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 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Again that’s a bit of a strawman, and to be fair I think you presented it with tongue in cheek.

But GW has shown us gender just doesn’t seem to be a concern for recruitment into the Imperial War Machine, with specific exceptions for the Sororitas and Astartes who have unique recruitment restrictions.

Again; I don't think that anybody has made the claim that the Imperium cares about gender specifically when recruiting.

HOWEVER, that being the case doesn't necessarily mean that any particular ratio of male/female will be present in the Guard.

For example, the Imperium - as far as we know doesn't care about the gender of recruits to the Tempestus Scions. HOWEVER, we might well expect Scion regiments to be almost exclusively male due to most potential female recruits being taken by the Schola Progenia for induction into the Adepta Sororitas instead (where their gender does matter).
This conclusion would also seem to be supported by the artwork, models, and background.

No people in this thread have been very explicit that in their opinion the Imperium doesn't recruit women en masse despite lots of evidence to the contrary.

Which is an argument I myself made, informed by Cain’s rather disdainful opinion of Stormtroopers. He describes them as the meatheads of the Schola Progenium, the headbangers not terribly well suited elsewhere.

As you say, the Sororitas essentially have First Dibs on any girls in the Schola system, and thanks to super faith indoctrination, I suspect it’s a relatively rare sort that’s the sort of head case not to be selected.

Other than that? We’re left with no sources whatsoever presenting female Imperial Guard as being anything remarkable.

The arguments presented for women being an automatic minority aren’t really relevant to the background, or supported anywhere in it. Rather it’s “but right now X% are women, therefore X% is what it is in 40K”.

In summary?

1. There are no in-universe sources suggesting that woman at arms are in anyway remarkable or uncommon, or a particular minority.

2. However, there are elements of the overall military of The Imperium which, for in-universe reasons, may have a low percentage of women in them. And those reasons are nothing to do with modern military recruitment practices.

3. That being said, the Galaxy is a big place. And generally The Imperium leaves each constituent planet to pursue its Tithe as the Governor sees fit. So there may well be Regiments which do not recruit women at all. Just as there may well be Regiments which do not recruit men at all. So if you as a player, for whatever reason, want a single sex army? Go for it.

 Gert wrote:
No people in this thread have been very explicit that in their opinion the Imperium doesn't recruit women en masse despite lots of evidence to the contrary.

No, nobody has said that. Being recruited at a 30% ratio to men would still qualify as being recruited en-masse. And the reason it would be lower compared to men would be because of many women choosing of their own free will to not join, as happens IRL and we must assume will continue to happen in 40k because there is NO EVIDENCE THIS HAS/WILL HAVE CHANGED. Wishful thinking on your part aside.

Even in a setting where conscription is going to account for a lot of the recruits, the quotas for each planet will be taken from volunteers first. And since IRL trends suggest something innate with women choosing to not volunteer, the volunteer ranks of the Imperium will have a lower ratio of women to men. And since the Imperium has no interest in equity or any gender quotas they're not going to fill the gap with conscripts.

So even if conscripts in the Imperium are purely 50-50(which I have already shown earlier in the thread is highly unlikely but we'll go with it to humor you), the volunteer portion of the AM will dilute that.

The Imperium isn't going to specifically recruit women, nor will they be discouraging their recruitment. However the local governments and behaviors of the normal citizens will cause the numbers to naturally skew.

You keep assuming that culture, which has changed massively especially in regards to women in the past decade and century alone, will be the same in 38,000 years across thousands of different planets.
Why?

A question that must be considered is: If a certain human world allows and encourages women to go to war,then who will give birth to offspring? Who will raise the offspring?

For a human group, the number of fertile women determines the growth rate of its population and even the entire future - and women going to the battlefield means a catastrophic loss of fertile women. They should have stayed in the safer rear to give birth and take care of children for future generations of soldiers, leave the work of going to war to men---------not only are they stronger, they are also more expendable. Even if just only one man survives in war, it is enough to ensure the continuation of his group/clan/world, and you know why.

If a world has a large number of female soldiers, then there is no doubt that they are all mass-produced by unnatural means ---------they should not born from their mothers' wombs,but giant artifical wombs . They would be female versions of the Krieg Death korps, they may even more radical, modified at the genetic level to make them stronger,they would look indistinguishable from normal men and even manly-looking than normal men, until the loss of their pants,never been attractive,but horrific and weird.

Altima wrote:

 AldarionTelcontar wrote:
OK, sorry for the late reply, but was busy IRL...


Sure. But you cannot just say "it should be so". You should also explain WHY.

"Inequality" didn't spring from nowhere. So if you want to remove it, you need to adress the root causes.

I'd argue your own logic back at you, since it's been repeatedly shown that within the context of the Imperium in 40k, the gender norms you reference simply don't exist. Women are found in all areas of the Imperium, including in front line combat positions. They're so ubiquitous in the guard that the only lip service that's paid to gender is simply that mixed gender regiments are not that typical, though do exist enough to not be a freak occurrence.

It's even noted in the Gaunt novels that the (all female) Sororitas initiates tended to be the physically dominating jock types and would routinely pound the other recruits into the ground during training and sports.

 AldarionTelcontar wrote:


No, but so long as baseline humans in Imperium are assumed to not be mutants compared to modern-day humans, majority of IG will be men.

Except as stated before, women are in the Guard in such a degree that it's not even remarked upon. It's only some people seeing the stated fact that female only regiments exist, men only regiments exist, mixed regiments are atypical but not unheard of come in with out-of-game reasoning why the female regiments must of course be in the vast minority that supports your stance.

If that is true, then where did this topic even come from?

 AldarionTelcontar wrote:


Most of science fiction is basically a portion of reality blown up to massive proportions and with better tech. That's it.

And could you accept that somewhere in 30,000+ years of advancement, some of that technology could render the physical differences between men and women pointless in an essentially endless galactic armed conflict?

Yes. Thing is, the only tech that could (genetic engineering) has to be basically headcanoned in, as I do not recall any explicit statements that Imperium is using it en masse for IG recruits.

 AldarionTelcontar wrote:


Now this actually is a good argument. IIRC, Starship Troopers has women serve as starship crews.

But complete equality can only exist in a society of genderless clones.

The Imperium does not have equality nor does it have equity, but has been shown again and again, gender is not the typical gatekeeping, unless it's Astartes (which has its own in and out universe ...discussions) or Sororitas. Or I guess Sisters of Silence.

Right.

 AldarionTelcontar wrote:


1) True. But as I have pointed out, Imperial Guard takes IIRC top 10% or so of recruits from any given world. This means that standards of IG recruitment from said world will be based on said world's standards, thus making any differences between the worlds irrelevant for the purposes of recruitment.

This sounds suspiciously made up. Why would the Imperial Guard recruitment standards vary from world to world? Are low grav worlders never going to be deployed to earth standard or higher G? Are corrupt officials never going to take the opportunity to curry or call in favors or rid themselves of undesirables?

Because having equal standards for everybody means that Imperial Guard would have to come up with standards, test ALL potential recruits for these standards, select the best recruits from those tested... and do it all on its own. Doing that would be just insane. Especially since we see that different worlds have different fighting styles and cultures, and those then translate into the way Imperial Guard regiments fight. And the existence of different fighting styles and world-based specializations means two things. First, applying same standards for a Tanith scout and a Catachan Jungle Fighter would be flat-out insane. Second, it is the proof positive that the sort of standardization I had described previously does not actually exist in the Imperial Guard.

 AldarionTelcontar wrote:

2) I was talking about Imperial Guard recruitment, which is also the topic of the thread.

Whether world is in the state of the total war or not doesn't matter for the IG. Of course, if the world is in the state of total war for survival, then they will recruit everybody they can get hands on, every warm body, men, women, even cripples... into the PDF.

Not the Guard.

You misunderstand. It's the Imperium itself that is in a state of near Total War. Most of its industrial output is dedicated to the war effort, and the only thing preventing it from throwing more bodies at the problem is that the Imperium can't physically move enough troops at a time. The Imperium can't even stop to reorganize itself which would improve the efficiency of the Guard alone by at least 50% because it is at constant war all over.

And then when an actual world comes under serious threat, then yes, every civilian that can be found and armed will be conscripted into the PDF or militia or what-have-you.

I do not misunderstand. Just this fact:
"Imperium can't physically move enough troops at a time"

means that Imperial Guard cannot afford to NOT be selective about who they are letting in. And in the fluff, we repeatedly see that Imperial Guard is in fact elite formation compared to the Planetary Defense Forces.

 AldarionTelcontar wrote:

3) I do not recall such enhancements being implied to being used en masse.

Which is not to say that they couldn't. I recall in older fluff, Inquisitorial Stormtroopers and Kasrkins had some genemodding going on. And then there's the Black Lucifers.

If we go that way, we might end up with "not to say that the Emperor cannot use the galaxy as a giant shuriken to slice the Chaos Gods into pieces".

 AldarionTelcontar wrote:

4) That is politicking, not fighting...

No, House Escher fu...ights.

LOL.

 AldarionTelcontar wrote:


Yes, I do believe no one ever bothered outside the Space Marines. As I said, I do not recall any evidence of large scale usage of genetic enhancement in the Imperium. And enhancement they do use in Space Marines apparently depends on candidate's biological and hormonal makeup, making it unviable for women.

You're factually incorrect on that one. The Custodes for one. Lucifer Blacks for another. Hell, in the second Horus Heresy novel, there was a noble house's retainer that got in good with Horus, and he was given genetreatment. While he was too old to be converted to an Astartes, but he was definitely no longer purely human.

And it's likely that large scale gene-modding of a population wouldn't be happening under the Imperium for three good reasons: the Imperium has a thing against mutants, it would require heavy resource investment, and all the modifications would normally be done before you plop people onto a planet so the biggest offenders would've been done during humanity's height at the dark age of technology.

And it should be noted that for Astartes, real life biologists have commented on GW's reasoning being total bunk, but we as the players have to accept it because that's what GW says (until they inevitably change or expand the fluff), much like they've said that women in the guard and the rest of the Imperium's military are pretty typical, no matter what modern day hang-ups players may have.

Uh, Custodians are basically super-Marines. Except their genetic modification is noted as being far more difficult and impossible to apply at large scale, with each Custodian being a hand-crafted piece of artwork, genetically. And if you need to get in good with a Warmaster to be given gene treatment, that is hardly proof of said treatment being widely available.

 AldarionTelcontar wrote:

And no, I have not "ignored the influence of gravity, of growing up in different environments, and the effect of the Imperium's effectively on-going total war stance, and the fact that they've just too big and bureaucratic to make any efficiency changes.".

Let me explain... again:
1) Influence of gravity does not matter, because recruiting standards will vary from world to world. In other words, you won't have an Ogryn or a Catachan being compared to a Tanith. Rather, any comparison and differentiation will be done on the world itself. Guard merely takes the best 10% from the world, but what exactly constitutes the "best 10%" depends on the world itself.

Why wouldn't they be compared? Any guard regiment from any world could be deployed to any other world. It would make sense to have at least a standard base, even if the Imperium weren't a bureaucratic hellhole. Hell, your own examples undermine your stance--Ogryns aren't raised as regiments, they're used as very specific auxiliaries because they can't function as regular guardsmen.

Because we see in the lore that Imperial Guard regiments are not, in fact, standardized. Rather, their way of fighting and equipment depends heavily on the culture and characteristics of the world they hail from.

If they truly were "comparing" people from different worlds - that is, having standardized recruitment standards - then we would likely see evidence of this in large amount of overall standardization of the Imperial Guard itself. But we see no such evidence, other than the fact that some 90% of the regiments copy aesthetics (and only aesthetics) of Cadian regiments.

Also, just because bureaucracy screws up doesn't mean IG doesn't try to use regiments in environments suitable for them.

 AldarionTelcontar wrote:

3) Total war stance doesn't matter, because Imperium is by its very nature incapable of being in a "total war stance" by World War 2 standards. Imperial Guard recruits through tithe, which if we take a traditional definition means that they take the best 10% of recruits from a world. Again, this argument would make sense if we were discussing a Planetary Defense Force... for PDF it may make sense to have a 50-50 split. Not so much for the Guard.

The Imperium is as close to being in a total war stance as they possibly could be. The only reasons they aren't closer to your WW2 standards is that they don't have enough industrial lift to throw more bodies at the existing conflicts and they can't physically get at most of their enemies--Chaos hides, usually in the warp where the Imperium is not just going to stroll into; Eldar are on their craftworlds or in the webways; tyranids float from system to system; Necrons are asleep, all over, and have the technology to hide.

And that is the key point: as they possibly could be. But with Age-of-Sail-like travel, not very reliable communication and overall decentralization... there are limits to how much mobilization Imperium can carry out.

 AldarionTelcontar wrote:


I am not discussing "sensibilities" here but reality. And reality is that men make better soldiers than women for purely biological reasons. Which then means that if you want to deviate from reality, you need to provide an explanation (at least in sci-fi).

I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume when you say 'better soldiers', you mean 'better frontline infantry combatants.' Because many women have distinguished themselves with their service. The US has senator that was in the armed services, and some extra bits between her thighs would not have prevented her from losing both legs after her Black Hawk was shot down by enemy fire in Iraq.

And the explanations have already been given. And, frankly, GW says so, so you don't really have a leg to stand on.

I was talking about frontline combatants the entire time. Hardly a need for disclaimer.

 AldarionTelcontar wrote:

But explanation in 40k is a) lacking and b) would be difficult to provide in the first place considering the state of the setting. Unless you went the route of rewriting the entire background to include pre-40k humanity genetically modifying its entire human population.

You're literally ignoring fluff and reasoning to impose your own view on a part of the setting GW has already put to rest, just so you can say that women don't make up a significant portion of combat units in the Astra Militarum.

What fluff?

 AldarionTelcontar wrote:

Science fiction too is largely based on the real world, because it typically a) features actual humans and b) is based on writer's own experiences.

I can't wait to read the part in Abnett's biography when he goes to another planet to shoot lasers at magical space demons.

That argument is dumb.

Imperium of Man is basically Roman-Empire-turned-Holy-Roman-Empire-IN-SPEHSS!
Lasgun is literally an assault rifle in terms of functionality.
Most Imperial Guard regiments are direct copies of various historical units.

And even ignoring that... imagination needs material to work with. Raw data comes in, results come out.

 AldarionTelcontar wrote:


Notice the "inherently".

Yes, some humans there are superhuman - just as there are some superhumans in the Imperium. But baseline human is still a baseline human. And when they are superhuman, that is always *explicitly* noted.

Gaunt fought at actual superhuman with hundreds or thousands of years of experience and was specifically noted to be more or less your average human. Perhaps a somewhat gifted duelist, but if you ask Ciaphas Cain what a gifted duelist can do against an average Astartes and the answer is "you can scratch their armor--once--if they're bored and underestimate you."

So even baseline humans may not be as baseline as you'd think.

Maybe. But considering how most other showings don't imply anything of the sort...

 AldarionTelcontar wrote:

Even if Imperium did provide such details, they probably wouldn't send out exact physical fitness standards or anything like it. They'd just say "best 10%", which brings us back to what I have been saying.

They can say send me your best, but unless the world prides itself on the regiments it sends--like the Cadians, Kriegsmen, etc.--who's going to know if they send their best 10% or not? Even Tanis, when it was mustering its three regiments as a point of pride, took the opportunity to get rid of some less than desirable members of the population.

While that is an argument for why it might be a good idea for Imperium to provide recruitment standards, it is actually an evidence against the idea that Imperium actually does check the recruits beforehand.

Of course, world still needs to be careful, because if regiments recruited consistently underperform, somebody might come to check.

 AldarionTelcontar wrote:


OK, I may have used the wrong term... but what I was talking about is basically the distribution curve.

To quote Wikipedia:
"The law of averages is the commonly held belief that a particular outcome or event will, over certain periods of time, occur at a frequency that is similar to its probability."

So what you said would be only true if Warhammer 40k men and women were demonstrably equal in every single characteristic.

But let's take the height... if we assume the US military's WW2 60'' minimum height requirement, and take these graphs:
https://matthewmazur.files.wordpress.com/2014/10/two-curves.png
https://qph.cf2.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-426a04d914f4c61347f224fa76f9d3c8.webp

You would lose some 5-10 times more women than men, just due to the height requirement.

It depends on the characteristics being measured, which is why it's likely that the Imperium has a generic standard for what's considered an acceptable guardsmen.

Which from what we've seen in the books that do feature female guardsmen fighting alongside male guardsman, doesn't seem to be particularly stringent. There's no mention of the female guardsmen of the Tanith struggling with the equipment once they become a mixed regiment--the only mention is that there's a low burn resentment that the newcomers don't have the Tanith made equipment that the original troops do. There's also no mention of any likewise issues with the regiment Cain usually serves with.

So there's evidence right there that there's not anything your typical woman in the guard can't handle that their male counterparts can't. And those two regiments are fighting regiments too, so you can't just say that they were garrison regiments with more lax recruitment standards. Hell, the only reason the regiment Cain typically serves with even is integrated in the first place is that an all-male and all-female regiment were both mangled to half strength and combined by the Munitorum.

And using data from WW2 might not be as effective as you think since, at least in the US, they were able to be picky enough at the beginning to relegate (male) African Americans to support roles--which would be where most females in the military would traditionally be assigned in the modern US armed forces--because of entirely constructed social reasons, which didn't stop the people at the time attributing it to such ridiculousness as black people not having good enough night vision.

Having a generic standard however would imply Imperium is capable of enforcing said standard. Which is an idea that clashes with the way Imperial bureaucracy is generally portrayed.

More likely is what I have noted: there is no Imperium-wide standard, they just send out recruitment requests.

And of course there is "evidence right there that there's not anything your typical woman in the guard can't handle that their male counterparts can't" - just the fact that they are in the guard means they had passed whatever the physical tests are required by their regiments.

Also, I literally only used World War 2 height requirement as an illustrative example of what happens when you use equal standards for all recruits. So while that factoid is interesting, it is also irrelevant for the point I have been making.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Which is an argument I myself made, informed by Cain’s rather disdainful opinion of Stormtroopers. He describes them as the meatheads of the Schola Progenium, the headbangers not terribly well suited elsewhere.

This kind of thing is helpful to contextualize. What book and when?

Remember that Stormtroopers have gone from being one thing(Imperial war-orphans raised in the Schola Progenium) into something more entirely. There's a lot that goes into the Tempestus Scions lore, and Cain's...uhhhh...special-ish view on things is daft.

WWW-STL wrote:
A question that must be considered is: If a certain human world allows and encourages women to go to war,then who will give birth to offspring? Who will raise the offspring?

For a human group, the number of fertile women determines the growth rate of its population and even the entire future - and women going to the battlefield means a catastrophic loss of fertile women. They should have stayed in the safer rear to give birth and take care of children for future generations of soldiers, leave the work of going to war to men---------not only are they stronger, they are also more expendable. Even if just only one man survives in war, it is enough to ensure the continuation of his group/clan/world, and you know why.

If a world has a large number of female soldiers, then there is no doubt that they are all mass-produced by unnatural means ---------they should not born from their mothers' wombs,but giant artifical wombs . They would be female versions of the Krieg Death korps, they may even more radical, modified at the genetic level to make them stronger,they would look indistinguishable from normal men and even manly-looking than normal men, until the loss of their pants,never been attractive,but horrific and weird.

Cloning is not unheard of. Vat grown is not unheard of. Artificial wombs…are not unheard of.

Now I’m not going to claim “if world X has tech Y, therefore all Imperial Worlds have tech Y”.

But let’s delve into the foetid mind of an incel, and revisit my deliberate Horror Post from a few pages back. Let’s consider a truly horrific world exists within The Imperium. Where women are only valued for their ability to pop out a Sprog once every 9 or so months. According to the mindless mindset of the incel? FeMaLeS are only good for popping out sprogs for a very limited time period. On account I don’t want to risk anyone throwing up, I won’t list any of the age ranges I’ve seen suggested. Now. On this Horror World? Let’s say there’s a cultural thing where girls and women in a certain age range are forced to conceive. Needn’t involve a Gentleman’s Rude Bits. Just a collection of population paste, possibly even gene and disease screened to ensure the resulting children are hale and healthy. On this world, where women are solely valued whilst of child bearing age, those arbitrarily declared past it by the bloke with the mankiest neckbeard are then trained up as soldiers and packed off planet to a war zone, as they’ve already provided the only thing that society otherwise demands of them - more idiot smelly hoomans.

Horrific sexist planetary culture, still potentially providing a huge number of women recruits for the Guard.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Also, no planet recruits its entire population of a given age range into the Guard. None of them.

A Hive World could offer up a Billion Guardsmen every year, and still not even put a dent in its teaming masses.

 JNAProductions wrote:
You keep assuming that culture, which has changed massively especially in regards to women in the past decade and century alone, will be the same in 38,000 years across thousands of different planets.
Why?

Because we've plateaued. The end state for those things has been achieved, and the rate of change will rapidly diminish to an equilibrium in the next few decades.

And since mankind has not moved past the biological reality we have today, to assume that men and women have changed dramatically enough to have their basic behaviors altered away from what we see today is egregious speculation.

I assume that what exists today is the median. A baseline around which individual human cultures will orbit, fluctuating in one way or the other but always returning to the baseline over thousands of years because culture isn't a continuous change forward, its more of a pendulum.

Lord Damocles wrote:

 Sgt_Smudge wrote:

Lord Damocles wrote:

 Sgt_Smudge wrote:
stuff

Essentially you seem to have said 'Look at what we're shown, but assume that anything which doesn't support my conclusion was supposed to support my conclusion, therefore I'm right'.

And that's different from you how?

The interaction has gone like this:

You: 'We should look at what GW has SHOWN us'
Me: 'But what GW has shown us is overwhelmingly male'
You: 'Well you should ignore that. What we're shown isn't indicative of the background'

Again, taking what I said WAY out of position there, to suit your argument. I didn't say "ignore it". I said "consider when it was made, and consider the socio-political environment of that time".

That fact you're being so defensive about that, and that you're saying that it's tantamount to "ignoring" is because you know what it means, in realistic terms. You know that it means that the minis and artwork wasn't always reflective of GW's intent, and you're trying to dance around that point.

I'm not saying to ignore it. I'm saying to acknowledge it, but also to remember the environment those minis and art was made in, and how that might have affected what was depicted.

Is that unreasonable?

 Sgt_Smudge wrote:
But, if apparently one black Catachan is an indication that the Imperium recruits black guys, then this one model should also indicate that the Imperium also recruits women.

Right?

Literally nobody has argued that the Imperium doesn't recruit women.

Yet you didn't address my point about how, if we're to take art and minis at face value - like you claim - then there should hardly be any black men in the Imperial Guard either.

You made that point, not me. I'm just holding you to the standard you set for your own point.

I'm pushing back against the (latest) flimsy argument that we should come to a conclusion based on what the art/models/fiction shows us, when what we're shown doesn't actually support the conclusion which it's being claimed(/implied) that it does.

How is it a flimsy argument to then say "hang on, these minis and artwork were made at a time when the designers probably weren't too fussed about actually representing the universe described in the attached lore", and asking people to acknowledge that fact. Is that a problem?

Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:Add in GW moving toward better representation and variety in the models and novels is a relatively recent thing (like, past decade maybe?) and the “but this art from 20+ years ago am a Sosig fest therefore Guard is Sosig fest” just isn’t a strong argument I’m afraid.

Exactly. Now, if someone wants to claim "OH NOES GW HAS GONE WOKE BECAUSE THEY'RE SHOWING REPRESENTATION NOW!!!", then they'd at least be acknowledging that GW's minis are not made in a socio-political void, but do at least somewhat reflect the artists producing them.

They'd still be laughable, but they'd be acknowledging the mutability of GW's presentation of things.

Lord Damocles wrote:Which is great, but the claim which I was responding to from Smudge was literally that we should look at what we've been shown by GW - which in terms of the background has been predominantly male Guard. I'm illustrating that that is a bad argument! You agree with me!

And also while ignoring what I've been saying about ALSO considering when that material was made, and the relevancy of it in a modern setting - you know, in an actually academic fashion?

Meanwhile I'm just here poking dumb arguments with a stick.

Does that include your own, such as your refusal to engage with the argument you presented about how one black Catachan means that the Imperial Guard wasn't predominantly white? Or was that just an argument in bad faith?

Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:But GW has shown us gender just doesn’t seem to be a concern for recruitment into the Imperial War Machine, with specific exceptions for the Sororitas and Astartes who have unique recruitment restrictions.

Guard, Inquisiton, Navy, Titan Legions and Knight Houses, not to mention private armed forces such as those run by a Rogue Trader? No trace of such at all.


Indeed there’s at least one Titan Legion noted to be comprised of entirely female crew, and has been that way since the Great Crusade.

Literally the only truth on the matter.

Grey Templar wrote:And the reason it would be lower compared to men would be because of many women choosing of their own free will to not join, as happens IRL and we must assume will continue to happen in 40k because there is NO EVIDENCE THIS HAS/WILL HAVE CHANGED.

Here's the evidence that it has/will change - 200 years ago, the idea of women fighting was nearly impossible. Look at today now.

And you don't think that in 38000 years, that might change? Sounds like wishful thinking on your part there, chief. Even IF we're to believe that your theory holds water, if we take the trend of women being increasingly involved in combat operations and extrapolate (as you yourself are doing regarding IRL cultures), then in 38000 years' time, I'm sure we'd see far more than the 30% even you describe.

Also, waiting for GreyTemplar to clarify if they, or the reddit post I linked to, is lying about the Cadian sprue having at least 10 femme presenting heads on it.

And since IRL trends suggest something innate with women choosing to not volunteer

no, they don't, because you haven't been able to determine if it is cultural or biological factors - because, unfortunately, we are still raised in a society which imposes cultural effects and beliefs, which alter the choices people make. And until you create a culture that is *truly* so devoid of those pressures (which many would deem to be impossible), you can't prove it is innately biological.

WWW-STL wrote:A question that must be considered is: If a certain human world allows and encourages women to go to war,then who will give birth to offspring? Who will raise the offspring?

I'm gonna stop this argument right there with: is that what you're defining the role of women to be relegated to? Birthing and rearing offspring?

I don't deny that at least one world in the Imperium has such a backwards view, but, I hasten to say, *we have no evidence that this is a mainstream opinion in 40k, and plenty to suggest it is not*.



Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Grey Templar wrote:

 JNAProductions wrote:
You keep assuming that culture, which has changed massively especially in regards to women in the past decade and century alone, will be the same in 38,000 years across thousands of different planets.
Why?

Because we've plateaued.

Gods, I wish you could be there when you get proven wrong.

 Grey Templar wrote:

 Gert wrote:
No people in this thread have been very explicit that in their opinion the Imperium doesn't recruit women en masse despite lots of evidence to the contrary.

No, nobody has said that. Being recruited at a 30% ratio to men would still qualify as being recruited en-masse.

This is true. I don't think I've seen anyone proposing that guardswomen are rare in the extreme. I disagree with pretty much everything Grey Templar has said in this thread, but I'll confirm this much for the sake of the discussion.

And the reason it would be lower compared to men would be because of many women choosing of their own free will to not join, as happens IRL and we must assume will continue to happen in 40k because there is NO EVIDENCE THIS HAS/WILL HAVE CHANGED. Wishful thinking on your part aside.

You keep saying this, but you also keep refusing to address the arguments made against this stance. And you sound a little less credible every time.

Even in a setting where conscription is going to account for a lot of the recruits, the quotas for each planet will be taken from volunteers first. And since IRL trends suggest something innate with women choosing to not volunteer, the volunteer ranks of the Imperium will have a lower ratio of women to men. And since the Imperium has no interest in equity or any gender quotas they're not going to fill the gap with conscripts.

So even if conscripts in the Imperium are purely 50-50(which I have already shown earlier in the thread is highly unlikely but we'll go with it to humor you), the volunteer portion of the AM will dilute that.

The Imperium isn't going to specifically recruit women, nor will they be discouraging their recruitment. However the local governments and behaviors of the normal citizens will cause the numbers to naturally skew.

Let's clarify exactly what you mean about this whole "something innate" thing. Are you taking the stance that there is something biological that makes women volunteer for millitary service less often than men? If so, what exactly do you think that is? Or, if you want to take the stance that it's something mysterious and unknowable, *why* do you think it's biological? Because something like that *really* seems more like a cultural factor.

Alternatively, if you think the "something innate" is cultural in nature, why do you think that the imperium, a radically different culture, would have extremely similar cultural stessors preventing more women from volunteering given that everything we know about the setting seems to suggest the imperium would be pressuring both men and women to volunteer?

Because after several pages of talking in circles, it really feels like you're going, "Women have the booby gene! The booby gene makes women allergic to army registration forms. No one knows why, but it's definitely for reasons that can't possibly have changed at any point in 38,000 years." Or put another way, it seems like you're really uncomfortable with the idea that women might be both equally willing to serve in the military and perfectly capable of doing so.

Quick reminder for clarity: I'm not asserting that there's a 50/50 split between men and women in the guard. I'm saying that your arguments for a 30/70 split smell rotten.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:

WWW-STL wrote:
A question that must be considered is: If a certain human world allows and encourages women to go to war,then who will give birth to offspring? Who will raise the offspring?

For a human group, the number of fertile women determines the growth rate of its population and even the entire future - and women going to the battlefield means a catastrophic loss of fertile women. They should have stayed in the safer rear to give birth and take care of children for future generations of soldiers, leave the work of going to war to men---------not only are they stronger, they are also more expendable. Even if just only one man survives in war, it is enough to ensure the continuation of his group/clan/world, and you know why.

If a world has a large number of female soldiers, then there is no doubt that they are all mass-produced by unnatural means ---------they should not born from their mothers' wombs,but giant artifical wombs . They would be female versions of the Krieg Death korps, they may even more radical, modified at the genetic level to make them stronger,they would look indistinguishable from normal men and even manly-looking than normal men, until the loss of their pants,never been attractive,but horrific and weird.

Cloning is not unheard of. Vat grown is not unheard of. Artificial wombs…are not unheard of.

Now I’m not going to claim “if world X has tech Y, therefore all Imperial Worlds have tech Y”.

But let’s delve into the foetid mind of an incel, and revisit my deliberate Horror Post from a few pages back. Let’s consider a truly horrific world exists within The Imperium. Where women are only valued for their ability to pop out a Sprog once every 9 or so months. According to the mindless mindset of the incel? FeMaLeS are only good for popping out sprogs for a very limited time period. On account I don’t want to risk anyone throwing up, I won’t list any of the age ranges I’ve seen suggested. Now. On this Horror World? Let’s say there’s a cultural thing where girls and women in a certain age range are forced to conceive. Needn’t involve a Gentleman’s Rude Bits. Just a collection of population paste, possibly even gene and disease screened to ensure the resulting children are hale and healthy. On this world, where women are solely valued whilst of child bearing age, those arbitrarily declared past it by the bloke with the mankiest neckbeard are then trained up as soldiers and packed off planet to a war zone, as they’ve already provided the only thing that society otherwise demands of them - more idiot smelly hoomans.

Horrific sexist planetary culture, still potentially providing a huge number of women recruits for the Guard.

You know what happens on that planet?

The governor gets shot and the culture gets uprooted. Why? Because the planet is providing an unacceptable ratio of regiments solely consisting of older recruits(these women past childbearing age) who are unfit for duty. It is a waste of the Emperor's resources to transport, train, and feed these regiments into the meat grinder. By the time a women is past childbearing age(40ish) she would definitely be physically degraded past a useful point for Imperial Guard service. And since such a planet would have a high reproduction rate due to forced birth and conception, there is no reason not to only accept younger recruits. The planet would rapidly have a glut of women too, not just men.

Instead, the planet would keep only enough men and women to replace the "farms". Extras would be sent to the IG. Which would still result in a ratio of more men then women joining up.

Anybody who "ages out" of the breeding farms would be either be allowed to retire or more "grimdarkly" be liquidated.

The Adeptus Munitorum is not going to listen to arguments that these older recruits are "still useful" or whatever. Why give good lasguns and flak armor to a bunch of 40ish year olds when you can get people in their teens and 20s everywhere? Such a planet would be liquidated for wasting the Emperor's resources.

Not when as some particularly weird men (not on this thread, to head off any controversy) on the internet claim the ideal child bearing age is 14-20.

Across those 6 years? Each woman could pop out four sprogs.

 Wyldhunt wrote:


Let's clarify exactly what you mean about this whole "something innate" thing. Are you taking the stance that there is something biological that makes women volunteer for millitary service less often than men? If so, what exactly do you think that is? Or, if you want to take the stance that it's something mysterious and unknowable, *why* do you think it's biological? Because something like that *really* seems more like a cultural factor.

Alternatively, if you think the "something innate" is cultural in nature, why do you think that the imperium, a radically different culture, would have extremely similar cultural stessors preventing more women from volunteering given that everything we know about the setting seems to suggest the imperium would be pressuring both men and women to volunteer?

Because after several pages of talking in circles, it really feels like you're going, "Women have the booby gene! The booby gene makes women allergic to army registration forms. No one knows why, but it's definitely for reasons that can't possibly have changed at any point in 38,000 years." Or put another way, it seems like you're really uncomfortable with the idea that women might be both equally willing to serve in the military and perfectly capable of doing so.

Quick reminder for clarity: I'm not asserting that there's a 50/50 split between men and women in the guard. I'm saying that your arguments for a 30/70 split smell rotten.

I'm saying its "something innate" because nobody has been able to find out what it is exactly. People in the real world have been trying to find out why women don't volunteer at even close to the same rates men do, and they have failed to find anything specific.

I say it can't be solely cultural in the IRL world, because this trend exists across many different countries with radically different cultures. Or at least, it is a cultural trend influenced by something that exists in every culture. My hyopthesis is that it is likely due to biology influencing culture, which would be one of the only common threads between cultures on Earth.

I am not uncomfortable with women volunteering at the same rates as men. I am saying that such a situation does not exist. It does not exist IRL, and I see no reason it would exist in 40k. Since we don't know why these phenomenon exists, we can't say that it has gone away in 40k. Thus, since we have a lack of evidence that this rather major behavioral shift has happened we can't assume it has.

Maybe you should explain why you are uncomfortable with 30/70?

So why do we have thousands of times more women in the military than we did in 1924?
Did female biology change radically in the past hundred years?

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Not when as some particularly weird men (not on this thread, to head off any controversy) on the internet claim the ideal child bearing age is 14-20.

Across those 6 years? Each woman could pop out four sprogs.

In the event that was the age range, the world would have difficulty maintaining its population due to very high maternal mortality.

Such wasting of the Emperor's resources would be dealt with harshly.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 JNAProductions wrote:
So why do we have thousands of times more women in the military than we did in 1924?
Did female biology change radically in the past hundred years?

No. We just began allowing them to join. But even with incentives, they still just don't join up in the same numbers as men.

Obviously, it has something to do with them being women. And unless you can identify what specifically makes them (not) do that and prove that has gone away in 40k we cannot assume that it has.

Or cultural factors. Women might have the same legal ability to join the military, but when the culture for decades was “Women stay home, men fight in wars,” there’s cultural inertia with that.
Even today, there’s still stereotypes and cultural forces that make it less likely for women to join the military than men.

 Grey Templar wrote:

 Wyldhunt wrote:


Let's clarify exactly what you mean about this whole "something innate" thing. Are you taking the stance that there is something biological that makes women volunteer for millitary service less often than men? If so, what exactly do you think that is? Or, if you want to take the stance that it's something mysterious and unknowable, *why* do you think it's biological? Because something like that *really* seems more like a cultural factor.

Alternatively, if you think the "something innate" is cultural in nature, why do you think that the imperium, a radically different culture, would have extremely similar cultural stessors preventing more women from volunteering given that everything we know about the setting seems to suggest the imperium would be pressuring both men and women to volunteer?

Because after several pages of talking in circles, it really feels like you're going, "Women have the booby gene! The booby gene makes women allergic to army registration forms. No one knows why, but it's definitely for reasons that can't possibly have changed at any point in 38,000 years." Or put another way, it seems like you're really uncomfortable with the idea that women might be both equally willing to serve in the military and perfectly capable of doing so.

Quick reminder for clarity: I'm not asserting that there's a 50/50 split between men and women in the guard. I'm saying that your arguments for a 30/70 split smell rotten.

I'm saying its "something innate" because nobody has been able to find out what it is exactly. People in the real world have been trying to find out why women don't volunteer at even close to the same rates men do, and they have failed to find anything specific.

If I'm not wrong, most leading scientists, anthropologists and sociologists claim it to be predominantly *cultural*. Just because you don't agree with that doesn't really change the leading opinions.

I say it can't be solely cultural in the IRL world, because this trend exists across many different countries with radically different cultures. Or at least, it is a cultural trend influenced by something that exists in every culture. My hyopthesis is that it is likely due to biology influencing culture, which would be one of the only common threads between cultures on Earth.

However, note that this does not preclude a culture being created in which women are just as likely to feel compelled into military service, or any other occupation.

Do you deny that such a culture *could* exist?

I am not uncomfortable with women volunteering at the same rates as men. I am saying that such a situation does not exist. It does not exist IRL, and I see no reason it would exist in 40k.

And that is a stupid argument, because 40k is a work of fiction.

Since we don't know why these phenomenon exists, we can't say that it has gone away in 40k. Thus, since we have a lack of evidence that this rather major behavioral shift has happened we can't assume it has.

Evidence: women soldiers in 40k are never remarked upon as being unusual, or uncommon. We see cases of mono-gender regiments, including all-women regiments. We see no evidence either that modern recruitment culture has stayed the same for 38000 years.

Evidence is against you here, and that's why you fall back to the faulty "but IRL" card.

Maybe you should explain why you are uncomfortable with 30/70?

I'm not uncomfy with that, at face value. I'm uncomfy with your reasoning behind it, because it's pants-on-head lunacy.

Think it’s time for an all-round breather, because we don’t want to fall foul of the no-politics rule.

Yes, I very much include myself in that.

 Grey Templar wrote:

 JNAProductions wrote:
So why do we have thousands of times more women in the military than we did in 1924?
Did female biology change radically in the past hundred years?

No. We just began allowing them to join. But even with incentives, they still just don't join up in the same numbers as men.

Obviously, it has something to do with them being women. And unless you can identify what specifically makes them (not) do that and prove that has gone away in 40k we cannot assume that it has.

Or, and hear me out:

THERE ARE STILL MASSIVE CULTURAL INHIBITIONS AND PRESSURES AGAINST WOMEN VOLUNTEERING TO SERVE.

Are you so blind to that?

(also, STILL waiting for you to explain if it's either you or the reddit post lying about there being a full squad's worth of femme presenting heads in the new kit)

 JNAProductions wrote:
So why do we have thousands of times more women in the military than we did in 1924?
Did female biology change radically in the past hundred years?

Another reason to make women on the battlefield in large numbers is that some world has their own Space Marines-equivalent augmentation technology, and only women can be modified and survive (men will certainly die in this pocess).

But do the laws of the Imperium allow possession of Space Marines equivalent technology, rather than charging it as tech-heresy and exterminating such world? This is very possible.

 Grey Templar wrote:

 JNAProductions wrote:
You keep assuming that culture, which has changed massively especially in regards to women in the past decade and century alone, will be the same in 38,000 years across thousands of different planets.
Why?

Because we've plateaued. The end state for those things has been achieved, and the rate of change will rapidly diminish to an equilibrium in the next few decades.

And since mankind has not moved past the biological reality we have today, to assume that men and women have changed dramatically enough to have their basic behaviors altered away from what we see today is egregious speculation.

I assume that what exists today is the median. A baseline around which individual human cultures will orbit, fluctuating in one way or the other but always returning to the baseline over thousands of years because culture isn't a continuous change forward, its more of a pendulum.

Also, we most certainly have not plateaued.

Here in America, there’s been backsliding, on gay rights, women’s rights, and trans rights. Hell, trans rights have never been where they should be, so that alone shows room to get better.

Have you heard the tragedy of House Goliath The Wise?

 Sgt_Smudge wrote:

Maybe you should explain why you are uncomfortable with 30/70?

I'm not uncomfy with that, at face value. I'm uncomfy with your reasoning behind it, because it's pants-on-head lunacy.

This. If we actually had some evidence supporting a specific assertion of a 30/70 split, I'd shrug and say, "Guess that's the setting." Waaaay back in this thread I think I asserted a bare minimum of 20% to explain why women in the guard never seem to get remarked upon. My issue isn't that a 30/70 split could be the case. My issue is that you're asserting a pretty major gender gap, and the reasoning you're using to do so doesn't really hold up under scrutiny.

As Smudge and others have pointed out, there are still huge cultural pressures, even in countries where it's legal for women to serve, that are very likely responsible for the gender gap in military service in those countries. So it seems really weird for you to keep insisting that no one can possibly know why more men than women might serve. Like, you *are* aware that in America, at least, there's still a lot of stuff discouraging girls/women from engaging in traditionally masculine activities and professions, right? Can we at least agree on that much?

 JNAProductions wrote:
Or cultural factors. Women might have the same legal ability to join the military, but when the culture for decades was “Women stay home, men fight in wars,” there’s cultural inertia with that.
Even today, there’s still stereotypes and cultural forces that make it less likely for women to join the military than men.

This is not a cultural reason, but a simple fact of biology, economics, and logic. The so-called culture is nothing but a by-product of them.

under natural circumstances, only women can give birth to children, and it takes at least ten years for a child to become a combat and labor force. During this time, someone must take care of them---How can a human group that encourages women to join the military and compensate for the rapid loss of women population? They would have few and even no any descendants, and their enemies would benefit from more female captives. Such a human group would have no future.

this is the basic design of the human species as a mammal, winnowed out by natural selection over milion of years, and it determines our mindset and ideological tendencies. Of course there are alway some few exceptions - but they are just some rare individual,always a minority---------maybe in the distant future, some human worlds will be able to mass-produce female soldiers with giant artificial wombs, but even so, women will always be physically less suitable for combat than men, barring some radical genetic modification.

Again, please point me to any Imperial World where the whole of the population is recruited into the Guard?

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Again, please point me to any Imperial World where the whole of the population is recruited into the Guard?

Cadia, right?

Which would be a close to 50/50 split if the population mimics real-world population.
And, given that (at least to my knowledge) the population split between men and women has ALWAYS been close to 50/50, it seems a lot more likely that it’d still be that way in millennia than something like proportion of genders in the military.

 JNAProductions wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Again, please point me to any Imperial World where the whole of the population is recruited into the Guard?

Cadia, right?

Which would be a close to 50/50 split if the population mimics real-world population.
And, given that (at least to my knowledge) the population split between men and women has ALWAYS been close to 50/50, it seems a lot more likely that it’d still be that way in millennia than something like proportion of genders in the military.

Cadia's a weird example.

It's not 100% population recruited. It can't be; there's always the possibility of birth defects, mutations, etc. That's usually the folk who end up doing menial/logistics related things.

Before Cruddace's first crack at the Guard, Cadia was additionally unique in that they had no PDF. Instead, they featured the "Cadian Internal Guard" which was full-blooded Guard Regiments raised, trained, etc specifically to stay on Cadia. They ended up being some of the top recruits from Whiteshields...and were tied to the bloody Ordo Cadia.

Then...poof, gone as a concept.

 Grey Templar wrote:


The ratio in the current miniature box, if you only use a single box and don't glob multiple boxes together, has 1/3 of the heads being female.

I have the Cadia box, and enough female heads are included to make everyone female, if one were so inclined.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Which is an argument I myself made, informed by Cain’s rather disdainful opinion of Stormtroopers. He describes them as the meatheads of the Schola Progenium, the headbangers not terribly well suited elsewhere.

Was this the ice planet book? I think those guys he went down into the caves were drop-outs from the Inquisitorial Stormtrooper training, and the equivalent of kasrkins. From what I recall, the Schola Progenium mostly trained what the Imperium expected to be special forces, officers, etc. Though now thinking on it, not everyone would fit that bill since they apparently take anyone who had at least one parent who died in military service to the Imperium.

But still, the gender mix of the Schola Progenium probably has no relevance to the Astra Militarum's recruitment.

 Grey Templar wrote:


No, nobody has said that. Being recruited at a 30% ratio to men would still qualify as being recruited en-masse. And the reason it would be lower compared to men would be because of many women choosing of their own free will to not join, as happens IRL and we must assume will continue to happen in 40k because there is NO EVIDENCE THIS HAS/WILL HAVE CHANGED. Wishful thinking on your part aside.

What's funny is that you have no evidence, and GW has certainly not commented, to suggest that only 30% of the Astra Militarum is made up as women. The only comment that's been made is that the regiments are usually filled with one gender and that mixed units do exist but are atypical. And some people use their modern assumptions, to put it nicely, to say, still, "Well, that obviously means that there's still more boys in that there treehouse!"

And recruitment into the military has a lot of factors. In the US, recruitment percentages are way, way down compared to WW2, and they're not even as prejudiced to non-white males as they used to be. Military recruitment in the US is also one of the only ways to guarantee a social safety net in the form of free education, healthcare, and a stipend should you be returned to the civilian world damaged. And still, recruitment is down. A lot of that has to do with better economic opportunities or alternatives available, the reduced amount of propaganda the armed forces puts out, and the general popular opinion that you might not want to die in a desert generation war so rich a-holes can get richer.

And if you want further evidence of why women may shy away from military recruitment, there's also the whole thing that you're all but guaranteed to be sexually harrassed, assaulted, or outright raped, and there's a good chance your assaulters will never be punished for it. Would you want to join a profession where that was a likely outcome? Yeah, me either. And that's just by your own fellows--it's likely significantly worse if captured by the enemy.

But hey, if the Imperium started pumping out propaganda, and actually showed women in said propaganda, who's to say they wouldn't join in the same levels as their male counterparts? So there's evidence to your change.

 AldarionTelcontar wrote:

Because having equal standards for everybody means that Imperial Guard would have to come up with standards, test ALL potential recruits for these standards, select the best recruits from those tested... and do it all on its own. Doing that would be just insane. Especially since we see that different worlds have different fighting styles and cultures, and those then translate into the way Imperial Guard regiments fight. And the existence of different fighting styles and world-based specializations means two things. First, applying same standards for a Tanith scout and a Catachan Jungle Fighter would be flat-out insane. Second, it is the proof positive that the sort of standardization I had described previously does not actually exist in the Imperial Guard.

Except the Astra Militarum doesn't recruit individual recruits. A tithe is placed on a world, or the world of its own accord, and a regiment is drawn up. Tanith implies that the world even supplies the regiments with their gear (and Cadia's ubiquitous equipment implies that it can also be purchased if not locally manufactured). So yes, it does make sense for the Astra Militarum to have minimum requirements so worlds aren't just tossing out ten thousand senior citizens to fight orks off on a world they couldn't care less about.

And applying the same standard to a Tanith scout and Catachan fighter to, at a minimum, be able to hold, aim, and fire a lasgun makes fine. After all, I'm assuming your country's military would require their infantry to, at a minimum, be able to stand, walk, and run, regardless of age, gender, or ethnicity.

And the AM's minimum standards do not seem to care what bits one has or doesn't have between their legs.

 AldarionTelcontar wrote:

I do not misunderstand. Just this fact:
"Imperium can't physically move enough troops at a time"

means that Imperial Guard cannot afford to NOT be selective about who they are letting in. And in the fluff, we repeatedly see that Imperial Guard is in fact elite formation compared to the Planetary Defense Forces.

But that's exactly what they do, regardless of if they can afford it or not. That's the Imperium's thing. They can't stop to improve their military so they just throw more bodies at the problem because yes, it's so inefficient and pointlessly cruel, but they can't stop. Because they're in a state of total war. And if they stop, humanity gets some combination of eaten, annihilated, or enslaved.

 AldarionTelcontar wrote:

Uh, Custodians are basically super-Marines. Except their genetic modification is noted as being far more difficult and impossible to apply at large scale, with each Custodian being a hand-crafted piece of artwork, genetically. And if you need to get in good with a Warmaster to be given gene treatment, that is hardly proof of said treatment being widely available.

They're leftover thunderwarriors from the Emp's reunification of Earth. If they had the ability to create "super marine perfect works of art" in an irradiated hellhole like that, what makes you think easier ways to genetically modify wouldn't be more available? I'm sure even Picasso started with stick figures at some point.

Hell, rejuvenation treatments are genetic modification, and they're ubiquitous among...well, anyone with any amount of influence in the Imperium. Even Colonel's seem to have access to them, much less the nobility, affluent individuals, Inquisitors, and so on.

And it wasn't the fact that the guy got in good with the Warmaster that gave him the genetic treatments. It was him getting out from under the thumb of the noble he was with (a noble Horus wanted to thumb anyway), and it was the ease he was given those treatments. There was no, oh, he's not compatible, or oh, there were complications, or oh, he was turned into a slavering monster. He got it, with seemingly no impact to his health or cognitive functions. It was easy.

 AldarionTelcontar wrote:

Because we see in the lore that Imperial Guard regiments are not, in fact, standardized. Rather, their way of fighting and equipment depends heavily on the culture and characteristics of the world they hail from.

If they truly were "comparing" people from different worlds - that is, having standardized recruitment standards - then we would likely see evidence of this in large amount of overall standardization of the Imperial Guard itself. But we see no such evidence, other than the fact that some 90% of the regiments copy aesthetics (and only aesthetics) of Cadian regiments.

Also, just because bureaucracy screws up doesn't mean IG doesn't try to use regiments in environments suitable for them.

You seem stuck in this one rut that you can't wrap your mind around the fact that a soldier in the Astra Militarum, regardless of their specialty, is still supposed to be a soldier and able to pick up a basic lasgun and fight who they're told to fight.

You know how like the saying that in the US Marines, everyone is an infantrymen? That means everyone in the Marines, from the rawest private to the medic to the guy flying the Osprey to the Commandant himself has been trained and is expected to be able to pick up a rifle and be combat effective. They're not expected to be special forces, but they are expected to fight and kill if necessary.

But to your point, that's also part of the recruitment tithe. The world doesn't seem to get a say in the regiment that's raised, unless they raise it themselves. Tanith was tasked to raise three regiments of light skirmish infantry. Presumably more industrial worlds would recruit standard regiments or even armored companies, etc.

And yes, Guard are expected to fight where they're told to fight. In one of the books, the Tanith--who are light infantry skirmishers--are put in WW2 style trench warfare where they're expected to suffer heavy casualties by doing stupid (even by AM standards) trench assaults and defenses.

 AldarionTelcontar wrote:


I was talking about frontline combatants the entire time. Hardly a need for disclaimer.

No, you said: "men make better soldiers than women for purely biological reasons." I clarified your statement since there's more to being a soldier than upper body strength.

 AldarionTelcontar wrote:

That argument is dumb.

Imperium of Man is basically Roman-Empire-turned-Holy-Roman-Empire-IN-SPEHSS!
Lasgun is literally an assault rifle in terms of functionality.
Most Imperial Guard regiments are direct copies of various historical units.

And even ignoring that... imagination needs material to work with. Raw data comes in, results come out.

For the sake of argument, sure, let's say they're all those things...until they're not. You're talking about a setting where you can have WW1 aesthetic humans fight space demons.

And the thing that just breaks your suspension of disbelief is the fact that women fight in equal numbers to men? And when told, by the creators themselves, that women fighting in the Guard is not anamous, has to cobble together out of context real world examples that don't apply or may not apply, as a reason to say, well, yeah, they fight, but not as much or as hard as the boys because men are just so much better at dying in a trench than girls.

 AldarionTelcontar wrote:

Maybe. But considering how most other showings don't imply anything of the sort...

Because most talented people in the AM probably end up dead in a warzone. Because it doesn't matter if you can lift an extra 20 lbs. if a bolter liquefies you, acid melts you, a gauss rifle turns you into dust, or some projectile tears its way through your insides.

 Grey Templar wrote:


Because we've plateaued. The end state for those things has been achieved, and the rate of change will rapidly diminish to an equilibrium in the next few decades.

And since mankind has not moved past the biological reality we have today, to assume that men and women have changed dramatically enough to have their basic behaviors altered away from what we see today is egregious speculation.

I assume that what exists today is the median. A baseline around which individual human cultures will orbit, fluctuating in one way or the other but always returning to the baseline over thousands of years because culture isn't a continuous change forward, its more of a pendulum.

Are you high? We've plateaued? Buddy, we don't even have a homogenized culture among our species right now. To say cultured has plateaued with regards to...well, any aspect or culture is not only absurd, it's outright laughable to the point of satire.

Even in the US, in a relatively geo politically, extremely wealthy nation that doesn't need to worry about an outside enemy, its culture has become vastly different in just the last 100 years. In the past 100 years, the US has: become a world power, become a super power, had an industrial revolution, turned post industrial revolution, had women's suffrage, enshrined civil rights for minorities (who were [and arguably still are, but let's not get into that] treated as second class citizens), legalized--as in, allowed to exist without criminal punishment--homosexuals, given said people equal rights to heterosexuals, had several economic collapses, etc. The culture in one relatively stable nation across one century has change drastically. To say that it won't change any further is just silly.

Now take all that, add 38,000 years to it, and all the crap that's happened and continues to happen in 40k, and sure, what we have today is a median. Whatever you say, pal.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:

Not when as some particularly weird men (not on this thread, to head off any controversy) on the internet claim the ideal child bearing age is 14-20.

Across those 6 years? Each woman could pop out four sprogs.

And it gets so much worse when the youngest pregnancy recorded was at five years old...

WWW-STL wrote:



This is not a cultural reason, but a simple fact of biology, economics, and logic. The so-called culture is nothing but a by-product of them.

under natural circumstances, only women can give birth to children, and it takes at least ten years for a child to become a combat and labor force. During this time, someone must take care of them---How can a human group that encourages women to join the military and compensate for the rapid loss of women population? They would have few and even no any descendants, and their enemies would benefit from more female captives. Such a human group would have no future.

this is the basic design of the human species as a mammal, winnowed out by natural selection over milion of years, and it determines our mindset and ideological tendencies. Of course there are alway some few exceptions - but they are just some rare individual,always a minority---------maybe in the distant future, some human worlds will be able to mass-produce female soldiers with giant artificial wombs, but even so, women will always be physically less suitable for combat than men, barring some radical genetic modification.

But these factors no longer exist in 40k, so why do you insist that they still do?

Women aren't the only forms of birth in the Imperium anymore. There's cloning. There's vats. There's tubing. So even if women were to rapidly die off--like, say, on Krieg--that doesn't mean the end of the population.

As for taking care of the young without their mothers, have you heard of orphanages? Foster care? Grandparents? Hell, this is the Imperium, so we can throw the Imperial Cult, "schools", creches, and the like into the mix.

And even without that, it's stated as fact that the only resource the Imperium has in abundance is bodies. They don't care if they send women or men to die for the Imperium. The only point where it even might be a concern is for newly seeded worlds, but even then, those worlds seem mostly exempt from that part of the tithe, if Tanith is any concern. They were to raise 30k troops from a population in the multi-millions.

And the fact that the Sisters of Battle exist sort of invalidates your whole point. Humanity hasn't died off because half a billion women decide to join up and fight and not stay at home and pump out babies.