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 Just Tony wrote:
I'm also waiting with baited breath how you can tell me we can fight the patriarchy by painting our little toys. After you tell me how there are no women in seats of power, nor ruling nations, nor running corporations, nor in any sort of position that you claim that they are kept out of.

Just because women can be elected, doesn't mean they're elected equitably. Even a cursory Google search tells me that less than 30% of the House of Representatives are women, despite women making up a (very) slight majority of the population.

Just because women are present doesn't mean they're making the rules.

it's disingenuous to claim that marketing and material forces in the real world are not gendered and that 40k is not a game whose primary audience is men. it doesn't matter if your space marines are non-binary, because that's as canon as if i made a space marines army that's only women. the face of 40k is snarling angry men, and individuals' armies or custom forces don't change that

People are blind to the default or 'standard' - it becomes invisible due to its ubiquity.

Only when people start deliberately discussing women or gender diverse people does gender suddenly 'appear'.

But in actual fact, most human societies default to masculine gender in all things.

The result is a bias against women or gender diverse people because they are the ones seen as gendering, when the default is already gendered.


You've just got to see discussions of orks or transformers as not being 'gendered' despite being described with male pronouns and using masculine language, to see how pernicious this is.

 Hellebore wrote:


You've just got to see discussions of orks or transformers as not being 'gendered' despite being described with male pronouns and using masculine language, to see how pernicious this is.

I think those are bad examples, as both are "combative", existing in the traditionally male dominated realm of warrior/soldier, and in the case of transformers and 40k, aimed at boys.

Not saying the overall point is wrong, just that those examples don't seem good for illustrating 'default'.

I think boats and cars are often referred to as female, no?

There’s also the skewing of being part of the represented majority.

I’m white, cis-het, white collar male. I’m also lucky enough to be fairly tall. Having been born in 1980, for all of my life I’ve not exactly struggled to see positive representation on the big and small screen, and in the other media I regularly consume.

I also have further advantage/privilege. Until I open my mouth and my Scottish accent is heard? Nobody is going to think I’m anything but indigenous to Kent, where I live (South East England). And that extended to my holiday in New York. Unless I spoke to someone, nobody would have any reason to think I wasn’t born and bred New Yorker.

As such, I have good representation in media, and only very, very rarely get hassled for being “other”. The only example in recent years I can immediately recall was a customer going off on one about the Scots during a phone call. Which lead to me hanging up, on account we’re allowed to do that.

Now that’s an advantage and privilege I’ve done nothing to personally earn or deserve. And in an ideal world, it’s something I’d want all humans to enjoy, and if that happens I lose nothing other than a label of being privileged. But the underlying benefit of said privilege would remain.

Representation does matter. Just look at the reactions of some when others start to get some of that representation.

For GW? Putting different skin tones on box and cover art, adding new lore that Custodes can be either sex etc costs….very little. The background for a codex would be written anyway. The models on box art would be painted anyway, same for cover art. And it makes the overall hobby more inviting.

Now, that’s not to say “they put a dark skinned hero prominently on a book cover, therefore lots of young people with dark skin suddenly got involved”. Because that’s not how the anything works or will ever work. But. It is more inviting. When you can see a setting or media treating you as just part of the story? You don’t feel excluded.

Even if those efforts don’t attract new blood from different communities? Looking back at GW’s financials, it clearly and evidentially hasn’t caused a detriment.

Shonky analogy? Few years back when my friends started having kids? I’d still invite new parents out for drinks. I knew the pressures of parenthood would likely prevent them from coming, but I still wanted them to feel welcome. Plus, you never know. That Friday night might be a night where they can in fact come out to play, because the Grandparents are visiting and don’t mind sitting for a few hours.

It’s the open invitation that matters, not whether it’s accepted.

I feel like this is Tuck Buckford, arguing with Erik from Internet Comment Etiquette, arguing with Sargon of Arkhad.(SP?)

It's basically comedy at this point, but it's a clear example of some of the deeper issues in this hobby. The sexism, misogyny, racism, whataboutism. It's all on display here.

All I can say is "You will not be missed".

Did some cleaning, let's stay civil and all that other stuff we put up in red text a few times before now, okay.

Removed.

 Haighus wrote:

 odinsgrandson wrote:

ccs wrote:

I don't recall my Necron lists ever being invalidated. Some rules shifted, pts changed, some things got better/some things got worse.... You know, normal crap edition to edition.

The Necrons were originally playable in 2nd edition, but Games Workshop discontinued the line of miniatures and did not print updated rules when the game went to 3rd edition (and remember, that was an edition change that invalidated all older codexes, so without a rules update, they were straight up unplayable).

That is the same edition switch that finally made Squats, Genestealer Cults, Demon World Armies, Eldar Harlequins and Chaos Cults unplayable.

They did add experimental rules for Harlequins and GSCs in Citadel Journal. Chaos cults got one Chapter Approved unit for CSM armies and it could be argued Lost and the Damned captured a lot of the human mortal aspect (I'm discounting the Chaos cultist unit unique to Alpha Legion lists in the 3.5th Chaos codex, as those are more akin to Legion sleeper operatives). Squats were overtly told to "counts as" in Citadel Journal.

Armies were official and playable and then they were not playable when the new edition was released. Necrons got an official codex long before any of those other ones.

I guess I was leaving out the Legion of the Damned, since they'd had an official list in WD which was erased. I wasn't counting them mostly because they could obviously turn into marines.

- Chaos Cults were their own army in 2nd ed, and I think they spent about 5 years before the Lost and Damned book came out (that book was the bridge between 3rd ed and 4th). They weren't a unit you'd add to a chaos space marine force, since the whole point of the army was that you'd outnumber a mob of orks by a fair margine.

- I admit that I never saw a copy of those Citadel Journals on any store shelve (either at a GW store or another LGS). But I guess having a published unofficial list is something.


- The Demon World army continues to be unplayable in 40k to this very day. (it was not the chaos demon army that was later released, it was more like binging a WFB chaos army to the table).


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Just Tony wrote:

I'd like to think nobody here is crazy enough to think that simply putting boobs on more of our models is suddenly gonna increase our female/male player base split to fifty percent.

No, it is more about not actively disinviting young women to play. I have a daughter who is the age I was when I started playing, and she's definitely more interested in games with powerful women.


Will it bring everything to 50/50? No, but that's no reason to not be awful to the women who are considering becoming gamers.

 odinsgrandson wrote:

 Haighus wrote:

 odinsgrandson wrote:

ccs wrote:

I don't recall my Necron lists ever being invalidated. Some rules shifted, pts changed, some things got better/some things got worse.... You know, normal crap edition to edition.

The Necrons were originally playable in 2nd edition, but Games Workshop discontinued the line of miniatures and did not print updated rules when the game went to 3rd edition (and remember, that was an edition change that invalidated all older codexes, so without a rules update, they were straight up unplayable).

That is the same edition switch that finally made Squats, Genestealer Cults, Demon World Armies, Eldar Harlequins and Chaos Cults unplayable.

They did add experimental rules for Harlequins and GSCs in Citadel Journal. Chaos cults got one Chapter Approved unit for CSM armies and it could be argued Lost and the Damned captured a lot of the human mortal aspect (I'm discounting the Chaos cultist unit unique to Alpha Legion lists in the 3.5th Chaos codex, as those are more akin to Legion sleeper operatives). Squats were overtly told to "counts as" in Citadel Journal.

Armies were official and playable and then they were not playable when the new edition was released. Necrons got an official codex long before any of those other ones.

I guess I was leaving out the Legion of the Damned, since they'd had an official list in WD which was erased. I wasn't counting them mostly because they could obviously turn into marines.

- Chaos Cults were their own army in 2nd ed, and I think they spent about 5 years before the Lost and Damned book came out (that book was the bridge between 3rd ed and 4th). They weren't a unit you'd add to a chaos space marine force, since the whole point of the army was that you'd outnumber a mob of orks by a fair margine.

- I admit that I never saw a copy of those Citadel Journals on any store shelve (either at a GW store or another LGS). But I guess having a published unofficial list is something.


- The Demon World army continues to be unplayable in 40k to this very day. (it was not the chaos demon army that was later released, it was more like binging a WFB chaos army to the table).


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Just Tony wrote:

I'd like to think nobody here is crazy enough to think that simply putting boobs on more of our models is suddenly gonna increase our female/male player base split to fifty percent.

No, it is more about not actively disinviting young women to play. I have a daughter who is the age I was when I started playing, and she's definitely more interested in games with powerful women.


Will it bring everything to 50/50? No, but that's no reason to not be awful to the women who are considering becoming gamers.

I wonder if your daughter would be willing to play.The star wars battlefront games that didn't have female characters as playable characters. I'm betting she would just like every other female gamer who played those games. Not seeing yourself in the game is not a barrier to entry.

Once more, I'm not calling for the eradication of female models and have a rather significant representation of female models in all of my armies that contain them. I'm just not game for reversing a whole bunch of lore in order to pander. I also find it highly suspicious when forced integration isn't a two way street.

 Just Tony wrote:
I wonder if your daughter would be willing to play.The star wars battlefront games that didn't have female characters as playable characters. I'm betting she would just like every other female gamer who played those games. Not seeing yourself in the game is not a barrier to entry.

For you.

Once more, I'm not calling for the eradication of female models and have a rather significant representation of female models in all of my armies that contain them. I'm just not game for reversing a whole bunch of lore in order to pander. I also find it highly suspicious when forced integration isn't a two way street.

A "whole bunch of lore" in this case is only a few lines of background text across two books from the last five years. And, for the umpteenth time, inclusion isn't pandering just because you don't like it.

 Manfred von Drakken wrote:

 Just Tony wrote:
I wonder if your daughter would be willing to play.The star wars battlefront games that didn't have female characters as playable characters. I'm betting she would just like every other female gamer who played those games. Not seeing yourself in the game is not a barrier to entry.

For you.

Once more, I'm not calling for the eradication of female models and have a rather significant representation of female models in all of my armies that contain them. I'm just not game for reversing a whole bunch of lore in order to pander. I also find it highly suspicious when forced integration isn't a two way street.

A "whole bunch of lore" in this case is only a few lines of background text across two books from the last five years. And, for the umpteenth time, inclusion isn't pandering just because you don't like it.

Both of my Eldar forces and my 3 Elven armies have female models in them? They did not have to rewrite law to make this happen. This is inclusion. Orcs and Orks are both established as spore based fungoid lifeforms, so they do not have gendered reproduction or secondary genders in any way, shape, or form. Tossing out decades of lore to rewrite their history in order to appeal to another demographic or to capitulate to an increasingly loud section of their fan base expressly for sales purposes would indeed be pandering.

See my earlier post, where the invitation existing is the important thing.

You want your product to have as wide a market appeal as possible. Because you don’t want to risk shutting people out entirely unintentionally.

For GW, that just means having better representation in the art, background and models that were going to be made anyway. It has no additional cost. At all.

If that’s problematic for a sliver of already active hobbyists? That’s entirely a problem for those individuals.

 Just Tony wrote:

 Manfred von Drakken wrote:

 Just Tony wrote:
I wonder if your daughter would be willing to play.The star wars battlefront games that didn't have female characters as playable characters. I'm betting she would just like every other female gamer who played those games. Not seeing yourself in the game is not a barrier to entry.

For you.

Once more, I'm not calling for the eradication of female models and have a rather significant representation of female models in all of my armies that contain them. I'm just not game for reversing a whole bunch of lore in order to pander. I also find it highly suspicious when forced integration isn't a two way street.

A "whole bunch of lore" in this case is only a few lines of background text across two books from the last five years. And, for the umpteenth time, inclusion isn't pandering just because you don't like it.

Both of my Eldar forces and my 3 Elven armies have female models in them? They did not have to rewrite law to make this happen. This is inclusion. Orcs and Orks are both established as spore based fungoid lifeforms, so they do not have gendered reproduction or secondary genders in any way, shape, or form. Tossing out decades of lore to rewrite their history in order to appeal to another demographic or to capitulate to an increasingly loud section of their fan base expressly for sales purposes would indeed be pandering.

what "decades of lore" are we talking about. there was the barest bones of lore for the idea that custodes were all men, and nothing ever said they couldn't be women

I want to circle back to a question I posed earlier in this or another thread about the “controversy”.

And it’s simple.

So. What.

Custodes now clarified to draw from male and female recruits.

Yes it’s a change to the background, and a retcon. But it’s not 40k’s first, nor is it likely to be the last.

And what has it actually changed for you? Why do you consider it to be so controversial? Where is the impact?

Dark Eldar? Are a retcon. They didn’t exist in Rogue Trader, and only in the very last Codex of 2nd Edition were Chaos Eldar mentioned.

Custodes and Marines being genetically altered? Was a retcon. One which fundamentally changed their character as armies.

None of those, to the best of my knowledge and recollection caused controversy.

So why is this bothersome to you? Of all the changes and retcons, which have been part and parcel of the background since the first expansion to Rogue Trader, why is this one the sign of some malaise?

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
I want to circle back to a question I posed earlier in this or another thread about the “controversy”.

And it’s simple.

So. What.

Custodes now clarified to draw from male and female recruits.

Yes it’s a change to the background, and a retcon. But it’s not 40k’s first, nor is it likely to be the last.

And what has it actually changed for you? Why do you consider it to be so controversial? Where is the impact?

Dark Eldar? Are a retcon. They didn’t exist in Rogue Trader, and only in the very last Codex of 2nd Edition were Chaos Eldar mentioned.

Custodes and Marines being genetically altered? Was a retcon. One which fundamentally changed their character as armies.

None of those, to the best of my knowledge and recollection caused controversy.

So why is this bothersome to you? Of all the changes and retcons, which have been part and parcel of the background since the first expansion to Rogue Trader, why is this one the sign of some malaise?

It's bothersome to them because it doesn't fit their idea of how things should go in both 40k and the real world. That's it. Everything is projection, Grotsnik.

One could argue these retcons are extremely old, so old many people wouldn't know. It's like people pulling TOS klingons as the real thing when fans argue about Discovery klingons looking dumb .
A retcon from recent times that seems far more impactful to me than the Custodes clarification was when we learned the Rift didn't occur 100 years ago but 12...

 Just Tony wrote:

Orcs and Orks are both established as spore based fungoid lifeforms, so they do not have gendered reproduction or secondary genders in any way, shape, or form. Tossing out decades of lore to rewrite their history in order to appeal to another demographic or to capitulate to an increasingly loud section of their fan base expressly for sales purposes would indeed be pandering.

And yet Orcs and orks are gendered.

Female orc cheerleader (the old one to prevent anyone making cries of recent wokeness or whatever):


In 40k Orks are "boyz" Gahzkull and the warbosses are "he" in narratives, they are very much male and identified as such by the company and themselves in the fluff.

Slow clap for all involved, managed to derail the thread, break all three rules and go off topic in 2 posts of the last warning. Good show people, that is spectacular work.

From now on rule breaking in this thread will entail long vacations. Managed 38 pages of mostly good stuff so well done to those that are actually following the rules for that, it beats the last thread by over double the page count.

Dudeface wrote:

 Just Tony wrote:

Orcs and Orks are both established as spore based fungoid lifeforms, so they do not have gendered reproduction or secondary genders in any way, shape, or form. Tossing out decades of lore to rewrite their history in order to appeal to another demographic or to capitulate to an increasingly loud section of their fan base expressly for sales purposes would indeed be pandering.

And yet Orcs and orks are gendered.

Female orc cheerleader (the old one to prevent anyone making cries of recent wokeness or whatever):

Spoiler:

In 40k Orks are "boyz" Gahzkull and the warbosses are "he" in narratives, they are very much male and identified as such by the company and themselves in the fluff.

You must be pretty desperate to use that as the basis for Orks being gendered when you're choosing the female orc cheerleader that is for Bloodbowl, which is explicitly a separate universe from the rest of warhammer that has no relation to the rest of Fantasy and definitely not 40k, where many of the models are made tongue in cheek and in reference to the world being based around a football game.

Meanwhile, in the previous Ork/Gender thread there's this from WAAARGH the Orks (pretty far back in lore canon as well so you can't claim it's a recent development) that directly contradicts your claim that Orks are gendered:

p88

"Unlike other races, Orks have no genders. The breeding ability develops in an Ork after he reaches maturity and becomes feral. Roughly half of the wild Orks develop marsupial pouches, in which an Ork whelp is born and nurtured. After a short span of time, the whelp is big enough to leave the pouch. The feral parent feeds the whelp on Squigs and teaches him how to survive in the wilderness. This gives the young Orks their tough, resourceful character."

Or are you going to admit that you want to just cherry pick what you want or don't want for lore and you actually don't care about it after all?

Orks have no gender, yet the writer immediately genders them as male by referring to them as he/him.

Which is exactly the point that Dudeface was making. The writing constantly refers to Orks as male. One line saying they are genderless followed by many, many lines referring to them as the male gender, which is gonna stick in the audiences mind more?

This is like the difference between the text and framing in a movie. For example, in the text of the first Michael Bay Transformers movie, Megan Fox's character is a skilled mechanic who is smarter and more competent than the male protagonist. Yet the framing of her character is that of a sex object, with repeated lingering shots of her body as a desirable and desired sexual object. And you know which of those the audience left the theatre remembering and identifying as her character? The visual framing of eye candy.

Textually, Orks are genderless. Yet the framing of them is always as male.

Orks also tend to show a very masculine personality/attitude. Indeed they embody the "Football hooligan" "macho male" aspects of perosonality/attitude all the time.

 A Town Called Malus wrote:
Orks have no gender, yet the writer immediately genders them as male by referring to them as he/him.

Which is exactly the point that Dudeface was making. The writing constantly refers to Orks as male. One line saying they are genderless followed by many, many lines referring to them as the male gender, which is gonna stick in the audiences mind more?

This is like the difference between the text and framing in a movie. For example, in the text of the first Transformers movie, Megan Fox's character is a skilled mechanic who is smarter and more competent than the male protagonist. Yet the framing of her character is that of a sex object, with lingering shots of her body. And you know which of those the audience left the theatre remembering and identifying as her character? The visual framing of eye candy.

Yet you guys bend over backwards to try and claim that all previous mentions of Custodes using that same framing of language that refer men and sons is gender neutral as a way to justify the sudden GW's sudden statement of Custodes having women in their ranks this entire time. You can't have it both ways.

 Grimskul wrote:

 A Town Called Malus wrote:
Orks have no gender, yet the writer immediately genders them as male by referring to them as he/him.

Which is exactly the point that Dudeface was making. The writing constantly refers to Orks as male. One line saying they are genderless followed by many, many lines referring to them as the male gender, which is gonna stick in the audiences mind more?

This is like the difference between the text and framing in a movie. For example, in the text of the first Transformers movie, Megan Fox's character is a skilled mechanic who is smarter and more competent than the male protagonist. Yet the framing of her character is that of a sex object, with lingering shots of her body. And you know which of those the audience left the theatre remembering and identifying as her character? The visual framing of eye candy.

Yet you guys bend over backwards to try and claim that all previous mentions of Custodes using that same framing of language that refer men and sons is gender neutral as a way to justify the sudden GW's sudden statement of Custodes having women in their ranks this entire time. You can't have it both ways.

Find one example of me doing that in this thread, please.

I've never justified GW's sudden retcon as anything but a retcon like the bajillion other retcons they have previously made with no justification or comment.

Or are you just here doing your best Don Quixote impression?

 RaptorusRex wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
I want to circle back to a question I posed earlier in this or another thread about the “controversy”.

And it’s simple.

So. What.

Custodes now clarified to draw from male and female recruits.

Yes it’s a change to the background, and a retcon. But it’s not 40k’s first, nor is it likely to be the last.

And what has it actually changed for you? Why do you consider it to be so controversial? Where is the impact?

Dark Eldar? Are a retcon. They didn’t exist in Rogue Trader, and only in the very last Codex of 2nd Edition were Chaos Eldar mentioned.

Custodes and Marines being genetically altered? Was a retcon. One which fundamentally changed their character as armies.

None of those, to the best of my knowledge and recollection caused controversy.

So why is this bothersome to you? Of all the changes and retcons, which have been part and parcel of the background since the first expansion to Rogue Trader, why is this one the sign of some malaise?

It's bothersome to them because it doesn't fit their idea of how things should go in both 40k and the real world. That's it. Everything is projection, Grotsnik.

Respectfully? I don’t need or want what you think their response would be. You may be right, you may be wrong. But responses like this somewhat poison the well of discussion.

It could be another reason. It could be they’ve been caught up in the carefully manufactured culture war and haven’t really stopped to think “wait, am I actually as bothered as I’ve been told to be?”. They could have a reason which whether or not I or the next person agrees, is at least good.

Only those who seems aggrieved that Custodes now recruit male and female candidates can tell us why it’s so controversial to them.

it's a retcon. it's also a cool retcon, and one that i think is good for the game as a whole, but no one is disputing that it's a retcon. people were jumping on "there have always been female custodians", but that was the retcon

more women is always a good thing, because i like and prefer to play with/as women, and hopefully this change and others like it will ensure that there are more women playing warhammer in my area so that i can feel more comfortable attending in-person events. would it be a bad thing for this change that i desire to happen? would it be a bad thing for me to feel more comfortable? can you defend that point without attempting to misdirect it, as has continued to happen every time someone has brought up this issue before?

Who me?

I’m all for it, as ultimately it doesn’t impact the game or the setting one iota, and may help bring in new blood.

New blood is always welcome, because it means more opponents and more people to talk background with.

 Grimskul wrote:

Dudeface wrote:

 Just Tony wrote:

Orcs and Orks are both established as spore based fungoid lifeforms, so they do not have gendered reproduction or secondary genders in any way, shape, or form. Tossing out decades of lore to rewrite their history in order to appeal to another demographic or to capitulate to an increasingly loud section of their fan base expressly for sales purposes would indeed be pandering.

And yet Orcs and orks are gendered.

Female orc cheerleader (the old one to prevent anyone making cries of recent wokeness or whatever):

Spoiler:

In 40k Orks are "boyz" Gahzkull and the warbosses are "he" in narratives, they are very much male and identified as such by the company and themselves in the fluff.

You must be pretty desperate to use that as the basis for Orks being gendered when you're choosing the female orc cheerleader that is for Bloodbowl, which is explicitly a separate universe from the rest of warhammer that has no relation to the rest of Fantasy and definitely not 40k, where many of the models are made tongue in cheek and in reference to the world being based around a football game.

Meanwhile, in the previous Ork/Gender thread there's this from WAAARGH the Orks (pretty far back in lore canon as well so you can't claim it's a recent development) that directly contradicts your claim that Orks are gendered:

p88

"Unlike other races, Orks have no genders. The breeding ability develops in an Ork after he reaches maturity and becomes feral. Roughly half of the wild Orks develop marsupial pouches, in which an Ork whelp is born and nurtured. After a short span of time, the whelp is big enough to leave the pouch. The feral parent feeds the whelp on Squigs and teaches him how to survive in the wilderness. This gives the young Orks their tough, resourceful character."

Or are you going to admit that you want to just cherry pick what you want or don't want for lore and you actually don't care about it after all?

I don't know, you said they haven't gendered orcs, you didn't caveat in which specific universe they hadn't gendered them in. Or are you cherry picking what you want as well?

I mean they might be genderless but as I clearly stated and you proved for me the fact the genderless baby is a he would imply a gender to the audience, setting and GW.

Is that not a commentary on the limitations of English, rather than Orks, societally, having genders?

Boyz/Boy is an Orkish word. Therefore it by no means carries the same definition as the English definition. It’s like Trunk. To me, that’s something an elephant has. To our American chums, it’s where you put the shopping in your car.

Orks using English masculine pronouns and terms doesn’t mean Orks are a single gender. Or even have a concept of such things.

When you’re an Ork? You’re an Ork. And because everyone knows Orks are the best, that’s seemingly enough definition for their society.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Is that not a commentary on the limitations of English, rather than Orks, societally, having genders?

No, because singular "they" has been used for hundreds of years.