need to include any in their collection any more so than I'm forced to have Space Wolves in mine. As I said - 40k is personal, and if you don't want them, you don't need to have them. And if you *do* want to have them, then it should be supported and allowed by the arbitrary rules of the setting.

Personally, I feel grounding it in reality, or Iin historical events or actions makes the horror that bit more visceral, since we know how bad those things really are.

And I don't think that perpetuating real life prejudices and hatred are necessary in making something viscerally evil, and I personally feel that the inability to portray that same evil without needing to rely on that crutch is a sign of uninventive writing.

As I've said - the X-Men are an excellent allegory for the injustices at the time, without actually needing to spell it out in black and white and technicolour. I feel that this made them just as visceral and evocative as the real life events around them, without needing to perpetuate those injustices any further.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 the_scotsman wrote:
The reason why X-men is typically viewed differently from Warhammer 40,000 in this regard because the people who make the mutant-hunting murder robots in X-men are framed as wrong, while the people who make the mutant-hunting murder cyborgs in Warhammer 40,000 are framed as correct.

Now this is also very true, and comes to a wider issue of how the Imperium is framed - either we have to address that the Imperium is entirely wrong and unabashedly villainous, or we need to shift what the Imperium is - but not halfway.

I had an interesting thought. When a perpetual is re-animated, are they reanimated as an exact facsimile as the person they were before, with all the memories ie personality?

What if Vulcan came back as a lady?

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
I had an interesting thought. When a perpetual is re-animated, are they reanimated as an exact facsimile as the person they were before, with all the memories ie personality?

What if Vulcan came back as a lady?

I believe in every situation, they've come back as they were prior - maybe a little bit mad or mentally unstable depending on the circumstances of their prior death, but I've seen nothing to assume that there is a shift in physical appearance or mental behaviour upon regeneration.

I don’t like perpetuals in 40K. Immortals just removes any peril from the setting. It’s not grim or dark. But that’s a different thread again.

As for bringing the women in I think the best way would be to say that since cawl made primaris, he has also experimented with females initiates and found it works well so here you go, female marines. Fluff done.

Next would be female heads in the next inevitable new marine kits. Maybe upgrade sprue sold separately and the. Chuck in some female pronouns in a story or two.

That way folk who don’t like it can ignore it and we can all hobby as we like with out abuse or death threats.

Andykp wrote:
I think we should leave mutant killing another thread. This one is about female marines, not mutants, just to be clear, being female is NOT a mutation.

This. Please leave the mutant discussion, as it's not productive. Stay on target, folks.