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 insaniak wrote:

 Just Tony wrote:

One day I sincerely hope it WILL be the final word on the subject, but I don't have that kind of faith in people anymore...

Assuming that anyone calling for change is just trying to cause problems seems a bit of a stretch. It's possible for people to like something while also thinking there are things about it that can be improved.

That's a fair statement.

But I do get the sense that the goonhammer article mostly motivated to stir the pot.

 Tyran wrote:
What does biological male and female even means though?

A chromosome definition doesn't work, because XX males and XY females are a thing.

My dog had a uterus until she was fixed. I don't think there's a human alive who wouldn't call her female unless it was for self-serving political reasons.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 Backspacehacker wrote:
If you can not find a faction that suits your desires, and instead must take an established on and alter it or demand it be altered to fit your real life outlook, agenda, afiliation and ideals, then you are not actually here for the health of the hobby or the sake of the hobby, but more or less just to cause problems.

This really should be the final word in this thread.

[EDIT]: And it will be mine...

And people wonder why people say 40k comes across as hostile and non-inclusive lmao. Imagine thinking a statement like that is bs when you unironically state anyone who brings up an issue they have with the setting doesn't actually care about the hobby and are just trying to cause trouble.

Which is exactly what the bigots on places like 4chan say, curious...

But go on, and continue to pretend the 40k community isn't disproportionately bereft of anyone who isn't a cisgendered straight white male (not that there's anything wrong with being a cisgendered straight white male) without ever wondering why that is.

I have discussed this bit of trivial “lore” a lot and have always thought it needed to go. I have never looked at it from a trans angle (always a sexism angle) and it’s clear from the experiences discussed in this thread that I will double down on it needing to go. There’s no argument to keep it that out weighs the harm it does to the community, and worse, the harm the community does when it attempts to defend this bit of outdated fluff.

 Insectum7 wrote:
But I do get the sense that the goonhammer article mostly motivated to stir the pot.

When serious topics are treated at such a superficial level as this, the line between pot-stirring and sincere concern becomes almost imperceptible. Was recently reading about Poe’s Law, and this situation may be a kind of variant.

 Void__Dragon wrote:
But go on, and continue to pretend the 40k community isn't disproportionately bereft of anyone who isn't a cisgendered straight white male (not that there's anything wrong with being a cisgendered straight white male) without ever wondering why that is.

Considering here in the US, black people are less likely to be accepting of trans people than white people are, this seems like a weird statement to make.

There have always been nonwhite people in my gaming groups; I live in a diverse state (California). There have been game nights down at my LGS where the *majority* of the players were black. When I lived in Santa Cruz the majority of the players in my Infinity group were Latino.

Truthfully, minis gaming skews towards men above all else. Racially, I find it can be pretty inclusive.

Andykp wrote:
I have discussed this bit of trivial “lore” a lot and have always thought it needed to go. I have never looked at it from a trans angle (always a sexism angle) and it’s clear from the experiences discussed in this thread that I will double down on it needing to go. There’s no argument to keep it that out weighs the harm it does to the community, and worse, the harm the community does when it attempts to defend this bit of outdated fluff.

It's defended due to nostalgic sentimentality. There's no especially compelling reason to keep it around. It's not something I've ever felt particularly strongly about personally but the Spess Mehreens are in fact the face of the setting and it's off-putting to exclude over half of the population for being represented in them for such childish reasons tbh. I can't even really blame GW here though, because there really might be a lot of current players who would swear off any future GW products purely for making the Space Marines able to be recruited from any human sex or gender.

 Blndmage wrote:
Having a Y chromosome doesn't make you male.

The vast majority of the time it absolutely does. XY is male. XXY (0.16% of the population) is male with some potential health and fertility issues. XYY (0.1% of the population) is male and most people don't even know they have non-typical chromosomes. XY with androgen insensitivity syndrome does give a female phenotype, but is only 0.005% of the population. And beyond that we're getting into extreme edge cases that aren't even close to worth mentioning in a brief note that space marines need to start from a male body. This is a game rulebook, not an advanced-level college textbook on genetics and sexual development.

We've learned a lot since then,and if GW doesn't want that game to seen as toxic, let alone the community, they need to update things.

Why? What exactly does this "update" need to be?

 Void__Dragon wrote:
It's not something I've ever felt particularly strongly about personally but the Spess Mehreens are in fact the face of the setting and it's off-putting to exclude over half of the population for being represented in them for such childish reasons tbh.

The face of the setting being segregated for no good reason is perfect for 40k/The Imperium. What part of "dystopia" don't you understand?

 Void__Dragon wrote:
It's defended due to nostalgic sentimentality. There's no especially compelling reason to keep it around. It's not something I've ever felt particularly strongly about personally but the Spess Mehreens are in fact the face of the setting and it's off-putting to exclude over half of the population for being represented in them for such childish reasons tbh. I can't even really blame GW here though, because there really might be a lot of current players who would swear off any future GW products purely for making the Space Marines able to be recruited from any human sex or gender.

So maybe instead of changing the fluff GW should stop making space marines the overwhelming face of the setting. Give each faction its equal share and space marines being all-male is no more of an issue than SoB being all-female. And as a nice bonus we break up the monotony of endless space marine stuff.

Hecaton wrote:

 Void__Dragon wrote:
It's not something I've ever felt particularly strongly about personally but the Spess Mehreens are in fact the face of the setting and it's off-putting to exclude over half of the population for being represented in them for such childish reasons tbh.

The face of the setting being segregated for no good reason is perfect for 40k/The Imperium. What part of "dystopia" don't you understand?

This I agree with.

I'm totally pro female Custodes though, I think that would be a nice counterpoint.

CadianSgtBob wrote:

So maybe instead of changing the fluff GW should stop making space marines the overwhelming face of the setting. Give each faction its equal share and space marines being all-male is no more of an issue than SoB being all-female. And as a nice bonus we break up the monotony of endless space marine stuff.

I do find it interesting that the female space marine crew has used this issue to justify female space marines. They'll use anything to justify it lol. What about, only men (cis and trans) space marines? But no women (cis or trans? Like I suggested upthread... but apparently that's not what they want, so they're veering this thread off topic.

Hecaton wrote:

Considering here in the US, black people are less likely to be accepting of trans people than white people are, this seems like a weird statement to make.

Almost as weird as this completely irrelevant statement you just made that didn't address anything I said at all.

I never at any point indicated white people's acceptance of white people relevant to other races my friend of extremely poor reading comprehension.

There have always been nonwhite people in my gaming groups; I live in a diverse state (California). There have been game nights down at my LGS where the *majority* of the players were black. When I lived in Santa Cruz the majority of the players in my Infinity group were Latino.

That's nice. No one gives a single gak about your anecdotes regarding your gaming group my friend. No one. Not a single soul.

Also, why would you bring up Infinity, a game I know almost nothing about except that from what I can tell most ethnic groups get a faction or two representing them and tend to have female members, when I was talking exclusively about 40k?

Truthfully, minis gaming skews towards men above all else. Racially, I find it can be pretty inclusive.

And yet Age of Sigmar by pretty much every account I have read or heard (I couldn't find any actual data on 40k or Age of Sigmar's demographics, do you have any?) tends to attract more women And POC from pretty much any account I've heard, but let's just focus on women for now. Minis gaming might indeed skew towards men, but do you feel that women are particularly averse toward 40k? Frankly that's the impression I've gotten from a rather large amount of the women who know of the setting I've spoken to. Why do you think that might be?

CadianSgtBob wrote:

 Void__Dragon wrote:
It's defended due to nostalgic sentimentality. There's no especially compelling reason to keep it around. It's not something I've ever felt particularly strongly about personally but the Spess Mehreens are in fact the face of the setting and it's off-putting to exclude over half of the population for being represented in them for such childish reasons tbh. I can't even really blame GW here though, because there really might be a lot of current players who would swear off any future GW products purely for making the Space Marines able to be recruited from any human sex or gender.

So maybe instead of changing the fluff GW should stop making space marines the overwhelming face of the setting. Give each faction its equal share and space marines being all-male is no more of an issue than SoB being all-female. And as a nice bonus we break up the monotony of endless space marine stuff.

Yes please also this ffs.

 Blndmage wrote:

Hecaton wrote:

 Blndmage wrote:
If they can do what they do to create Space Marines, the AGAB (assigned gender at birth) wouldn't stand in their way at all.

No, there's plenty of reasons it could. If it required upregulation of genes that are on a y chromosome, for example, it wouldn't be able to be performed on people without one.

Having a Y chromosome doesn't make you male. Also, you're adding to it

This right here is what I mean.
Your adding justifications that don't exist in the lore.

When it was written, dna sequencing wasn't really a thing. We've learned a lot since then,and if GW doesn't want that game to seen as toxic, let alone the community, they need to update things.

What makes someone male if I remember correctly is a functional SYR gene,the SYR gene is found almost exclusively on the Y chromosome. Some Females can be born with XXY chromosome, yet still be female as the Y chromosome doesn't have a functional SYR gene.

Intersex is a thing, and sadly gets labeled as a different sex. It is an umbrella term to describe several genetic mutations relating to the Sex chromosomes, that cause those who are born this way a lot of pain and suffering. I think they are almost all infertile, and it is not uncommon for other genetic mutations to be present.

Genetics is a complex thing, and as such a lot can go wrong at conception, leading to people having deformities.

What I don't understand is the idea that as things are not 100% that we need to remove all preconceptions. It is like saying that the number of limbs people have is not 4, but anything from 0.

I look at the word Man and it says Adult Human, Male. To me all three are related to biology. Adult, physical maturity, the body has reached maturity, and can reproduce.
Human, I hope that explains ot self. We are Homo Sapiens.
Male, a body that has a functional SYR gene which has developed the body to be one that produces lots of small gametes and as such will alter the body accordingly.

Hecaton wrote:

 Void__Dragon wrote:
It's not something I've ever felt particularly strongly about personally but the Spess Mehreens are in fact the face of the setting and it's off-putting to exclude over half of the population for being represented in them for such childish reasons tbh.

The face of the setting being segregated for no good reason is perfect for 40k/The Imperium. What part of "dystopia" don't you understand?

Oh thanks for reminding me, I forgot to mention that people don't want it changed because it might ruin their headcanon, like Hecaton here's headcanon that the Emperor did it deliberately because he's a raging misogynist (when every bit of fluff that addresses the issue at all states its a biological issue).

The Femarine thing seems like a weird red herring here, as in it not being relevant to the author’s argument but at the same time that’s where it seems to lead.

'Conform with the hobby or else you're just here to cause problems and should leave' really isn't the stellar take that a number of people in this thread seem to think it is.

 Void__Dragon wrote:
Almost as weird as this completely irrelevant statement you just made that didn't address anything I said at all.

I never at any point indicated white people's acceptance of white people relevant to other races my friend of extremely poor reading comprehension.

Oh, so you're not even making coherent statements then.

 Void__Dragon wrote:
That's nice. No one gives a single gak about your anecdotes regarding your gaming group my friend. No one. Not a single soul.

No one gives a gak about the fact that you find male-majority hobbies icky, but that's neither here nor there.

 Void__Dragon wrote:
Also, why would you bring up Infinity, a game I know almost nothing about except that from what I can tell most ethnic groups get a faction or two representing them and tend to have female members, when I was talking exclusively about 40k?

Well, funny you should mention that; Infinity *also* is overwhelmingly male in terms of its playerbase. It's almost like representing women in depictions in minis *doesn't* suddenly bring them running to the hobby and the people claiming that it does are speaking in bad faith.

 Void__Dragon wrote:

And yet Age of Sigmar by pretty much every account I have read or heard (I couldn't find any actual data on 40k or Age of Sigmar's demographics, do you have any?) tends to attract more women And POC from pretty much any account I've heard, but let's just focus on women for now. Minis gaming might indeed skew towards men, but do you feel that women are particularly averse toward 40k? Frankly that's the impression I've gotten from a rather large amount of the women who know of the setting I've spoken to. Why do you think that might be?

Absent any actual data that AoS has a different playerbase than other minis games I don't have an opinion on the subject.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Void__Dragon wrote:

Oh thanks for reminding me, I forgot to mention that people don't want it changed because it might ruin their headcanon, like Hecaton here's headcanon that the Emperor did it deliberately because he's a raging misogynist (when every bit of fluff that addresses the issue at all states its a biological issue).

It can be both. Also, I used the term "gynophobe," not misogynist. Like, the Emperor designed the process that creates Astartes to only work with males because he didn't want females to become Astartes.

CadianSgtBob wrote:

 Blndmage wrote:
Having a Y chromosome doesn't make you male.

The vast majority of the time it absolutely does. XY is male. XXY (0.16% of the population) is male with some potential health and fertility issues. XYY (0.1% of the population) is male and most people don't even know they have non-typical chromosomes. XY with androgen insensitivity syndrome does give a female phenotype, but is only 0.005% of the population. And beyond that we're getting into extreme edge cases that aren't even close to worth mentioning in a brief note that space marines need to start from a male body. This is a game rulebook, not an advanced-level college textbook on genetics and sexual development.

We've learned a lot since then,and if GW doesn't want that game to seen as toxic, let alone the community, they need to update things.

Why? What exactly does this "update" need to be?

First by numbers you give for XY androgen insensitivity 0.005%. that means if the Imperium has 4-8 quadrillion people, the low end according to Google with arguments for 15qad, or multiple quintillion people, let's average that to 6 quadrillion people, Wich means there are 3,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 people in the Imperium at the MINIMUM.
How many Space Marines are there?

 Manchu wrote:
The Femarine thing seems like a weird red herring here, as in it not being relevant to the author’s argument but at the same time that’s where it seems to lead.

I've talked about this before, but any sort of protected identity the femarine crew can use to justify their demand for female Astartes is used i.e. give us female Astartes or you're a bigot/you're hurting the women/the children/the trans folk.

 Void__Dragon wrote:

And yet Age of Sigmar by pretty much every account I have read or heard (I couldn't find any actual data on 40k or Age of Sigmar's demographics, do you have any?) tends to attract more women And POC from pretty much any account I've heard, but let's just focus on women for now. Minis gaming might indeed skew towards men, but do you feel that women are particularly averse toward 40k? Frankly that's the impression I've gotten from a rather large amount of the women who know of the setting I've spoken to. Why do you think that might be?

Fantasy seems to resonate with a wider demographic than sci-fi, is more or less what I've seen. Also 40ks sci fi is particularly violent, bleak, and faschistic, even if a lark at the same time. That may also have something to do with it. Are there "good guys" in AoS? I don't really know.

CadianSgtBob wrote:


So maybe instead of changing the fluff GW should stop making space marines the overwhelming face of the setting.

This will never happen. I don't know why there's this idea that Spess Mehreens are only the most popular faction by a landslide because of GW's favoritism when in reality it's the other way around: GW shows them favoritism because they became by far the most popular faction.

What you want as a guardsman player is unfortunately for you (and me I suppose, being a Daemons/Custodes player primarily) does not align with what the majority of players want and I don't know why this is so hard for people to accept.

Give each faction its equal share and space marines being all-male is no more of an issue than SoB being all-female. And as a nice bonus we break up the monotony of endless space marine stuff.

I could even agree with this in theory. If, say, guardsmen were the face of 40k and GW made sure to emphasize that guardsmen can come from every walk of life (and also probably play it for tragedy given the brutal and often short lives being a gear in the Imperium's war machine brings, everyone is equal in misery here) then sure. Spess Mehreens being all dudes wouldn't really be an issue (though as much as I bullied Hecaton for his fanfiction I really would prefer it be for the reason of the Emperor being a gynophile than dumb "muh male biological muffucker" gak it currently is).

But that's not the reality we live in and bluntly I doubt it ever will be. The escapism and heroic fantasy elements of Mehreens is too strong. It's a more appealing and honestly juvenile form of escapism than the Imperial Guard can have. I won't fully discount the possibility but bluntly turning the focus down from Marines would be a much more financially risky move than just letting girls put on their beak helmets.

 Blndmage wrote:
First by numbers you give for XY androgen insensitivity 0.005%. that means if the Imperium has 4-8 quadrillion people, the low end according to Google with arguments for 15qad, or multiple quintillion people, let's average that to 6 quadrillion people, Wich means there are 3,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 people in the Imperium at the MINIMUM.
How many Space Marines are there?

What if XY-androgen insensitivity is one of the failure conditions for the Astartes creation process?

Even allowing for 'grandfather rights' on this rather argument-inciting bit of lore for Astartes, I'd have zero issues with female Custodes because their genetic enhancements are supposed to be custom-made to each recruit.

The fundamental changes to the gene-seed technology with Primaris also offers a narrative opportunity - though obviously that's irrelevant in the case of this question which is talking about heresy era.

Fortunately GW rather sensibly ducked the issue with the much more recent Age of Sigmar lore: since Stormcast are essentially an idealised version of the person built around a disembodied soul, and definitely have female and male members, narrative 'space' for a stormcast essentially transitioning at their first reforging is implicitly possible in the lore whether articulated or not.

I’ve also noticed very few women interested in Infinity. By contrast, I notice many more interested in Malifaux. Perhaps this related to Insectum7’s point.

And yes there are quite clear good guys in AOS compared to 40k, even with Stormcast getting a thin coat of grimdark over the last few years.

 Void__Dragon wrote:


This will never happen. I don't know why there's this idea that Spess Mehreens are only the most popular faction by a landslide because of GW's favoritism when in reality it's the other way around: GW shows them favoritism because they became by far the most popular faction.

What you want as a guardsman player is unfortunately for you (and me I suppose, being a Daemons/Custodes player primarily) does not align with what the majority of players want and I don't know why this is so hard for people to accept.

Isnt this line of logic a good reason why Marines are the way they are? They are so popular why would anyone change them? Why is this so hard for people to accept?

 Void__Dragon wrote:
This will never happen. I don't know why there's this idea that Spess Mehreens are only the most popular faction by a landslide because of GW's favoritism when in reality it's the other way around: GW shows them favoritism because they became by far the most popular faction.

Chicken or the egg. If they're in every starter set and they're pushed for people to buy them as their first army, and the overwhelming amount of fiction for the setting portrays them as the protagonists... you can't say that GW isn't putting their finger on the scaler here.

 Void__Dragon wrote:
I could even agree with this in theory. If, say, guardsmen were the face of 40k and GW made sure to emphasize that guardsmen can come from every walk of life (and also probably play it for tragedy given the brutal and often short lives being a gear in the Imperium's war machine brings, everyone is equal in misery here) then sure. Spess Mehreens being all dudes wouldn't really be an issue (though as much as I bullied Hecaton for his fanfiction I really would prefer it be for the reason of the Emperor being a gynophile than dumb "muh male biological muffucker" gak it currently is).

The Emperor was definitely not a gynophile; the only way he'd let women into his throne room is if they stood at the far end of it and didn't talk.

And there are perfectly good reasons why it might only work on male subjects.

 Void__Dragon wrote:
But that's not the reality we live in and bluntly I doubt it ever will be. The escapism and heroic fantasy elements of Mehreens is too strong. It's a more appealing and honestly juvenile form of escapism than the Imperial Guard can have. I won't fully discount the possibility but bluntly turning the focus down from Marines would be a much more financially risky move than just letting girls put on their beak helmets.

I disagree, especially in the long term.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

locarno24 wrote:
Even allowing for 'grandfather rights' on this rather argument-inciting bit of lore for Astartes, I'd have zero issues with female Custodes because their genetic enhancements are supposed to be custom-made to each recruit.

The fact that both these groups are all-male leaves me with the Occam's razor solution of "the Emperor was a gynophobe" tbh.

 Blndmage wrote:
First by numbers you give for XY androgen insensitivity 0.005%. that means if the Imperium has 4-8 quadrillion people, the low end according to Google with arguments for 15qad, or multiple quintillion people, let's average that to 6 quadrillion people, Wich means there are 3,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 people in the Imperium at the MINIMUM.
How many Space Marines are there?

That's a ridiculous argument and you know it. You were talking about the validity of saying "Y chromosome = male", the total number of people in the fictional 40k universe has nothing to do with the fact that if you take a random person with a Y chromosome there is a 99.995% chance that person is in fact male. And for purposes of a game rulebook (which is, once again, not a genetics textbook) making a brief description of the space marine creation process it is absolutely reasonable to say that 99.995% likely is close enough to 100% to not bother talking about the extreme edge cases.

Whilst the level of space-marine-centric has varied the marines have absolutely been the poster boys since day 1 of rogue trader.

Yes there's obviously a reinforcing loop from market share but in no way has pushing them as the iconic image of 40k not also been a conscious choice from GW.