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Curvaceous wrote:

 Arbitrator wrote:
I've said it before, I've said it again.

We already have Sisters,

Quote the part of the OP where somebody asked you. Nobody asked, in this thread, for anyone’s opinions on sisters or on women being in the space marines.

That's nice. Still stating what I think on the subject though.

Curvaceous wrote:

 Arbitrator wrote:
I've said it before, I've said it again.

We already have Sisters,

Quote the part of the OP where somebody asked you. Nobody asked, in this thread, for anyone’s opinions on sisters or on women being in the space marines.

The question was" How to best add female space marines"? The answer is you don't as it undermines faction identity and thematic elements deeply ingrained in the setting. Adding female space marines undermines the entire theme of having fraternal militant orders of space knights crusade across the galaxy in the name of their god. That is why the sisters exist. They provide the female equilivant of the fantasy, just without the gene augmentation (which IMO makes them way more interesting and relatable than space marines). By having them join the space marines you do a disservice to both factions.

This is a discussion board and getting mad at people answering your question in a way you don't like defeats the purpose of the discussion.

 some bloke wrote:
Ok, so first things first:

Discussions about whether this should or should not happen have already been had and the topic was closed!

 Gert wrote:

 some bloke wrote:
Ok, so first things first:

Discussions about whether this should or should not happen have already been had and the topic was closed!

Yeah, basically. We already had a big 70+ page knock-down drag-out argument about all of this in Background over the last couple months. It was a damn rollercoaster, that's for sure - And kudos to the mods and most of the participants for letting it go that long without degenerating into a total old-school flame-war and getting locked, because it's absolutely an important discussion to have - But whooooo could I use a break, and I was hardly the most vigilant poster there.

To answer your question in the terms that you have dictated, you let sisters of battle cross the Rubicon Primaris. This keeps the distinct identities and themes of the factions intact.

In fairness, the OP put in the option for "No female SM" in the poll, contradicting themselves before the thread even began.

My absolute favorite kind of lore is to introduce something in a specific campaign. For example you have an Imperial Armor campaign book with the red Scorpions or howling griffons, and that chapter in particular has always had women in the chapter. Then out-of-universe they can be in any chapter. GW has always done this the way land speeder tempest was invented by the white scars and has proliferated nonspecific to other chapters, or the way some chapters supposedly don’t use razorbacks because they’re an “innovation” but it’s never specified which chapters, so anyone’s army can have razorbacks.

So just like everything else in 40k, you could make a Dark Angels siege assault list (the army list with siege mantlets and the LR Achilles) even though it’s not particularly in the dark angels codex or on their stereotypical dualwing theme.


And OP I think there’s a different response to saying how should women be introduced as space marines than how should female space marines added. It makes it more personal, you know, like when you talk someone down by personalizing your relationship.

I picked "Don't add female marines." Not only is there plenty of female representation in Sisters of Battle to make this option redundant, but it can conceivably believed that other factions have plenty of female representation in the with enough creativity. Female AM is a viable option, likewise the same CSM, Daemons, Craftworld, Drukhari, and Tyranids.

Anyway, my personal lore for my Void Hunters is that they're cursed founding chapter with experimental geneseed. Basically a primaris testbed chapter. And one of the experimental modifications is that their gene-seed also works on women. Considering that some cursed founding chapters are able to grow giant bone scythe-blades out of their arms, this seems relatively mild to me. And it still works with the widely accepted canon that female marines do not normally exist, making this a rare exception.

Though at this point I am starting to feel that no such justification is really needed, as canonicity of male-only marines is pretty shaky to begin with and I have kinda stopped caring about the official fluff anyway.

TinyLegions wrote:
I picked "Don't add female marines." Not only is there plenty of female representation in Sisters of Battle to make this option redundant, but it can conceivably believed that other factions have plenty of female representation in the with enough creativity. Female AM is a viable option, likewise the same CSM, Daemons, Craftworld, Drukhari, and Tyranids.

But CSM are the evil antagonist... Thats a negative vessel for female representation.

Vatsetis wrote:

TinyLegions wrote:
I picked "Don't add female marines." Not only is there plenty of female representation in Sisters of Battle to make this option redundant, but it can conceivably believed that other factions have plenty of female representation in the with enough creativity. Female AM is a viable option, likewise the same CSM, Daemons, Craftworld, Drukhari, and Tyranids.

But CSM are the evil antagonist... Thats a negative vessel for female representation.

Its 40K! There is no good or evil!

Vatsetis wrote:

TinyLegions wrote:
I picked "Don't add female marines." Not only is there plenty of female representation in Sisters of Battle to make this option redundant, but it can conceivably believed that other factions have plenty of female representation in the with enough creativity. Female AM is a viable option, likewise the same CSM, Daemons, Craftworld, Drukhari, and Tyranids.

But CSM are the evil antagonist... Thats a negative vessel for female representation.

The imperium is also the villain, and sometimes worse than the literal daemon worshipers they fight.
Note that I'm neutral to the change.

Will this be a trend now every other week until people get fed up or mindless bickering and leave the site??

We have a ban on politics and religion for a reason. Wokness is a political religion that will gobble up and spit out and ruin everything it touches..

 Argive wrote:
Will this be a trend now every other week until people get fed up or mindless bickering and leave the site??

You're welcome to leave too. You will not be missed.

 Argive wrote:
We have a ban on politics and religion for a reason. Wokness is a political religion that will gobble up and spit out and ruin everything it touches..

As long as it's an issue, it should be discussed, whether you like that or not or whatever labels you choose to attach to it. And saying it like this is not going to win you converts.

But there is no issue, you want wimminz in power armor go play Sisters, they have a lovely new range. No need to bastardize SM.

I voted "Don't add Female Space Marines". With that said, if you want to create your own homebrew chapter of female Space Marines go for it, i'll gladly play against them if they are done correctly.

So lets go scientific. Who gets recruited to become a Space Marine (Generally) . The top 1% of the top 1% of the top 1% of Males who aren't yet fully grown into adults (Ragnar's books read like he is close to 18). So you are talking about the top 0.001% at the absolute most, and its probably significantly less than that. The Current Fastest 5k Run by a female of any age group from any country is 14:06.62 by a Woman named Letesenbet GIDEY, The fastest 5k by a US High School boy is 13:37.91 by a guy named Galen Rupp.

The Heaviest Bench press by any female of any age is 600.8 lb by Becca Swanson, the Heaviest Bench press by a Texas high school boy was 700lbs

I can keep going, the point being that if you are attempting to recruit the best physical specimen of a 12-18 year old range, its going to be exclusively Male.

Just for comparison, the US High School records for female athletes in those same events is 15:37.12 5k (2 minutes slower) and for Bench press, the highest I could find was a Teen female by the name of Lexi Harris who was able to Bench 435 (265lbs less), and she beat EVERYONE by a country mile, the next closest was 360lbs.

One of the biggest issues we saw in the Military with Female soldiers and injuries was joints and connective tissue injuries. The US army conducted a joint experiment featuring new recruits and found that Female Recruits were over 2x more likely to be injured from training, the US Marines did a similar study a few years back and they found very similar numbers, 40.1% of Females suffered some form of injury while 18.8% of men suffered similar injuries.

So from a strictly Scientific perspective, the strongest/fastest will be males and they will be about 50% as likely to sustain injuries while training which leads to a lower attrition rate.

From a game perspective, it wouldn't matter, but what would the point be except to please a very vocal minority who in my experience, don't even really play/buy the models so much as enjoy complaining about it. I mean, we already have Sisters of Battle as a full female army, we have Necrons which are literal killer robots devoid of gender, we have Orkz which are called "boyz" but reproduce Via Fungus spores, we have Tau, Eldar, Dark Eldar, IG and others who have female model ranges. I wouldn't mind them being fleshed out more, especially IG since there is a fair amount of fluff regarding all female regiments and mixed gender regiments, but as far as Female Space Marines go, I see no purpose other than a niche for a specific gamer group and pandering to the outrage mob who have made attempts at this before.

 Castozor wrote:
But there is no issue, you want wimminz in power armor go play Sisters, they have a lovely new range. No need to bastardize SM.

Sisters are a pretty specific thing with a pretty specific set of iconography and traits, though. A Space Wolf Shieldmaiden or Valkyrie, for instance, would be a far different thing from a Sister of Battle.

And sure, Sisters are awesome - but they're also not the customizable blank slate that Marines are, the fact that made them popular. They can have any culture, be specialized to any method of warfare; they can be Mongol warriors, Vikings, bikers, crusading zealots, Romans, samurai, or basically anything you can imagine - but for some inexplicable reason they lack a gender select switch, which is an artifact of a previous time - and the Stormcast Eternals suggest that monogendering a flagship faction is not a mistake GW would repeat today.

What if you don't want just one gender of superwarrior? Hell, I'd be for putting men in the Sororitas - although I'd definitely start calling it the Sororitas at that point - just to maintain reciprocity if that's what it took.

The funniest possible position that people fake-hold in these threads is, "Female Space Marines would make Space Marines less unique"

Space Marines aren't unique. They're large, aggressive, highly-trained, muscular men in armour suits with big guns. That's the potato of the sci-fi faction lookbook.

 CEO Kasen wrote:

 Castozor wrote:
But there is no issue, you want wimminz in power armor go play Sisters, they have a lovely new range. No need to bastardize SM.

Sisters are a pretty specific thing with a pretty specific set of iconography and traits, though. A Space Wolf Shieldmaiden or Valkyrie, for instance, would be a far different thing from a Sister of Battle.

And sure, Sisters are awesome - but they're also not the customizable blank slate that Marines are, the fact that made them popular. They can have any culture, be specialized to any method of warfare; they can be Mongol warriors, Vikings, bikers, crusading zealots, Romans, samurai, or basically anything you can imagine - but for some inexplicable reason they lack a gender select switch, which is an artifact of a previous time - and the Stormcast Eternals suggest that monogendering a flagship faction is not a mistake GW would repeat today.

What if you don't want just one gender of superwarrior? Hell, I'd be for putting men in the Sororitas - although I'd definitely start calling it the Sororitas at that point - just to maintain reciprocity if that's what it took.

Space marines are at their core militant orders of fraternal religious brethren that crusade across the galaxy in the name of their god. The sisters are a sorority of religious sisters that crusade across the galaxy in the name of their god. To throw all of the themes of catholic orders, and crusades out simply to appease that is ludicrous.

 Altruizine wrote:
The funniest possible position that people fake-hold in these threads is, "Female Space Marines would make Space Marines less unique"

Space Marines aren't unique. They're large, aggressive, highly-trained, muscular men in armour suits with big guns. That's the potato of the sci-fi faction lookbook.

Exactly; A look that works well because you can canonically put any take you want on them, except, for some reason, that one.

I'm not about to accuse people of holding fake positions, though. Not entirely thought out ones, yes, because honestly this topic doesn't get discussed enough for everyone to have fully considered opinions about it yet, so until I have reason to believe otherwise I'll assume they're being earnest.

 CEO Kasen wrote:

 Castozor wrote:
But there is no issue, you want wimminz in power armor go play Sisters, they have a lovely new range. No need to bastardize SM.

Sisters are a pretty specific thing with a pretty specific set of iconography and traits, though. A Space Wolf Shieldmaiden or Valkyrie, for instance, would be a far different thing from a Sister of Battle.

And sure, Sisters are awesome - but they're also not the customizable blank slate that Marines are, the fact that made them popular. They can have any culture, be specialized to any method of warfare; they can be Mongol warriors, Vikings, bikers, crusading zealots, Romans, samurai, or basically anything you can imagine - but for some inexplicable reason they lack a gender select switch, which is an artifact of a previous time - and the Stormcast Eternals suggest that monogendering a flagship faction is not a mistake GW would repeat today.

Can you really not do that with Sisters though? There are thousands of orders across thousands of worlds, aren't there? Surely they aren't all uniform? Surely they would have picked up local customs and garbs resulting in some curious variations?
That could even be how you can get your Shieldmaidens or Valkyries; they are Sisters of Battle stationed on Fenris or similar Norse themed world, and they went a tad native.

Personally though I always thought that allowing Marines to field Chapter serfs is a fair compromise; that is an aspect of their fluff that is barely touched upon, even though chapter serfs are supposed to be an integral part of the day to day functioning of the chapter. Whilst Marines might be only males, there is nothing that limits serfs in that respect.
It would also explain how Marines, despite having such pitiful numbers, are capable of engaging in large scale conflicts; they use chapter serf auxiliaries. This would solve one of the critiques of Space Marine use, that they do not have actually have the numbers to operate as they do.

 CEO Kasen wrote:

 Argive wrote:
We have a ban on politics and religion for a reason. Wokness is a political religion that will gobble up and spit out and ruin everything it touches..

As long as it's an issue, it should be discussed, whether you like that or not or whatever labels you choose to attach to it. And saying it like this is not going to win you converts.

He is however right that is a rule on this site that politics and religion are banned on this site. That the mods are somehow failing to enforce this lately has been more of the issue.

 Sledgehammer wrote:
Space marines are at their core militant orders of fraternal religious brethren that crusade across the galaxy in the name of their god. The sisters are a sorority of religious sisters that crusade across the galaxy in the name of their god. To throw all of the themes of catholic orders, and crusades out simply to appease that is ludicrous.

You say "Appease," I say "Include," and in a game that encourages you to invest yourself, you want to give people as many customization options as feasible. Also, my understanding is that the Marines revere the Emperor as their genefather, but outside the Black Templars don't necessarily consider him a god, which would be a marked difference from a faction of truly religious zealots.

You also left out "Genetically altered superhuman," and that's kind of a point of difference. Someone said it was like comparing Batman and Superman - These aren't the same thing or the same kind of fantasy; both awesome for different reasons. Additionally, the heavily gothic, baroque aesthetic of the Sisters is a far different one from the flat, techier, boxier look of the Marines - that flat look that allows so much space to do whatever you want with them.

The Catholic monasteries also didn't have gyrojet rocket launchers as standard issue. The Marines really don't lose anything by including women any more than any other historically-based setup loses by including laser cannons.

 CEO Kasen wrote:

 Sledgehammer wrote:
Space marines are at their core militant orders of fraternal religious brethren that crusade across the galaxy in the name of their god. The sisters are a sorority of religious sisters that crusade across the galaxy in the name of their god. To throw all of the themes of catholic orders, and crusades out simply to appease that is ludicrous.

You say "Appease," I say "Include," and in a game that encourages you to invest yourself, you want to give people as many customization options as feasible. Also, my understanding is that the Marines revere the Emperor as their genefather, but outside the Black Templars don't necessarily consider him a god, which would be a marked difference from a faction of truly religious zealots.

You also left out "Genetically altered superhuman," and that's kind of a point of difference. Someone said it was like comparing Batman and Superman - These aren't the same thing or the same kind of fantasy; both awesome for different reasons. Additionally, the heavily gothic, baroque aesthetic of the Sisters is a far different one from the flat, techier, boxier look of the Marines - that flat look that allows so much space to do whatever you want with them.

The Catholic monasteries also didn't have gyrojet rocket launchers as standard issue. The Marines really don't lose anything by including women any more than any other historically-based setup loses by including laser cannons.

And what about the people that have invested themselves in a factions themes? You don't care about how they feel about having their space knights templars no longer be space knights templars?

You don't have to crush existing lore in order to make it more inclusive.

 CEO Kasen wrote:
Sisters are a pretty specific thing with a pretty specific set of iconography and traits, though.

Are they?

 CEO Kasen wrote:


You say "Appease," I say "Include," .

Xenos 40k Players for a decade: Hey can we get some new sculpts for literally any of the Xenos armies?
Imperial 40k Players for a decade: No, they aren't popular enough and they wont sell enough to justify the production costs.

And than You: "We should do all the things to include others"

I'm being a bit silly here and over simplifying it, but damn dude, how many people would jump on the "FEMALE SPEESE MEHREENS!" bandwagon compared to how many players they would lose because this was the straw that broke the camels back, waiting years for an update, getting salty about the ridiculous amounts of SPEESE MEHREENS! only to be told, yeah we wont be making new models for Eldar/Nidz, Tau etc because we need to push out this pet project to appease the woke mob.

 Sledgehammer wrote:
Space marines are at their core militant orders of fraternal religious brethren that crusade across the galaxy in the name of their god. The sisters are a sorority of religious sisters that crusade across the galaxy in the name of their god. To throw all of the themes of catholic orders, and crusades out simply to appease that is ludicrous.

I must disagree.

Space Marines are transhuman warriors armed with the best weapons and armor available to the Imperium.

Sisters of Battle are an order of female fanatical religious servants of the Imperial Church armed with the best weapons and armor the Church can purchase.

Space marine chapters and members religiosity varies greatly. Every single Sister of Battle is a religious fanatic.

 CEO Kasen wrote:

Exactly; A look that works well because you can canonically put any take you want on them, except, for some reason, that one.

Yeah. I think a big part of marine popularity is their thematic flexibility. You can flavour them in many differnt ways, so it is pretty silly to ban this one specific seasoning. And allowing it doesn't really remove the male-only themes. Like if my techno-barbarian tacticool space hunters chapter has some female marines that doesn't prevent someone making an all-male templarish knightly brotherhood chapter.

And no, as much as I love SoB they're not thematically flexible in the same way as marines are. Their themes are much more focused, which is both strength and weakness. Like if marines were always explicitly medievalish knightly templar brotherhoods same way than SoB are always catholic-inspired warrior nuns I would get the opposition on thematic grounds better. But that has really never been the case, marines already cover many different thematic roles.

 CEO Kasen wrote:

 Castozor wrote:
But there is no issue, you want wimminz in power armor go play Sisters, they have a lovely new range. No need to bastardize SM.

Sisters are a pretty specific thing with a pretty specific set of iconography and traits, though. A Space Wolf Shieldmaiden or Valkyrie, for instance, would be a far different thing from a Sister of Battle.

And sure, Sisters are awesome - but they're also not the customizable blank slate that Marines are, the fact that made them popular. They can have any culture, be specialized to any method of warfare; they can be Mongol warriors, Vikings, bikers, crusading zealots, Romans, samurai, or basically anything you can imagine - but for some inexplicable reason they lack a gender select switch, which is an artifact of a previous time - and the Stormcast Eternals suggest that monogendering a flagship faction is not a mistake GW would repeat today.

What if you don't want just one gender of superwarrior? Hell, I'd be for putting men in the Sororitas - although I'd definitely start calling it the Sororitas at that point - just to maintain reciprocity if that's what it took.

Who says you can't do that with Sisters? They have various orders all of which approach battle differently. At the end of the day all Marines are bulky dudes in power armor regardless of whether they prefer to shank you in the back, from a bike or while being called Wolfy McWulfsson.

 alextroy wrote:

 Sledgehammer wrote:
Space marines are at their core militant orders of fraternal religious brethren that crusade across the galaxy in the name of their god. The sisters are a sorority of religious sisters that crusade across the galaxy in the name of their god. To throw all of the themes of catholic orders, and crusades out simply to appease that is ludicrous.

I must disagree.

Space Marines are transhuman warriors armed with the best weapons and armor available to the Imperium.

Sisters of Battle are an order of female fanatical religious servants of the Imperial Church armed with the best weapons and armor the Church can purchase.

Space marine chapters and members religiosity varies greatly. Every single Sister of Battle is a religious fanatic.

Space Marines still have a religious aspect though.
They have Chaplains in their ranks, they live and train in Fortress Monasteries, they spend a lot of time praying, they refer to each other as Brother (which also has a double meaning), they are organized in Chapters, and they do have some design elements reminiscent of Knightly Orders, although it's more obvious in a few cases than most.
They might not be the militant arm of the Church and absolute fanatics like the Sisters (barring, of course, a couple of notable Chapters), but they are not a secular organization.

I guess they are comparable to the Brotherhood of Steel from Fallout? Not overtly religious, but the monastic inspiration is clear.