Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

a_typical_hero wrote:
Could somebody please elaborate to help me understand what the fuzz is about?

The specific phrase "biological male" is used by transphobes to mean "someone who claims to be not-male but we all know they're really a man", because using the term "trans woman" would mean accepting the enemy's assertion that trans women are women. They'll talk about things like "biological males being allowed in women's sports".

This has nothing to do with the GW quote. The GW quote does not use this specific phrase, and the context of it is obviously something entirely different from the transphobe use. Goonhammer is just looking to farm outrage clicks, nothing more.

I really don't understand the attitude of "I don't see the problem with this, ergo there is no problem." – it's totally ok to not be informed on this stuff, or be new to it or whatever, but if the people affected by it see the problem, particularly when those people are from a traditionally marginalised group, then you should probably take their word for it, rather than either dismissing it because you don't understand the nuances of something they get subjected to every day, or assuming they're acting in bad faith for some reason.

 Blndmage wrote:

People are refusing to answer the basic question of "do you think trans women [my example as a trans woman] are valid as women?".

Because Dakka is basically just multiple threads of people arguing at great length, and if you do something enough you get good at it and we know someone asking a trap question to divert the thread when we see one.

CadianSgtBob wrote:

 Blndmage wrote:
Transphobia in the community is bad enough that, locally, I was threatened with violence if I ever entered our FLGS, the patrons and owner backed the person threatening me, when I had his explicit threat in writing, after saying they're inclusive and would back me (I approached the owner before starting to play there).

That is unfortunate and those people should be in prison for their actions, and certainly should not be tolerated in the 40k community. But that has nothing to do with the topic of this thread.

People are refusing to answer the basic question of "do you think trans women [my example as a trans woman] are valid as women?".

What does that have to do with the topic of space marines having to start from a male body? Nothing in that GW quote in any way says that trans women are not women.

It has everything to do with this thread, can't you see that?

If the hobby scene, local, online, wherever is actively harmful to transfolks, we're not going to be involved, no matter how much we want to be.

The toxicity of the community can tank this game.

 Blndmage wrote:

CadianSgtBob wrote:

 Blndmage wrote:
Transphobia in the community is bad enough that, locally, I was threatened with violence if I ever entered our FLGS, the patrons and owner backed the person threatening me, when I had his explicit threat in writing, after saying they're inclusive and would back me (I approached the owner before starting to play there).

That is unfortunate and those people should be in prison for their actions, and certainly should not be tolerated in the 40k community. But that has nothing to do with the topic of this thread.

People are refusing to answer the basic question of "do you think trans women [my example as a trans woman] are valid as women?".

What does that have to do with the topic of space marines having to start from a male body? Nothing in that GW quote in any way says that trans women are not women.

It has everything to do with this thread, can't you see that?

If the hobby scene, local, online, wherever is actively harmful to transfolks, we're not going to be involved, no matter how much we want to be.

The toxicity of the community can tank this game.

It hasn't so far.

 Blndmage wrote:
It has everything to do with this thread, can't you see that?

If the hobby scene, local, online, wherever is actively harmful to transfolks, we're not going to be involved, no matter how much we want to be.

The toxicity of the community can tank this game.

The topic of this thread is a specific quote by GW and the Goonhammer article objecting to it. Your experiences are awful and those people deserve to be kicked out of the 40k community just like the Nazi guy but the donkey-caves at your local store have nothing to do with the topic here.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Nazrak wrote:
I really don't understand the attitude of "I don't see the problem with this, ergo there is no problem." – it's totally ok to not be informed on this stuff, or be new to it or whatever, but if the people affected by it see the problem, particularly when those people are from a traditionally marginalised group, then you should probably take their word for it, rather than either dismissing it because you don't understand the nuances of something they get subjected to every day, or assuming they're acting in bad faith for some reason.

So if a trans person says "this is not transphobic" you should take their word for it and let the discussion end there?

Anyway, I think the article was a considered, measured and thoughtful one, and I hope that at least some of the people who read it reconsider their positions on this stuff as a result.

As just about the most stereotypical Warhammer Guy from back in the day (straight, white, male, etc etc) who's been at this for well over thirty years now, I don't see any issue at all with GW being sensitive to the fact that they have a much broader audience nowadays, and I think that they have some sort of responsibility of inclusivity towards people who've often, whether by accident or design, felt excluded from the hobby.

Swastakowey wrote:

 blood reaper wrote:

Hecaton wrote:

 blood reaper wrote:
Goonhammer comment sections are one of gods gifts to the internet.

Considering they don't allow discussion... nah, it's pretty pointless. Just a circlejerk.

Yeah I should've added the /s to my post to make it clear - it's hysterical how there is no discussion permitted and that the mods/site authors respond to everything with this incredibly snide tone.

Ummmmmm build your own website?



It's disturbing how some people behave with just a crumb of power.

I mean I think he's totally within his right to do this I just think it's immensely funny and infantile.

 Void__Dragon wrote:

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?

The relevance to the post you quoted is because you YOURSELF tossed the "cis white het" bomb into the conversation in some sort of attempt to shame people into ending discourse. Their response is a refutation of your claim. You brought race into this, you have nobody to blame but yourself if the conversation gets continued.

 Blndmage wrote:
The toxicity of the community can tank this game.

Bluntly, 40k won’t live or die depending upon transwomen joining or leaving, or even based on what most 40k players think about trans issues. On the other hand, the toxicity around dogmatic parsing of fluff does create bigger issues. That’s arguably what is objectionable about the article, just as to 40k. There are some bigger issues with it, vis a vis trans issues (in a nutshell, exploitative and trivializing).

CadianSgtBob wrote:


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Nazrak wrote:
I really don't understand the attitude of "I don't see the problem with this, ergo there is no problem." – it's totally ok to not be informed on this stuff, or be new to it or whatever, but if the people affected by it see the problem, particularly when those people are from a traditionally marginalised group, then you should probably take their word for it, rather than either dismissing it because you don't understand the nuances of something they get subjected to every day, or assuming they're acting in bad faith for some reason.

So if a trans person says "this is not transphobic" you should take their word for it and let the discussion end there?

Well no, not if others are saying it is. You're not ever going to get a complete consensus, but if significant numbers of people from a certain demographic group are saying there's a problem with something, then I think it's reasonable that people from outside that group should be at the very least willing to consider that there may well be a problem.

 Nazrak wrote:

CadianSgtBob wrote:


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Nazrak wrote:
I really don't understand the attitude of "I don't see the problem with this, ergo there is no problem." – it's totally ok to not be informed on this stuff, or be new to it or whatever, but if the people affected by it see the problem, particularly when those people are from a traditionally marginalised group, then you should probably take their word for it, rather than either dismissing it because you don't understand the nuances of something they get subjected to every day, or assuming they're acting in bad faith for some reason.

So if a trans person says "this is not transphobic" you should take their word for it and let the discussion end there?

Well no, not if others are saying it is. You're not ever going to get a complete consensus, but if significant numbers of people from a certain demographic group are saying there's a problem with something, then I think it's reasonable that people from outside that group should be at the very least willing to consider that there may well be a problem.

I mean what is a significant number in this case?

Something also worth reading around this issue (which I think Gert has?), is Shon Faye's The Transgender Issue:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Transgender-Issue-Argument-Justice/dp/0241423147

You can read many very positive and some positive critical reviews google

 PetitionersCity wrote:
Something also worth reading around this issue (which I think Gert has?), is Shon Faye's The Transgender Issue:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Transgender-Issue-Argument-Justice/dp/0241423147

You can read many very positive and some positive critical reviews google

Can you summarize what this book has to say about the GW quote in specific or 40k in general?

So it begins, the destruction of this hobby by the woke community.

That is so pathetic, so much outrage just because a bunch of sentences which propably don't have any "transphobic" meaning behind it.

 Void__Dragon wrote:

Swastakowey wrote:

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?

If you read my previous post with any comprehension you'd have the answer my friend.

And the answer is indeed that there is a good chance that there's no financially sound reason for GW to do so because the outcry might outweigh the benefits.

The problem is, you lambast someone for bringing up race AFTER you did, you then dismiss someone's anecdotes while bringing up your own, all the while being oddly combative and then at the same time arguing over a self admitted losing position after complaining that people just dont get that their position is a losing one? It's all so circular.

 Nazrak wrote:
I really don't understand the attitude of "I don't see the problem with this, ergo there is no problem." – it's totally ok to not be informed on this stuff, or be new to it or whatever, but if the people affected by it see the problem, particularly when those people are from a traditionally marginalised group, then you should probably take their word for it, rather than either dismissing it because you don't understand the nuances of something they get subjected to every day, or assuming they're acting in bad faith for some reason.

Is it not ok to also see something as not a problem? How far do you take this logic? Schizophrenics are marginalized but that does not mean you believe their delusions. You should only believe that they believe those delusions. Thats why you should probably argue your point to justify it instead of the silly line of thinking you just stated. Whenever you say something like this you should honestly put that logic to work in other scenarios to see how silly it can get. What about if someone from said group said it wasn't a problem?

The inclusion of this one sentence in the HH book feels like a cut & paste moment, not an action caused by malice.

+ + +

With that out of the way, it's interesting to take a quick look at the ranges currently on sale by GW for 40k, and observe whether there are obviously-female (or intended to be female) sculpts present.

Space Marines (including most sub-varieties due to shared ranges) - No
Grey Knights - No
Adeptus Custodes* - No
Sisters of Silence* - Yes
Sisters of Battle - ...yes.
Adeptus Mechanicus - No? Hard to tell with all the cybernetics. There are female adepts in the background, though (see Cain books for one example).
Imperial Guard - No***
Imperial Knights - No****
Inquisition - Yes
Officio Assassinorum - Yes
Leagues of Votann - Yes (definitely seen on hover-trike pilot, at least).

Chaos Space Marines - No**
Chaos Daemons - Maybe? Hard to tell with Slaanesh. Also, most non-Slaanesh Daemons can be argued to be free of gender, too.
Chaos Knights - No****
Death Guard - No
Thousand Sons - No
World Eaters - Probably not.

Craftworld Eldar - Yes
Dark Eldar - Yes
Harlequins - Yes, I think?
Genestealer Cults - Yes
Necrons - No gender at all, based on sculpts
Orks - ...no? Could be argued to be genderless, too.
Tau - Yes
Tyranids - No gender at all, based on sculpts

* - I'd argue these two should be merged as Talons of the Emperor, but hey.
** - I'm saying No, but I haven't had a close enough look at the new Cultist sculpts to rule out female models there.
*** - Severina Raine has "rotated out", that Catachan Sergeant was a limited ed release, and I can't see if there are female heads on the Cadian upgrade sprue. If there are, amend to Yes, but could definitely do better.
**** - The only human model is a bloke, but can we really say either way what gender the pilot of a Big Stompy Robot is? Don't recall female pilots being excluded in the IK background, at the very least.

Hecaton wrote:

I ain't conceding gak.

You already have my son.

No, I know what's up with you. That anxiety you feel when your female friends, family and acquaintances look at your minis collection... it's not going to go away if you have female space marines lol.

I'm too poor to afford an actual minis collection my friend, nor do I, despite not finding any of the arguments against their inclusion (except the GW POV financial one) compelling, feel particularly strongly about the subject. But I do like that I've gotten under your skin enough to make you resort to attacks on my personal life you know nothing about.

But that doesn't tell you if they're going to play LoL or not in the first place. So that study doesn't actually answer the question put forth.

Do you think the women who refuse to play non-female champions (which is apparently like 97% of them btw) would have given the game a second look if there was no female representation?

Besides, we know that most women who play 40k play Tyranids.

What is the source for that btw? Because I can't find one but it's a common 40k anecdote.

It's competitive

So is League of Legends.

Many women are not comfortable with directly competitive games or sports,

On average true.

or at least participating in them themselves.

You almost touched on what I wanted to bring up which is that the hobby isn't actually inherently competitive. Modeling and painting are another very big part of it and one that stereotypically at least shouldn't be offputting to women, correct? Even if the game doesn't appeal to women on average they could still be part of the community through other ways. Yet aren't, at least as far as 40k goes. And I don't find the idea that it's just because science fiction appeals less to women compelling, as said.

Women are traditionally not interested in, say, military science fiction, which is the kind of novel that's most like 40k.

I've not seen data on this but I do expect this is likely true.

I agree it's headcanon. The canon is that the Astartes creation process only works on male humans.

Ah good I'm glad you conceded your preferences for the Astartes are primarily rooted in headcanon, my thanks!

 Insectum7 wrote:

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.

Isn't that basically the Sisters of Silence though? Both they and Custodes form the Talons of the Emperor, do they not?
I always considered SoS to be to Custodes what SoB are to Marines.

Anyway, bailing on this thread because on this site of all places it was always going to be a shitshow, but just wanted to be on record that if this old grognard can be willing to accept that rigidly adhering to one specific 35-year old bit of background material is less important than being welcoming and inclusive to people beyond the "traditional" wargaming demographic, then I don't see why anyone else can't.

If I'm coming off hostile it's because I've sat back and seen enough sexist, homophobic, racist, transphobic gak on these boards and this thread is explicitly where my experience with the community, and by this I mean here on dakka, is relevant.

I haven't seen any other trans folks willing to out themselves for this, but I am. This could literally mean 4can folks will dox me. No joking. Being trans on the internet is an ever changing field of landmines that are people's bigotry.

If another trans person wants to give their thoughts and discuss things that's great. But you might want to stop and consider why I seem to be the only trans woman here. The community is scary. It's the reason none of my queer friends will touch the hobby.

 Lord_Valorion wrote:
So it begins, the destruction of this hobby by the woke community.

That seems a bit hyperbolic given the fact that we've seen nonsense like this article over and over again in the past and none of it has had any lasting impact (other than to the wallets of the people hosting the articles after all the ad views come in).

 Dysartes wrote:
*** - Severina Raine has "rotated out", that Catachan Sergeant was a limited ed release, and I can't see if there are female heads on the Cadian upgrade sprue. If there are, amend to Yes, but could definitely do better.

There are female heads on the Cadian sprue and the new character in the upcoming IG release is a woman (the daughter of Creed). And there is an abundance of women in the fluff, even if that hasn't yet translated into many new models due to the age of the current product lines.

Don't recall female pilots being excluded in the IK background, at the very least.[/i]

Female knight pilots are explicitly mentioned in the background.

I will note that as much as I dislike goonhammers tone, management, and general semi-shilly, radlib sort of pseudo-activism, the title of this thread has very little to do with the actual content of the article (which is imo is also very stupid and reveals of the major issues with engaging with trans issues).

CadianSgtBob wrote:

a_typical_hero wrote:
Could somebody please elaborate to help me understand what the fuzz is about?

The specific phrase "biological male" is used by transphobes to mean "someone who claims to be not-male but we all know they're really a man", because using the term "trans woman" would mean accepting the enemy's assertion that trans women are women. They'll talk about things like "biological males being allowed in women's sports".

This has nothing to do with the GW quote. The GW quote does not use this specific phrase, and the context of it is obviously something entirely different from the transphobe use. Goonhammer is just looking to farm outrage clicks, nothing more.

There can be more than one dogwhistle people who are transphobes can use my friend. "Biological male" is not where it ends.

I definitely don't think there's any reason to think the author of that excerpt is a transphobe don't get me wrong. Has anyone stated as much in this thread at least?

We’ve had openly trans posters here in the past btw.

 Void__Dragon wrote:
You already have my son.

When you want to act your age and stop making comments like this I'll bother responding to your points. Given that you don't even own minis your opinion isn't particularly relevant, anyway.

 Sim-Life wrote:

 Blndmage wrote:

People are refusing to answer the basic question of "do you think trans women [my example as a trans woman] are valid as women?".

Because Dakka is basically just multiple threads of people arguing at great length, and if you do something enough you get good at it and we know someone asking a trap question to divert the thread when we see one.

I mean bluntly the optics of refusing to answer the question are more suspect. If she blows her handle after that that's on her but if you agree with the statement I don't see why you can't answer it.

 Void__Dragon wrote:


You are aware that trans people can live in poverty as well and are in fact far more likely to be the victims of violence when doing so?

I'm aware. Does that dismissed the others? When you don't have anything to eat, or a roof upon your head, the least of your problem is knowing if other people see you as a man or a woman.

Hecaton wrote:

 Void__Dragon wrote:
You already have my son.

When you want to act your age and stop making comments like this I'll bother responding to your points. Given that you don't even own minis your opinion isn't particularly relevant, anyway.

I accept your concession.

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:

Isn't that basically the Sisters of Silence though? Both they and Custodes form the Talons of the Emperor, do they not?
I always considered SoS to be to Custodes what SoB are to Marines.

They're very different, thematically. If SoS were more of their own thing I'd make an army of them. Sororitas are their own thing, wield political power in the setting, etc. Whereas the Sisters of Silence, as per the Custodes codex, are presented as emphatically *lesser* than the Custodes (and not just in terms of personal prowess).