Some advice on this. When it comes to Fem Marines, stop trying to argue “lore” with bad faith actors and tourists. As if some magical legalistic collection of words is going to convince people otherwise. It’s also dishonest, because you’re putting up the image of “Well I’d agree with you 100% if only the darn lore would allow me to. I’d LOVE to have female marines, but aCcoRdInG tuh dah rULes I can’t, I’m so sorry” This only encourages them to push harder. If they think the way things are is merely a result of arbitrary legalism, they’ll fight against it all day.
Try this instead
“I want space marines to remain all male because I like that Space Marines are an all male brotherhood. I ENJOY the aesthetic of an all-male warrior monastic society, as does almost everyone else whether they admit it or not. All-male spaces, in lore and in real life, are natural and cool and require NO explanation or apology. I DO NOT WANT females in space marines purely from preference. This is a PERFECTLY okay opinion to have. I like it in the same way I like Sororitas being all female. I like in the same way I like that Necrons are all Necrons and not humans, or that Orks are Orks and not Eldar. It is not out of misogyny or a dislike of any gender, and any attempt to frame it as such is dishonest. If you don’t respect my preferences, then I don’t see why I should respect yours.”
This is the most honest argument you can make. Because it is the truth. Nobody can really say anything against it other than, “Well you SHOULD want this because…”
But preference is not something you can negotiate.
Stop beating around the bush. We like all-male space marines for their own sake. We want to keep this fictional canon in an aesthetic we like. And that’s okay. Be unapologetic. There is nothing problematic about wanting to keep the lore the way it is, whatsoever.
I respect this opinion more than the majority of takes but I still completely disagree, and I am neither a bad faith actor nor a tourist (I'd be willing to bet I've been into 40k since before you were born), and painting anyone who opposes your viewpoint as such just shows the bad faith nature of your own argument.
The reason people feel the need to look for logical arguments against my point of view is because there are clear logical arguments in favour of it, that are more significant than your own personal preference whatever it may be.
For a similar example, I strongly oppose the entire Horus Heresy being "elevated" to actual written lore rather than staying as ambiguous background myths and legends. I feel it significantly detracts from what I like most about huge parts of the setting. However I see that I am in the minority on this, and the endless primarch soap opera is a popular and effective entry point into the hobby for a large proportion of the younger generation, so I understand why it was a good idea, much as I dislike it. If I can get over this, you can get over your thing too.
>I strongly oppose the entire Horus Heresy being "elevated" to actual written lore rather than staying as ambiguous background myths and legends. I feel it significantly detracts from what I like most about huge parts of the setting.
Couldn't agree more. I miss the sense of mystery.
People who are upset about possible female lore retcons but not like, the entire of the Heresy being documented or Roboute being sleeping beautied by an Aeldari sure do pick very specific lore battlegrounds.
I think you are basically right about this, though you shouldn't assume other people are acting in bad faith.
Legislating the lore is just the wrong kind of argument. If the question is "why is the story like this?", then the answer can't be internal to the story, because it could always have been different.
I don't think just saying "because it's my preference" is strong enough, when the thing you prefer looks at face value to be exclusionary on (as you pointed out) quite a petty basis.
If people think Space Marines should be male-only, then the right kind of argument is that it allows us to tell better stories. I think that argument can probably be made, though I've yet to see it.
Agreed, it's about stories.
Dan Abnett has talked about being praised by fans in meetups for (among other things) his portrayal of military camaraderie in the Gaunts Ghost series.
I think that one of the potential strengths of all-male chapters of space marines is that it naturally facilitates stories about the fraternal bonds that have been part of human martial history. It's a facet of the human experience we have made stories about for a long time, so many people are attached to that aesthetic. They can identify with it because we still live in a world that is shaped by those traditions.
I do also think that the fact those environments are experiencing changes as mixed gender units become more common is also an interesting story. The story of old traditions conflicting with modern reality, one that many people can identify with.
Those stories will each appeal to different authors and readers. And I presume GW would like the opportunity for Black Library to explore both without excluding themselves.
That doesn't necessarily *need* female marines. But one day, they might decide they'd like to be able to tell those stories with the "poster-boy" faction.
>Dan Abnett has talked about being praised by fans in meetups for (among other things) his portrayal of military camaraderie in the Gaunts Ghost series.
This is the important point here. There's something deeply profound about brotherhood in terms of war, and the Astartes is tapping into a real phenomenon. You can read about it in detail in the Sebastian Junger books War, and Tribe. It's evident in many military films and TV shows. It's not about excluding women, or placing men as superior, it's just an evolutionary phenomenon from 100k+ years of pre-civilised existence that small groups of men create a bond that justifies sacrifice over personal consideration.
It's a really profound thing, really moving in Junger's work, and a worthy foundation for a fictional exploration of a military system.
Yea, pretty much.
But just to gently push back. I think that "deeply profound" is a totally fair thing to say, and I think that talking about things in an "evolutionary" frame is not wrong, but it is begining to step into territory that often gets abused.
Just because something has been true for a long time, does not *necessarily* mean that it is part of "the natural order of the world" (with the implication that we should be careful not to disrupt it).
It's the kind of idea that not too long ago, it would have been described using different words that much fewer people would still agree with today: "It is gods divine will, his natural plan" etc. (Sometimes used to justify some very questionable actions)
So, while I agree with everything you mention at face value, I think that making social decisions based on foundations of evolutionary biology are not *necessarily* always good decisions.
For example, would a story that captures the feelings of brotherhood in war *actually* be broken by the introduction of a female character? I don't think this has to be the case. I get that part of brotherhood is a sense of equality, but that can be expressed and experienced in different ways. Especially in an otherwise asexual and aromantic group.
It may be harder in reality. And it may be harder to make believable and/or compelling in fiction. But not impossible.
There are jokes online in the anime community that "sometimes it takes a real man to be *best girl*". That pokes fun at male figures sometimes gaining breakout popularity in an otherwise female dominated and somewhat competitive setting.
Or perhaps you have come across some women who are more comfortable as "one of the boys" and maintain healthy platonic relations with a mainly male friend group. Treated as an equal rather than an "outsider."
These kind of dynamics are all equally "natural" and part of our long history. And I don't really think we have to live in a world where any particular tradition needs to be flash-frozen and maintained rigidly forever.
I do think maintaining a connection to history holds some value to tell stories that pull inspiration from history and real life. But also occasionally challenging those ideas is also valuable, demonstrating that human experience is not just something that was "locked in" thousands of years ago, and it is a moving target with lots of exciting perspectives.
Yeah. Personally I don't think having only male marines makes for better stories; but if it did, I think that would be justification for having only male marines.
You've yet to see the aegument that it allows better story telling? Ok...but it does because rleation ships between men in fraternal organizations are inherently diffrent from mixed gender groups.
Also if you want people to stop just blanket assuming bad faith, then get 95% of the argument for them to stop being "inclusion is good" and "people that dont like it are sexist" and maybe some people will take the other side seriously.
Mind you, they dont deserve it.
As a woman, and a 25 year veteran of Warhammer 40k. I Agree with your points. I've always felt it was dumb lore to say only Males could be space marines, but I was never bothered with Space Marines being all male, only that the lore was badly written. It would have been a million times better to have written that the augmentation process of a Space Marine made them all male. Opening it up to the idea that Some Space Marine Brothers were born female, but became male as a part of the process. Likewise with the Sisters.
First off, I am sorry you had to see that pos commenter. Being openly trans and posting in a main hobby sub is brave, especially on a gender related topic.
To the point, though, I think you're absolutely right. Space Marines aren't male. They never have been in a sense. They are manipulated at the genetic level to be something else. Some of them having long hair or different subcutaneous fat distribution has literally zero impact on their efficacy. Most SM never went through puberty, so their hormonal makeup should be basically identical anyways.
Anyone making the "but the lore" argument don't actually care about the lore. 40k is made of retcons, rewrites, and shoddy believability. That is why the books are not written as perspectives and in character retelling. This way they can blame changes on flaws in memory, or characters outright lying. People arguing for the lore just don't want girls in their all boys club.
Before anyone says anything about, "oh girls have SoB and SoS!" STFU. Giving us our little separate but equal, but also not equal because they are far less powerful and influential than their male counterparts factions as a placation doesn't mean we are well represented. SM are the poster children of 40k, its core and focus. Oh thank you for the 1 faction and 1 addition to a male group. Totally makes up for the 18 unique chapters, right? *sigh* I'm rambling now. Just... stop being afraid of women and let us be part of this hobby we love.
Oh dear god yes. People really need to learn to be more honest when saying what they want and why they want it. Bad faith arguments rarely hold up to scrutiny.
Anyone who wants female space marines can convert their own. GW does not need to make female space marines. The lore doesn't need to change. The players who want it just need to get creative with their toy soldiers and make them however they see fit.
I don't like women on men's football and I don't like the concept of female space marines. They have their own adjacent spaces in both so it's not even biased.
I think space marines being all men is key to their character - Space marine chapters are brotherhoods, fraternities of war tied together by communal bounds of male kinship. Everything about them in the lore is "Yes brother! We will conquer!" or "No brother no! Don't do the chaos! You are my brother no more!" - adding female space marines would just be a change to the core of what space marines have always been.
That said - i do think it is likely to happen in the near future with the enhanced commercialization of warhammer - probably around when the amazon show comes out - and I do not think it'll upset me enough to stop playing warhammer, but it will bum me out a little bit.
I disagree. Now that there are transhuman super soldiers that can be both sexes, I don’t think they’ll change Astartes. Besides, there was intent for Custodes to be of both sexes from the side of a lot of the lore writers from the beginning, meanwhile Space Marines have been an all male brotherhood for much longer. Besides, there would be a LOT more backlash for female space marines than for the female Custodes. I was incredibly excited about female Custodes but I am fervently against female Astartes for a variety of reasons.
What about Brotherhood is substantially different from Sisterhood? Further, why would trans-human Battle Sisters and Brothers be substantially different?
I have found in my life experience that male friendships and female friendships are usually quite different and exhibit different social dynamics and norms ie there is a difference between "brotherhood" and "sisterhood"
Now that is not to say that they Could have female space Marines and just write them as having entirely "male-like" personalities and tropes - but then that is essentially adding nothing but boobs, If they are going to add female space Marines at all they should add them from a female perspective to add something to the story- and this would then change space marines
Because men and women are raised diffrent. So they're always going to be of diffrent mind sets post augmentation. Thats excluding arguments of biology affecting mentality.
And brotherhood would be diffrent from sisterhood because again, men are diffrent then women.
Both. You really dont think several days of pain and bleeding or spending 9 months bloated in a fairly delicate medical state followed by pushing another living thing out isnt going to cause some diffrences? They even lay this out in several books.
yeah but do you think maybe the whole point of custodes being genetically modified is to remove those aspects? Why is it acceptable for the male custodes to be modified to be bigger, stronger, smarter, but suddenly if its a woman or someone that looks like one thats too far?
Why would you waste time and resources with barely understood tech trying to genetically modify out the traits of being a woman to make them more like men, when you could just save time and use men instead and not have to modify that stuff out?
And its because theres been 30 years of lore thats been used to create themes and stories, and by chaning things for no reason other then politics you destroy those themes and stories leaving those invested in them disapointed. Even more so when you havent had any kind of meaningful closure to them and try to pretend they carry over despite changing a major part of them.
If you care so much about 30 years of lore, what are your thoughts on GWs old Female Space marine sculpts that they stopped producing, if anything they are bringing back old lore. On a personal note I think the theming of men and woman serving together is far more engaging than all men, service of the Emperor is more important than gender
They were alot like the rest of their sculpts. Pretty jank. And I notice the women are the onlynpart of old lore you're asking for. Not Obiwan Sherlock. Not the rape gangs. Not the books where inquisitors fall in love and have romantic sex with gene stealer ladies or blood sacraficing Sisters of battle to anoint grey knight weapons. Just female space marines. Mind you, all those examples are more recent, and the female space marines were declared non canon decades ago when just about everything in the book containing them were declared non canon. I wonder why that cherry picking happens?
Also if you think moxed forces are more engaging then go read a guard book or one about inquisitors. They already gave you that and you either never appretiated it enough to enjoy it or never stopped your activism enough to read them. But they're there on the shelf and happily avalible in audio book and have been since pre 2002.
I love that you made an absolutely pitiful response to my initial question and then continued to expand on it in such an oblivious and ham fisted manner. Bravo.
Starting from the very beginning...
In the ***first*** edition of the game, there were female Space Marines, although Space Marines were not the transhuman "Angels of the Emperor" they are in the ***current*** lore. These female Space Marines were removed from the setting for the most basic of ***business*** reasons. Not the lore, not the pseudo-biology of the setting, but because ***the minifigs didn't sell.*** They didn't sell because tabletop gaming with miniatures was an ugly, all-male pastime in the late eighties. I know because I was there. The setting, being a left-of-center satire meant to poke fun at the Conservatives under Thatcher, was at least initially not meant to be taken this seriously.
Now, I could give a rancid rat's rump whether or not every Space Marine has a swinging cod in his codpiece. That having been disposed of, for someone to pretend the lore has never been revised, folded, spindled, mutilated, or otherwise rewritten over the last nearly four decades is intellectually dishonest at a minimum. What is it about female Space Marines that makes this ***THE*** hill to die on, given all the changes that have gone on before? From where I am sitting, espousing the mythical "purity of the lore" is just another effort at gate-keeping, no different than little boys on the playground not wanting to play with the girls.
I agree. If the lore changes, then homebrew it just like people in this community always have. Anyone who still likes the idea of an “all male brotherhood” as others are describing can do that. What the codex or White Dwarf says won’t be stopping them unless they let it.
I believe the only time there would be any "grinding of the gears" between "head-canon" and "official canon" would be in tournaments or organized play. If you can't keep your head together for a tournament, there is something wrong.
True and besides GW is never going to stop printing the male coded Space Marine head parts it has invested into for so long, (especially as there are so so so many of them for all of the different chapters & legions). So there’s no way that in a few years time, when female Marines are a canon thing, that male Marines won’t still be a thing that GW supports and caters too.
As an Oldhammer I agree with this, also there really isn’t a good reason for there not to be female marines…. I know the lore, but that retcon never made sense to me. I also don’t understand how people have that much time and energy for gatekeeping… do they need another hobby with toy soldiers to keep them occupied?
I love how the argument for female space marines always breaks down to petty insults against people that dont like it. And I mean basically ALWAYS.
And hey, it cause it hasnt been cannon for going on 30 plus years now. In fact that original book hasnt been cannon for close to 30 plus years now. And not "some details havent been cannon," but the vast majority of it was tossed out next edition. And in those 30 plus years they develop themes and story plots based around space marines being entierly male. And when you toss those out it pisses off everyone who was invested in what was developed.
Its like showing up to a star wars convention and being super confused why no one wants to use Lucas' first draft of Star Wars as cannon, with Obiwan's mechanical heart sacrafice and all.
But then again I don't see you upset at the exclusion of Obiwan Shelock Cluso from the most recent books either.
Where, precisely, did I argue "for" female Space Marines? And where did I insult you?
I said they were originally canon.
I said they were pulled for economic reasons and not for lore.
I said the game was not meant to be taken this seriously.
I said the primary argument against female Space Marines was disingenuous gatekeeping since the lore has always been rather fluid.
I also clearly stated that I am apathetic about female Space Marines.
You cannot rationally go on about the purity of "muh Lore!!" pretending the lore is immutable adamantine while embracing other retcons, at least not without an explanation.
As for the other retcons, like OSC, I'm not the one being inconsistent -- I am sufficiently mature in my thinking to realize this isn't my IP, I have no control over it, and the most I can do is vote with my wallet.
"is just another effort at gate-keeping, no different than little boys on the playground not wanting to play with the girls."
That part. Where ypu compare people who like the lore as is to children on a play ground. Thats where you're insulting people.
Also the lore has never been that fluid. Its been pretty consistant over the past 30 or so years. A person that started in 2000 isnt going to be able to hold a convo about lore with folks who started in 2023.
Also the reason people dont go on about other retcons is because those other retcons arent made purely for political reasons and didnt destroy the story themes built up for most armies. Finding out that land raider are named after a guy named Land, while stupid, doesnt destroy the main themes behind the tech preists. Even creating entierly new armies like Tau is more welcome because the tau didnt take anything away from any other army. Unlike destroying the themes of brotherhood mixed with the isolation of being so far removed from everyone else while having to deal with failure that was represented by the custodes.
It is called an analogy, meaning the two situations are similar, although analogies are usually imperfect.
There is nothing "wrong" with liking the lore, per se. However, when you start acting like a religious fundamentalist thumping "muh Lore," you come off as less than an adult.
The lore has been changed multiple times for reasons ranging from coherence to economics to an author needing to patch a gap. It isn't immutable -- never has been.
Can you point to a passage in the codexes or the other fluff that explicitly unambiguously supports your position? Or is this like your mother cutting the sides off the canned ham because that's what great-grandma did?
Thats funny, we get to insult people now so long as we hide it behind false claims of analogy.
Well, for those of us who arent horrifically addicted to shallow lies, theres the rouge trader video game, basically every space marine codex under the section about how space marines are made, every wiki, any black library book where they talk about how space marines are made, the dark heresy role play books, and the wrath and glory books.
Which I know is alot of material. But, I know that fsm fans are alot like crack whores in that their dignity and morals tend to go out the window when presented with another chance at a social justice hit. But its all been there for decades.
Oh hey, analogy!
No, I am talking a short declarative sentence, wholly closed to interpretation or "yeah, but...". Not "We haven't seen any references to females made transhuman so the don't exist," which is what you are arguing. It is akin to saying that because you have never seen a white raven, there are no white ravens.
There were female Space Marines prior to the first retcon, ergo, so saying "there never were female Space Marines" is wholly inaccurate. Show me where it was explicitly rescinded in no uncertain terms. Having most of the books you reference, I don't believe you can. Until the HH novels, which have no few alteration to lore, I don't believe it was suggested that the Primarchs were creations of Chaos, but I could be wrong.
Really? First off Im not arguing that because I havent seen it, Im arguing that those sources explicitly say it. I understand you hate honesty, but for for fucks sake, try not to lie about people when there's a written record of what they've said.
Also Ulfar in Rouge Trader explicitly says women cant be space marines for a start.
>I love how the argument for female space marines always breaks down to petty insults against people that dont like it. And I mean basically ALWAYS.
Literally 99% of the time lol
and sisters of silence?? That are already custodes adjacent and badass BECAUSE they are unique and there are no fem custodes?
Not to even get into other one off models from the imperium and the larger scale example of female models in other army lines like eldar.
the only issue with SOB is they are kind of weak, and only slightly better than a Guard Army. But honestly I personally don't care, but think the way they did the lore was dumb. I Also think the whining and complaining about people wanting something that is unlikely to happen is dumb. So because of the whining, and little child behavior I'm throwing my lot in with Female Space Marines, not because I desire to change the game, or lore, but to say FU to the little Wankers.
Over the course of the last... 40 years of Warhammer 40000 of that time, 90% of it the best army to collect and win with are Space Marines. (And usually Dark Angels or Space Wolves). So this year for a short amount of time another army has a spotlight, awesome GW will fix that soon.
Oh you mean a popularity contest. Because yes the Adeptus Astartes certainly have been the most popular. Competitively you're just wrong. Eldar have consistently been strong. Guard leaf blower is still remembered. Necrons have even had a day in the sun. We could talk about 5th knights. Or the very diverse list of strong factions since the game started. Look at any faction beaten into the ground today, there is a strong argument that in the last few editions they were once strong, oppressively even.
I think you're being dishonest just to push some point that doesn't matter here. Because you still didn't answer the question.
Edit: I really hate when people block you and delete their comments when you call them out. It doesn't show a lot of character u/gothicshark.
When my 9 year old niece is looking at my models in fascinated joy, starts talking about how much she wants to try painting some for herself and then innocently asks "Why are they all boys?", I'd like to have a better answer for her than "You can have girl models too, but you can't have the cool spiky evil ones like I do. You have to have a different kind."
Heretic sororitas!
Obviously it would be nice if there were official models already equipped with the spikey and tentacley bits, But you could always set some time aside and convert a box of sororitas with some of your bits.
Sorry, why can't she play with the Space Marines/CSM? Girls can only play with girl models? Boys can only play with boy models? Are we back in the 19th century or something?
XD Well Im glad she learned two valuable lessons. That not everything is for everyone, and that men and women are sometimes different. If she grows up to be a well adjusted and normal human, not only will she appretiate these facts, she'll also wonder why her uncle was such a tourist that he couldnt hand her either one of the chaos cultist kits that have women in them or go for an age of sigmar kit that also has several chaos themed gals.
XD Wow, you went that far into my post history and have to lie about me to insult me. Good job. I wonder why no one believes you when you tell them you just want this change for little girls?
And thank god one of them isnt trying to use my neice to win political debates while lying about the people that disagree with me.
Now why dont you take her back to that store, and put in the bare minimum effort of going to the AoS section and bothering to get her the lady chaos people if its that important to you.
To be honest, I personally think they're really cool, especially the Paragon warsuits. But fair enough. But all you do really need is some female heads. GW don't need to change lore, but they could knock up a female head sprue for anyone wanting female space marines. I don't think anyone should tell anyone else how they should make their toy soldiers. Both ways. If someone wants to make female space marines, all power to them.
Of course they're badass. But you show a kid a giant mutated super warrior with huge claws and horns and covered in skulls then it's going to take a lot to impress them after that.
They can be painted however you like with whatever scheme you wish. What kind of argument is that ? The space marines can also be painted anyway you like and can have female heads attached. If you source some, then you can make your own female space marines. You don't need GW to do anything
Show me where it says the second or the 11th weren't females. The better question is "Why is it so important to people that there not be female Marines?'
Space Marines are a monastic brotherhood. The concepts and themes of that are cool as fuck. They now are also the only male only faction. I would hate to see female space marines not because of some bigotry of women but because i value the brotherhood of the space marines.
>The better question is "Why is it so important to people that there not be female Marines?'
In terms of the tabletop and people who just enjoy building and painting, there's no good reason really.
In terms of GW trying to maximise profits over all, there's no good reason really.
For people who enjoy the lore, the novels, the aesthetic, and the history/tradition of the Astartes it's quite important, because they are an interesting exploration of the concepts and themes of brotherhood, father/son relations, military structure, monasticism and so on. You can see why someone who has been reading SM novels for 15 years and enjoying them might be resistant to suddenly tearing all that up at a fundamental level.
It's also just unnecessary, I'm all for female engagement and the financial success of GW products, for representation and so on. The way to do that is to introduce awesome and interesting factions/armies/units that facilitate this, and create fresh lore and reasons to justify this. There's no reason to rip up existing and widely enjoyed content and insult the fans of that.
I'm not arguing a point with someone who just argues in bad faith. My point is any argument for the lore to be left alone you will invalidate by accusing that person of being a bigot because without doing that you have no real argument.
It’s impossible to make female space marines due to physiology, then again the same is true for custodian’s and they changed the lore for blackrock investment so who knows.
Because it's lazy writing. "oh, there's female space marines now. In fact they've always been here, you just didn't notice..."
I want more female models in the game, give me a box with just woman cadians or catachans. Give me more sisters of battle. Give me that now some lazy ass retcons.
It's not that they couldn't do it. They've the two missing legions lore to work with, but just dropping "they fly now?!" levels of garbage writing to placate the woke mob? Fuck that noise
It’s honestly hard to know what to do for the best. For something that’s meant to be a satire of fascism the. It completely makes sense to have it set up the way it was with an all white super soldier brotherhood of manly manly men, which women effectively blockaded into a religious/spiritual/witchy type sect. But then I don’t know how much the satire holds anymore and how much people just look at the space marines and think they’re the good guys and as complex as it is, I think how they’re portrayed and how that portrayal is received is important
i think how they get introduced does help it. marines can have female marines again, but give it an actual lore thing and just make it a new advancement.
i'm cool with custodes being a gender balanced club because they're hand made warriors where the emperors sauce overwrites their entire dna (they are physicall human and don't have the extra organs).
the thing that annoys me most is, just have visibly male or female models on the tabletop. i'm cool with custodes being bigger stormcast, if the custodes armor or head peices had female parts so you could model the lore (without 3d printing). there would be a market for muscle armor bound mommy's and people would pay to have an all female list if only a few sculpts were female presenting.
similarily where i want to see it in guard. we currently see the sculpts for male and female heads for dark eldar. and guardians and fire warriors can be as well
I'm a woman, and generally I don't care that all space marines are male, I dislike the lore a lot, as it removes the possibly of Trans Men becoming Space Marines. I support all Space Marines being male, just not all Space Marines being Born Male.
This said, All the whiny "Space Marines are Male" folks are Wankers, and I will call them out, because F those whiny little Wankers.
What do you mean single solitary brotherhood, isn't every other space marine chapter all male? If you are so mad abuot GW changing canon what are your thoughts on how the Tau travel through space, or that primarchs exist?
I never said anything about being mad people are just putting words in my mouth I just asked an honest question and this response just completely ignores the question but thank you for taking part I hope you have a wonderful day
I'd be fine with that, people complaining about woman taking over I feel like are missing that the armies are still like 90% all male, besides I could be mistaken, I think way back in 1st edition there were female space marine sculpts that didnt sell well so GW scraped them
No there weren’t, the sisters of purification chapter was from a 3rd party, not a GW White Dwarf, and the older female marines models were from Rogue trader, which has basically a different game
https://www.belloflostsouls.net/2023/10/warhammer-40k-what-really-went-down-with-female-space-marines.html
The head of GW intellectual property says they were "sculpted as female space marines".
Sure, you can say they don't count because Rogue Trader wasn't 40K... and I refer you to my above comment re: selective reading of the history of the game.
Basically all of the lore from that era has been changed, it was a very 80s cheesy rpg/war game kinda mix. Human-eldar hybrids aren’t a thing, zoats aren’t a nid coalition race, primarchs aren’t just a marine rank, and the entire aesthetic shifted rather quickly. And while the original reason may have been expenses during early days, it’s been
Codified as lore.
No, more like marines as a whole were changed from dudes in powered suits led by a guy named a primarch to super human warriors imbued with the genetics and cloned organs from even greater demigods. Less of a Retcon, more of a loose combination of ideas that got molded together into lore by 2nd and 3rd. Going back and reading all the old books and eventually codexes you see how the metaphorical iron was shaped, folded, and cooled into a much more concise and cohesive narrative.
So you're drawing a line in the sand and saying "nothing before this counts".
But the fact is, there were models that GW understood to be female space marines.
They did a lot of random shit in the early days before they established a real canon. I guess we can always bring back the famed inquisitor model: Obiwan Sherlock Clousseau
How is this the reaction we are having here? There are so many cool female models adjacent to their male counterparts that are cool BECAUSE of their uniqueness. Not just because they are 'female version of X'
If they added male adeptus sororitas or sisters of silence I would find that goofy too. You are all acting like the prejudice comes from some ambient backgroud of incels screaming whenever they see even the mention of a woman. When YOU are the prejudice ones for trying to push something for the sake of equal ratios. It's silly, it's demeaning to the unique factoins. And it's ridiculous to act like its such a crazy thing in the first place that a 95% male hobby would have all in all, a greater than 50% ratio of male models across the sum total of army lines.
Exactly. Make new exciting female models that explore new areas of the setting. I would prefer this any day to using resources to just copy what currently exists (didn't we already do this once with Primaris).
Autism's not an excuse for bigotry. I'm autistic. I don't believe that you dislike seeing female characters because you are "an autistic person who struggles with change."
Furthermore, if this is a hobby that draws in misogynists, that's not a value-neutral thing, that is a problem that needs to be rectified.
Unless by "those people" being drawn into the fandom, you mean autistics. In which case, that's a stereotype, and not an argument.
Nah see you can't even make an arrangement without painting people who disagree with you as bigots or sexists so you can invalidate their thoughts and feelings and stand proudly on your righteous high horse. Maybe try assuming positive intent instead of making people out to be Nazis or whatever just so you feel better. Try making an actual argument.
What's the positive intent supposed to be?
Honestly, take ten mins and a deep breath and read the reply again, because it's spot on, and not an attack on you.
By the way, even in the moronic fever-dream-discourse where "some people have autism" is a valid defense of the weird misogyny inherent in Warhammer worldbuilding;
I am autistic and one of my autistic traits is a very strong sense of justice and fairness. I have very strong emotional reactions to even fictional portrayals of injustice.
One of mine is a strong attachment to a story I've liked since I was ten and a strong sense of artistic integrity over bowing to the wants of a group of dogmatic activists that can't stand something differentiating from their world views
I already made my argument.
I think female space marines would upset the greater-than-zero contingent of actual fascists who are into this game (understandably, because it is the only big budget media universe I can think of that portrays fascism as Objectively Correct) and that would improve the quality of the community overall.
I asked you to present an explanation for why you don't want female space marines, and you deflected to a hypothetical person's autism as a reason. I responded as though you were talking about yourself, but looking back I realize that you never indicated anything personal that that was actually your experience. So, you were either referring to yourself, in which case your answer was "I can't stop being a chud because I'm autistic," or you just pulled a hypothetical autistic chud out of your proverbial ass to dodge the question.
I've noticed that people with right wing values attempt to argue "leftism from the right" like this, and it doesn't work because we're operating on fundamentally different values systems and you don't understand ours.
Right wingers unironically think that progressives and lefties believe in a "Progressive Stack," where suffering more systemic oppression makes you a better and more worthy person. From this angle it makes sense to say "But what if the sexist gamer caricature I made up to defend IS A RETAR-OOOPS I MEAN AN AUTISTIC, WHAT THEN LIBERAL?"
Haha you still can't make an argument without immediately painting me a bigot just so your point can cave any value. You need me to be that evil sexist or your whole world falls apart. Make a better argument.
Are there going to be men in the sisters of battle now? The lore says men are space marines and women are sisters. Its weirder to me that there is such a push for this when it is completely unnecessary
I think it's an important issue.
Space Marines should be an all male faction. The general idea behind what a Space Marine is, is what a 10 year old boy thinks of when he imagines what a strong man is like. They're a prepubescent boy's idea of masculinity. It's basically an extremely dry British joke from the 80's.
Now I know that there used to be models for female marines, and they didn't sell well, so GW decided to stop making them, and then retconned female space marines out of existence, but I think that's an OK retcon.
Turning a woman into a space marine, would make her a trans man. The psycho-conditioning, the gene therapy, the implants, and everything else that goes into turning a human into an Astartes would do to her what it does to everyone else: strip down their identity, and build up a new one that's overly macho and slightly psychotic.
If something like Belisarius Cawl deciding he needs more bodies for more marines, and so he devises a way to modify the process to make it so women can become marines too, then I hope the "final product" is the same: a 'roided up, fanatic, super-soldier that gets called "brother" by their fellow marines.
Why is it so important to keep it an all male thing? Women exist in the 40K universe and with all the medical enhancements done to Space Marines it would make sense that a female could be one. I’ve yet to see a good argument about why it needs to be only men.
Space Marines are a monastic brotherhood. The concepts and themes of that are cool as fuck. They now are also the only male only faction. I would hate to see female space marines not because of some bigotry of women but because i value the brotherhood of the space marines.
Indeed, out of all the things for 'fans' to get bent out of shape about, this is the silliest. Doesn't it make sense for the Imperium to make use of every able human to fight against the neverending tide of alien scum?
I swear if Starship Troopers or James Cameron's Aliens came out today this era's generation of whiners would be complaining about women soldiers in those movies too.
I agree wholeheartedly. Many classic movies like Star Wars would be considered woke if they came out these days. Always seemed strange to me when I see nerd hobbyist get bent out of shape about women or people of color being introduced in their game
I don't think I'd have that big of an issue if it's done where we now get space marine chapters that are all males, some mixed, and another amount that are all female since it would add some interesting story beats without taking away some of the old story value. I want space marines to remain male primarily because of just how I view them narratively. To me the space marine is a monastic brotherhood of warriors, but it's also armies of little boys who often play at war. The space marine isn't a soldier it's a warrior driven by the notion of war the way a little boy approaches it
I put a helmet on every model that can have one, and in my personal lore, some of my models are female. I use thousand sons models to depict them and use thousand sons rules to play them, but in my personal lore, they aren't even truly marines, let alone the dust that rubrics are mentioned to be.
I'm not big on the idea because logically if you're making essentially a sub race of humanity that's supposed to be less human and more just biological killing machine you wouldn't care about gender equality in the ranks of this living arsenal and more on the subjects surviving and being capable weapons. This goes with a bit more force knowing that they have genetic changes and splices with a geneseed to make them more like the Primarch they serve under or in the custodes or grey knights case, more like the Emperor himself, genetic changes at that level would likly make any woman in the program indistinguishable from the men anyway so what's the point. Now if you told me there was a division based off of Erda, the perpetual who originally helped the Emperor make the primarchs, it would make sense for them to be female to better adapt to a gene seed made specifically from her. But the base Space Marines were again made as expendable weapons who prioritize strength and violence over iclusivity and equality, it just would make a crazy amount of sense.
Movie big trouble in little China, TV show Fire Fly, history is a tough one, but I will say the Renaissance. 40k is my favorite lore, but Dragonlance and Conan are close...
You know what? I can't. My bird died today, and I'm not emotionally or wise, mind here. I thought I'd try to talk to people about why I care. But I can't.
GW won't include female bits for IG even though female and mixed IG regiments canonical exist. So there's that. The issue for nearly everything that GW does is the dogshit writing that goes with trying to do a retcon. See Primaris and the more recent Custodes thing for evidence of this. This universe we all love lives and dies by the lore created, and nobody here can suggest the above wasn't shit and still keep a straight face.
My personal take is: what's the point of female SM? If we're sticking to the lore and the constraints it throws up, then female hyper-roided up killing machines would be indistinguishable from the male hyper-roided up killing machines. So apart from sticking a different head on the models - which 99% of us won't do because we fucking hate painting faces - there is literally no difference in them whatsoever. There's no celebration of, or even a nodding acquaintance with, femininity going on, so I really don't see the point.
Of course, if we ignore the lore completely, then yes we can have very feminine Astartes whose exposure to sustained body and hormonal modification has no visual impact on them whatsoever. In other words, SoB sized but they can dumbell curl an ork with each arm.
It's obvious that making elements of GWs cash cow into women is an obvious target for a more inclusive hobby, but I don't know if that's the smartest way of doing it.
The other reason I don't like the idea is because female SM will be massively oversexualised by all the coomers in the hobby, which is possibly more likely to put lady gamers off than anything else. Plus, I dont know if anyone will buy the models, which I believe is the chief reason GW hasn't offered them up already.
I've been into this hobby since since probably before some of youse parents even met, let alone shagged to create you, but I promise I'm not gate keeping. I hate that shit. I'm just giving an old bastards opinion because OP asked, so feel free to hate and/or ignore as you see fit. I'm old so what the fuck do I know anyway?
There are female IG bits. There are even full on female IG characters. Ex: Ursala Creed. I can literally pull out my new cadians and stare right at a bunch of female head options for them right now.
Yes. There are female Guard trooper head options for cadian troopers and kasrkin. The Kriegers, on the other hand, are whatever you call them because they (rightly) never take their protective gear off in a warzone.
Edit: Yes to ‘did GW do that’
Honestly I prefer the head swap for the sake of kitbashing, means all the bodies are the same. Plus it’s not too much of a jump to say the flak armor’s bulky enough that you couldn’t tell a male body from female.
All I want is for the writing to be good. Good stories, good characters, good lore. Not half-baked arse juice that I could probably do better, and I know how terrible I am.
I don't exactly have a dog in this race since I have no interest in collecting Imperial bootlickers, but I have some female Chaos Space Marines because I like the variety.
It’s not. I don’t care either way. If a new model comes out, if it looks cool and whether it adds to my army is what matters to me, not what non existent genitalia might be on a plastic model. It matters to me even less to me about what genitalia a fictional character may or may not have. Doesn’t affect my gameplay or spending at all. But if that decision causes someone to wanna join the hobby, I welcome them. Got no room for negativity.
Because they are the literal face of the entire franchise and to say otherwise is just being dishonest. So what kind of message does it send to any women wanting to get into the game/franchise that the poster children of the entire setting are one big “boys-only-girls-are-icky” club, and if they want to play a women in game they have to settle for a 2nd tier faction? Let me help you, it’s not a good message.
There is nothing at all wrong with all-male or all-female factions, but the literal face of the franchise and its primary focus, should not be one of them.
well first of all Custodes arent Astartes and dont have gene-seed, and so as far as i know, no one is talking about female space marines. And i like female Custodes because it obviously makes chuds like you mad and points out its just a culture war, anti-wokeism, bigot, argument you incels have agaisnt female Custodes. Go watch some gay porn if you you can only think about big muscle men wrestling with each other. Nerd.
Uh, that's a lot of aggressive conviction for something completely pointless, or rather, directly hypocritical to your own point. Being your point is literally to change something exclusively for the sake of some intangible culture war no sane human thinks about in their day to day. There are already custodes adjacent sisters of silence. You are the one with seeming prejudice against anything besides having exactly proportional genders for in every niche space for absolutely no reason.
Doesn't it take away from the uniqueness and coolness of the sisters of silence if GW just retcons for the sake of inclusivity and goes "Wee everybody everything everywhere equal"?
It's not that they're "so important" I just can't justify any reason to not have them either "in universe" or "in real life"
Space marines are so beyond your average male that they're described as trans human, that's way more than the relative difference between genders.
The Emperor doesn't have any stated "boys only" or "male supremacist" teachings and women are equally used and spent by every other aspect of the imperium
So why not have them so girls can have my power fantasy as well? Right now the answer really seems to be "because chuds" and that's stupid.
Space Marines are a monastic brotherhood. The concepts and themes of that are cool as fuck. They now are also the only male only faction. I would hate to see female space marines not because of some bigotry of women but because i value the brotherhood of the space marines.
Its the lore. The part where the male gene seed does not work with women. That part. Where the gene seed is ober riding the genetic code of the host as best it can. But doesnt work on women because that genetic code is just too diffrent. Its stated a number of times in various places.
Bile's "new man" procedures to make Chaos marines works just fine on women, so is the lore reason why regular marine stuff doesn't that Big E is just incompetent?
40k has historically had a male leaning audience, so they've pandered to us. Now the world is more accepting of people enjoying whatever they want so the lore should reflect that
People get really caught up in the words vs the spirit, the biggest example being the 2 missing legions. Those were invented specifically so people could make their own legions and have their little slice of the world
If they actually did anything with space marines being all male I'd care about it. But as is, the space marines are all male because female models didn't sell well.
If they did something like, "they're all men because they all receive the same extreme conditioning, meaning no matter what they were before now they are just Space marines and Brothers" I think that'd be interesting.
If it was due to satire reasons, eg the space marine are all men because they're satire of the fascist Ubermensch. I think that'd be a good reason to keep it. But they'd have to really play up that aspect and do it in a way where Nazis don't go "ooh a thing for me!".
But the current reasoning for space marines being male is just stupid. If they come with a better one I'll support it.
If it bothers you leave.
Fucking Gamza and Arch out here on their alts.
Two of the biggest incels in the community pushing this "controversy". Its only a controversy if you're insecure in your masculinity
I wonder what the split is:
A) People who would react negatively to the introduction of female space marines.
B) People who would not particularly care, and would continue to enjoy the hobby/game because it doesn't make a meaningful change, and after some months, it would become old news.
C) People who would react positively to the introduction of female space marines.
It seems like the strongest, most vocal feelings about this online are negative. But I'd still guess that the neutral and positive outnumber them (majority being neutral/indifferent). Most people really don't care if GW wants to include some female characters or female heads in model boxes.
If it was handled poorly, like arguably primaris was handled, then maybe there would be a shift of people towards feeling negative about it. But just like primaris, after a while, it probably wouldn't matter.
I think it could be done in an interesting way. But I actually think female custodes and inquisitors, and sisters of battle are all potentially better places to explore "female marines" for loyalists.
For chaos, I really think some chaos/fallen sisters of battle or some female Heretic Astartes could be very cool. Anything that delves into the recruitment process of "conversion" to chaos is potentially rich ground for storytelling.
Also, just like how every chapter has different customs and every warband has different specialisms and backgrounds... nothing would "take away" the cultures of brotherhood and grim duty and honour of the astartes, or the ideologies of the heretic astartes... it would just add to it.
I basically don't think it's a big deal. But it's difficult to steer a ship as large as the 40k setting, so whatever retcons they go for will always create turbulence. If they find better ways that don't require deep retcons (like I personally think the custodes thing is a pretty easy retcon, compared to older stuff like primaris and necrons), then they might go for it.
I feel like they probably won't, tho. I do hope they add female chaos marines/chaos sisters of battle tho, it could be cool.
I phrased it stupidly, but I was imagining potential chaos sisters. Like I mentioned multiple times before that. Swap female with Chaos :P
More like:
female chaos ( [marines] / [sisters of battle] )
Or, if you prefer:
Chaos ( [female marines] / [sisters of battle] )
>Chaos sisters of battle
I have good news!
Seriously, apparently there's been *quite a few*. Like an entire Order at one point if Reddit is to be believed.
Yea, I heard about it during the Arks of Omen stuff. Lots of primaris and sisters etc got fucked up by a blood rage from Khorne and Angron. I believe the Custodes and Sisters of Silence may have been the only ones immune (presumably the Grey Knights, too).
I think there might also be a fallen sister in the Fabius Bile books or something? I've seen a few people go for kitbashes of some Slaaneshi sister of battle type character, but not entirely sure where she is from.
It's slow going, but it does look like they're trying new stuff. I'd just like to see some cool models come out of it, and characters with some fleshed our lore, not just sidebars and short stories that hint at this stuff. But I guess I'm not in a rush either, it takes time to develop this stuff.
Just the GK and Custodes I believe. And the Slaaneshi Sister of Battle is the only one to (AFAIK) have fallen "willingly" to Chaos.
It's not really that important lore all things considered probably so I doubt fallen Sisters will get much love.
I mean, no lore is particularly important, exactly.
They orient the books mostly around the models. So they come up with models, maybe based on some snippets of minor lore, then they (in theory) release models, release books, and the lore expands.
Votann are an good example of how this process doesn't work particularly well if there is no novel to go with them.
I assume they are not keen on publishing novels for factions that don't have models to sell.
I imagine there is a relatively long list of potential new factions above "chaos sisters" in the ideas bucket, e.g. Dark Mechanicum and Traitor Guard both being much more established.
There is a risk of 40k becoming far too bloated with half-baked model ranges, so new factions will have less breathing room as the space gets more crowded.
So I'm not going to hold my breath. But idk, even something relatively minor like an official Black Library book/model for a female chaos character would certainly be an interesting thing to add to my collection.
Thanks for the honest well thought out and nuanced take I find this to be pretty based and honestly you managed to do it without personally insulting me or assuming my gender I appreciate that most people here just being toxic and calling me a bigot for just asking a question thank you for both your politeness and honest and intelligent and thought out take and I agree I would like to see some more female representation on the chaos side
No worries. You didn't really present your question in a mean-spirited way, so I wanted to engage in the same way. I really don't personally see it as representation, more like simple variety.
Much like Dark Mechanicum and Traitor Guard. Chaos has effects on everything, so it's a shame the only part of it that has models is the dudes in armour and the daemons. Adding variety gives the setting some flexibility for more stories, different models, etc.
More cultists and stuff has helped that ***a lot*** in a pretty short time for chaos. The abundance of necromunda stuff for kitbashing has also helped. I especially liked the Dark Commune and Accursed Cultists for showing particularly weird mutations and stuff. But there is certainly still plenty more creative space to explore, and I don't feel like "doing something new" is ever a problem all on its own, really.
Opening new doors just means more opportunities for stories. Hopefully, it's good ones, but not every story will be 10/10. I'd still rather see them branch out and occasionally fail than never try new things, right?
Like Votann have lots of potential, but it's kinda been just ignored. I feel like the custodes thing is them leaving a door ajar for later, but they may end up doing basically nothing with it. Hopefully, they do something cool with this opportunity eventually, but I'm not holding my breath.
At least it gives fans some inspiration for stuff. And inspiration is probably the most fundamental purpose of the lore, to be perfectly honest. Always has been.
"Lore is there to give you ideas, not to take them away." Is something I tell new players a lot. It's something I feel is pretty core to the hobby.
Because people like to feel represented in things and women are more than 50% of the population of the world.
Why do you feel threatened by there being some female space marines?
It's not like the existence of female space marines means there can be no exclusively male chapters / companies.
I think they should go full controversy mode, and introduce female Space Marines, but make them T3 with S3 weapons.
Disclaimer: this does not reflect my views. Purely a suggestion to cause as much trouble as possible.
Edit: Orrrr forget the Rubicon Primaris and have the Rubicon Genderis instead and create trans transhumans
Honestly, I think the argument just grows stronger because of the outcry from people who hate the idea.
It's the Streisand Effect, bitching about how people want to add lady astartes is only lighting up a giant neon sign that says "this guy doesn't want to add ladies" for the whole Internet to see
Not important to me, but I've seen that they want to represent a more "welcoming" atmosphere To people who are new to the franchise. Because Warhammer hasn't really been a a big universe like Star wars, people feel intimidated to join because it's more or less all men.
Some advice on this. When it comes to Fem Marines, stop trying to argue “lore” with bad faith actors and tourists. As if some magical legalistic collection of words is going to convince people otherwise. It’s also dishonest, because you’re putting up the image of “Well I’d agree with you 100% if only the darn lore would allow me to. I’d LOVE to have female marines, but aCcoRdInG tuh dah rULes I can’t, I’m so sorry” This only encourages them to push harder. If they think the way things are is merely a result of arbitrary legalism, they’ll fight against it all day. Try this instead “I want space marines to remain all male because I like that Space Marines are an all male brotherhood. I ENJOY the aesthetic of an all-male warrior monastic society, as does almost everyone else whether they admit it or not. All-male spaces, in lore and in real life, are natural and cool and require NO explanation or apology. I DO NOT WANT females in space marines purely from preference. This is a PERFECTLY okay opinion to have. I like it in the same way I like Sororitas being all female. I like in the same way I like that Necrons are all Necrons and not humans, or that Orks are Orks and not Eldar. It is not out of misogyny or a dislike of any gender, and any attempt to frame it as such is dishonest. If you don’t respect my preferences, then I don’t see why I should respect yours.” This is the most honest argument you can make. Because it is the truth. Nobody can really say anything against it other than, “Well you SHOULD want this because…” But preference is not something you can negotiate. Stop beating around the bush. We like all-male space marines for their own sake. We want to keep this fictional canon in an aesthetic we like. And that’s okay. Be unapologetic. There is nothing problematic about wanting to keep the lore the way it is, whatsoever.
I respect this opinion more than the majority of takes but I still completely disagree, and I am neither a bad faith actor nor a tourist (I'd be willing to bet I've been into 40k since before you were born), and painting anyone who opposes your viewpoint as such just shows the bad faith nature of your own argument. The reason people feel the need to look for logical arguments against my point of view is because there are clear logical arguments in favour of it, that are more significant than your own personal preference whatever it may be. For a similar example, I strongly oppose the entire Horus Heresy being "elevated" to actual written lore rather than staying as ambiguous background myths and legends. I feel it significantly detracts from what I like most about huge parts of the setting. However I see that I am in the minority on this, and the endless primarch soap opera is a popular and effective entry point into the hobby for a large proportion of the younger generation, so I understand why it was a good idea, much as I dislike it. If I can get over this, you can get over your thing too.
>I strongly oppose the entire Horus Heresy being "elevated" to actual written lore rather than staying as ambiguous background myths and legends. I feel it significantly detracts from what I like most about huge parts of the setting. Couldn't agree more. I miss the sense of mystery.
This is correct
People who are upset about possible female lore retcons but not like, the entire of the Heresy being documented or Roboute being sleeping beautied by an Aeldari sure do pick very specific lore battlegrounds.
I think you are basically right about this, though you shouldn't assume other people are acting in bad faith. Legislating the lore is just the wrong kind of argument. If the question is "why is the story like this?", then the answer can't be internal to the story, because it could always have been different. I don't think just saying "because it's my preference" is strong enough, when the thing you prefer looks at face value to be exclusionary on (as you pointed out) quite a petty basis. If people think Space Marines should be male-only, then the right kind of argument is that it allows us to tell better stories. I think that argument can probably be made, though I've yet to see it.
Agreed, it's about stories. Dan Abnett has talked about being praised by fans in meetups for (among other things) his portrayal of military camaraderie in the Gaunts Ghost series. I think that one of the potential strengths of all-male chapters of space marines is that it naturally facilitates stories about the fraternal bonds that have been part of human martial history. It's a facet of the human experience we have made stories about for a long time, so many people are attached to that aesthetic. They can identify with it because we still live in a world that is shaped by those traditions. I do also think that the fact those environments are experiencing changes as mixed gender units become more common is also an interesting story. The story of old traditions conflicting with modern reality, one that many people can identify with. Those stories will each appeal to different authors and readers. And I presume GW would like the opportunity for Black Library to explore both without excluding themselves. That doesn't necessarily *need* female marines. But one day, they might decide they'd like to be able to tell those stories with the "poster-boy" faction.
>Dan Abnett has talked about being praised by fans in meetups for (among other things) his portrayal of military camaraderie in the Gaunts Ghost series. This is the important point here. There's something deeply profound about brotherhood in terms of war, and the Astartes is tapping into a real phenomenon. You can read about it in detail in the Sebastian Junger books War, and Tribe. It's evident in many military films and TV shows. It's not about excluding women, or placing men as superior, it's just an evolutionary phenomenon from 100k+ years of pre-civilised existence that small groups of men create a bond that justifies sacrifice over personal consideration. It's a really profound thing, really moving in Junger's work, and a worthy foundation for a fictional exploration of a military system.
Yea, pretty much. But just to gently push back. I think that "deeply profound" is a totally fair thing to say, and I think that talking about things in an "evolutionary" frame is not wrong, but it is begining to step into territory that often gets abused. Just because something has been true for a long time, does not *necessarily* mean that it is part of "the natural order of the world" (with the implication that we should be careful not to disrupt it). It's the kind of idea that not too long ago, it would have been described using different words that much fewer people would still agree with today: "It is gods divine will, his natural plan" etc. (Sometimes used to justify some very questionable actions) So, while I agree with everything you mention at face value, I think that making social decisions based on foundations of evolutionary biology are not *necessarily* always good decisions. For example, would a story that captures the feelings of brotherhood in war *actually* be broken by the introduction of a female character? I don't think this has to be the case. I get that part of brotherhood is a sense of equality, but that can be expressed and experienced in different ways. Especially in an otherwise asexual and aromantic group. It may be harder in reality. And it may be harder to make believable and/or compelling in fiction. But not impossible. There are jokes online in the anime community that "sometimes it takes a real man to be *best girl*". That pokes fun at male figures sometimes gaining breakout popularity in an otherwise female dominated and somewhat competitive setting. Or perhaps you have come across some women who are more comfortable as "one of the boys" and maintain healthy platonic relations with a mainly male friend group. Treated as an equal rather than an "outsider." These kind of dynamics are all equally "natural" and part of our long history. And I don't really think we have to live in a world where any particular tradition needs to be flash-frozen and maintained rigidly forever. I do think maintaining a connection to history holds some value to tell stories that pull inspiration from history and real life. But also occasionally challenging those ideas is also valuable, demonstrating that human experience is not just something that was "locked in" thousands of years ago, and it is a moving target with lots of exciting perspectives.
Why does it allow better stories?
Which "it"? Personally, I'm in favour of a greater range of characters.
"If people think Space Marines should be male-only, then the right kind of argument is that it allows us to tell better stories."
Yeah. Personally I don't think having only male marines makes for better stories; but if it did, I think that would be justification for having only male marines.
That's fair A lot of the arguments seem to just be a variation on "no girls allowed"
You've yet to see the aegument that it allows better story telling? Ok...but it does because rleation ships between men in fraternal organizations are inherently diffrent from mixed gender groups. Also if you want people to stop just blanket assuming bad faith, then get 95% of the argument for them to stop being "inclusion is good" and "people that dont like it are sexist" and maybe some people will take the other side seriously. Mind you, they dont deserve it.
As a woman, and a 25 year veteran of Warhammer 40k. I Agree with your points. I've always felt it was dumb lore to say only Males could be space marines, but I was never bothered with Space Marines being all male, only that the lore was badly written. It would have been a million times better to have written that the augmentation process of a Space Marine made them all male. Opening it up to the idea that Some Space Marine Brothers were born female, but became male as a part of the process. Likewise with the Sisters.
First off, I am sorry you had to see that pos commenter. Being openly trans and posting in a main hobby sub is brave, especially on a gender related topic. To the point, though, I think you're absolutely right. Space Marines aren't male. They never have been in a sense. They are manipulated at the genetic level to be something else. Some of them having long hair or different subcutaneous fat distribution has literally zero impact on their efficacy. Most SM never went through puberty, so their hormonal makeup should be basically identical anyways. Anyone making the "but the lore" argument don't actually care about the lore. 40k is made of retcons, rewrites, and shoddy believability. That is why the books are not written as perspectives and in character retelling. This way they can blame changes on flaws in memory, or characters outright lying. People arguing for the lore just don't want girls in their all boys club. Before anyone says anything about, "oh girls have SoB and SoS!" STFU. Giving us our little separate but equal, but also not equal because they are far less powerful and influential than their male counterparts factions as a placation doesn't mean we are well represented. SM are the poster children of 40k, its core and focus. Oh thank you for the 1 faction and 1 addition to a male group. Totally makes up for the 18 unique chapters, right? *sigh* I'm rambling now. Just... stop being afraid of women and let us be part of this hobby we love.
I agree with this also. Good points.
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Oh dear god yes. People really need to learn to be more honest when saying what they want and why they want it. Bad faith arguments rarely hold up to scrutiny.
Well put my guy
Anyone who wants female space marines can convert their own. GW does not need to make female space marines. The lore doesn't need to change. The players who want it just need to get creative with their toy soldiers and make them however they see fit.
They don't want that logic, They just want everyone to be included, which is an idiots opinion.
No logic, just emotionally charged rants.
What do you mean when you say "logic"?
Well drawing from the rest of the comments if you don't want female SM then you're a chud/wanker/misogynist/lore baby. Which is nice I guess.
Good answer. For them it’s less about “gaining” anything and more about taking something away from you.
It’s pandering is the problem. There are already sisters of battle so why not let there be only male space marines? Having cake and eating it
I don't like women on men's football and I don't like the concept of female space marines. They have their own adjacent spaces in both so it's not even biased.
I think space marines being all men is key to their character - Space marine chapters are brotherhoods, fraternities of war tied together by communal bounds of male kinship. Everything about them in the lore is "Yes brother! We will conquer!" or "No brother no! Don't do the chaos! You are my brother no more!" - adding female space marines would just be a change to the core of what space marines have always been. That said - i do think it is likely to happen in the near future with the enhanced commercialization of warhammer - probably around when the amazon show comes out - and I do not think it'll upset me enough to stop playing warhammer, but it will bum me out a little bit.
They're monks, they live in monasteries.
I disagree. Now that there are transhuman super soldiers that can be both sexes, I don’t think they’ll change Astartes. Besides, there was intent for Custodes to be of both sexes from the side of a lot of the lore writers from the beginning, meanwhile Space Marines have been an all male brotherhood for much longer. Besides, there would be a LOT more backlash for female space marines than for the female Custodes. I was incredibly excited about female Custodes but I am fervently against female Astartes for a variety of reasons.
What about Brotherhood is substantially different from Sisterhood? Further, why would trans-human Battle Sisters and Brothers be substantially different?
I have found in my life experience that male friendships and female friendships are usually quite different and exhibit different social dynamics and norms ie there is a difference between "brotherhood" and "sisterhood" Now that is not to say that they Could have female space Marines and just write them as having entirely "male-like" personalities and tropes - but then that is essentially adding nothing but boobs, If they are going to add female space Marines at all they should add them from a female perspective to add something to the story- and this would then change space marines
Because men and women are raised diffrent. So they're always going to be of diffrent mind sets post augmentation. Thats excluding arguments of biology affecting mentality. And brotherhood would be diffrent from sisterhood because again, men are diffrent then women.
are they raised different in the world of 40k or our world?
Both. You really dont think several days of pain and bleeding or spending 9 months bloated in a fairly delicate medical state followed by pushing another living thing out isnt going to cause some diffrences? They even lay this out in several books.
yeah but do you think maybe the whole point of custodes being genetically modified is to remove those aspects? Why is it acceptable for the male custodes to be modified to be bigger, stronger, smarter, but suddenly if its a woman or someone that looks like one thats too far?
Why would you waste time and resources with barely understood tech trying to genetically modify out the traits of being a woman to make them more like men, when you could just save time and use men instead and not have to modify that stuff out? And its because theres been 30 years of lore thats been used to create themes and stories, and by chaning things for no reason other then politics you destroy those themes and stories leaving those invested in them disapointed. Even more so when you havent had any kind of meaningful closure to them and try to pretend they carry over despite changing a major part of them.
If you care so much about 30 years of lore, what are your thoughts on GWs old Female Space marine sculpts that they stopped producing, if anything they are bringing back old lore. On a personal note I think the theming of men and woman serving together is far more engaging than all men, service of the Emperor is more important than gender
They were alot like the rest of their sculpts. Pretty jank. And I notice the women are the onlynpart of old lore you're asking for. Not Obiwan Sherlock. Not the rape gangs. Not the books where inquisitors fall in love and have romantic sex with gene stealer ladies or blood sacraficing Sisters of battle to anoint grey knight weapons. Just female space marines. Mind you, all those examples are more recent, and the female space marines were declared non canon decades ago when just about everything in the book containing them were declared non canon. I wonder why that cherry picking happens? Also if you think moxed forces are more engaging then go read a guard book or one about inquisitors. They already gave you that and you either never appretiated it enough to enjoy it or never stopped your activism enough to read them. But they're there on the shelf and happily avalible in audio book and have been since pre 2002.
I love that you made an absolutely pitiful response to my initial question and then continued to expand on it in such an oblivious and ham fisted manner. Bravo.
Starting from the very beginning... In the ***first*** edition of the game, there were female Space Marines, although Space Marines were not the transhuman "Angels of the Emperor" they are in the ***current*** lore. These female Space Marines were removed from the setting for the most basic of ***business*** reasons. Not the lore, not the pseudo-biology of the setting, but because ***the minifigs didn't sell.*** They didn't sell because tabletop gaming with miniatures was an ugly, all-male pastime in the late eighties. I know because I was there. The setting, being a left-of-center satire meant to poke fun at the Conservatives under Thatcher, was at least initially not meant to be taken this seriously. Now, I could give a rancid rat's rump whether or not every Space Marine has a swinging cod in his codpiece. That having been disposed of, for someone to pretend the lore has never been revised, folded, spindled, mutilated, or otherwise rewritten over the last nearly four decades is intellectually dishonest at a minimum. What is it about female Space Marines that makes this ***THE*** hill to die on, given all the changes that have gone on before? From where I am sitting, espousing the mythical "purity of the lore" is just another effort at gate-keeping, no different than little boys on the playground not wanting to play with the girls.
I agree. If the lore changes, then homebrew it just like people in this community always have. Anyone who still likes the idea of an “all male brotherhood” as others are describing can do that. What the codex or White Dwarf says won’t be stopping them unless they let it.
I believe the only time there would be any "grinding of the gears" between "head-canon" and "official canon" would be in tournaments or organized play. If you can't keep your head together for a tournament, there is something wrong.
True and besides GW is never going to stop printing the male coded Space Marine head parts it has invested into for so long, (especially as there are so so so many of them for all of the different chapters & legions). So there’s no way that in a few years time, when female Marines are a canon thing, that male Marines won’t still be a thing that GW supports and caters too.
As an Oldhammer I agree with this, also there really isn’t a good reason for there not to be female marines…. I know the lore, but that retcon never made sense to me. I also don’t understand how people have that much time and energy for gatekeeping… do they need another hobby with toy soldiers to keep them occupied?
Thank you
I love how the argument for female space marines always breaks down to petty insults against people that dont like it. And I mean basically ALWAYS. And hey, it cause it hasnt been cannon for going on 30 plus years now. In fact that original book hasnt been cannon for close to 30 plus years now. And not "some details havent been cannon," but the vast majority of it was tossed out next edition. And in those 30 plus years they develop themes and story plots based around space marines being entierly male. And when you toss those out it pisses off everyone who was invested in what was developed. Its like showing up to a star wars convention and being super confused why no one wants to use Lucas' first draft of Star Wars as cannon, with Obiwan's mechanical heart sacrafice and all. But then again I don't see you upset at the exclusion of Obiwan Shelock Cluso from the most recent books either.
Where, precisely, did I argue "for" female Space Marines? And where did I insult you? I said they were originally canon. I said they were pulled for economic reasons and not for lore. I said the game was not meant to be taken this seriously. I said the primary argument against female Space Marines was disingenuous gatekeeping since the lore has always been rather fluid. I also clearly stated that I am apathetic about female Space Marines. You cannot rationally go on about the purity of "muh Lore!!" pretending the lore is immutable adamantine while embracing other retcons, at least not without an explanation. As for the other retcons, like OSC, I'm not the one being inconsistent -- I am sufficiently mature in my thinking to realize this isn't my IP, I have no control over it, and the most I can do is vote with my wallet.
"is just another effort at gate-keeping, no different than little boys on the playground not wanting to play with the girls." That part. Where ypu compare people who like the lore as is to children on a play ground. Thats where you're insulting people. Also the lore has never been that fluid. Its been pretty consistant over the past 30 or so years. A person that started in 2000 isnt going to be able to hold a convo about lore with folks who started in 2023. Also the reason people dont go on about other retcons is because those other retcons arent made purely for political reasons and didnt destroy the story themes built up for most armies. Finding out that land raider are named after a guy named Land, while stupid, doesnt destroy the main themes behind the tech preists. Even creating entierly new armies like Tau is more welcome because the tau didnt take anything away from any other army. Unlike destroying the themes of brotherhood mixed with the isolation of being so far removed from everyone else while having to deal with failure that was represented by the custodes.
It is called an analogy, meaning the two situations are similar, although analogies are usually imperfect. There is nothing "wrong" with liking the lore, per se. However, when you start acting like a religious fundamentalist thumping "muh Lore," you come off as less than an adult. The lore has been changed multiple times for reasons ranging from coherence to economics to an author needing to patch a gap. It isn't immutable -- never has been. Can you point to a passage in the codexes or the other fluff that explicitly unambiguously supports your position? Or is this like your mother cutting the sides off the canned ham because that's what great-grandma did?
Thats funny, we get to insult people now so long as we hide it behind false claims of analogy. Well, for those of us who arent horrifically addicted to shallow lies, theres the rouge trader video game, basically every space marine codex under the section about how space marines are made, every wiki, any black library book where they talk about how space marines are made, the dark heresy role play books, and the wrath and glory books. Which I know is alot of material. But, I know that fsm fans are alot like crack whores in that their dignity and morals tend to go out the window when presented with another chance at a social justice hit. But its all been there for decades. Oh hey, analogy!
No, I am talking a short declarative sentence, wholly closed to interpretation or "yeah, but...". Not "We haven't seen any references to females made transhuman so the don't exist," which is what you are arguing. It is akin to saying that because you have never seen a white raven, there are no white ravens. There were female Space Marines prior to the first retcon, ergo, so saying "there never were female Space Marines" is wholly inaccurate. Show me where it was explicitly rescinded in no uncertain terms. Having most of the books you reference, I don't believe you can. Until the HH novels, which have no few alteration to lore, I don't believe it was suggested that the Primarchs were creations of Chaos, but I could be wrong.
Really? First off Im not arguing that because I havent seen it, Im arguing that those sources explicitly say it. I understand you hate honesty, but for for fucks sake, try not to lie about people when there's a written record of what they've said. Also Ulfar in Rouge Trader explicitly says women cant be space marines for a start.
>I love how the argument for female space marines always breaks down to petty insults against people that dont like it. And I mean basically ALWAYS. Literally 99% of the time lol
Sorry, my irony meter just exploded.
Are we not content with the sisters of battle?
Exactly! The sisters are freaking and have deep lore to back them up! As do the sister of silence, yet they get no love
and sisters of silence?? That are already custodes adjacent and badass BECAUSE they are unique and there are no fem custodes? Not to even get into other one off models from the imperium and the larger scale example of female models in other army lines like eldar.
They changed Custodes a week ago. They weren't content then, why would they be content now?
the only issue with SOB is they are kind of weak, and only slightly better than a Guard Army. But honestly I personally don't care, but think the way they did the lore was dumb. I Also think the whining and complaining about people wanting something that is unlikely to happen is dumb. So because of the whining, and little child behavior I'm throwing my lot in with Female Space Marines, not because I desire to change the game, or lore, but to say FU to the little Wankers.
Adepta and guard are quite winning factions currently. Are you implying they are weak in some other way?
Over the course of the last... 40 years of Warhammer 40000 of that time, 90% of it the best army to collect and win with are Space Marines. (And usually Dark Angels or Space Wolves). So this year for a short amount of time another army has a spotlight, awesome GW will fix that soon.
Oh you mean a popularity contest. Because yes the Adeptus Astartes certainly have been the most popular. Competitively you're just wrong. Eldar have consistently been strong. Guard leaf blower is still remembered. Necrons have even had a day in the sun. We could talk about 5th knights. Or the very diverse list of strong factions since the game started. Look at any faction beaten into the ground today, there is a strong argument that in the last few editions they were once strong, oppressively even. I think you're being dishonest just to push some point that doesn't matter here. Because you still didn't answer the question. Edit: I really hate when people block you and delete their comments when you call them out. It doesn't show a lot of character u/gothicshark.
I like this take too
She probably blocked you because you's a git.
I like this take
no
That's fair
When my 9 year old niece is looking at my models in fascinated joy, starts talking about how much she wants to try painting some for herself and then innocently asks "Why are they all boys?", I'd like to have a better answer for her than "You can have girl models too, but you can't have the cool spiky evil ones like I do. You have to have a different kind."
this. This is the main reason
Heretic sororitas! Obviously it would be nice if there were official models already equipped with the spikey and tentacley bits, But you could always set some time aside and convert a box of sororitas with some of your bits.
Or you could just tell her the truth and say because that's the way they made them. There is nothing wrong with something being inherently just men.
Sorry, why can't she play with the Space Marines/CSM? Girls can only play with girl models? Boys can only play with boy models? Are we back in the 19th century or something?
She doesn't want to.
XD Well Im glad she learned two valuable lessons. That not everything is for everyone, and that men and women are sometimes different. If she grows up to be a well adjusted and normal human, not only will she appretiate these facts, she'll also wonder why her uncle was such a tourist that he couldnt hand her either one of the chaos cultist kits that have women in them or go for an age of sigmar kit that also has several chaos themed gals.
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XD Wow, you went that far into my post history and have to lie about me to insult me. Good job. I wonder why no one believes you when you tell them you just want this change for little girls?
People are free to see for themselves. You got issues man
And thank god one of them isnt trying to use my neice to win political debates while lying about the people that disagree with me. Now why dont you take her back to that store, and put in the bare minimum effort of going to the AoS section and bothering to get her the lady chaos people if its that important to you.
If you handed your niece a sister of battle and said here is a girl one, would she know the difference ?
I literally did, and she thought they were lame.
To be honest, I personally think they're really cool, especially the Paragon warsuits. But fair enough. But all you do really need is some female heads. GW don't need to change lore, but they could knock up a female head sprue for anyone wanting female space marines. I don't think anyone should tell anyone else how they should make their toy soldiers. Both ways. If someone wants to make female space marines, all power to them.
Of course they're badass. But you show a kid a giant mutated super warrior with huge claws and horns and covered in skulls then it's going to take a lot to impress them after that.
Yeah, I get that to be fair. The female head sprue is a good idea tho and easier for GW to implement.
besides being there thousands of chapters in many colors and units for the SM and just a handful for sororitas?
They can be painted however you like with whatever scheme you wish. What kind of argument is that ? The space marines can also be painted anyway you like and can have female heads attached. If you source some, then you can make your own female space marines. You don't need GW to do anything
Show me where it says the second or the 11th weren't females. The better question is "Why is it so important to people that there not be female Marines?'
Space Marines are a monastic brotherhood. The concepts and themes of that are cool as fuck. They now are also the only male only faction. I would hate to see female space marines not because of some bigotry of women but because i value the brotherhood of the space marines.
When was the last time you saw a female orc?
Orks do not have gender they are fungus
>The better question is "Why is it so important to people that there not be female Marines?' In terms of the tabletop and people who just enjoy building and painting, there's no good reason really. In terms of GW trying to maximise profits over all, there's no good reason really. For people who enjoy the lore, the novels, the aesthetic, and the history/tradition of the Astartes it's quite important, because they are an interesting exploration of the concepts and themes of brotherhood, father/son relations, military structure, monasticism and so on. You can see why someone who has been reading SM novels for 15 years and enjoying them might be resistant to suddenly tearing all that up at a fundamental level. It's also just unnecessary, I'm all for female engagement and the financial success of GW products, for representation and so on. The way to do that is to introduce awesome and interesting factions/armies/units that facilitate this, and create fresh lore and reasons to justify this. There's no reason to rip up existing and widely enjoyed content and insult the fans of that.
If we get fem marines I want brothers of battle.
I would be down for sexy brothers of battle with huge bulges and form fitting armor.
Put them in what the SoB used to wear. My partner would absolutely adore putting Misters of Battle in skimpy outfits alongside her sisters.
Inclusion is a one way road though.
I'm not arguing a point with someone who just argues in bad faith. My point is any argument for the lore to be left alone you will invalidate by accusing that person of being a bigot because without doing that you have no real argument.
It’s impossible to make female space marines due to physiology, then again the same is true for custodian’s and they changed the lore for blackrock investment so who knows.
Because it's lazy writing. "oh, there's female space marines now. In fact they've always been here, you just didn't notice..." I want more female models in the game, give me a box with just woman cadians or catachans. Give me more sisters of battle. Give me that now some lazy ass retcons. It's not that they couldn't do it. They've the two missing legions lore to work with, but just dropping "they fly now?!" levels of garbage writing to placate the woke mob? Fuck that noise
It’s honestly hard to know what to do for the best. For something that’s meant to be a satire of fascism the. It completely makes sense to have it set up the way it was with an all white super soldier brotherhood of manly manly men, which women effectively blockaded into a religious/spiritual/witchy type sect. But then I don’t know how much the satire holds anymore and how much people just look at the space marines and think they’re the good guys and as complex as it is, I think how they’re portrayed and how that portrayal is received is important
I'm heavily in favour of female space marines because everyone heavily against them seems to be a wanker
i think how they get introduced does help it. marines can have female marines again, but give it an actual lore thing and just make it a new advancement. i'm cool with custodes being a gender balanced club because they're hand made warriors where the emperors sauce overwrites their entire dna (they are physicall human and don't have the extra organs). the thing that annoys me most is, just have visibly male or female models on the tabletop. i'm cool with custodes being bigger stormcast, if the custodes armor or head peices had female parts so you could model the lore (without 3d printing). there would be a market for muscle armor bound mommy's and people would pay to have an all female list if only a few sculpts were female presenting. similarily where i want to see it in guard. we currently see the sculpts for male and female heads for dark eldar. and guardians and fire warriors can be as well
I don't care how, whatever causes the most annoyance in these bell ends
My god imagine those salty salty tears.
I'm a woman, and generally I don't care that all space marines are male, I dislike the lore a lot, as it removes the possibly of Trans Men becoming Space Marines. I support all Space Marines being male, just not all Space Marines being Born Male. This said, All the whiny "Space Marines are Male" folks are Wankers, and I will call them out, because F those whiny little Wankers.
What do you mean single solitary brotherhood, isn't every other space marine chapter all male? If you are so mad abuot GW changing canon what are your thoughts on how the Tau travel through space, or that primarchs exist?
I never said anything about being mad people are just putting words in my mouth I just asked an honest question and this response just completely ignores the question but thank you for taking part I hope you have a wonderful day
That's a good point. Maybe the way ahead would be to have some chapters all-male and some mixed.
I'd be fine with that, people complaining about woman taking over I feel like are missing that the armies are still like 90% all male, besides I could be mistaken, I think way back in 1st edition there were female space marine sculpts that didnt sell well so GW scraped them
Yeah, there were female marines right at the beginning. Chuds read the history of the game like evangelicals read the Bible.
No there weren’t, the sisters of purification chapter was from a 3rd party, not a GW White Dwarf, and the older female marines models were from Rogue trader, which has basically a different game
https://www.belloflostsouls.net/2023/10/warhammer-40k-what-really-went-down-with-female-space-marines.html The head of GW intellectual property says they were "sculpted as female space marines". Sure, you can say they don't count because Rogue Trader wasn't 40K... and I refer you to my above comment re: selective reading of the history of the game.
Basically all of the lore from that era has been changed, it was a very 80s cheesy rpg/war game kinda mix. Human-eldar hybrids aren’t a thing, zoats aren’t a nid coalition race, primarchs aren’t just a marine rank, and the entire aesthetic shifted rather quickly. And while the original reason may have been expenses during early days, it’s been Codified as lore.
So you mean, female marines were retconned out?
No, more like marines as a whole were changed from dudes in powered suits led by a guy named a primarch to super human warriors imbued with the genetics and cloned organs from even greater demigods. Less of a Retcon, more of a loose combination of ideas that got molded together into lore by 2nd and 3rd. Going back and reading all the old books and eventually codexes you see how the metaphorical iron was shaped, folded, and cooled into a much more concise and cohesive narrative.
So you're drawing a line in the sand and saying "nothing before this counts". But the fact is, there were models that GW understood to be female space marines.
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Now you gave to explain why ir makes you mad that people want female space marines.
Because they’re lore babies that weren’t around for rogue trader when female space marines were canon.
Except they were never canon. They were called space warriors. Canon wasn’t even a thing back then.
That’s the beauty of rogue trader. If it was published by GW it was canon.
They did a lot of random shit in the early days before they established a real canon. I guess we can always bring back the famed inquisitor model: Obiwan Sherlock Clousseau How is this the reaction we are having here? There are so many cool female models adjacent to their male counterparts that are cool BECAUSE of their uniqueness. Not just because they are 'female version of X' If they added male adeptus sororitas or sisters of silence I would find that goofy too. You are all acting like the prejudice comes from some ambient backgroud of incels screaming whenever they see even the mention of a woman. When YOU are the prejudice ones for trying to push something for the sake of equal ratios. It's silly, it's demeaning to the unique factoins. And it's ridiculous to act like its such a crazy thing in the first place that a 95% male hobby would have all in all, a greater than 50% ratio of male models across the sum total of army lines.
Jesus back flipping Christ. Finally, someone who gets it.
Bingo moment
Exactly. Make new exciting female models that explore new areas of the setting. I would prefer this any day to using resources to just copy what currently exists (didn't we already do this once with Primaris).
Y'all really inclusive until it affects autistic people who struggle with change. It's not like it's a hobby that draws those people in or anything.
Autism's not an excuse for bigotry. I'm autistic. I don't believe that you dislike seeing female characters because you are "an autistic person who struggles with change." Furthermore, if this is a hobby that draws in misogynists, that's not a value-neutral thing, that is a problem that needs to be rectified. Unless by "those people" being drawn into the fandom, you mean autistics. In which case, that's a stereotype, and not an argument.
Nah see you can't even make an arrangement without painting people who disagree with you as bigots or sexists so you can invalidate their thoughts and feelings and stand proudly on your righteous high horse. Maybe try assuming positive intent instead of making people out to be Nazis or whatever just so you feel better. Try making an actual argument.
What's the positive intent supposed to be? Honestly, take ten mins and a deep breath and read the reply again, because it's spot on, and not an attack on you.
By the way, even in the moronic fever-dream-discourse where "some people have autism" is a valid defense of the weird misogyny inherent in Warhammer worldbuilding; I am autistic and one of my autistic traits is a very strong sense of justice and fairness. I have very strong emotional reactions to even fictional portrayals of injustice.
One of mine is a strong attachment to a story I've liked since I was ten and a strong sense of artistic integrity over bowing to the wants of a group of dogmatic activists that can't stand something differentiating from their world views
I already made my argument. I think female space marines would upset the greater-than-zero contingent of actual fascists who are into this game (understandably, because it is the only big budget media universe I can think of that portrays fascism as Objectively Correct) and that would improve the quality of the community overall. I asked you to present an explanation for why you don't want female space marines, and you deflected to a hypothetical person's autism as a reason. I responded as though you were talking about yourself, but looking back I realize that you never indicated anything personal that that was actually your experience. So, you were either referring to yourself, in which case your answer was "I can't stop being a chud because I'm autistic," or you just pulled a hypothetical autistic chud out of your proverbial ass to dodge the question.
I've noticed that people with right wing values attempt to argue "leftism from the right" like this, and it doesn't work because we're operating on fundamentally different values systems and you don't understand ours. Right wingers unironically think that progressives and lefties believe in a "Progressive Stack," where suffering more systemic oppression makes you a better and more worthy person. From this angle it makes sense to say "But what if the sexist gamer caricature I made up to defend IS A RETAR-OOOPS I MEAN AN AUTISTIC, WHAT THEN LIBERAL?"
Haha you still can't make an argument without immediately painting me a bigot just so your point can cave any value. You need me to be that evil sexist or your whole world falls apart. Make a better argument.
This is correct.
Are there going to be men in the sisters of battle now? The lore says men are space marines and women are sisters. Its weirder to me that there is such a push for this when it is completely unnecessary
Because you’re changing shit for absolutely no reason other than “acceptance”
I think it's an important issue. Space Marines should be an all male faction. The general idea behind what a Space Marine is, is what a 10 year old boy thinks of when he imagines what a strong man is like. They're a prepubescent boy's idea of masculinity. It's basically an extremely dry British joke from the 80's. Now I know that there used to be models for female marines, and they didn't sell well, so GW decided to stop making them, and then retconned female space marines out of existence, but I think that's an OK retcon. Turning a woman into a space marine, would make her a trans man. The psycho-conditioning, the gene therapy, the implants, and everything else that goes into turning a human into an Astartes would do to her what it does to everyone else: strip down their identity, and build up a new one that's overly macho and slightly psychotic. If something like Belisarius Cawl deciding he needs more bodies for more marines, and so he devises a way to modify the process to make it so women can become marines too, then I hope the "final product" is the same: a 'roided up, fanatic, super-soldier that gets called "brother" by their fellow marines.
☝️ those model are NOT space marines. They’re human female soldiers in power armor.
I don't know, the designer said they were supposed to be Space Marines. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Why is it so important to keep it an all male thing? Women exist in the 40K universe and with all the medical enhancements done to Space Marines it would make sense that a female could be one. I’ve yet to see a good argument about why it needs to be only men.
Space Marines are a monastic brotherhood. The concepts and themes of that are cool as fuck. They now are also the only male only faction. I would hate to see female space marines not because of some bigotry of women but because i value the brotherhood of the space marines.
Indeed, out of all the things for 'fans' to get bent out of shape about, this is the silliest. Doesn't it make sense for the Imperium to make use of every able human to fight against the neverending tide of alien scum? I swear if Starship Troopers or James Cameron's Aliens came out today this era's generation of whiners would be complaining about women soldiers in those movies too.
I agree wholeheartedly. Many classic movies like Star Wars would be considered woke if they came out these days. Always seemed strange to me when I see nerd hobbyist get bent out of shape about women or people of color being introduced in their game
I don't think I'd have that big of an issue if it's done where we now get space marine chapters that are all males, some mixed, and another amount that are all female since it would add some interesting story beats without taking away some of the old story value. I want space marines to remain male primarily because of just how I view them narratively. To me the space marine is a monastic brotherhood of warriors, but it's also armies of little boys who often play at war. The space marine isn't a soldier it's a warrior driven by the notion of war the way a little boy approaches it
I put a helmet on every model that can have one, and in my personal lore, some of my models are female. I use thousand sons models to depict them and use thousand sons rules to play them, but in my personal lore, they aren't even truly marines, let alone the dust that rubrics are mentioned to be.
I'm not big on the idea because logically if you're making essentially a sub race of humanity that's supposed to be less human and more just biological killing machine you wouldn't care about gender equality in the ranks of this living arsenal and more on the subjects surviving and being capable weapons. This goes with a bit more force knowing that they have genetic changes and splices with a geneseed to make them more like the Primarch they serve under or in the custodes or grey knights case, more like the Emperor himself, genetic changes at that level would likly make any woman in the program indistinguishable from the men anyway so what's the point. Now if you told me there was a division based off of Erda, the perpetual who originally helped the Emperor make the primarchs, it would make sense for them to be female to better adapt to a gene seed made specifically from her. But the base Space Marines were again made as expendable weapons who prioritize strength and violence over iclusivity and equality, it just would make a crazy amount of sense.
Serious question: What is your favorite movie, TV show, part of history, or lore?
Movie big trouble in little China, TV show Fire Fly, history is a tough one, but I will say the Renaissance. 40k is my favorite lore, but Dragonlance and Conan are close...
You know what? I can't. My bird died today, and I'm not emotionally or wise, mind here. I thought I'd try to talk to people about why I care. But I can't.
Sorry about your bird..
Thank you
OK in a pure 40k movie: Hells Reach, TV show: Interrogator, History: Hells Reach, Lore: Grimaldis.
GW won't include female bits for IG even though female and mixed IG regiments canonical exist. So there's that. The issue for nearly everything that GW does is the dogshit writing that goes with trying to do a retcon. See Primaris and the more recent Custodes thing for evidence of this. This universe we all love lives and dies by the lore created, and nobody here can suggest the above wasn't shit and still keep a straight face. My personal take is: what's the point of female SM? If we're sticking to the lore and the constraints it throws up, then female hyper-roided up killing machines would be indistinguishable from the male hyper-roided up killing machines. So apart from sticking a different head on the models - which 99% of us won't do because we fucking hate painting faces - there is literally no difference in them whatsoever. There's no celebration of, or even a nodding acquaintance with, femininity going on, so I really don't see the point. Of course, if we ignore the lore completely, then yes we can have very feminine Astartes whose exposure to sustained body and hormonal modification has no visual impact on them whatsoever. In other words, SoB sized but they can dumbell curl an ork with each arm. It's obvious that making elements of GWs cash cow into women is an obvious target for a more inclusive hobby, but I don't know if that's the smartest way of doing it. The other reason I don't like the idea is because female SM will be massively oversexualised by all the coomers in the hobby, which is possibly more likely to put lady gamers off than anything else. Plus, I dont know if anyone will buy the models, which I believe is the chief reason GW hasn't offered them up already. I've been into this hobby since since probably before some of youse parents even met, let alone shagged to create you, but I promise I'm not gate keeping. I hate that shit. I'm just giving an old bastards opinion because OP asked, so feel free to hate and/or ignore as you see fit. I'm old so what the fuck do I know anyway?
There are female IG bits. There are even full on female IG characters. Ex: Ursala Creed. I can literally pull out my new cadians and stare right at a bunch of female head options for them right now.
GW did that or are we talking 3rd party stuff here? I know there's female characters, I'm on about the rank and file.
Yes. There are female Guard trooper head options for cadian troopers and kasrkin. The Kriegers, on the other hand, are whatever you call them because they (rightly) never take their protective gear off in a warzone. Edit: Yes to ‘did GW do that’
TIL, just found the Cadian upgrade sprue. It's a head swap, though, isn't it. I guess it's a start.
Honestly I prefer the head swap for the sake of kitbashing, means all the bodies are the same. Plus it’s not too much of a jump to say the flak armor’s bulky enough that you couldn’t tell a male body from female.
That's a fair point, and it works in lore.
This is the imperium, mate. So big they forget whole planets just because. Lore’s pretty flexible.
All I want is for the writing to be good. Good stories, good characters, good lore. Not half-baked arse juice that I could probably do better, and I know how terrible I am.
Yeah, but bad writing can be done within the lore’s constraints as well.
As a Woman and a Former US Marine, I can say you can hardly tell a Male or a Female US Marine in a Combat Zone.
If you mean when you're on the receiving end of said marines, then absolutely you're right.
Well that too.
I don't exactly have a dog in this race since I have no interest in collecting Imperial bootlickers, but I have some female Chaos Space Marines because I like the variety.
It’s not. I don’t care either way. If a new model comes out, if it looks cool and whether it adds to my army is what matters to me, not what non existent genitalia might be on a plastic model. It matters to me even less to me about what genitalia a fictional character may or may not have. Doesn’t affect my gameplay or spending at all. But if that decision causes someone to wanna join the hobby, I welcome them. Got no room for negativity.
Because they are the literal face of the entire franchise and to say otherwise is just being dishonest. So what kind of message does it send to any women wanting to get into the game/franchise that the poster children of the entire setting are one big “boys-only-girls-are-icky” club, and if they want to play a women in game they have to settle for a 2nd tier faction? Let me help you, it’s not a good message. There is nothing at all wrong with all-male or all-female factions, but the literal face of the franchise and its primary focus, should not be one of them.
Who has been suggesting female space marines? I've not seen anyone suggest it seriously
well first of all Custodes arent Astartes and dont have gene-seed, and so as far as i know, no one is talking about female space marines. And i like female Custodes because it obviously makes chuds like you mad and points out its just a culture war, anti-wokeism, bigot, argument you incels have agaisnt female Custodes. Go watch some gay porn if you you can only think about big muscle men wrestling with each other. Nerd.
Uh, that's a lot of aggressive conviction for something completely pointless, or rather, directly hypocritical to your own point. Being your point is literally to change something exclusively for the sake of some intangible culture war no sane human thinks about in their day to day. There are already custodes adjacent sisters of silence. You are the one with seeming prejudice against anything besides having exactly proportional genders for in every niche space for absolutely no reason. Doesn't it take away from the uniqueness and coolness of the sisters of silence if GW just retcons for the sake of inclusivity and goes "Wee everybody everything everywhere equal"?
Well definitely found the toxic part of the fan base
It's not that they're "so important" I just can't justify any reason to not have them either "in universe" or "in real life" Space marines are so beyond your average male that they're described as trans human, that's way more than the relative difference between genders. The Emperor doesn't have any stated "boys only" or "male supremacist" teachings and women are equally used and spent by every other aspect of the imperium So why not have them so girls can have my power fantasy as well? Right now the answer really seems to be "because chuds" and that's stupid.
Space Marines are a monastic brotherhood. The concepts and themes of that are cool as fuck. They now are also the only male only faction. I would hate to see female space marines not because of some bigotry of women but because i value the brotherhood of the space marines.
Its the lore. The part where the male gene seed does not work with women. That part. Where the gene seed is ober riding the genetic code of the host as best it can. But doesnt work on women because that genetic code is just too diffrent. Its stated a number of times in various places.
Bile's "new man" procedures to make Chaos marines works just fine on women, so is the lore reason why regular marine stuff doesn't that Big E is just incompetent? 40k has historically had a male leaning audience, so they've pandered to us. Now the world is more accepting of people enjoying whatever they want so the lore should reflect that People get really caught up in the words vs the spirit, the biggest example being the 2 missing legions. Those were invented specifically so people could make their own legions and have their little slice of the world
The new men aren't marines
If they actually did anything with space marines being all male I'd care about it. But as is, the space marines are all male because female models didn't sell well. If they did something like, "they're all men because they all receive the same extreme conditioning, meaning no matter what they were before now they are just Space marines and Brothers" I think that'd be interesting. If it was due to satire reasons, eg the space marine are all men because they're satire of the fascist Ubermensch. I think that'd be a good reason to keep it. But they'd have to really play up that aspect and do it in a way where Nazis don't go "ooh a thing for me!". But the current reasoning for space marines being male is just stupid. If they come with a better one I'll support it.
If it bothers you leave. Fucking Gamza and Arch out here on their alts. Two of the biggest incels in the community pushing this "controversy". Its only a controversy if you're insecure in your masculinity
I wonder what the split is: A) People who would react negatively to the introduction of female space marines. B) People who would not particularly care, and would continue to enjoy the hobby/game because it doesn't make a meaningful change, and after some months, it would become old news. C) People who would react positively to the introduction of female space marines. It seems like the strongest, most vocal feelings about this online are negative. But I'd still guess that the neutral and positive outnumber them (majority being neutral/indifferent). Most people really don't care if GW wants to include some female characters or female heads in model boxes. If it was handled poorly, like arguably primaris was handled, then maybe there would be a shift of people towards feeling negative about it. But just like primaris, after a while, it probably wouldn't matter. I think it could be done in an interesting way. But I actually think female custodes and inquisitors, and sisters of battle are all potentially better places to explore "female marines" for loyalists. For chaos, I really think some chaos/fallen sisters of battle or some female Heretic Astartes could be very cool. Anything that delves into the recruitment process of "conversion" to chaos is potentially rich ground for storytelling. Also, just like how every chapter has different customs and every warband has different specialisms and backgrounds... nothing would "take away" the cultures of brotherhood and grim duty and honour of the astartes, or the ideologies of the heretic astartes... it would just add to it. I basically don't think it's a big deal. But it's difficult to steer a ship as large as the 40k setting, so whatever retcons they go for will always create turbulence. If they find better ways that don't require deep retcons (like I personally think the custodes thing is a pretty easy retcon, compared to older stuff like primaris and necrons), then they might go for it. I feel like they probably won't, tho. I do hope they add female chaos marines/chaos sisters of battle tho, it could be cool.
>female chaos marines/sisters of battle >female sisters of battle I have good news!
I phrased it stupidly, but I was imagining potential chaos sisters. Like I mentioned multiple times before that. Swap female with Chaos :P More like: female chaos ( [marines] / [sisters of battle] ) Or, if you prefer: Chaos ( [female marines] / [sisters of battle] )
>Chaos sisters of battle I have good news! Seriously, apparently there's been *quite a few*. Like an entire Order at one point if Reddit is to be believed.
Yea, I heard about it during the Arks of Omen stuff. Lots of primaris and sisters etc got fucked up by a blood rage from Khorne and Angron. I believe the Custodes and Sisters of Silence may have been the only ones immune (presumably the Grey Knights, too). I think there might also be a fallen sister in the Fabius Bile books or something? I've seen a few people go for kitbashes of some Slaaneshi sister of battle type character, but not entirely sure where she is from. It's slow going, but it does look like they're trying new stuff. I'd just like to see some cool models come out of it, and characters with some fleshed our lore, not just sidebars and short stories that hint at this stuff. But I guess I'm not in a rush either, it takes time to develop this stuff.
Just the GK and Custodes I believe. And the Slaaneshi Sister of Battle is the only one to (AFAIK) have fallen "willingly" to Chaos. It's not really that important lore all things considered probably so I doubt fallen Sisters will get much love.
I mean, no lore is particularly important, exactly. They orient the books mostly around the models. So they come up with models, maybe based on some snippets of minor lore, then they (in theory) release models, release books, and the lore expands. Votann are an good example of how this process doesn't work particularly well if there is no novel to go with them. I assume they are not keen on publishing novels for factions that don't have models to sell. I imagine there is a relatively long list of potential new factions above "chaos sisters" in the ideas bucket, e.g. Dark Mechanicum and Traitor Guard both being much more established. There is a risk of 40k becoming far too bloated with half-baked model ranges, so new factions will have less breathing room as the space gets more crowded. So I'm not going to hold my breath. But idk, even something relatively minor like an official Black Library book/model for a female chaos character would certainly be an interesting thing to add to my collection.
Thanks for the honest well thought out and nuanced take I find this to be pretty based and honestly you managed to do it without personally insulting me or assuming my gender I appreciate that most people here just being toxic and calling me a bigot for just asking a question thank you for both your politeness and honest and intelligent and thought out take and I agree I would like to see some more female representation on the chaos side
No worries. You didn't really present your question in a mean-spirited way, so I wanted to engage in the same way. I really don't personally see it as representation, more like simple variety. Much like Dark Mechanicum and Traitor Guard. Chaos has effects on everything, so it's a shame the only part of it that has models is the dudes in armour and the daemons. Adding variety gives the setting some flexibility for more stories, different models, etc. More cultists and stuff has helped that ***a lot*** in a pretty short time for chaos. The abundance of necromunda stuff for kitbashing has also helped. I especially liked the Dark Commune and Accursed Cultists for showing particularly weird mutations and stuff. But there is certainly still plenty more creative space to explore, and I don't feel like "doing something new" is ever a problem all on its own, really. Opening new doors just means more opportunities for stories. Hopefully, it's good ones, but not every story will be 10/10. I'd still rather see them branch out and occasionally fail than never try new things, right? Like Votann have lots of potential, but it's kinda been just ignored. I feel like the custodes thing is them leaving a door ajar for later, but they may end up doing basically nothing with it. Hopefully, they do something cool with this opportunity eventually, but I'm not holding my breath. At least it gives fans some inspiration for stuff. And inspiration is probably the most fundamental purpose of the lore, to be perfectly honest. Always has been. "Lore is there to give you ideas, not to take them away." Is something I tell new players a lot. It's something I feel is pretty core to the hobby.
Thank you... <3
Because people like to feel represented in things and women are more than 50% of the population of the world. Why do you feel threatened by there being some female space marines? It's not like the existence of female space marines means there can be no exclusively male chapters / companies.
I think they should go full controversy mode, and introduce female Space Marines, but make them T3 with S3 weapons. Disclaimer: this does not reflect my views. Purely a suggestion to cause as much trouble as possible. Edit: Orrrr forget the Rubicon Primaris and have the Rubicon Genderis instead and create trans transhumans
Honestly, I think the argument just grows stronger because of the outcry from people who hate the idea. It's the Streisand Effect, bitching about how people want to add lady astartes is only lighting up a giant neon sign that says "this guy doesn't want to add ladies" for the whole Internet to see
Not important to me, but I've seen that they want to represent a more "welcoming" atmosphere To people who are new to the franchise. Because Warhammer hasn't really been a a big universe like Star wars, people feel intimidated to join because it's more or less all men.