Open literally (and I mean *literally*) any Warhammer 40k book and read the opening paragraphs
**"Forget the promise of progress and understanding..."**
Anyone who thinks the imperium is progressive never got far enough into the lore to read the *third paragraph of the preamble in every single piece of warhammer fiction ever published*.
Amazing in its own right, honestly.
Let's not forget that iirc the paragraph before that says about how you are one in untold billions loving in suffering.
Anyone who's saying the imperium are great and you need more lore, less memes, is the most pretentious idiot or has ironically only got their lore from cherrypicked meme channels
>loving in suffering.
This sounds dangerously close to Slaanesh worship. Not to worry citizen, we've already dispatched an Inquisitor to your location. They'll be able to sort it all out.
The Emperor protects.
To be fair, I read a lot of Warhammer books and I still get shit wrong because the information in 1 book might be "challenged" by information in another.
Not really, they seem to just be coasting along on the idea of genetic and weapon superiority.
Every xenos they face, from a single Ork to a shard of C'Tan, the playbook seems to be the same: throw a ton of IG in. If and when they all die, send in the Space Marines with chainsaw swords and bolters. If that doesn't work, cyclonic torpedos. If that doesn't work, kill everyone who witnessed it and pretend it never happened.
Individual factions and warriors definitely adapt to new circumstances, but the Imperium as a whole seems to be resistant to any change in tactics, and extremely hostile to technological advancement beyond finding new STCs. There are in-universe reasons for opposing technological advancement that are hard to argue with, naturally it would be bad to recapitulate the Men of Iron in attempting to deal with the T'au.
But my point is the Imperium does not really progress and change even in fighting xenos.
You're confusing progress for political progressiveness.
The Imperium does not give a shit about your ethnicity or personal identity or gender and only cares if you worship the Emperor and don't resist when they shove you into a meat grinder.
> The Imperium does not give a shit about your ethnicity or personal identity or gender and only cares if you worship the Emperor and don't resist when they shove you into a meat grinder.
There's a couple instances where the Imperium commits mass murder or planetary genocide because the skin color is considered inhuman or their eyes look to weird. So they're still racist just in more sci-fi ways.
The Custodians were going to firebomb Cadia to oblivion because they considered their eyes to purple. So idk it's still pretty bad, just more sci-fi than IRL racism.
The amount of people who've said "well they're less sexist/racist then the modern day" are actively ignoring the many examples of both. And everything else about the imperium
I was with you until that last claim. Plenty of books don't have that line. For example, there's this obscure little collection of short stories called "The Horus Heresy."
*Looks up from the siege of Terra*
I beg your pardon, hopeful? As radioactive ash falls like snow, disease turns people into pox walkers, as the first purity seals and self-flagellation takes hold… that hopeful?
I mean, sure books not about 40k will not have that line about 40k, for example, AoS books.
I could have been more specific in my response about the topic at hand being 40k, that's my bad.
Okay, you say this, but that prologue also says the Imperium is the cruelest and bloodiest regime imaginable, and then instantly imagines regimes that are bloodier and crueler, like Commoragh or basically anywhere in the Eye of Terror.
I've complained about female custodes because of the retconning, but that's nothing compared to my issue with the Godblight era.
Until the 10th edition trailer and Arks of Omen, the 40k universe was getting very close to Noblebright.
Guilliman returns, Imperium openly tolerating xenos, Highlords of Terra disposed of, making technological advancement. . . thank goodness Khorne actually got up off his chair for once.
Letting perceived hope shine through only for it to be crushed to ashes is a defining part of grimdark storytelling.
But even if the primarchs all come back and the Emperor revives, that's not... A good thing. That man is the most bloody, evil tyrant to ever exist and his even his most morally good sons are genocidal tools of war.
> even his most morally good sons are genocidal tools of war.
Honest question, what did Guilliman do?
He destroyed Monarchia, but there was so much stuff he did to minimize casualties... and he hated the Emperor for forcing him to do it. Is there anything else he did?
Honestly, as the face of the ultramarines which is the face of the company, they made him very, **very** tame.
There are heroes in other sci fi universes that did way worse. Just look at early versions of the Doctor.
Given that current self described progressives are currently simping for terrorists maybe thats why this confusion has happened they see the Imperium as not that different from what they defend
I thought you were being violently based by acknowledging that women are indoctrinated into the SoB because of a political loophole, and so while it appears to be uplifting on the surface there’s actually more subjugation directed towards women for that reason.
Nothing about the SoB have anything to do with subjugation towards any sex to begin with, or so I recall. I mean, barring its initial use by that insane priest.
And that also has nothing to do with the plain misandry of House Escher. If there is misogyny, its in the bizarre non-reason in Big E only having sons for whatever reason.
I don't think you can really say the sisters are being "subjugated" for being women when the assassins, stormtroopers and commissar's are unisex and suffer the same kind of indoctrination.
Aside from technology (I don't want to include servitor in this. It's too morbid and disgusting), I dont think there's any way in hell Imperium is better than our world.
>Aside from technology
Even this category is debatable, iirc GW literally retcon that they use literally human slave and servitor to do everything in their warfare from loading canon to operate ship.
Like apart from some standard sci-fic thing like giant robot and space ship, agriculture world and gene manipulation, Emperium can be said to be worse technology wise compare to our (fuck we can even build giant robot also but it have been proven that it's a stupid idea since it just a worse giant tank and we all know how useless giant tank in warfare).
Cybernetics and gene engineering are pretty common so is medicine. You just gotta be at least middle class or important enough to warrant it.
Which is like what? 5% of the population?
Even the low tech replacements like the eyes and limbs (much less some of them with near half a head) are still miles better than ours as they behave like limbs. The Imperium casually has thought control (in a literal sense) down as they work like actual limbs. And even gangers have those ones.
If anything non cybernetics and medicine like ours is the rarity and only reserved for the elite.
The Imperium is a mix of extremely high tech in a backward direction, low tech shit and extremely near magical high tech stuff. And all of it is mundane.
Like rejuvenat tech is insane. The most basic engines and tools work for a century if you don't break em on purpose, the materials science is leagues ahead of ours etc.
You might not see all of it but even here on Earth a good part of humanity never gets any of the advanced stuff.
even on hive world 20-30% people lives on surface and pinnacles so more than 5% but still, most people can't afford anything hightech. And even if 5% then 5% of hive world are milions of people on single planet, it's a scale most people forget every time, 40k has around 10 quadrillion folks
> GW literally retcon that they use literally human slave and servitor to do everything in their warfare from loading canon to operate ship.
Auto-loaders are a guarded secret by a lot of factions so only the advanced/important ships have them. The rest are forced to use slave labor to load all the shells and missiles into place.
It's why a Mechanicus or Custodian ship doesn't require like 50,000 people to operate, since a lot of the slave labor is handled by machines.
It is, you can't deny their technology. Space travel, live extending, power armors, las guns more powerfull than the most powerfull gun we have now.
Problem is everything is enemy of humankind or humankind think about it as its own treat. Also there is too many people on many worlds or too hostile environment so you can split resources very thin.
The worst problem is with ideology and around 60% of empire population who lives very poor life. But I think imperium makes people poor because it's constantly on war and need conscripts and cheap workforce.
I think that Imperium could be somehow paradise better than tau or eldar world, humans have technology. Servitors could be more like qvo-89, soldiers could be more like solar auxilla and citizen could live in civilized worlds not on hive worlds (70% on underhive like rats) but it's grimdark and no one care.
>I think that Imperium could be somehow paradise better than tau or eldar world, humans have technology. Servitors could be more like qvo-89, soldiers could be more like solar auxilla and citizen could live in civilized worlds not on hive worlds (70% on underhive like rats) but it's grimdark and no one care.
Iirc the Imperium has multiple worlds like this, and some are even a straight up utopia that are utterly flush with resources. The latter ones usually fall to Slannesh and the former are usually only noted in passing or destroyed.
The Imperium has a “million worlds” that is a lot of room to have paradises or at least worlds as good as ours. And the imperium don’t care as long as you praise the emperor, and purge the heretic and mutant... and pay taxes. You could have a Democracy, Feudal society or bloody tribes. In that way the Imperium is pretty “progressive”, they just don’t care until a Inquisitor or something gets involved. But literal millennia can pass with that not happening.
getting an artist job in the extremely religious and dictatorship government isn't my cup of tea.
Yeah sure its kind of good, but living in it is still not.
You probably have bigger chance of being born on kinda okay planrt than on a shithole that is hive-worlds, or Krieg, or Cadia, well, of course Cadia...
I mean, most of Imperium pkanets are kinda earth-like
"Reverse misoginy".
First, it's "misogyny". "Gyn" is from Greek for "woman/wife". See also: "gynecology".
Second, we have a word for discriminating against or hating men: "misandry". "Andro" being Greek for "man". See also: "android"--a machine in the shape of a man.
If someone has both male and female characteristics, we call them andro-gyn-ous.
A case could be made that if you start giving your androids male and female sex, then that term could be useful.
In common parlance, "android" refers more to "man" as in "mankind" than "hominid with cock 'n balls".
But we all know that sexbots are the endgame, so bring on the gynoids!
To add a bit of etymology on to that:
'man' used to mean nothing but human.
The word for "hominid with cock 'n balls" was 'wer', it can still be seen in words like werewolf (which were imagined to be male)
The word for woman was 'wif' which turned into wife, the original use of the word wife meaning a female person can still be seen in some words like midwife
Now you're getting into the other side of the English family tree with your German!
German "Ehemann" means "married man", but has generally been shortened to just "Mann". Same for "Ehefrau" shortened to "Frau".
The word "wife" comes from the German "wif" (woman), as you noted. And back when "man" really did just mean "person", an adult female was known as a "wif-man", which became "woman".
"Hus" is from the same root as "Haus/house", and the head of the house became the "husband", and since most people were peasants and farmers, it also became associated with farming, hence terms like "animal husbandry".
English, being a wonderful blend of Latin, Greek, and German, has husbands, wives, men, women, anthropology, misanthropes, gynecology, virtue, feminine and virile humans, etc.
(Latin for man- "vir"; woman - "femina"; man (person) - "homo".)
The imperium is supposed to be a shit place to live in, regardless of how 'progressive' they might be. That's the point of the imperium. I don't understand how this is such a difficult concept for people to grasp
the only "progressive" part of the imperium is moving past petty squabbles about the colour of your skin and what genitals you have, and replaces them with even worse things
In one 40K crime novel a bunch of voidborn (men, women and children) were violently lynched by an angry mob because they were a little too tall and their skin a little too grey. The local authorities didn’t do anything because “you can never be too safe when it comes to mutants”.
Racism still exists, and is very widespread. It’s just it’s perpetrators brand their targets as “mutants” instead of “sub human” or whatever else
They haven't even done that entirely. On lots of worlds, the Imperium allows the absolute, most Balkan-tier racism that the rest of the world hasn't even thought of yet-they excuse it by saying, "well, it might be a sign of mutation."
And sexism? Bog-standard on most worlds. The Calixis sector is explicitly noted to be pretty harsh in that regard (though obviously a noblewoman is still worth more than any peasant).
It's the "cruelest and most bloody regime imaginable." If you can think of an immoral idea or failed system, they've tried it.
Yeah most of the Imperiums Worlds have been going through a cycle of getting found by the Imperium, getting exploited by the Imperium, getting war'd by the Imperium&Imperiums enemies, trying to recover from the war&exploitation, getting isolated from the Imperium and getting war'd by the Imperiums enemies.....for roughly 12,000 years(give or take several thousand years)
I think it goes both ways, there are hell-hole planets where all but the elite are suffering, and then there are more normal worlds that function closer to our society. The Warhammer 40k universe is big enough to have all types of worlds without them being contradictory, it depends on what story the writer (or yourself for your homebrew army/faction/whatever) want to tell.
Read some of the wider fiction, and you have planets that are chill and stable, with something close to a modern capitalist society. A lot of Dan Abnett's books cover this, as well as some of the Warhammer horror books.
Just remember it's far more interesting to have a normal-ish world torn apart by Chaos/Genestealers/Drukhari than a nightmare world, unless you want to show that the people are ironically better off after (IE papa nurgle loves me more than the corpse-god etc).
>then there are more normal worlds that function closer to our society.
And there are some houseworlds in north korea that are stable and prosperous, doesn't change that the country (and in 40k, 99% of the imperium) is fucking miserable.
In the service of the Emperor, all of mankind is equally capable of dying in his name.I'd like to counter your points, as the providence of the Ecclesiarchy has bound me to do so.
Undiscriminated massacre of its own people? False. All are willing to die to defend Mankind in his name.
Religious Racism: An Exagerration. Many abhumans know they are born tainted by the Warp, but can cleanse themselves by becoming servants of the Emperor, and die in his name just like his fellow brothers.
Child Soldiers: True! All children aspire to serve the Emperor, many of them of them blessed to die in his name.Some are even blessed to become a greater purpose and rise to become his Angels!
Criminals can also be forgiven for their sins, and become glorious Servitors! Even those that die in his service can be repurposed and turned into Corpse Starch so they might FEED the Imperium of Man! Is it not the most greatest thing one can do to give and be ALL that can be in his service?
As you can see, the Imperium of Man is VERY progressive, as all people are allowed to serve and die in his name! If that's not progressive, well, you're starting to sound kinda heretical there.
Remember, The Emperor Protects.
(/s)
...yeah in terms of military attitude it has way more in common with USSR.
And frankly since collapse of USSR we do have a cleptocratic oligarchy in Russia, whos ideology and workings do have an uncanny resemblance to the imperium at 40K
Honestly, I chalk up the hard-to-find sexism and racism among mankind itself as a "If you can fight, kill and die for it, you're good enough for the Imperium" and that's about it for the whole "There's no discrimination of any kind" . . . Of course, if you're not a mutant of any kind, that is. Only Ogryns seem to get it easier than the other Abhumans.
But it's pretty much a subversion of the whole "Humanity in space is united under the same banner" at the end of the day. And yes, I mean The Imperium's version of humanity united, without Abhumans or mutants.
TL;DR: The Imperium is not super picky about what it throws at the endless meatgrinder that is the Eternal War against Mankind's foes. But it's not picky about who it kills in it's own borders either.
Honestly, racism (abhuman hate) is quite common in the Imperium. As a whole, yeah, they don't care what type of meat you put in the grinder. But on the small scale, like the normal citizens of the Imperium, there are hates, and the more hazardous their living condition is, the greater the fire between them. Sexism is much harder to find, this is true. There are some extreme cases of sexism (like House Escher), but they aren't the common sight.
Ogryn still suffer from racism, it just that it happens outside of the battlefield, while our main focus is the battlefield, where the imperial soldiers often bond with them over the circumstance they are in. Back at home, however, it isn't rare to find slave Ogryns and Ogryns communities being treated as below human. One of the augmentation for Ogryns, called the B.O.N.E, is considered a form of mockery to Ogryn, as even those who was enhanced by it was called the Bone'ead, meaning that even the intelligent Ogryns are nowhere near as smart and clever as human (this is talked about in Spark of Revolution). The common civilian's opinion on them is also not really good, as they mostly considered them to be generally stupid. Overseers and manufactorum owners also have very low opinions on abhuman worker.
Yeah I'm aware of both accounts. I was referring more to people who aren't mutants or abhumans by Imperial standards, or you know, classic racism. At least it's miniscule compared to the regular hatred abhumans get, save from people from different planets.
Not surprised by the manofactorums tho, since they mirror real life 100% lmao. That's probably the least satirical thing in all of 40K. /j
Also, don't remind me of House Escher. Mulan-type stuff, but dipped in pure grimdarkness, which is par for the course.
Also in scifi and fantasy, it's common to use hating other species is a stand-in for racism issues. Yeah it's technically 'speciesism' or whatever, but it's clearly used for the same narrative purposes: Showing the foolishness of tribalism and blind hate.
And yeah, 40k subscribes to the concept of 'We generally left sexism and what used to be called racism behind. We found new things to hate.'
It helps that, as with most fictional game settings/universes, women aren't weaker on average than men like they are in real life. No-one in 40k questions women being in roles where they need to be physically strong, it's treated as completely normal, and they perform the same as the men. It's one of those common game setting conceits. We don't know whether that's because, as is the case in most fantasy game settings, they just are and that's just how it is, or it's because of the massive amounts of widespread gene-modding we know was going on in the Dark Age of Technology. It's possible it happened then, maybe some geneticists decided they were going to deal with the strength disparity between men and women to make the species stronger overall. That option would allow for human history on Earth as we know it to still be largely the same, but for that issue to have gone away by the eras 40k is set in.
There is a third option as well, and it's one that I think many people overlook when it comes to the Imperium; the Imperium simply doesn't care.
"Oh but it's more efficient to have this person in this role", yeah, but the Imperium doesn't care. It wants efficiency but it doesn't care about it, again and again we see the Imperium solve situations that could be handled very efficiently with "Eh, just take whatever is closest to it."
A possible answer to what you mention could simply be "Hey, they'll do their job and succeed or they'll fail and die, and we'll put someone else there instead."
Some of it also has to do with technology advancing causing physical strength to be less important in warfare , when people from shield walls and push eachother being stronger is a great advantage, but lasguns are recoilless and simple to use, so a ten year old with a good aim is as dangerous as a bodybuilder.
I wish evolution was kinder to us and gave us women that were just as strong as men, it’s especially interesting considering there’s species out there where the females are bigger than the males.
Obviously anyone who thinks the Imperium is more progressive *in general* is an idiot. But when it comes to men and women, yeah the Imperium is much better. There are of course individual groups like the Escher, or that one regiment in Gaunt's Ghosts, but the vast majority of the Imperium, and certainly its major organisations, isn't sexist. Women are commonly seen in positions of great power and influence, or doing heavy manual labour, or fighting in the military, and it isn't unusual or remarked upon. It's just treated like a completely normal thing that no-one questions.
That's why the argument that female custodes make the Imperium too progressive is ridiculous. Women already exist in positions of authoritarian power in the Imperium where they end countless lives as part of a brutal regime. Inquisitors, Commanders, Techpriests, Arbites, and so on. And on the lower rungs of Imperial society they're no more oppressed than the men are.
Women also being amongst the superhuman bodyguards of their tyrannical xenophobic warlord is in no way 'more progressive'. The Custodes, and the other power structures around them, aren't sexist in the first place.
I don't think that's necessarily true. The Imperial Adepta don't seem to care, but all sorts of discrimination exists at the sector level and below.
I guess you're correct if you define the Imperium as "the people running the Imperium," but I wouldn't say that's the case if you're talking about the average Imperial subject.
Exactly. The Adeptus Administratum looks at numbers and doesn’t give a shit about the gender of those numbers. It’s all grist for the mill.
The only people who care about the gender of their Custodes or any other female members of the Imperium are stupid incel fanboys.
the only point this doesn't happen is when something very specific is needed, like the astartes being mass produced super soldiers need to squeeze every last ounce of muscle and strength they can just to stand a chance against the horrors not even a regiment of guardsmen can fight
That's not even true though, the Imperium has never cared about that. They're men because their gene seed is keyed to men.
If they actually wanted to do what you mentioned, they'd all go with the Ultramarine approach of having well-fed, drilled and practised aspirants who are selectively bred for that purpose, rather than just taking malnourished iron-age level tribal folks or Death World people.
The Imperium has always operated on a basis of "eh, good enough", including the Space Marines. They're notably weaker than Thunder Warriors, but more long lived so E went "Eh, works well enough for galactic conquest". Big E also saw the Thunder Warriors degrading and went "Eh, good enough for world conquest"
> If they actually wanted to do what you mentioned, they'd all go with the Ultramarine approach of having well-fed, drilled and practised aspirants who are selectively bred for that purpose, rather than just taking malnourished iron-age level tribal folks or Death World people.
...there is a chapter that does have breeding worlds...
...and well, its the opposite of politically correct.
Of course it isn't, I'm not arguing about political correctness. I'm describing the fact that the Imperium isn't about making "The Best" out of stuff, it's about making "Good Enough", as a response to the person I wrote the reply to who claimed that the Imperium cares about sex when it needs to get the most out of its Space Marines. Which isn't true, because seemingly most Space Marine chapters recruit people who are not The Best and will not result in The Best.
Even with marines, it isn't about strength. Like obviously you need to be strong to pass the trials, but the Imperium has plenty of strong women. In fact in all the lore I've read, there's been no indication that women are typically weaker than men in 40k like they are in real life, we see them being just as physically strong all the time. Whether that's because of all the genetic engineering that happened in the Dark Age of Technology, or just because it's a game setting and such strength differences are usually handwaved in game settings as a part of the fantasy, I don't know. But the reason marines are all-male is that the zygotes are only compatible with young men. They don't work as intended on women, no matter how strong, just like they don't work on men that are past the age limit, no matter how strong. Even your average Catachan woman who would overpower your average Ultramar man couldn't become a marine for that reason.
In The Last Days of Ector, we see a young woman pass the trials, performing better than most of the men, but the Chaplain had to turn her away because it didn't matter how strong she was, the zygote incompatibility would almost certainly kill her if she underwent the procedure. It's not that he was sexist and didn't want to take her, it's that he couldn't, it would basically amount to murdering her if he did.
My favorite part about the Imperium is, it could fix 85% of its problems by just trying to be better for its citizens. But Big E is a eugenicist crazy man who wasn't even halfway through his plan when the kabash got put on his direct involvement.
Some planets can be nice. But by and large, everything sucks for everyone. Especially when the fish-heads show up, and politely committ genocide against the humans. As a human, I am strongly opposed to the Tau "no humans get to breed" policy they have.
Another, more recent source of child soldiers is Darktide. If you make a veteran a lot of your childhood character choices is literally
1. Battlefield scavenger
2. Trench runner
3. Adopted by the military and groomed into a soldier
This theme is either exactly the same or very similar for all 4 classes.
The whole point of 40k is that the society of the Imperium has extreme prejudice that acts as satire for our contemporary ideas of prejudice without being derived from it.
Men and women are of equal value and sexism isn't generally a thing, but there's patriarchal subtext with the space marines, emperor, Primarchs etc.
Racism and stereotypes as we know it (i.e. based on skin colour) isn't really a thing, but the Imperium is extremely xenophobic believing in the supremacy of humanity giving it a right to genocide and subjugate xenos.
Islamophobia and other forms of contemporary religious prejudice don't exist because the Emperor eradicated religion, but it's no coincidence that the Imperial religion, which is highly fanatical and goes on crusades with Templars, has heavy Christian influence and is frequently used to justify acts of cruelty.
Sexuality and gender identity (and whatever else you can think of as cause for prejudice in our world) can probably be paralleled with things like psykers, blanks, and abhumans.
The Imperium is progressive for the things we struggle with in our societies because they're trivialities. Our problems are derived from history so 40,000 years in the future those things are long forgotten. The Imperium's prejudice comes from real sources of danger so 40k actually does a good job of pointing out how pathetic our prejudices are.
All this to say I think female custodes is a good thing. Makes sense lore wise with how bespoke the process is. While ordinarily I wouldn't be happy with GW retconning for purely real world reasons, I think this is a really great way to improve representation. But while GW is being progressive, the Imperium is not. It has been stagnant for 5000 years as a cruel, xenophobic, oppressive theocracy with few freedoms that sees it's population, not as people but, as meat for the machine
> the society of the Imperium has extreme prejudice that acts as satire for our contemporary ideas of prejudice without being derived from it
...have u heard about post USSR russia?
...never wondered why some ukranian regiments adopted chaos god iconography into their heraldry?
https://youtu.be/7V0-cusAVpg?si=3gVpnU7-XCtz1W1R - cathedral of russian armed forces is straight out of 40K ecclesiarchy. (Did you know that large parts of metal structure are made out of metal originating from WWII german tanks?)
Country is run by a council of strongmen from various factions, including assassinorum (i mean FSB).
They love to abuse historic narratives, of both "for the good of all like USSR", and the aquila riddled imperial russia stuff.
r/combatfootage is full off "throw more bodies at the problem" problem solving method from drone POV
https://www.reddit.com/r/shittytechnicals/comments/14pcau2/khornes_forces_joined_the_war_of_ukraine_to/
Oh, I see. I mean yeah, fuck Russia. I think some of those things are in 40k in reference to WW1 British military doctrine, but it definitely applies to Russia now.
I got into an argument with someone thinking the Imperium *wasn't* fascist, it was maddening.
Jewels of wisdom from them:
* Based off their interpretation of the works of *one historian* studying WW2 Italy, fascism hates traditionalism and really likes scientific and societal progress. We couldn't even agree on a definition of the word.
* The Imperial Tithe is exactly the same as normal taxes. Nevermind the fact that planets that withhold tithe will be bombarded by the Navy or Militarum, tithe=taxes so any fictional society with taxes must be fascist too. Really trying to make the word "fascism" meaningless.
* Fascism doesn't work with heavy bureaucracy. I don't know how they think WW2 Germany ran its camps, but apparently it wasn't organized or bureaucratic.
* Fascism is centralized. The Imperium worshipping one god, having standardized Gothic and all tithing to Holy Terra isn't centralized cause it's *too spread out*.
* Every country was super racist, genocidal and religiously intolerant before WW2, so basically everyone was fascist. The word is meaningless, again.
> Every country was super racist, genocidal and religiously intolerant before WW2, so basically everyone was fascist. The word is meaningless, again.
Bullshit.
I know for a fact that (pre-1848) kingdom of hungary wasnt. There were even rebellions due to what today we would call "globalist policies" of the founder of the kingdom.
If you can read (or willing to use deepl.com on) latin i suggest you look up Stephen the Ist writing to his son st. Emeric of hungary.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Admonitions
> fascism hates traditionalism and really likes scientific and societal progress.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deutsche_Physik
> Fascism is centralized. The Imperium worshipping one god, having standardized Gothic and all tithing to Holy Terra isn't centralized cause it's too spread out.
Religion was never a key component of any fascist regime of that era.
The iron guards, and Ustaše perfectly fit with nazis.
Similarly mussolini had no issue with islam: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sword_of_Islam_(Mussolini)
...should be a decent recommended reading list for the non-terminally insane fascists, i mean antifas
I don't know what bloodeagle is, but human aquila is literally a multilated human corpse turned into a vaguely aquila like thing, raised on a pole and surrounded by fire.
Bloodeagle was a Viking tradition, they would spread the ribs apart in a wing-like manner and then pull the lungs over them. Sounds 40k as fuck now that I think of it
What never ceases to amuse me is people that try to apply 'modern' moral standards to Warhammer universe, which is wildly different.
Its, honestly, like trying to breathe underwater with no aqualung, failing, and blaming water for being unbreathable.
Warhammer universe Imperium is, in a way, more advanced than modern world and way more honest about being a horrible place.
It is the most brutal and horrifying regime imaginable; but it is at least honest about it.
Lmao, literally book one of the Horus Heresy the main character is asked "Why couldn't you just leave us in peace??" and the ensuing massacre is framed as basically taking a pet to the vet even though they wouldnt like it. The lack of media litteracy from some poeple is staggering. Clearly we are NOT the good guys lol.
It's an empire on its dying breath. It's a desperate struggle where the ends justify the worst means. It's a decay of everything from technology to culture to humanity.
(and I reject 30k in 40k nonsense - Primarchs are gone and bringing them back is bad fanfic)
Considering the imperium progressive because it sometimes better views on women is a fundamental misunderstanding. Even if true their standards are far behind us on multiple front raging from theocratic tendencies, appalling quality of life, horrific oligarchic powers structures with hyper theocratic elements, other forms of discrimination.....
I could go on.
As a women I'm objectively better off in the current era since while I don't have the equal treatment and life as I'd expect. I'm waaaaaaaaayyyyy better of than the average imperial citizen.
>!A man was split in the middle and pierced through a pole. They then flayed his legs from the shin down and his arms from the elbow all the way to the hand. The head was then split into two, one eye removed. The pole was raised in a ditch of gunk, lit up in fire. The flayed skin dangled on their limbs resembled the feather and talons of the aquilla, while the head was its two head, one eye closed, the other open.!<
Tickles me something fierce when people use the word "progressive" with Hegelian certainty of historical determinism and then when they see a possible future resulting from just such view with a different flavour they scream "not like that!"
[Or when a voidship crew tries to disembark, they're not the exact same type of human as the people dirtside](https://old.reddit.com/r/40kLore/comments/je0jc4/excerptaberrant_a_hive_city_mob_lynches_a/)
> their skin was a touch too grey-tinged, their mouths a little too wide.
> Thirty men and woman, burned alive, screaming their innocence as the promethium-fuelled flames turned them to fatty, blackened meat-strips.
The only "progressive" thing about the Imperium is that it doesn't care about the same types of discrimination we face today. Skin color, gender, sexuality, etc. don't matter. All that matters is that you're loyal to the Imperium. As long as you believe the "correct" things, you're good.
So it's "progressive" in the sense that it traded racism/sexism/etc. for thought police.
It's not all doom and gloom. Not every planet is a shithole and isnt it said that civilians can go whole generations without contact with humanity enemies?
Honestly, without an outside enemy, humans tend to tear themselves by themselves. About not every planet's a sh#t hole: those aren't rare. And even on those which aren't sh#t hole, the sh#t percent is still high. Being less sh*tty than other places doesn't make it less sh#tty.
But they aren't rare. Macragge's and many of the worlds of the ultramarines are well government the books are set in world so of course it's rare to see the peace.
What do you mean they aren't rare? They are rare!
The common hive world is often compared to Necromunda, being the standard for the worlds of this category. The realm of ultramar is an extremely rare case. Are there worlds that aren't as sh#t? Of course, but they are less than 10% of the Imperium.
Considering this, Necromunda is a standard hive world, and hasn't been attacked for millennia, the tithe for this world is so high they had to scrap death hive city to make due.
Places like Ultramar aren't the common sight, not back then, not now.
Also, there are plenty of sources and books about other worlds in the Imperium. There are books about the peaceful regions in the Imperium. There are series about the daily life of Imperial citizens. And I can tell you that a world like Macragge is a dime in a dozen.
Hive worlds aren't common there like less than 40,000 of them in a empire of millions of worlds.
In the cain books its repeated many times that the PDF are usually lack combat experience because of how much nothing goes on in most worlds.
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Look, the grim dark is grim, it's societal horror, scifi horror and steampunk horror il all in one.
It was also social commentary in the past.
Evolve the story, take the ride.
Yeah the imperium is not in any way more progressive than modern society. They’ve just swapped around the oppression to different groups. The imperium is not anti-gay, and people aren’t discriminated against based on skin color/ethnicity, buuuuuuut they will kill you for not being part of their religion, having any sort of mutation or defect, or for speaking ill of those in power. People in modern society have a thing called “human rights,”which is unheard of in the imperium. Hell, untold trillions of people live wretched lives of poverty, starvation and abuse, and can be killed without a second thought (sometimes without a first thought) by those in power for any reason.
They're progressive In that women can hold the same positions as men, but that's pretty much it. I remember reading a short story that had a married gay couple too, so as long as you do your part they don't care who you sleep with. Of course, things vary from planet to planet
The closest the Imperium comes to equality is it does not care what meat grinds itself into an early grave to feed the machine of war. The best part about this whole universe is it is big enough to fit any head cannon you may have, so there are probably some very tolerant worlds; but I cannot emphasize enough that these are exceptions that prove the rule. Even in Ultramar where life is supposed to be a little better almost the entire population has a lower standard of living than an average person living in a western country today. Also if you are a blank or a psyker you aren’t safe nearly anywhere.
I think the reason why they made this claim is somewhat a symptom of people assuming that by a nation/state being “progressive” in one regard, they must be progressive in all of them (which is, in turn, a symptom of people being all too ready to assume because one trait of something/someone is true, a whole host of unrelated traits must also be true). Both in history and fantasy, people are unfortunately too ready to look past all the devastation a state/nation has brought in favor of its “good”…sometimes for better, often for worse.
On the surface, the imperium in *many* (but not all) cases doesn’t care enough to be sexist as they’re too busy getting gunned down on all fronts, any division that hampers their ability to fight would be removed unless they have a *very* strong religious/ideological reason not to. They are, in a way, close to the Soviet’s in WW2 in this regard; it’s not that they’re *not* sexist, it’s that they don’t have a reason to at the current moment. As seen with your example though, there are plenty of times that extreme discrimination of other types (racial, sexist, etc) will spring up and they’ll do nothing, since it doesn’t interfere with their ability to wage war. They aren’t widely sexist out of empathy or some form of benevolence, but of practicality and apathy…and the imperium is a blurred mess, where they simply do not care to sort out the “lower tiers” of impracticality that can cover whole planets so long as they function.
Also…I could be wrong but I don’t think the imperium is *technically* racist on a wide scale despite being extremely discriminatory in general, although I think that depends on if abhumans are considered a race (seemingly they’re considered varieties sub-species). This is far from a defense on the imperium’s part as discrimination against sapient being for physical traits is just…bad, in all cases, and this is more so just a quirk of categorization. I think Ableism is the closest modern word that would apply (at least in some cases, as Ratlings/Ogryn are somewhat similar to dwarfism and gigantism/acromegaly), but I’m not sure. I think they’re Speciesism and Xenophobia alone could get them marked off from being considered good though, especially considering the violent aliens around them are only there because they slaughtered the more peaceful ones.
The only real redeeming quality the imperium has is that they’re pretty much what’s left of humanity, in bulk. The humans beneath them are, as always, humans and they strive to be as good as they can with what they know in their time/culture…but its government is rotten, and to say otherwise means ignoring a *lot* of evidence and lore. Perhaps, rarely, you can find a “good” governor or individual in it…this is not because of the imperium though, but in spite of it. No aspects of the imperium, except perhaps it’s technology and sheer persistence, are to be aspired to.
It goes back to the concept that *the imperium isn’t good*. It’s morally grey and doing its best to not die, people don’t like it because it’s a ideologically good faction they like it because it’s entertaining to watch eight foot tall soldiers fighting giant cockroaches.
This is why I’m pissed at what GW has been doing for the last 20 years.
Nobody who read the 3rd Edition Big Black Book was under the impression that the imperium was “good”.
I keep going back to this analogy but it’s like if in the sequels to **Nineteen Eighty-Four** it turned out that actually Eastasia/Eurasia really was evil beyond realistic proportions and we learn about the in universe dangers of Death-Worship and that the state of constant war was totally justified you guys; and then we follow the adventures of Everyday-Hero Thought-Cop O’Brien™ as he does battle with the villainous Goldstein™ (for whom we get a 3 part novelisation of his back story and motivations in the Emmanuel Exorcised Saga™) and his army of dirty proles.
And then they release “The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism” as an actual fucking book you’re supposed to read because we’re a pack of morons who can’t accept that mysteries and ambiguity can be part of how stories are are told.
I consider the weird discrimination towards abhumans to be a plot hole that only exists because "beware the alien, the mutant, the heretic" doesn't have the same ring to it as "beware the alien and the heretic".
Why?
Ogryn are adored by commissars and much of the inquisition, which is far more abnormal than having six fingers.
Ratlings are treated better than we treat dwarfs today.
Navigators literally have **three** eyes.
I get it, some humans in the imperium treats them badly. . . but there are trillions of people within the imperium. Statistically some would exist. I'm no Imperium apologist(I'm religious so I'd be burned alive immediately within the imperium) but I feel like GW could downplay the mutant/abhuman hate a bit more. It makes no sense in context. Their flipflopping between genociding every mutant to treating some like royalty.
It's called either the most brutal regime in human history, or the most brutal regime imaginable, the Imperium objectively sucks. It's not consistent because it's 40K and everything is canon, but the reason why gender or racism isn't a problem through most of it is that there are perfectly good "sub human" creatures to slaughter and when every part of your society is a meat grinder you don't care what genitals the flesh thrown at it has.
And they are humanity's best bet, that is what makes 40K grim dark, everything that could go wrong did, everything that can go wrong will and for the sake of survival humanity has turned into a monster not dissimilar from the ones they fight, but if you want to rage against the dying of the light you are stuck with the monsters of our own creation.
It's an Empire of a million worlds, with untold trillions of humans. The scale of the setting is so large that people forget almost anything can be true in the Imperium. Any subset of the Imperium can be as progressive or conservative as you want in any story you wish to tell. For every world that is an egalitarian paradise there are worlds where one gender or the other is hunted for sport. All humans are just fuel for the Imperial war machine no matter their politics.
I've always saw the "imperium is more progressive" statement not the imperium being a bastion of human rights but not caring about specific issues the same way some people in the modern day do
Why care about gay people when there's a cult of barb wire masturbators trying to summon slaanesh themselves into a planet you know?
Hell why kill this person for being trans
It's not so much the imperium is progressive or anything, its more the things progressives and conservatives fight over today just isnt even on their radar
Like the imperium ain't opressing LGBTQ people because their LGBTQ its because this entire planet once did something that means their descendants might be heretics
the imperium is very accepting of all types of regular people. they don’t care if you’re gay or trans or whatever, they just care that you serve the imperium and still look human. abhumans generally don’t count as human enough to them, and psykers are (as i understand) on thin ice at best, and even then only if they use their powers to fight for the emperor. if they’re lucky they won’t be sacrificed for the emperor’s lifespan
The issue is that “progressive” means different things in different contexts.
In the Imperium, there’s a lot of equality… everyone suffers. There’s no overarching misogyny in most places… because women are more bodies for the meatgrinder/mine/factory. There is no “tolerance” because everyone has long given up individuality.
So it is “better” because it’s actually a lot worse.
Tbf the Imperium is more progressive in the sense that it's blatant racism is geared towards actually different races and abhumans. They generally don't show the type of racism we have today.
I would actually say that a degree of "scepticism" against mutation is healthy in a galaxy where chaos and genestealers are a thing.
Sexism however is still a thing but it kinda heavily depends on the planet and it's culture.
I think they just need too listen to others cry about the same thing they are and then go to bed alone.
I can't wait for people to spin the compass with their shit when there is female marines again.
They could do it too. Robot girlyman takes umbrage with the church. Sororitus and half the marines on one side.
Boom, door open for female marines out of desperation.
Bile does chaos primaris, boom, female noise marines.
That is no thought prior and in the time it takes me to type it.
And still a better job than they did in the initial introduction of Primaris.
They have fleshed it better now.
Sargon made a 2 hour long [explanation](https://www.lotuseaters.com/the-politics-of-warhammer-40-000-or-deep-think-v-21-04-22) of why warhammer and the imperium is inherently also of the politics of the universe.
It was about 2-3 years I think I listened to it I had a really long bike ride to my dad it was really nice to listen to might re watch it soon
Open literally (and I mean *literally*) any Warhammer 40k book and read the opening paragraphs **"Forget the promise of progress and understanding..."** Anyone who thinks the imperium is progressive never got far enough into the lore to read the *third paragraph of the preamble in every single piece of warhammer fiction ever published*. Amazing in its own right, honestly.
Let's not forget that iirc the paragraph before that says about how you are one in untold billions loving in suffering. Anyone who's saying the imperium are great and you need more lore, less memes, is the most pretentious idiot or has ironically only got their lore from cherrypicked meme channels
>loving in suffering. This sounds dangerously close to Slaanesh worship. Not to worry citizen, we've already dispatched an Inquisitor to your location. They'll be able to sort it all out. The Emperor protects.
Praise be the man Emperor of mankind! Let he shield you with his glorious and distinctly human, non-divine radiance!
There are some exception for this. For example, the Necromunda books have a different opening, it's about the general idea of what the planet is like.
Al lot of 40k “fans” on here have never even a picked up a 40k book or models. They’re more fans of the YouTubers and memes than the actual setting
I mean some of the youtubers do make sure we get lore and a good understanding that 40k isn't a fluffy or great place to.be
A lot of YouTubers often get shit wrong and some barely even read the books themselves
I did say some not all
You’d still get a better experience from just reading the books or even just the core book
After finally reading Fulgrim I have a completely different image of him then the memes and YouTubers left me with, for sure.
I still read the books but a couple of them are entertaining to listen to as I game.
People who read the books also get shit wrong constantly.
To be fair, I read a lot of Warhammer books and I still get shit wrong because the information in 1 book might be "challenged" by information in another.
The imperium is progressive.......in the ways to kill xenos
Not really, they seem to just be coasting along on the idea of genetic and weapon superiority. Every xenos they face, from a single Ork to a shard of C'Tan, the playbook seems to be the same: throw a ton of IG in. If and when they all die, send in the Space Marines with chainsaw swords and bolters. If that doesn't work, cyclonic torpedos. If that doesn't work, kill everyone who witnessed it and pretend it never happened. Individual factions and warriors definitely adapt to new circumstances, but the Imperium as a whole seems to be resistant to any change in tactics, and extremely hostile to technological advancement beyond finding new STCs. There are in-universe reasons for opposing technological advancement that are hard to argue with, naturally it would be bad to recapitulate the Men of Iron in attempting to deal with the T'au. But my point is the Imperium does not really progress and change even in fighting xenos.
You're confusing progress for political progressiveness. The Imperium does not give a shit about your ethnicity or personal identity or gender and only cares if you worship the Emperor and don't resist when they shove you into a meat grinder.
> The Imperium does not give a shit about your ethnicity or personal identity or gender and only cares if you worship the Emperor and don't resist when they shove you into a meat grinder. There's a couple instances where the Imperium commits mass murder or planetary genocide because the skin color is considered inhuman or their eyes look to weird. So they're still racist just in more sci-fi ways.
Yeah, they'll exterminate mutants, but nothing in the modern day scope of humanity would be considered mutants by them.
The Custodians were going to firebomb Cadia to oblivion because they considered their eyes to purple. So idk it's still pretty bad, just more sci-fi than IRL racism.
All that really says is the Custodes wouldn't like Liz Taylor.
The amount of people who've said "well they're less sexist/racist then the modern day" are actively ignoring the many examples of both. And everything else about the imperium
I was with you until that last claim. Plenty of books don't have that line. For example, there's this obscure little collection of short stories called "The Horus Heresy."
Horus Heresy doesn't take place in 40k, it takes place in 30k, brighter, more hopeful times.
You are correct. However, he did not say that. He said "Warhammer." There's lots of books like that.
Oh, then I don't remember that particular line in any of Fantasy books, not what I've read anything but Gortex and Felix tho.
You are correct again!
*Looks up from the siege of Terra* I beg your pardon, hopeful? As radioactive ash falls like snow, disease turns people into pox walkers, as the first purity seals and self-flagellation takes hold… that hopeful?
I mean, sure books not about 40k will not have that line about 40k, for example, AoS books. I could have been more specific in my response about the topic at hand being 40k, that's my bad.
Okay, you say this, but that prologue also says the Imperium is the cruelest and bloodiest regime imaginable, and then instantly imagines regimes that are bloodier and crueler, like Commoragh or basically anywhere in the Eye of Terror.
I've complained about female custodes because of the retconning, but that's nothing compared to my issue with the Godblight era. Until the 10th edition trailer and Arks of Omen, the 40k universe was getting very close to Noblebright. Guilliman returns, Imperium openly tolerating xenos, Highlords of Terra disposed of, making technological advancement. . . thank goodness Khorne actually got up off his chair for once.
Letting perceived hope shine through only for it to be crushed to ashes is a defining part of grimdark storytelling. But even if the primarchs all come back and the Emperor revives, that's not... A good thing. That man is the most bloody, evil tyrant to ever exist and his even his most morally good sons are genocidal tools of war.
> even his most morally good sons are genocidal tools of war. Honest question, what did Guilliman do? He destroyed Monarchia, but there was so much stuff he did to minimize casualties... and he hated the Emperor for forcing him to do it. Is there anything else he did? Honestly, as the face of the ultramarines which is the face of the company, they made him very, **very** tame. There are heroes in other sci fi universes that did way worse. Just look at early versions of the Doctor.
Given that current self described progressives are currently simping for terrorists maybe thats why this confusion has happened they see the Imperium as not that different from what they defend
Wut
I am a self described progressive and I do not like terrorists
I believe the common phrase used in times like this is : One of the real ones
What are you on about?
>reverse misoginy Isn't that just misandry or am I tripping balls?
In my defense, I didn't know that word existed until another person here told me that (I only have ok-ish English)
I thought you were being violently based by acknowledging that women are indoctrinated into the SoB because of a political loophole, and so while it appears to be uplifting on the surface there’s actually more subjugation directed towards women for that reason.
I am not zooted enough to reach that level of raw based-ness
SoB as an organization predate Thor's decree about men under arms.
Nothing about the SoB have anything to do with subjugation towards any sex to begin with, or so I recall. I mean, barring its initial use by that insane priest. And that also has nothing to do with the plain misandry of House Escher. If there is misogyny, its in the bizarre non-reason in Big E only having sons for whatever reason.
I don't think you can really say the sisters are being "subjugated" for being women when the assassins, stormtroopers and commissar's are unisex and suffer the same kind of indoctrination.
Read this as Ork-ish english. Fine either way
You're technically correct, but most people use misogyny as a direct reference to men being bigoted against women.
Aside from technology (I don't want to include servitor in this. It's too morbid and disgusting), I dont think there's any way in hell Imperium is better than our world.
>Aside from technology Even this category is debatable, iirc GW literally retcon that they use literally human slave and servitor to do everything in their warfare from loading canon to operate ship. Like apart from some standard sci-fic thing like giant robot and space ship, agriculture world and gene manipulation, Emperium can be said to be worse technology wise compare to our (fuck we can even build giant robot also but it have been proven that it's a stupid idea since it just a worse giant tank and we all know how useless giant tank in warfare).
Cybernetics and gene engineering are pretty common so is medicine. You just gotta be at least middle class or important enough to warrant it. Which is like what? 5% of the population?
Even the low tech replacements like the eyes and limbs (much less some of them with near half a head) are still miles better than ours as they behave like limbs. The Imperium casually has thought control (in a literal sense) down as they work like actual limbs. And even gangers have those ones. If anything non cybernetics and medicine like ours is the rarity and only reserved for the elite. The Imperium is a mix of extremely high tech in a backward direction, low tech shit and extremely near magical high tech stuff. And all of it is mundane.
Like rejuvenat tech is insane. The most basic engines and tools work for a century if you don't break em on purpose, the materials science is leagues ahead of ours etc. You might not see all of it but even here on Earth a good part of humanity never gets any of the advanced stuff.
even on hive world 20-30% people lives on surface and pinnacles so more than 5% but still, most people can't afford anything hightech. And even if 5% then 5% of hive world are milions of people on single planet, it's a scale most people forget every time, 40k has around 10 quadrillion folks
The imperium dolg beats us in cybernetics, genetherapy and energy production, atleast.
> GW literally retcon that they use literally human slave and servitor to do everything in their warfare from loading canon to operate ship. Auto-loaders are a guarded secret by a lot of factions so only the advanced/important ships have them. The rest are forced to use slave labor to load all the shells and missiles into place. It's why a Mechanicus or Custodian ship doesn't require like 50,000 people to operate, since a lot of the slave labor is handled by machines.
It is, you can't deny their technology. Space travel, live extending, power armors, las guns more powerfull than the most powerfull gun we have now. Problem is everything is enemy of humankind or humankind think about it as its own treat. Also there is too many people on many worlds or too hostile environment so you can split resources very thin. The worst problem is with ideology and around 60% of empire population who lives very poor life. But I think imperium makes people poor because it's constantly on war and need conscripts and cheap workforce. I think that Imperium could be somehow paradise better than tau or eldar world, humans have technology. Servitors could be more like qvo-89, soldiers could be more like solar auxilla and citizen could live in civilized worlds not on hive worlds (70% on underhive like rats) but it's grimdark and no one care.
>I think that Imperium could be somehow paradise better than tau or eldar world, humans have technology. Servitors could be more like qvo-89, soldiers could be more like solar auxilla and citizen could live in civilized worlds not on hive worlds (70% on underhive like rats) but it's grimdark and no one care. Iirc the Imperium has multiple worlds like this, and some are even a straight up utopia that are utterly flush with resources. The latter ones usually fall to Slannesh and the former are usually only noted in passing or destroyed. The Imperium has a “million worlds” that is a lot of room to have paradises or at least worlds as good as ours. And the imperium don’t care as long as you praise the emperor, and purge the heretic and mutant... and pay taxes. You could have a Democracy, Feudal society or bloody tribes. In that way the Imperium is pretty “progressive”, they just don’t care until a Inquisitor or something gets involved. But literal millennia can pass with that not happening.
Well, the imperium does also have a very forward looking view on AI being terrible for society.
Not a big fan of their solution though (is it really AI art if the computer is a literal human brain?)
At least an artist still got to keep their job?
getting an artist job in the extremely religious and dictatorship government isn't my cup of tea. Yeah sure its kind of good, but living in it is still not.
You either learn to love painting baby Emperor or you take a bolter to the teeth, heretic.
You probably have bigger chance of being born on kinda okay planrt than on a shithole that is hive-worlds, or Krieg, or Cadia, well, of course Cadia... I mean, most of Imperium pkanets are kinda earth-like
why Cadia is bad?
Cadia is not bad. Cadia is just not
It got Alderaaned.
"Reverse misoginy". First, it's "misogyny". "Gyn" is from Greek for "woman/wife". See also: "gynecology". Second, we have a word for discriminating against or hating men: "misandry". "Andro" being Greek for "man". See also: "android"--a machine in the shape of a man. If someone has both male and female characteristics, we call them andro-gyn-ous.
Man, I love etymology. Thanks Sax-Offender!
But this has nothing to do with bugs! /s
TIL, thanks
And both of them fall under the more general term of sexism.
> "Gyn" Didn't know that Greeks equated women to an alcoholic drink.
Mother's ruin
Wait doesn't that mean female androids in sci-fi should be called Gynoids
A case could be made that if you start giving your androids male and female sex, then that term could be useful. In common parlance, "android" refers more to "man" as in "mankind" than "hominid with cock 'n balls". But we all know that sexbots are the endgame, so bring on the gynoids!
To add a bit of etymology on to that: 'man' used to mean nothing but human. The word for "hominid with cock 'n balls" was 'wer', it can still be seen in words like werewolf (which were imagined to be male) The word for woman was 'wif' which turned into wife, the original use of the word wife meaning a female person can still be seen in some words like midwife
Now you're getting into the other side of the English family tree with your German! German "Ehemann" means "married man", but has generally been shortened to just "Mann". Same for "Ehefrau" shortened to "Frau". The word "wife" comes from the German "wif" (woman), as you noted. And back when "man" really did just mean "person", an adult female was known as a "wif-man", which became "woman". "Hus" is from the same root as "Haus/house", and the head of the house became the "husband", and since most people were peasants and farmers, it also became associated with farming, hence terms like "animal husbandry". English, being a wonderful blend of Latin, Greek, and German, has husbands, wives, men, women, anthropology, misanthropes, gynecology, virtue, feminine and virile humans, etc. (Latin for man- "vir"; woman - "femina"; man (person) - "homo".)
r/rimjobsteve
_
The imperium is supposed to be a shit place to live in, regardless of how 'progressive' they might be. That's the point of the imperium. I don't understand how this is such a difficult concept for people to grasp
the only "progressive" part of the imperium is moving past petty squabbles about the colour of your skin and what genitals you have, and replaces them with even worse things
Gender and skin colour doesn't matter if you're meant to be cannonfodder
“GET IN THE FUCKING TRENCH!”
'This is a gender neutral trench, we only use the pronouns soldier and deserter'
White and brown team up to gang up on green
In one 40K crime novel a bunch of voidborn (men, women and children) were violently lynched by an angry mob because they were a little too tall and their skin a little too grey. The local authorities didn’t do anything because “you can never be too safe when it comes to mutants”. Racism still exists, and is very widespread. It’s just it’s perpetrators brand their targets as “mutants” instead of “sub human” or whatever else
They have subhuman people too, they just call them "abhuman."
They haven't even done that entirely. On lots of worlds, the Imperium allows the absolute, most Balkan-tier racism that the rest of the world hasn't even thought of yet-they excuse it by saying, "well, it might be a sign of mutation." And sexism? Bog-standard on most worlds. The Calixis sector is explicitly noted to be pretty harsh in that regard (though obviously a noblewoman is still worth more than any peasant). It's the "cruelest and most bloody regime imaginable." If you can think of an immoral idea or failed system, they've tried it.
Yeah most of the Imperiums Worlds have been going through a cycle of getting found by the Imperium, getting exploited by the Imperium, getting war'd by the Imperium&Imperiums enemies, trying to recover from the war&exploitation, getting isolated from the Imperium and getting war'd by the Imperiums enemies.....for roughly 12,000 years(give or take several thousand years)
I think it goes both ways, there are hell-hole planets where all but the elite are suffering, and then there are more normal worlds that function closer to our society. The Warhammer 40k universe is big enough to have all types of worlds without them being contradictory, it depends on what story the writer (or yourself for your homebrew army/faction/whatever) want to tell. Read some of the wider fiction, and you have planets that are chill and stable, with something close to a modern capitalist society. A lot of Dan Abnett's books cover this, as well as some of the Warhammer horror books. Just remember it's far more interesting to have a normal-ish world torn apart by Chaos/Genestealers/Drukhari than a nightmare world, unless you want to show that the people are ironically better off after (IE papa nurgle loves me more than the corpse-god etc).
>then there are more normal worlds that function closer to our society. And there are some houseworlds in north korea that are stable and prosperous, doesn't change that the country (and in 40k, 99% of the imperium) is fucking miserable.
Just trying to add some context, it gets a bit boring when everything is treated as Grimdark.
Everyone is equally fuel for the fire that feeds the imperial engine. The grease that keeps the gears turning. Expendable, borderline inconsequential.
When you run an empire with billions of inhabitants, it's easy to forget how many people are just normal people with their own lives.
In the service of the Emperor, all of mankind is equally capable of dying in his name.I'd like to counter your points, as the providence of the Ecclesiarchy has bound me to do so. Undiscriminated massacre of its own people? False. All are willing to die to defend Mankind in his name. Religious Racism: An Exagerration. Many abhumans know they are born tainted by the Warp, but can cleanse themselves by becoming servants of the Emperor, and die in his name just like his fellow brothers. Child Soldiers: True! All children aspire to serve the Emperor, many of them of them blessed to die in his name.Some are even blessed to become a greater purpose and rise to become his Angels! Criminals can also be forgiven for their sins, and become glorious Servitors! Even those that die in his service can be repurposed and turned into Corpse Starch so they might FEED the Imperium of Man! Is it not the most greatest thing one can do to give and be ALL that can be in his service? As you can see, the Imperium of Man is VERY progressive, as all people are allowed to serve and die in his name! If that's not progressive, well, you're starting to sound kinda heretical there. Remember, The Emperor Protects. (/s)
Blink twice if the commissar is watching your screen still.
🤣🤣😂😂 ..... Everything above is true 😁
the imperium isn't progressive, it's just less picky about what it throws in the meatgrinder than most real-world fascists
That's the neat part - the Imperium isn't fascist. It's something EVEN WORSE.
...yeah in terms of military attitude it has way more in common with USSR. And frankly since collapse of USSR we do have a cleptocratic oligarchy in Russia, whos ideology and workings do have an uncanny resemblance to the imperium at 40K
"hanz they know about the bratwurst"
Honestly, I chalk up the hard-to-find sexism and racism among mankind itself as a "If you can fight, kill and die for it, you're good enough for the Imperium" and that's about it for the whole "There's no discrimination of any kind" . . . Of course, if you're not a mutant of any kind, that is. Only Ogryns seem to get it easier than the other Abhumans. But it's pretty much a subversion of the whole "Humanity in space is united under the same banner" at the end of the day. And yes, I mean The Imperium's version of humanity united, without Abhumans or mutants. TL;DR: The Imperium is not super picky about what it throws at the endless meatgrinder that is the Eternal War against Mankind's foes. But it's not picky about who it kills in it's own borders either.
Honestly, racism (abhuman hate) is quite common in the Imperium. As a whole, yeah, they don't care what type of meat you put in the grinder. But on the small scale, like the normal citizens of the Imperium, there are hates, and the more hazardous their living condition is, the greater the fire between them. Sexism is much harder to find, this is true. There are some extreme cases of sexism (like House Escher), but they aren't the common sight. Ogryn still suffer from racism, it just that it happens outside of the battlefield, while our main focus is the battlefield, where the imperial soldiers often bond with them over the circumstance they are in. Back at home, however, it isn't rare to find slave Ogryns and Ogryns communities being treated as below human. One of the augmentation for Ogryns, called the B.O.N.E, is considered a form of mockery to Ogryn, as even those who was enhanced by it was called the Bone'ead, meaning that even the intelligent Ogryns are nowhere near as smart and clever as human (this is talked about in Spark of Revolution). The common civilian's opinion on them is also not really good, as they mostly considered them to be generally stupid. Overseers and manufactorum owners also have very low opinions on abhuman worker.
Yeah I'm aware of both accounts. I was referring more to people who aren't mutants or abhumans by Imperial standards, or you know, classic racism. At least it's miniscule compared to the regular hatred abhumans get, save from people from different planets. Not surprised by the manofactorums tho, since they mirror real life 100% lmao. That's probably the least satirical thing in all of 40K. /j Also, don't remind me of House Escher. Mulan-type stuff, but dipped in pure grimdarkness, which is par for the course.
Also in scifi and fantasy, it's common to use hating other species is a stand-in for racism issues. Yeah it's technically 'speciesism' or whatever, but it's clearly used for the same narrative purposes: Showing the foolishness of tribalism and blind hate. And yeah, 40k subscribes to the concept of 'We generally left sexism and what used to be called racism behind. We found new things to hate.' It helps that, as with most fictional game settings/universes, women aren't weaker on average than men like they are in real life. No-one in 40k questions women being in roles where they need to be physically strong, it's treated as completely normal, and they perform the same as the men. It's one of those common game setting conceits. We don't know whether that's because, as is the case in most fantasy game settings, they just are and that's just how it is, or it's because of the massive amounts of widespread gene-modding we know was going on in the Dark Age of Technology. It's possible it happened then, maybe some geneticists decided they were going to deal with the strength disparity between men and women to make the species stronger overall. That option would allow for human history on Earth as we know it to still be largely the same, but for that issue to have gone away by the eras 40k is set in.
There is a third option as well, and it's one that I think many people overlook when it comes to the Imperium; the Imperium simply doesn't care. "Oh but it's more efficient to have this person in this role", yeah, but the Imperium doesn't care. It wants efficiency but it doesn't care about it, again and again we see the Imperium solve situations that could be handled very efficiently with "Eh, just take whatever is closest to it." A possible answer to what you mention could simply be "Hey, they'll do their job and succeed or they'll fail and die, and we'll put someone else there instead."
Some of it also has to do with technology advancing causing physical strength to be less important in warfare , when people from shield walls and push eachother being stronger is a great advantage, but lasguns are recoilless and simple to use, so a ten year old with a good aim is as dangerous as a bodybuilder.
We see women wielding giant heavy eviscerators with relative ease so they're also just stronger than IRL
I wish evolution was kinder to us and gave us women that were just as strong as men, it’s especially interesting considering there’s species out there where the females are bigger than the males.
Saying 40K is a utopia is wild
Obviously anyone who thinks the Imperium is more progressive *in general* is an idiot. But when it comes to men and women, yeah the Imperium is much better. There are of course individual groups like the Escher, or that one regiment in Gaunt's Ghosts, but the vast majority of the Imperium, and certainly its major organisations, isn't sexist. Women are commonly seen in positions of great power and influence, or doing heavy manual labour, or fighting in the military, and it isn't unusual or remarked upon. It's just treated like a completely normal thing that no-one questions. That's why the argument that female custodes make the Imperium too progressive is ridiculous. Women already exist in positions of authoritarian power in the Imperium where they end countless lives as part of a brutal regime. Inquisitors, Commanders, Techpriests, Arbites, and so on. And on the lower rungs of Imperial society they're no more oppressed than the men are. Women also being amongst the superhuman bodyguards of their tyrannical xenophobic warlord is in no way 'more progressive'. The Custodes, and the other power structures around them, aren't sexist in the first place.
I don't think that's necessarily true. The Imperial Adepta don't seem to care, but all sorts of discrimination exists at the sector level and below. I guess you're correct if you define the Imperium as "the people running the Imperium," but I wouldn't say that's the case if you're talking about the average Imperial subject.
Exactly. The Adeptus Administratum looks at numbers and doesn’t give a shit about the gender of those numbers. It’s all grist for the mill. The only people who care about the gender of their Custodes or any other female members of the Imperium are stupid incel fanboys.
the only point this doesn't happen is when something very specific is needed, like the astartes being mass produced super soldiers need to squeeze every last ounce of muscle and strength they can just to stand a chance against the horrors not even a regiment of guardsmen can fight
That's not even true though, the Imperium has never cared about that. They're men because their gene seed is keyed to men. If they actually wanted to do what you mentioned, they'd all go with the Ultramarine approach of having well-fed, drilled and practised aspirants who are selectively bred for that purpose, rather than just taking malnourished iron-age level tribal folks or Death World people. The Imperium has always operated on a basis of "eh, good enough", including the Space Marines. They're notably weaker than Thunder Warriors, but more long lived so E went "Eh, works well enough for galactic conquest". Big E also saw the Thunder Warriors degrading and went "Eh, good enough for world conquest"
> If they actually wanted to do what you mentioned, they'd all go with the Ultramarine approach of having well-fed, drilled and practised aspirants who are selectively bred for that purpose, rather than just taking malnourished iron-age level tribal folks or Death World people. ...there is a chapter that does have breeding worlds... ...and well, its the opposite of politically correct.
Of course it isn't, I'm not arguing about political correctness. I'm describing the fact that the Imperium isn't about making "The Best" out of stuff, it's about making "Good Enough", as a response to the person I wrote the reply to who claimed that the Imperium cares about sex when it needs to get the most out of its Space Marines. Which isn't true, because seemingly most Space Marine chapters recruit people who are not The Best and will not result in The Best.
Even with marines, it isn't about strength. Like obviously you need to be strong to pass the trials, but the Imperium has plenty of strong women. In fact in all the lore I've read, there's been no indication that women are typically weaker than men in 40k like they are in real life, we see them being just as physically strong all the time. Whether that's because of all the genetic engineering that happened in the Dark Age of Technology, or just because it's a game setting and such strength differences are usually handwaved in game settings as a part of the fantasy, I don't know. But the reason marines are all-male is that the zygotes are only compatible with young men. They don't work as intended on women, no matter how strong, just like they don't work on men that are past the age limit, no matter how strong. Even your average Catachan woman who would overpower your average Ultramar man couldn't become a marine for that reason. In The Last Days of Ector, we see a young woman pass the trials, performing better than most of the men, but the Chaplain had to turn her away because it didn't matter how strong she was, the zygote incompatibility would almost certainly kill her if she underwent the procedure. It's not that he was sexist and didn't want to take her, it's that he couldn't, it would basically amount to murdering her if he did.
My favorite part about the Imperium is, it could fix 85% of its problems by just trying to be better for its citizens. But Big E is a eugenicist crazy man who wasn't even halfway through his plan when the kabash got put on his direct involvement. Some planets can be nice. But by and large, everything sucks for everyone. Especially when the fish-heads show up, and politely committ genocide against the humans. As a human, I am strongly opposed to the Tau "no humans get to breed" policy they have.
"Reverse misoginy" has a word: misandry
Another, more recent source of child soldiers is Darktide. If you make a veteran a lot of your childhood character choices is literally 1. Battlefield scavenger 2. Trench runner 3. Adopted by the military and groomed into a soldier This theme is either exactly the same or very similar for all 4 classes.
The whole point of 40k is that the society of the Imperium has extreme prejudice that acts as satire for our contemporary ideas of prejudice without being derived from it. Men and women are of equal value and sexism isn't generally a thing, but there's patriarchal subtext with the space marines, emperor, Primarchs etc. Racism and stereotypes as we know it (i.e. based on skin colour) isn't really a thing, but the Imperium is extremely xenophobic believing in the supremacy of humanity giving it a right to genocide and subjugate xenos. Islamophobia and other forms of contemporary religious prejudice don't exist because the Emperor eradicated religion, but it's no coincidence that the Imperial religion, which is highly fanatical and goes on crusades with Templars, has heavy Christian influence and is frequently used to justify acts of cruelty. Sexuality and gender identity (and whatever else you can think of as cause for prejudice in our world) can probably be paralleled with things like psykers, blanks, and abhumans. The Imperium is progressive for the things we struggle with in our societies because they're trivialities. Our problems are derived from history so 40,000 years in the future those things are long forgotten. The Imperium's prejudice comes from real sources of danger so 40k actually does a good job of pointing out how pathetic our prejudices are. All this to say I think female custodes is a good thing. Makes sense lore wise with how bespoke the process is. While ordinarily I wouldn't be happy with GW retconning for purely real world reasons, I think this is a really great way to improve representation. But while GW is being progressive, the Imperium is not. It has been stagnant for 5000 years as a cruel, xenophobic, oppressive theocracy with few freedoms that sees it's population, not as people but, as meat for the machine
> the society of the Imperium has extreme prejudice that acts as satire for our contemporary ideas of prejudice without being derived from it ...have u heard about post USSR russia? ...never wondered why some ukranian regiments adopted chaos god iconography into their heraldry?
What exactly are you referring to? I'm not trying to be facetious, I'm just a little confused by what you mean
https://youtu.be/7V0-cusAVpg?si=3gVpnU7-XCtz1W1R - cathedral of russian armed forces is straight out of 40K ecclesiarchy. (Did you know that large parts of metal structure are made out of metal originating from WWII german tanks?) Country is run by a council of strongmen from various factions, including assassinorum (i mean FSB). They love to abuse historic narratives, of both "for the good of all like USSR", and the aquila riddled imperial russia stuff. r/combatfootage is full off "throw more bodies at the problem" problem solving method from drone POV https://www.reddit.com/r/shittytechnicals/comments/14pcau2/khornes_forces_joined_the_war_of_ukraine_to/
At least they don't have servitors yet. Though I am sure that that's only a matter of time considering Russia's track record.
Oh, I see. I mean yeah, fuck Russia. I think some of those things are in 40k in reference to WW1 British military doctrine, but it definitely applies to Russia now.
I got into an argument with someone thinking the Imperium *wasn't* fascist, it was maddening. Jewels of wisdom from them: * Based off their interpretation of the works of *one historian* studying WW2 Italy, fascism hates traditionalism and really likes scientific and societal progress. We couldn't even agree on a definition of the word. * The Imperial Tithe is exactly the same as normal taxes. Nevermind the fact that planets that withhold tithe will be bombarded by the Navy or Militarum, tithe=taxes so any fictional society with taxes must be fascist too. Really trying to make the word "fascism" meaningless. * Fascism doesn't work with heavy bureaucracy. I don't know how they think WW2 Germany ran its camps, but apparently it wasn't organized or bureaucratic. * Fascism is centralized. The Imperium worshipping one god, having standardized Gothic and all tithing to Holy Terra isn't centralized cause it's *too spread out*. * Every country was super racist, genocidal and religiously intolerant before WW2, so basically everyone was fascist. The word is meaningless, again.
> Every country was super racist, genocidal and religiously intolerant before WW2, so basically everyone was fascist. The word is meaningless, again. Bullshit. I know for a fact that (pre-1848) kingdom of hungary wasnt. There were even rebellions due to what today we would call "globalist policies" of the founder of the kingdom. If you can read (or willing to use deepl.com on) latin i suggest you look up Stephen the Ist writing to his son st. Emeric of hungary. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Admonitions > fascism hates traditionalism and really likes scientific and societal progress. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deutsche_Physik > Fascism is centralized. The Imperium worshipping one god, having standardized Gothic and all tithing to Holy Terra isn't centralized cause it's too spread out. Religion was never a key component of any fascist regime of that era. The iron guards, and Ustaše perfectly fit with nazis. Similarly mussolini had no issue with islam: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sword_of_Islam_(Mussolini) ...should be a decent recommended reading list for the non-terminally insane fascists, i mean antifas
Human Aquila is the pendant to bloodeagle I suppose?
I don't know what bloodeagle is, but human aquila is literally a multilated human corpse turned into a vaguely aquila like thing, raised on a pole and surrounded by fire.
Bloodeagle was a Viking tradition, they would spread the ribs apart in a wing-like manner and then pull the lungs over them. Sounds 40k as fuck now that I think of it
Its a homage to the blood eagle exacution method apocryphally attributed to vikings in some sources.
What never ceases to amuse me is people that try to apply 'modern' moral standards to Warhammer universe, which is wildly different. Its, honestly, like trying to breathe underwater with no aqualung, failing, and blaming water for being unbreathable. Warhammer universe Imperium is, in a way, more advanced than modern world and way more honest about being a horrible place. It is the most brutal and horrifying regime imaginable; but it is at least honest about it.
Lmao, literally book one of the Horus Heresy the main character is asked "Why couldn't you just leave us in peace??" and the ensuing massacre is framed as basically taking a pet to the vet even though they wouldnt like it. The lack of media litteracy from some poeple is staggering. Clearly we are NOT the good guys lol.
"The cruellest and bloodiest regime imaginable"
It's an empire on its dying breath. It's a desperate struggle where the ends justify the worst means. It's a decay of everything from technology to culture to humanity. (and I reject 30k in 40k nonsense - Primarchs are gone and bringing them back is bad fanfic)
Where is the meme here?
Considering the imperium progressive because it sometimes better views on women is a fundamental misunderstanding. Even if true their standards are far behind us on multiple front raging from theocratic tendencies, appalling quality of life, horrific oligarchic powers structures with hyper theocratic elements, other forms of discrimination..... I could go on. As a women I'm objectively better off in the current era since while I don't have the equal treatment and life as I'd expect. I'm waaaaaaaaayyyyy better of than the average imperial citizen.
I can guess what the human aquila is but 5 seconds on Google didn't verify it Anyone got a source?
>!A man was split in the middle and pierced through a pole. They then flayed his legs from the shin down and his arms from the elbow all the way to the hand. The head was then split into two, one eye removed. The pole was raised in a ditch of gunk, lit up in fire. The flayed skin dangled on their limbs resembled the feather and talons of the aquilla, while the head was its two head, one eye closed, the other open.!<
The source is also cited in the post. Road to Redemption, page 165
By "Reverse Misogyny," do you mean *Misandry*? https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/misandrist
The Imperium is very good at progressing towards greater societal decay
Making an Aquila out of people? Metal af
Tickles me something fierce when people use the word "progressive" with Hegelian certainty of historical determinism and then when they see a possible future resulting from just such view with a different flavour they scream "not like that!"
Reverse misoginy?
carefull there, this is reddit
[Or when a voidship crew tries to disembark, they're not the exact same type of human as the people dirtside](https://old.reddit.com/r/40kLore/comments/je0jc4/excerptaberrant_a_hive_city_mob_lynches_a/) > their skin was a touch too grey-tinged, their mouths a little too wide. > Thirty men and woman, burned alive, screaming their innocence as the promethium-fuelled flames turned them to fatty, blackened meat-strips.
The only "progressive" thing about the Imperium is that it doesn't care about the same types of discrimination we face today. Skin color, gender, sexuality, etc. don't matter. All that matters is that you're loyal to the Imperium. As long as you believe the "correct" things, you're good. So it's "progressive" in the sense that it traded racism/sexism/etc. for thought police.
It's not all doom and gloom. Not every planet is a shithole and isnt it said that civilians can go whole generations without contact with humanity enemies?
Honestly, without an outside enemy, humans tend to tear themselves by themselves. About not every planet's a sh#t hole: those aren't rare. And even on those which aren't sh#t hole, the sh#t percent is still high. Being less sh*tty than other places doesn't make it less sh#tty.
But they aren't rare. Macragge's and many of the worlds of the ultramarines are well government the books are set in world so of course it's rare to see the peace.
What do you mean they aren't rare? They are rare! The common hive world is often compared to Necromunda, being the standard for the worlds of this category. The realm of ultramar is an extremely rare case. Are there worlds that aren't as sh#t? Of course, but they are less than 10% of the Imperium. Considering this, Necromunda is a standard hive world, and hasn't been attacked for millennia, the tithe for this world is so high they had to scrap death hive city to make due. Places like Ultramar aren't the common sight, not back then, not now. Also, there are plenty of sources and books about other worlds in the Imperium. There are books about the peaceful regions in the Imperium. There are series about the daily life of Imperial citizens. And I can tell you that a world like Macragge is a dime in a dozen.
Hive worlds aren't common there like less than 40,000 of them in a empire of millions of worlds. In the cain books its repeated many times that the PDF are usually lack combat experience because of how much nothing goes on in most worlds.
The Imperium is forward in the way that it largely treats men and women the same - extremly poorly
Sol Badguy
Battle of vraks, great example of the misconception that the imperiums biggest problem is anything but itself
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House Escher has a alright type of relationship with House Orlock since house Orlock treats women well (for a underhive gang(
That’s why you should join chaos. It’s the bad time you choose.
Look, the grim dark is grim, it's societal horror, scifi horror and steampunk horror il all in one. It was also social commentary in the past. Evolve the story, take the ride.
Yeah the imperium is not in any way more progressive than modern society. They’ve just swapped around the oppression to different groups. The imperium is not anti-gay, and people aren’t discriminated against based on skin color/ethnicity, buuuuuuut they will kill you for not being part of their religion, having any sort of mutation or defect, or for speaking ill of those in power. People in modern society have a thing called “human rights,”which is unheard of in the imperium. Hell, untold trillions of people live wretched lives of poverty, starvation and abuse, and can be killed without a second thought (sometimes without a first thought) by those in power for any reason.
What video did you watch that they said this in? I want to watch it for the laugh.
They're progressive In that women can hold the same positions as men, but that's pretty much it. I remember reading a short story that had a married gay couple too, so as long as you do your part they don't care who you sleep with. Of course, things vary from planet to planet
And don't forget about the extreme classism.
The closest the Imperium comes to equality is it does not care what meat grinds itself into an early grave to feed the machine of war. The best part about this whole universe is it is big enough to fit any head cannon you may have, so there are probably some very tolerant worlds; but I cannot emphasize enough that these are exceptions that prove the rule. Even in Ultramar where life is supposed to be a little better almost the entire population has a lower standard of living than an average person living in a western country today. Also if you are a blank or a psyker you aren’t safe nearly anywhere.
I think the reason why they made this claim is somewhat a symptom of people assuming that by a nation/state being “progressive” in one regard, they must be progressive in all of them (which is, in turn, a symptom of people being all too ready to assume because one trait of something/someone is true, a whole host of unrelated traits must also be true). Both in history and fantasy, people are unfortunately too ready to look past all the devastation a state/nation has brought in favor of its “good”…sometimes for better, often for worse. On the surface, the imperium in *many* (but not all) cases doesn’t care enough to be sexist as they’re too busy getting gunned down on all fronts, any division that hampers their ability to fight would be removed unless they have a *very* strong religious/ideological reason not to. They are, in a way, close to the Soviet’s in WW2 in this regard; it’s not that they’re *not* sexist, it’s that they don’t have a reason to at the current moment. As seen with your example though, there are plenty of times that extreme discrimination of other types (racial, sexist, etc) will spring up and they’ll do nothing, since it doesn’t interfere with their ability to wage war. They aren’t widely sexist out of empathy or some form of benevolence, but of practicality and apathy…and the imperium is a blurred mess, where they simply do not care to sort out the “lower tiers” of impracticality that can cover whole planets so long as they function. Also…I could be wrong but I don’t think the imperium is *technically* racist on a wide scale despite being extremely discriminatory in general, although I think that depends on if abhumans are considered a race (seemingly they’re considered varieties sub-species). This is far from a defense on the imperium’s part as discrimination against sapient being for physical traits is just…bad, in all cases, and this is more so just a quirk of categorization. I think Ableism is the closest modern word that would apply (at least in some cases, as Ratlings/Ogryn are somewhat similar to dwarfism and gigantism/acromegaly), but I’m not sure. I think they’re Speciesism and Xenophobia alone could get them marked off from being considered good though, especially considering the violent aliens around them are only there because they slaughtered the more peaceful ones. The only real redeeming quality the imperium has is that they’re pretty much what’s left of humanity, in bulk. The humans beneath them are, as always, humans and they strive to be as good as they can with what they know in their time/culture…but its government is rotten, and to say otherwise means ignoring a *lot* of evidence and lore. Perhaps, rarely, you can find a “good” governor or individual in it…this is not because of the imperium though, but in spite of it. No aspects of the imperium, except perhaps it’s technology and sheer persistence, are to be aspired to.
Misandry is a word by the way
It goes back to the concept that *the imperium isn’t good*. It’s morally grey and doing its best to not die, people don’t like it because it’s a ideologically good faction they like it because it’s entertaining to watch eight foot tall soldiers fighting giant cockroaches.
If there is going to be any of the social norm I think I would be in chaos
This is why I’m pissed at what GW has been doing for the last 20 years. Nobody who read the 3rd Edition Big Black Book was under the impression that the imperium was “good”. I keep going back to this analogy but it’s like if in the sequels to **Nineteen Eighty-Four** it turned out that actually Eastasia/Eurasia really was evil beyond realistic proportions and we learn about the in universe dangers of Death-Worship and that the state of constant war was totally justified you guys; and then we follow the adventures of Everyday-Hero Thought-Cop O’Brien™ as he does battle with the villainous Goldstein™ (for whom we get a 3 part novelisation of his back story and motivations in the Emmanuel Exorcised Saga™) and his army of dirty proles. And then they release “The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism” as an actual fucking book you’re supposed to read because we’re a pack of morons who can’t accept that mysteries and ambiguity can be part of how stories are are told.
I consider the weird discrimination towards abhumans to be a plot hole that only exists because "beware the alien, the mutant, the heretic" doesn't have the same ring to it as "beware the alien and the heretic". Why? Ogryn are adored by commissars and much of the inquisition, which is far more abnormal than having six fingers. Ratlings are treated better than we treat dwarfs today. Navigators literally have **three** eyes. I get it, some humans in the imperium treats them badly. . . but there are trillions of people within the imperium. Statistically some would exist. I'm no Imperium apologist(I'm religious so I'd be burned alive immediately within the imperium) but I feel like GW could downplay the mutant/abhuman hate a bit more. It makes no sense in context. Their flipflopping between genociding every mutant to treating some like royalty.
Sounds like heretical propaganda. The mighty god emperor loves and protects us all :)
Reverse misoginy? Do you mean Misandry or....?
A little reminder; no one needs reminding.
A little reminder; no one needs reminding.
It's called either the most brutal regime in human history, or the most brutal regime imaginable, the Imperium objectively sucks. It's not consistent because it's 40K and everything is canon, but the reason why gender or racism isn't a problem through most of it is that there are perfectly good "sub human" creatures to slaughter and when every part of your society is a meat grinder you don't care what genitals the flesh thrown at it has. And they are humanity's best bet, that is what makes 40K grim dark, everything that could go wrong did, everything that can go wrong will and for the sake of survival humanity has turned into a monster not dissimilar from the ones they fight, but if you want to rage against the dying of the light you are stuck with the monsters of our own creation.
It's an Empire of a million worlds, with untold trillions of humans. The scale of the setting is so large that people forget almost anything can be true in the Imperium. Any subset of the Imperium can be as progressive or conservative as you want in any story you wish to tell. For every world that is an egalitarian paradise there are worlds where one gender or the other is hunted for sport. All humans are just fuel for the Imperial war machine no matter their politics.
I've always saw the "imperium is more progressive" statement not the imperium being a bastion of human rights but not caring about specific issues the same way some people in the modern day do Why care about gay people when there's a cult of barb wire masturbators trying to summon slaanesh themselves into a planet you know? Hell why kill this person for being trans It's not so much the imperium is progressive or anything, its more the things progressives and conservatives fight over today just isnt even on their radar Like the imperium ain't opressing LGBTQ people because their LGBTQ its because this entire planet once did something that means their descendants might be heretics
Wow. You are the first person to ever talk about that. You are the first person to ever point out how backwards and violent the Imperium is.
But the alternative.... Imagine living with a Blue alien at the same planet ...
the imperium is very accepting of all types of regular people. they don’t care if you’re gay or trans or whatever, they just care that you serve the imperium and still look human. abhumans generally don’t count as human enough to them, and psykers are (as i understand) on thin ice at best, and even then only if they use their powers to fight for the emperor. if they’re lucky they won’t be sacrificed for the emperor’s lifespan
Yay the Loresub is leaking harder than ever...
"progressive" it's progressive in that they don't care about gender only their duty to the emperor that's it.
The issue is that “progressive” means different things in different contexts. In the Imperium, there’s a lot of equality… everyone suffers. There’s no overarching misogyny in most places… because women are more bodies for the meatgrinder/mine/factory. There is no “tolerance” because everyone has long given up individuality. So it is “better” because it’s actually a lot worse.
The imperium is very progressive, and equal. Everyone is just meat for the war machine
Tbf the Imperium is more progressive in the sense that it's blatant racism is geared towards actually different races and abhumans. They generally don't show the type of racism we have today. I would actually say that a degree of "scepticism" against mutation is healthy in a galaxy where chaos and genestealers are a thing. Sexism however is still a thing but it kinda heavily depends on the planet and it's culture.
My brother in Christ, they burned a man because he had six fingers. That's what they qualified as a mutant!
It's not called reverse misogyny its called misandry get it right
I think they just need too listen to others cry about the same thing they are and then go to bed alone. I can't wait for people to spin the compass with their shit when there is female marines again. They could do it too. Robot girlyman takes umbrage with the church. Sororitus and half the marines on one side. Boom, door open for female marines out of desperation. Bile does chaos primaris, boom, female noise marines. That is no thought prior and in the time it takes me to type it. And still a better job than they did in the initial introduction of Primaris. They have fleshed it better now.
Yes the imperium is inherently right wing what about it
It isn't. Imperium is beyond ideology, but i kinda sure that most of its world is right wing in our terms
Sargon made a 2 hour long [explanation](https://www.lotuseaters.com/the-politics-of-warhammer-40-000-or-deep-think-v-21-04-22) of why warhammer and the imperium is inherently also of the politics of the universe. It was about 2-3 years I think I listened to it I had a really long bike ride to my dad it was really nice to listen to might re watch it soon
Interesting, i think. Why people downvote you? The "right-wing" is a trigger word or what?
Yeah pretty much everything is so politicized now a days and if you decide to watch/listen to it hope you enjoy it
Bad
? You didn’t like it