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I think it's too close to call IMO. I don't really see how it couldn't be framed in a way that wouldn't come across as sexist.
New recruits are female, Chapter doesn't like and makes life difficult for new female recruits. Why are they mad? Oh because it was only men before and tradition is super important?
Nah that's way too similar to how women are treated in the armed forces today.

Primaris stuff has set a useful precedent. That the New Fangled’s are mistrusted, until they’ve proven themselves.

Just have to mention it as something that happens in the background, without a particular focus on it.

 Manfred von Drakken wrote:
And after all this, I have to wonder: does anyone actually have a reason not to include female Marines beyond, "...but the lore!"?

Apart from "...but the lore!" being a darn good reason, there were several people voicing different concerns throughout the thread. Your deliberate exclusion of those arguments doesn't make them invalid.

 A Town Called Malus wrote:
If you want an in-lore reason why? It doubles the potential pool of recruits for space marines, something that the Imperium would literally genocide a planet or 3 to achieve

Crispy78 wrote:
It doesn't feel like an important part of the lore to me, it's not as relevant as the banning that led to the formation of the Sisters Of Battle for instance. I don't think there was ever any decree in lore, or from GW, that space marines must all be manly men. The lore justification of it being a limitation of the process could be very easily changed - as I've mentioned previously, they have relatively recently changed this already with the introduction of the Primaris marines. There could just be a crisis in space marines recruitment that means they need to look further afield; or some crucial female character (not sure who? Not aware of many) could be grievously wounded and put through the Primaris process as a last-ditch attempt to save her, and what do you know? It works...

The chancellor in the novell "The Emperor's Legion" mentions that the Imperium got the capability to create a lot of new chapters, the High Lords just refuse to do so at the moment. At a 99.9% failure rate, a single hive world offering 1000 million candidates would result in 1 million new Scouts. If online sources are to be believed, Necromunda could give 1% of its total population to achieve this number. What's the total population of the Imperium again? Pre-Cawl there were ~1 million loyal Space Marines in the whole galaxy, if I remember correctly.

 insaniak wrote:
So all they actually need to do to introduce female marines is release cool models for them. However they choose to work it into the background is largely irrelevant... It's going to get complaints from those who dislike change regardless of how they do it lazy changes like the Custodes. And then people will buy the cool models, they'll become a standard part of the game, and everyone will move on.

I corrected that for you.

 Hellebore wrote:
What thematic marine units would you think could be cool specifically BECAUSE they are identified as female?

I hope that nobody who argued against "male" being a core part of the SM identity thinks that an all "female" squad is a great idea.

 a_typical_hero wrote:

 Hellebore wrote:
What thematic marine units would you think could be cool specifically BECAUSE they are identified as female?

I hope that nobody who argued against "male" being a core part of the SM identity thinks that an all "female" squad is a great idea.

You missed every other comment I made about there also being gendered male units. When there is parity, it's not an issue to have that. Selective quoting is not going to make you look clever.

The other thing that is ignored is that the thread is the bare minimum ask - women in marines. The entire marine aesthetic is heavily masculine (which as the default is ignored until you point it out and then people try to say it's gender neutral), so even if they said 'sure add girls' it would still be, girls can play so long as they look as much like boys as possible. It's not an equivalent showing, it's just 'wear the men's uniform, jobs a goodun' which women in militaries around the world will tell you is not useful. This is of course in no way an argument for boobplate....

But there is more to the discussion than, hey girls can be marines so long as none of the masculine imagery changes. It's just that the concept gets bogged down in whether there should be women at all, it never progresses passed that. Because whenever women do achieve any representation it's always begrudgingly and rarely on their own terms - like being 'let in' means they should be grateful to have any presence and so should be happy with what they get, rather than being equal members with equal say in how things run.

But as usual, the shitfight to get them even in there means that it takes another few decades before the military designs kevlar that fits their bodies, or equipment that fits comfortably.

 a_typical_hero wrote:

 insaniak wrote:
So all they actually need to do to introduce female marines is release cool models for them. However they choose to work it into the background is largely irrelevant... It's going to get complaints from those who dislike change regardless of how they do it lazy changes like the Custodes. And then people will buy the cool models, they'll become a standard part of the game, and everyone will move on.

I corrected that for you.

No, you didn't. You changed it to something completely different to what I was actually saying.

There are a lot of people out there who just dislike change, regardless of how it is executed. They like things the way they are, and the immediate reaction to any change is to dislike it, because it's not what they're used to. And those people tend to be the loudest complainers, from my experience, because change is 'ruining' the thing they like... but that doesn't automatically make change a bad thing.

 a_typical_hero wrote:

 Manfred von Drakken wrote:
And after all this, I have to wonder: does anyone actually have a reason not to include female Marines beyond, "...but the lore!"?

Apart from "...but the lore!" being a darn good reason, there were several people voicing different concerns throughout the thread. Your deliberate exclusion of those arguments don't make them invalid.

 A Town Called Malus wrote:
If you want an in-lore reason why? It doubles the potential pool of recruits for space marines, something that the Imperium would literally genocide a planet or 3 to achieve

Crispy78 wrote:
It doesn't feel like an important part of the lore to me, it's not as relevant as the banning that led to the formation of the Sisters Of Battle for instance. I don't think there was ever any decree in lore, or from GW, that space marines must all be manly men. The lore justification of it being a limitation of the process could be very easily changed - as I've mentioned previously, they have relatively recently changed this already with the introduction of the Primaris marines. There could just be a crisis in space marines recruitment that means they need to look further afield; or some crucial female character (not sure who? Not aware of many) could be grievously wounded and put through the Primaris process as a last-ditch attempt to save her, and what do you know? It works...

The chancellor in the novell "The Emperor's Legion" mentions that the Imperium got the capability to create a lot of new chapters, the High Lords just refuse to do so at the moment. At a 99.9% failure rate, a single hive world offering 1000 million candidates would result in 1 million new Scouts. If online sources are to be believed, Necromunda could give 1% of its total population to achieve this number. What's the total population of the Imperium again? Pre-Cawl there were ~1 million loyal Space Marines in the whole galaxy, if I remember correctly.

 insaniak wrote:
So all they actually need to do to introduce female marines is release cool models for them. However they choose to work it into the background is largely irrelevant... It's going to get complaints from those who dislike change regardless of how they do it lazy changes like the Custodes. And then people will buy the cool models, they'll become a standard part of the game, and everyone will move on.

I corrected that for you.

 Hellebore wrote:
What thematic marine units would you think could be cool specifically BECAUSE they are identified as female?

I hope that nobody who argued against "male" being a core part of the SM identity thinks that an all "female" squad is a great idea.

Why is the lore a good reason? It's just hashed out fiction. Or is it a case of "old good new bad?"

Alright then. The Imperium is now the unequivocally goods guys. Goes against the lore? Why does it matter, it's just hashed out fiction.

 Bobthehero wrote:
Alright then. The Imperium is now the unequivocally goods guys. Goes against the lore? Why does it matter, it's just hashed out fiction.

Something that goes against the central conceit of the setting is different from something that changes a single faction in a way that is largely irrelevant to their (many) themes.

And you know what? GW could make that change too. It’d radically alter 40k in a way I personally think would be for the worse, but they can do it if they want to.

 Bobthehero wrote:
Alright then. The Imperium is now the unequivocally goods guys. Goes against the lore? Why does it matter, it's just hashed out fiction.

GW have done a terrible job of making them the bad guys so not sure what your point is. Their massive catalogue of books is nothing but hero power fantasy, good guy guilliman, noble marines etc.

It's bad in name only and there are plenty of pro fasch people out there who unironically consider it good. Which a problem entirely of GW's making because they want to sell the hero fantasy while also getting that edge the darkbad provides, without actually exposing the consequences of that darkbad.

Currently the imperium is a noble hero cosplaying as an edgelord. GW has a long way to go in their fiction if they want to ACTUALLY depict the imperium as bad in a way that any new customer sees understands and accepts. Because they don't currently.

 Bobthehero wrote:
Alright then. The Imperium is now the unequivocally goods guys. Goes against the lore? Why does it matter, it's just hashed out fiction.

I'm a little puzzled as to what point you thought you were making, here.

What would happen if GW decided to switch the Imperium to being 'unequivocally good' is that some people would hate the change for various reasons, some people would love the change (whether because it's something new, or because they currently dislike the ubiquitous grim-ness of the setting now), and some wouldn't care because they view the background material as nothing more than window dressing to add some colour to a game of toy soldiers and their real focus is on pushing models around the table.

So, pretty much what happens with every other change to the background material. It would make for a very different tone to the setting overall... but the world would keep turning, and within a few months, the majority of the player base would have accepted that this is the way things are now and moved on.

 Bobthehero wrote:
Alright then. The Imperium is now the unequivocally goods guys. Goes against the lore? Why does it matter, it's just hashed out fiction.

I don’t get what you mean. How does opening up the Astartes to making more children into soldiers make the Imperium good guys? Just because something is “good” for consumers doesn’t make it change the morality of characters in universe.

The Imperium has plenty of evil ideas without borrowing sexism from the real world. Personally, I’d prefer to keep real world bigotries in the real world and have my escapist fantasy Bloodiest Regime Imaginable stick to committing unreal, escapist atrocities.

My point is that if you claim the lore is just hashed out fiction, then you can justify *anything* no matter how much it goes against the lore, at which point, why bother have lore at all?

So…..where should they have stopped?

Custodes dressed like Cameo?

Marines not being post-human genhanced monstrosities?

The game being set in raids into the Eye of Terror to collect revenue?

Either the background is all sacrosanct, or it’s all open to change.

Me? I’m not fussed about change myself. I prefer it be developments rather than retcon, but I’m not nailing my colours to the mast on that.

 Bobthehero wrote:
My point is that if you claim the lore is just hashed out fiction, then you can justify *anything* no matter how much it goes against the lore, at which point, why bother have lore at all?

I mean…They did do that already. Do you not remember 5th edition?

Do you not remember what happened to the Warhammer World?

I have to admit I find this reasoning amusing, coming from the other side of the issue where GW already irreparably broke the setting for me, rendered its once engrossing lore into He-Man level toy-pushing, and made it crystal clear multiple times that nothing in the setting means anything to those in charge.

The setting is an embarrassment already. Let yourself grieve and move on.

 a_typical_hero wrote:

 Manfred von Drakken wrote:
And after all this, I have to wonder: does anyone actually have a reason not to include female Marines beyond, "...but the lore!"?

Apart from "...but the lore!" being a darn good reason, there were several people voicing different concerns throughout the thread. Your deliberate exclusion of those arguments don't make them invalid.

We've established that the lore is malleable, so it's not exactly a rock-solid argument. It's hard for players to hold the lore as sacrosanct when GW doesn't.

And every other 'argument' against female Marines has basically boiled down to, 'girls have cooties'. To me, they all look like a six-year-old boy sitting in his treehouse with a paper hat and stuffed tiger dropping water balloons on the girl from across the street.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
So…..where should they have stopped?

Custodes dressed like Cameo?

Marines not being post-human genhanced monstrosities?

The game being set in raids into the Eye of Terror to collect revenue?

Either the background is all sacrosanct, or it’s all open to change.

Me? I’m not fussed about change myself. I prefer it be developments rather than retcon, but I’m not nailing my colours to the mast on that.

Ideally they'd have started without a bunch of things that would have to be retconned later, really, just add on new things while respecting what is already there.

And so adding female Marines wouldn’t be acceptable to you because? Why would that not be respecting what exists already?

 Bobthehero wrote:
My point is that if you claim the lore is just hashed out fiction, then you can justify *anything* no matter how much it goes against the lore, at which point, why bother have lore at all?

The background material serves the same purpose it always has - to provide a setting in which the game exists. It's less that you can justify anything, and more that you don't actually need to.

We're not talking about a religious text handed down from on high. It's a setting for a game of toy soldiers.




Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Bobthehero wrote:

Ideally they'd have started without a bunch of things that would have to be retconned later, really, just add on new things while respecting what is already there.

I'm sure the original 40K writers would have loved to know where the game was going to be in 30 years time, but that's not really a realistic expectation. Rogue Trader included rules for creating your own vehicles, because they seriously didn't think they would ever have the budget to make more than a handful of official vehicle kits. Their vision of the game was very firmly grounded in 'what if?' rather than a concrete vision of how the universe could look if they had the resources to do it properly.

The game would be a bare shadow of itself if the studio in the years since had confined themselves to what was already written.

BobtheInquisitor wrote:

I mean…They did do that already. Do you not remember 5th edition?

Do you not remember what happened to the Warhammer World?

I have to admit I find this reasoning amusing, coming from the other side of the issue where GW already irreparably broke the setting for me, rendered its once engrossing lore into He-Man level toy-pushing, and made it crystal clear multiple times that nothing in the setting means anything to those in charge.

The setting is an embarrassment already. Let yourself grieve and move on.

I started getting more into 40k near the end of 5th, so I never got deeply immerse in the older lore, but someone of the newer stuff is pretty crap, too

 insaniak wrote:

The background material serves the same purpose it always has - to provide a setting in which the game exists. It's less that you can justify anything, and more that you don't actually need to.

We're not talking about a religious text handed down from on high. It's a setting for a game of toy soldiers.

The sort of dismissal of the lore leads to the quote above.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
And so adding female Marines wouldn’t be acceptable to you because? Why would that not be respecting what exists already?

Because what currently exists says it can't happen, sure if we handwave that, then it's anything goes. But I don't want the lore to be just handwaved and be malleable to the point where it doesn't matter.

No, the existing lore says the existing conversion process can only be done on male candidates.

I’ve given consistent, in-universe reasons why that status quo is by no means the result of a conscious choice in the creation of the technology. Such as the entire Astartes project being a salvage job without the presence of the Primarchs, which got the Astartes to a “good enough, and now the Warp Storms have cleared, I guess they’ll have to do” state.

They were, canonically, not the intended final product, just the best made of a bad situation.

Given The Emperor had developed predecessors (at least the Thunder Warriors), to pretend he had no intentions, in place of no time, to revisit and rejig is, so far as opinions can be in this situation, just wrong. And we can’t rule out that part of the intention to revisit, revise and perfect would’ve been to sort out the Y Chromosome only issue. Because as the Great Crusade showed? They’d take as many Astartes as each Legion could arm, equip and transport. So limiting it intentionally to around 50% of candidates (the sniffy standards of Chapters clearly not being as much of a concern originally) wouldn’t make sense. Especially as there’s no sign of any limits in rank or service for women elsewhere in the Imperial armed forces. At all.

 Bobthehero wrote:

Because what currently exists says it can't happen, sure if we handwave that, then it's anything goes. But I don't want the lore to be just handwaved and be malleable to the point where it doesn't matter.

You can not want it all you want, but it's going to happen. It's how GW have been developing their franchises for 30 years now. You're apparently coming in halfway through and telling a bunch of people who have been here since the '90s that the way things were when you personally arrived is how they should stay, and they're trying to tell you that this is just how it is, and how it's always been.

The background is malleable, and that's by design. It's how the game grows.

I wouldn't be opposed to it going back to before I arrived, tbh, I firmly think not all change is good, maybe at some point the lore's gonna change to the point where it's not fun anymore, we'll see.

Not all change is good. Thing is, not all the stuff that was there originally was good, either.

Which of it is good and which isn't is very much down to personal preference. I'm not a fan of Primaris marines, or having loyalist Primarchs in 40k. I also wasn't a fan of the bit from the 90s where the Iron Hands are led by a guy with Iron Hands whose name is Iron Man. Some people love both of those things.

Personal dislike is ultimately not the best litmus test for whether or not a change is a good idea. As much as I dislike the Primaris as a thing, for example, I can't deny that they're technically nice models and have added a lot of narrative value to the setting. I can also just choose to not use them if I don't want to, and leave them to those who do...

The brotherhood, self sacrifice and monastic inspiration inherent to the cultural makeup of space marines is exactly what makes them space marines. To remove them from that is to make them no different than other power armored super soldiers from other franchises. The Adeptus Sororiatas is your foil to them. It is all in service to the thematic image of a society built on the bones of outmoded and archaic ways of thinking. "Progress" is at odds with the core themes of the franchise.


"Forget the promise of progress and understanding, for in the grim darkness of the far future there is only war. There is no peace amongst the stars, only an eternity of carnage and slaughter, and the laughter of thirsting gods." It kind of spells it out here....

40k is in many ways directly at odds with our sensibilities and moral compass, which has helped to insulate it from some of the broader cultural discourse ongoing in media. Please stop interjecting these issues into a setting that is in its essence diametrically opposed to that kind of discourse.

 Bobthehero wrote:
I wouldn't be opposed to it going back to before I arrived, tbh, I firmly think not all change is good, maybe at some point the lore's gonna change to the point where it's not fun anymore, we'll see.

That happens to everyone. At some point, some change, you decide the setting has moved away from you. The good news is you’ll still have old codices and BL books to revisit. The bad news is if you stay in TT wargaming at all you’ll have to keep hearing about WH40k and all its eye rolling developments forever.

 Sledgehammer wrote:
The brotherhood, self sacrifice and monastic inspiration inherent to the cultural makeup of space marines is exactly what makes them space marines. To remove them from that is to make them no different than other power armored super soldiers from other franchises. The Adeptus Sororiatas is your foil to them. It is all in service to the thematic image of a society built on the bones of outmoded and archaic ways of thinking. "Progress" is at odds with the core themes of the franchise.


"Forget the promise of progress and understanding, for in the grim darkness of the far future there is only war. There is no peace amongst the stars, only an eternity of carnage and slaughter, and the laughter of thirsting gods." It kind of spells it out here....

40k is in many ways directly at odds with our sensibilities and moral compass, which has helped to insulate it from some of the broader cultural discourse ongoing in media. Please stop interjecting these issues into a setting that is in its essence diametrically opposed to that kind of discourse.

So if sexism is appropriate to the Imperium in 40k, why isn't racism?
Or homophobia?
Or transphobia?

And why is it literally only one organization that excludes women, and not also the High Lords, or the Inquisition, or Guard, or Arbites, or so on and so forth.

 Sledgehammer wrote:
The brotherhood, self sacrifice and monastic inspiration inherent to the cultural makeup of space marines is exactly what makes them space marines.

What exactly about a monastic lifestyle (let's ignore Space Wolves for the moment!) requires adherents to be men?

Are women not capable of self sacrifice?

Can women not share bonds with those they fight with?

None of what you described needs to be inherently masculine, particularly in a setting that doesn't treat men and women any differently to each other anywhere else, other than in one badly dated joke to justify nuns with guns.

40k is in many ways directly at odds with our sensibilities and moral compass, which has helped to insulate it from some of the broader cultural discourse ongoing in media. Please stop interjecting these issues into a setting that is in its essence diametrically opposed to that kind of discourse.

Conversely, it could be argued that maintaining a gender bias into Space Marines when that bias doesn't actually exist in the culture that they represent does more to 'interject these issues' into the setting than allowing women to be Space Marines would.

The Imperium does not have a gender bias. We're shown no other job in the entirety of the Imperium where women are told 'Nope, can't do it. The genitals are not right for this action!' Just Space Marines.

It was not questioned back when the game was first created, because that gender bias did exist in the minds of the people playing the game. But the longer it goes on, and the more women are represented in the rest of the game, the more absurd it gets.

 JNAProductions wrote:

 Sledgehammer wrote:
The brotherhood, self sacrifice and monastic inspiration inherent to the cultural makeup of space marines is exactly what makes them space marines. To remove them from that is to make them no different than other power armored super soldiers from other franchises. The Adeptus Sororiatas is your foil to them. It is all in service to the thematic image of a society built on the bones of outmoded and archaic ways of thinking. "Progress" is at odds with the core themes of the franchise.


"Forget the promise of progress and understanding, for in the grim darkness of the far future there is only war. There is no peace amongst the stars, only an eternity of carnage and slaughter, and the laughter of thirsting gods." It kind of spells it out here....

40k is in many ways directly at odds with our sensibilities and moral compass, which has helped to insulate it from some of the broader cultural discourse ongoing in media. Please stop interjecting these issues into a setting that is in its essence diametrically opposed to that kind of discourse.

So if sexism is appropriate to the Imperium in 40k, why isn't racism?
Or homophobia?
Or transphobia?

And why is it literally only one organization that excludes women, and not also the High Lords, or the Inquisition, or Guard, or Arbites, or so on and so forth.

Because at their core the space marines are like I just said a brotherly, monastic, religious, military order that evokes the imagery and culture of their predecessors in the real world historical crusades as a means by which to convey those thematic underpinnings.

And racism, sexism, and fear of anything not of the norm is literally the mechanism by which 40k can achieve its satire. In Gaunts Ghosts for instance, Gaunt, is successful DESPITE the imperium. He is a loose cannon that does EVERYTHING outside of the norm, defying all convention. The irony of his success and the critique therein is that, that is the very reason why he is successful. He is not a typical commander, and does not hold the the typical values of his contemporaries, and is thus successful. Ultimately this results in him being a very successful commander and an thus ironic exemplar of the values of the imperium, thereby propagating the bad behavior that persists in the structure around him...

The imperium of man's raison d'être is the horrors of the warp, which they ironically are literally feeding through their refusal to act ethically.

 insaniak wrote:

 Sledgehammer wrote:
The brotherhood, self sacrifice and monastic inspiration inherent to the cultural makeup of space marines is exactly what makes them space marines.

What exactly about a monastic lifestyle (let's ignore Space Wolves for the moment!) requires adherents to be men?

Are women not capable of self sacrifice?

Can women not share bonds with those they fight with?

None of what you described needs to be inherently masculine, particularly in a setting that doesn't treat men and women any differently to each other anywhere else, other than in one badly dated joke to justify nuns with guns.

40k is in many ways directly at odds with our sensibilities and moral compass, which has helped to insulate it from some of the broader cultural discourse ongoing in media. Please stop interjecting these issues into a setting that is in its essence diametrically opposed to that kind of discourse.

Conversely, it could be argued that maintaining a gender bias into Space Marines when that bias doesn't actually exist in the culture that they represent does more to 'interject these issues' into the setting than allowing women to be Space Marines would.

The Imperium does not have a gender bias. We're shown no other job in the entirety of the Imperium where women are told 'Nope, can't do it. The genitals are not right for this action!' Just Space Marines.

It was not questioned back when the game was first created, because that gender bias did exist in the minds of the people playing the game. But the longer it goes on, and the more women are represented in the rest of the game, the more absurd it gets.

I'll quote Insaniak here, because I'd like to hear your answer.
This post puts it significantly better than I did.

 JNAProductions wrote:

 Sledgehammer wrote:
The brotherhood, self sacrifice and monastic inspiration inherent to the cultural makeup of space marines is exactly what makes them space marines. To remove them from that is to make them no different than other power armored super soldiers from other franchises. The Adeptus Sororiatas is your foil to them. It is all in service to the thematic image of a society built on the bones of outmoded and archaic ways of thinking. "Progress" is at odds with the core themes of the franchise.


"Forget the promise of progress and understanding, for in the grim darkness of the far future there is only war. There is no peace amongst the stars, only an eternity of carnage and slaughter, and the laughter of thirsting gods." It kind of spells it out here....

40k is in many ways directly at odds with our sensibilities and moral compass, which has helped to insulate it from some of the broader cultural discourse ongoing in media. Please stop interjecting these issues into a setting that is in its essence diametrically opposed to that kind of discourse.

So if sexism is appropriate to the Imperium in 40k, why isn't racism?
Or homophobia?
Or transphobia?

And why is it literally only one organization that excludes women, and not also the High Lords, or the Inquisition, or Guard, or Arbites, or so on and so forth.

You've literally been told why within 40k lore.
Lore: The geneseed process simply doesn't work on females for some unknown reason.