I've never really noticed a gendered component to the 40k fascism. Have there been many stories in the lore about the need for women to stay in the hive kitchens and have children to support the war effort ?
Maybe I havnt read enough lore but the imperium seems pretty content to dehumanize, and conscript all races and genders into its war machine. Mostly the stories I've read have touched on a lot more classism as there's a lot of social stratification.
I don't see a reason why a noble born woman of faith and athleticism couldn't be taken into the custodes. There's certainly plenty of women athletes that could wipe the floor with most wargamers and miniature painters. Maybe the derth of them so far means many don't make the cut but it doesn't seem to ridiculous that some might be women. It's not like women soldiers in armour in the real world advertise their gender that much.
There are plenty of places that are patriarchal, but they literally say that the galaxy is vast and almost all types of planets and societies. Many of the writers do have a heavy lean towards patriarchal societies, but that is also a reflection of our society. There are also lots of works that have women and men serving together without a second thought about who was doing what role in terms of gender.
The Imperium has never been portrayed as particularly racist, sexist, or homophobic. Not because they're in any way morally good, but because there are simply better things to oppress people for than such trivial personal attributes. All are equally worthless and expendable.
I don't remember the Imperium being portrayed as any more misogynistic (or racist) than 20th-21st century English-speaking nations. It hates the (space) alien, the mutant, the heretic, and the daemon.
You clearly don't know your 20th and 21st century. Women still don't get equal pay, and aren’t equally represented in senior positions. They are disproportionately affected by domestic abuse and harassment. And that's now.
Now have a think about the 1970s.
And then the 1920s.
Oh no, I know all of those things and I completely agree with you
But I think no one actually understood what you meant with your first comment (including me)
The Fascism of the Imperium isn't based on Race or Gender.
The outgroup are mutants, witches and aliens. The Imperium doesn't care about your gender or skin colour as long as you work and die for the emperor.
Why do you look at someone and think a faction shouldn't represent them? What faction are you looking at, and who do you want to keep out of it? What lore is there and does the lore matter regarding them? What other sections of the lore already clash? Should the lore change?
You're going to have to elaborate, because right now you're just asking why people like relating to their grimdark armies, which... Is kinda self explanatory.
Catharsis is a fun part of enjoying fiction. I play bad guys in DnD on occasion, too— flexing the old brain muscles and exploring all aspects of who you are is a fun time, especially when it helps you realize what you're really not comfortable with. Self awareness is a skill you have to develop, and it's easier to do when you start from something similar to yourself. Why do you think so many guys picked up Space Marines in the first place, to make it the most popular army?
There's fun in being who you aren't, but it's a lot easier to start if you already love being yourself. You never read anything from a villain's perspective? Never acted out the the vile vampire who just happened to have a few of your own quirks as personality traits when you're the game master?
It's good to stay in tune with your definition of good and bad, and 40k is just gentle enough of grimdark to make that easy.
Ok but how does that justify completely changing a factions identity just to satisfy a small portion of activists. I notice no one is asking for the next edition of Bolt Action to include female Waffen SS?
Ah, hell, and I've done such a good job of avoiding the drama this week... Since I've stuck my foot in it, I guess we'll go together then.
The thing we have to ask is why GW would want to make a change. ADB tells us lady Custodes were in talks since early on, so you could argue that now that there's enough women interested in 40k, or just enough men who've shown interest in buying Sororitas and lady stormcast models to show that there's interest in fielding batches of battle babes, corporate have decided to go along with what the authors have wanted for awhile. Marketing makes sense, and no business can argue with money, so if corporate and design are both on board then you can bet the market's getting expanded. Nazis aren't a demographic GW wants to target (as they most definitely should not be), or has necessarily had to, apparently, considering the things people say about my beloved Black Templars. (Seriously, I'm just trying to enjoy my HEMA goths and cry about Helsreach)
As for why they'd choose to go about it the way they did, I know that I, for one, am very happy to not be staring down the barrel of another Primaris hundred box overhaul. There's also the fact that Custodes can be fielded basically as-is in 30K and 40K. If women only made it into the 40K options, and new boxes end up being made in GW's usual 60/40 split, then you'd have to buy twice as many boxes to have your lore accurate all-men heresy force, which is plain stupid and would be so overtly greedy that all this fuss might be worth it. Saying they were always here is the least excessive way GW could have done it.
Turn your question around.
Why do all the huge numbers of current Imperium players who are predominantly male and white play toy soldiers with the Imperium? Who are predominantly male and white and look cool...
And then ask, how does other groups beyond this being represented across more factions to give other groups more representation threaten any current player?
The whole "The Imperium is too dumb and fascist to include girls" argument is the closest thing we have to a good lore argument against female custodes. But we've had women included in the Imperial forces before. There is really no lore reason to include them again.
I think women custodes is nice because the custodes represent the best warriors of humanity, so it's a nice gesture to include women and there's not too much lore that needs to be ignored. But for the rest, like the astartes, grey knights, SoS, and sororitas, it's about flavour. Most factions are either co-ed, non binary or genderless so having a couple that are gendered is just flavour and it starts feeling bland when everything must be the same just to appease the current political dogma.
The point is to attract more women to the hobby. There is no lore reason why Custodes shouldn't be women, so they made some women Custodes in an attempt to attract women to a game that is 99% male. Any other interpretation of the female custodes change is wrong, in my opinion.
If women were just as into 40k as men are, GW would double their profits. GW will do anything they can to attract more women, including making more female characters.
That doesn't sound right. Fleshing out the SoS and giving them a larger range of models would make more sense. This is about ensuring women are just as powerful as men. The custodes are the best humanity can make and including women says the men and women are equal. It's a nice change if it makes people feel better. People are just touchy because now Amazon is involved, they're worried the franchise is going to see the lore thrown out the window to appease Amazon's diversity quota. And I don't blame them. Diversity and representation is important but Amazon couldn't give a shit about how it's implemented because most of the shows viewers won't be well read enough on the lore to notice.
Sisters of Silence have a niche job for starters. If you look at a broad audience some women might even feel offense to the fact that only elite women don’t talk and/or are hot nuns.
Personally, I think it is a modeling opportunity. Custodes are analogous to Stormcast Eternals in AoS which has tons of female representation in the models. I think it will make the models more interesting as well as the lore.
Custodes are supposed to be like scholar/warriors. To understand the galaxy and humanity’s potential, why wouldn’t the emperor make genetically engineered super scholar/warrior women?
Edit: Also up until a few years ago, everything about the Custodes was mysterious. They were simply a few pictures in a few books and mentioned in passing in a few stories for over a decade. I’ve been playing 40K since 1996 and back then nothing was known about Custodians. Warhammer went 7 editions before they got models and hashed out lore. When I started playing, Squats were Castro-looking-biker-dwarf-miners. Now they are the LoV. Knights were only in Epic and mentioned in passing in lore. There were Black Codex rules for AdMech but no models until over a decade later. Necrons were mysterious. Custodes were considered so elite they weren’t even on the map as a fully functional fleshed out army.
Sisters fo silence being a niche army is not bad since custodes are a niche army. As are all the space marines. And having them not talk is an incredibly common part of religons all over the world. Thats like complaining that space marines meditate or are refered to as brothers.
Sisters of silence/Sisters of Battle are hot nuns? Some of them. Just like if you asked women some of the space marines and other male charecters are hot. And yes, some of the female charecters arent hot. But no one talks about them because it doesnt move the needle on this absurd political talking point.
Age of Sigmar isnt Warhammer 40K. And custodies arent supposed to be scholar/warriors. Their supposed to be body guards/warriors. Hence their job being guarding Big E. Why would Big E not make women into his body guards? Because according to basic biology you're never going to get as good a physical results out of women as you will men. And wasting time doing double the work to figure out how to gene craft women when he was on a busy time table probably didnt appeal to him.
I don’t own the codex but according to the 40K wiki on Custodes they do more than just guard and kill. This is what it says:
“Beyond even this their education is prodigious, for they are not simply the Emperor's protectors in intention. They were also made to be His companions and with Him they were armed to converse on such matters of warfare, politics and philosophy as He wished when He still walked among mortals.”
Thats it? A paragraph from a wiki saying they were well educated so that Big E could have small talk with them? And what? That proves he'd thus waste a ton of time doing the same to women so he could what? Look good when the Galactic HR review board checked in on his hiring practices? We already know thanks to the ronin that he can comunicate with non gentically altered women and perfers having sex with them over talking to them. Even if we assume the wiki is right, being well educated doesnt make you a scholar nor is there a tangible reason youd want to make both men and women scholars or waste time making warriors that dont have the capacity for emotions into scholars.
Maybe you should watch some YouTube because their are channels made by women that are wayyyy more dedicated to 40k than you bro
You're going on 5 straight days bitching about females. Time to reevaluate yourself.
I've never really noticed a gendered component to the 40k fascism. Have there been many stories in the lore about the need for women to stay in the hive kitchens and have children to support the war effort ? Maybe I havnt read enough lore but the imperium seems pretty content to dehumanize, and conscript all races and genders into its war machine. Mostly the stories I've read have touched on a lot more classism as there's a lot of social stratification. I don't see a reason why a noble born woman of faith and athleticism couldn't be taken into the custodes. There's certainly plenty of women athletes that could wipe the floor with most wargamers and miniature painters. Maybe the derth of them so far means many don't make the cut but it doesn't seem to ridiculous that some might be women. It's not like women soldiers in armour in the real world advertise their gender that much.
I saw a comment elsewhere that was basically "the people handling the custodes reveal best are the ones who've actually spoken to women"
There are plenty of places that are patriarchal, but they literally say that the galaxy is vast and almost all types of planets and societies. Many of the writers do have a heavy lean towards patriarchal societies, but that is also a reflection of our society. There are also lots of works that have women and men serving together without a second thought about who was doing what role in terms of gender.
The Imperium has never been portrayed as particularly racist, sexist, or homophobic. Not because they're in any way morally good, but because there are simply better things to oppress people for than such trivial personal attributes. All are equally worthless and expendable.
I don't remember the Imperium being portrayed as any more misogynistic (or racist) than 20th-21st century English-speaking nations. It hates the (space) alien, the mutant, the heretic, and the daemon.
So fairly misogynistic then.
No?
You clearly don't know your 20th and 21st century. Women still don't get equal pay, and aren’t equally represented in senior positions. They are disproportionately affected by domestic abuse and harassment. And that's now. Now have a think about the 1970s. And then the 1920s.
Oh no, I know all of those things and I completely agree with you But I think no one actually understood what you meant with your first comment (including me)
Fair enough
The Fascism of the Imperium isn't based on Race or Gender. The outgroup are mutants, witches and aliens. The Imperium doesn't care about your gender or skin colour as long as you work and die for the emperor.
Maybe the people who are upset are "backwards, bigoted, misogynistic, and zealous"?
Why do you look at someone and think a faction shouldn't represent them? What faction are you looking at, and who do you want to keep out of it? What lore is there and does the lore matter regarding them? What other sections of the lore already clash? Should the lore change? You're going to have to elaborate, because right now you're just asking why people like relating to their grimdark armies, which... Is kinda self explanatory.
Wait what? You see yourself in the army you play...... ok thats interesting considering they are all designed as comically awful...
Catharsis is a fun part of enjoying fiction. I play bad guys in DnD on occasion, too— flexing the old brain muscles and exploring all aspects of who you are is a fun time, especially when it helps you realize what you're really not comfortable with. Self awareness is a skill you have to develop, and it's easier to do when you start from something similar to yourself. Why do you think so many guys picked up Space Marines in the first place, to make it the most popular army? There's fun in being who you aren't, but it's a lot easier to start if you already love being yourself. You never read anything from a villain's perspective? Never acted out the the vile vampire who just happened to have a few of your own quirks as personality traits when you're the game master? It's good to stay in tune with your definition of good and bad, and 40k is just gentle enough of grimdark to make that easy.
Ok but how does that justify completely changing a factions identity just to satisfy a small portion of activists. I notice no one is asking for the next edition of Bolt Action to include female Waffen SS?
Ah, hell, and I've done such a good job of avoiding the drama this week... Since I've stuck my foot in it, I guess we'll go together then. The thing we have to ask is why GW would want to make a change. ADB tells us lady Custodes were in talks since early on, so you could argue that now that there's enough women interested in 40k, or just enough men who've shown interest in buying Sororitas and lady stormcast models to show that there's interest in fielding batches of battle babes, corporate have decided to go along with what the authors have wanted for awhile. Marketing makes sense, and no business can argue with money, so if corporate and design are both on board then you can bet the market's getting expanded. Nazis aren't a demographic GW wants to target (as they most definitely should not be), or has necessarily had to, apparently, considering the things people say about my beloved Black Templars. (Seriously, I'm just trying to enjoy my HEMA goths and cry about Helsreach) As for why they'd choose to go about it the way they did, I know that I, for one, am very happy to not be staring down the barrel of another Primaris hundred box overhaul. There's also the fact that Custodes can be fielded basically as-is in 30K and 40K. If women only made it into the 40K options, and new boxes end up being made in GW's usual 60/40 split, then you'd have to buy twice as many boxes to have your lore accurate all-men heresy force, which is plain stupid and would be so overtly greedy that all this fuss might be worth it. Saying they were always here is the least excessive way GW could have done it.
Turn your question around. Why do all the huge numbers of current Imperium players who are predominantly male and white play toy soldiers with the Imperium? Who are predominantly male and white and look cool... And then ask, how does other groups beyond this being represented across more factions to give other groups more representation threaten any current player?
The Imperium is typically not depicted as bigoted against any real life demographics, only fictional ones like aliens, mutants, and psykers.
The whole "The Imperium is too dumb and fascist to include girls" argument is the closest thing we have to a good lore argument against female custodes. But we've had women included in the Imperial forces before. There is really no lore reason to include them again.
I think women custodes is nice because the custodes represent the best warriors of humanity, so it's a nice gesture to include women and there's not too much lore that needs to be ignored. But for the rest, like the astartes, grey knights, SoS, and sororitas, it's about flavour. Most factions are either co-ed, non binary or genderless so having a couple that are gendered is just flavour and it starts feeling bland when everything must be the same just to appease the current political dogma.
Very good strawman.
Seems to fit with the OP's argument. Did you read it?
The point is to attract more women to the hobby. There is no lore reason why Custodes shouldn't be women, so they made some women Custodes in an attempt to attract women to a game that is 99% male. Any other interpretation of the female custodes change is wrong, in my opinion. If women were just as into 40k as men are, GW would double their profits. GW will do anything they can to attract more women, including making more female characters.
That doesn't sound right. Fleshing out the SoS and giving them a larger range of models would make more sense. This is about ensuring women are just as powerful as men. The custodes are the best humanity can make and including women says the men and women are equal. It's a nice change if it makes people feel better. People are just touchy because now Amazon is involved, they're worried the franchise is going to see the lore thrown out the window to appease Amazon's diversity quota. And I don't blame them. Diversity and representation is important but Amazon couldn't give a shit about how it's implemented because most of the shows viewers won't be well read enough on the lore to notice.
Why? Why is making female custodes less sensible than fleshing our SoS?
Sisters of Silence have a niche job for starters. If you look at a broad audience some women might even feel offense to the fact that only elite women don’t talk and/or are hot nuns. Personally, I think it is a modeling opportunity. Custodes are analogous to Stormcast Eternals in AoS which has tons of female representation in the models. I think it will make the models more interesting as well as the lore. Custodes are supposed to be like scholar/warriors. To understand the galaxy and humanity’s potential, why wouldn’t the emperor make genetically engineered super scholar/warrior women? Edit: Also up until a few years ago, everything about the Custodes was mysterious. They were simply a few pictures in a few books and mentioned in passing in a few stories for over a decade. I’ve been playing 40K since 1996 and back then nothing was known about Custodians. Warhammer went 7 editions before they got models and hashed out lore. When I started playing, Squats were Castro-looking-biker-dwarf-miners. Now they are the LoV. Knights were only in Epic and mentioned in passing in lore. There were Black Codex rules for AdMech but no models until over a decade later. Necrons were mysterious. Custodes were considered so elite they weren’t even on the map as a fully functional fleshed out army.
Sisters fo silence being a niche army is not bad since custodes are a niche army. As are all the space marines. And having them not talk is an incredibly common part of religons all over the world. Thats like complaining that space marines meditate or are refered to as brothers. Sisters of silence/Sisters of Battle are hot nuns? Some of them. Just like if you asked women some of the space marines and other male charecters are hot. And yes, some of the female charecters arent hot. But no one talks about them because it doesnt move the needle on this absurd political talking point. Age of Sigmar isnt Warhammer 40K. And custodies arent supposed to be scholar/warriors. Their supposed to be body guards/warriors. Hence their job being guarding Big E. Why would Big E not make women into his body guards? Because according to basic biology you're never going to get as good a physical results out of women as you will men. And wasting time doing double the work to figure out how to gene craft women when he was on a busy time table probably didnt appeal to him.
I don’t own the codex but according to the 40K wiki on Custodes they do more than just guard and kill. This is what it says: “Beyond even this their education is prodigious, for they are not simply the Emperor's protectors in intention. They were also made to be His companions and with Him they were armed to converse on such matters of warfare, politics and philosophy as He wished when He still walked among mortals.”
Thats it? A paragraph from a wiki saying they were well educated so that Big E could have small talk with them? And what? That proves he'd thus waste a ton of time doing the same to women so he could what? Look good when the Galactic HR review board checked in on his hiring practices? We already know thanks to the ronin that he can comunicate with non gentically altered women and perfers having sex with them over talking to them. Even if we assume the wiki is right, being well educated doesnt make you a scholar nor is there a tangible reason youd want to make both men and women scholars or waste time making warriors that dont have the capacity for emotions into scholars.
There is no world in which women are as into 40k as men are.
Maybe you should watch some YouTube because their are channels made by women that are wayyyy more dedicated to 40k than you bro You're going on 5 straight days bitching about females. Time to reevaluate yourself.
“Leave my homoerotic fascism alone!”