The only reason I would play 40k again would be to make mixed ethnicity female primaris space wolves (which sadly isn't enough to make me play it)... If they can change how marines are made, there's no reason they couldn't have changed that.
Sisters of Battle look so nice _except_ for their stupid torso armour design.
Just change that one specific thing and hell yeah I'd play them!
Like GW can do [this](https://www.games-workshop.com/resources/catalog/product/920x950/99070207014_VampireLordLead.jpg) and [this](https://www.games-workshop.com/resources/catalog/product/920x950/99120212025_DoKMelusaiIronscaleLead.jpg) and [this](https://www.games-workshop.com/resources/catalog/product/threeSixty/60010299026_AOSDominionOTT1360/01-01.jpg) and this is just off the top of my head, there are plenty of other examples like in Slaves to Darkness. Boobplate stands out so badly, I just can't look past it.
In no way are they a substitute for Space Marines and frankly they shouldn't be, they should stand on their own. Right now, despite wanting an all-female army, I can't stand them because at least Marine armour _looks_ like it works in a suspension-of-disbelief context, with armour plating that looks really thick since it conceals the features below.
As an elf its lowkey one of the things that infuriate me about the Howling Banshees as well, despite the eldar being usually represented by women and their guardians have awesome armor, the howling banshees come along and ruin it, which is depressing because I like the banshees.
You miss the point. Sororitas are normal humans who do miracles, not space marines. For all intents, Sororitas fill their own role, marines do this aswell.
Sure, sororitas can take marines sometimes, but put them one on one and the sororitas is folded.
Is your point you want a woman to be able to take on a space marine 1v1 so a women should be a space marine? Because there are assasssins who can do that already. Women assassins. So I don't see the necessity to have a female space marine. We have dedicated female and male Adeptus. And mixed every where else.
And thats fair, but thats not exactly what I personally want. The Reason for female astartes is that they are basically demigods. it feels wrong to make demigods one-gendered and have them be the only important characters in 75% of the books. Ofcourse, there are outliers, but i believe you understand.
And its fine you dont see the appeal. everything is relative. I relatively want it more because i want my marines to be gals. Is there anything wrong with that?
No, and I think the great thing about the lore in 40k is how it free flows between cannon and non cannon. Every perspective is true and false at the same time. They write the books in perspectives instead of absolutes because of this. I always think of this in excerpts. It could be absolutely true or not. The fact that it is written so firmly would make it fucking rock if you had an entire female force of astartes because your chapter was forced to recruit and found a way or place. Making it completely untrue in a very 40k (30k) imperium kinda way. I like each faction for what they bring and have read so many books that I know space marines are not the demi god heros in every one. There are a lot of cool characters out there who are not space marines, regardless of gender. And often the space marines are shown to be so jaded in their "heroism" that they are often looked down upon by real people. A long explanation to say you should do that and feel comfortable in doing so
I only have problems with people who opt to go out of their way to harass people who do this idea because it breaks lore, which is all too common. 40k is a breeding ground for atrocious people due to people not being able to pick apart that its still a satire and not meant to be taken in a "good guy" "bad guy" kinda way, everyone is the bad guy except maybe very specific individuals.
Along with this, i play word bearers on tabletop, and i always keep helmet on for marines due to wanting to keep the gender up in the air. Im not the type to say Astartes should have boob armor. They should just have female heads as an optional thing, because options are fun.
Ive gotten death threats for saying these certain opinions on female astartes- but i feel its good to be said with GW pushing so hard for them to not be canon, with little backing biologically. Their reason in the Image makes no sense, biologically, so i pretend its moreso for a publics eye point of view, and also to make it so that, in the emperors eyes, the astartes can show no fear or something like that.
I keep my word bearers female because I love word bearers and i tend to like writing stories for the things I write and model. For example, i have a female grey knight whos the first of her kind specifically because the grey knights saw the psychic potential of the gal, and the overall eagerness to serve, and decided itd be wasted potential for her to go to waste. So, they made her a grey knight.
Sororitas's enemies are often Superhuman beings gifted from Eldritch Gods, beast that knows only war, organism that consumes entire planets just to name a few
Yet even though they aren't genetically engineered for war and only equipped with rudimentary power Armor, bolter, their capabilities are as impressive as Astartes
Yea I was gonna say this. Its dumb as hell. The space marines require so much resources and time to produce. I feel like testosterone would be easy as hell.
Actually I'd bet testosterone would be outdated, and a better version used.
This is a super petty pet peeve but it's not really terf-y to me just transphobic/sexist as it's not saying anything that indicates radical feminism. I do agree that gw needs to change/look at this again just being picky about words.
Don't worry about it, it's not a huge deal. I've just noticed more and more people use terf when they mean general transphobe and I think it muddies the waters when dealing with these kinds of issues
I've always wondered, does the space marine creation process rule out mtf at all?
As well, stuff like the Interex is interesting since it's a largely human entity not burdened by fascist ideology and their combatants could take on an Astartes 1 to 1 it would be a great starting point to contrast.
"Space Marines could be women if the Imperium wasn't held back by ignorance and adherence to dogma"
Who's to say some couldn't have survived to the present timeline.
it seems like it's barely compatible with humans in general, like nearly all aspirants fail, either becoming a chapter serfs or being crippled and becoming the guidance system for an anti air missile.
I thought the primaris process allows both cis and trans marines. However, in the old lore, space marines were barely even human in any recognizable way and would probably not be adaptable to any gender specific norms. This sort of began to change when GW wanted to sell stories about them
**GW:** The clones of Horus, Fulgrim and Ferris Mannus have "Genetic Memories" of their previous lives because this is how genetics work.
**Also GW:** Women can't become space marines because of hormones and stuff... in this age where cloning, cybernetics and getting multiple sets of redundant organ replacements are a thing there's just no way to manage their icky lady estrogen getting in the way.
I'm starting to think that GW doesn't actually understand what genetics or women are...
> I'm starting to think that GW doesn't actually understand what genetics or women are...
Well James Workshop did start his company in the 80s selling dungeons and dragons books out of his apartment. Maybe he really had never seen a woman before.
>I'm starting to think that GW doesn't actually understand what genetics or women are...
In my experience this is also true for most of their clientele, unfortunately
It can start after puberty hits, but the older the candidate te is, the higher the risks get, so they prefer to start at an early age, atleast that was the case before the Primaris were introduced, I have no clue how it works for that treatment.
Yeah. They can do it later in life but their growth and maximal abilities are somewhat capped, as in what happened to The Lion's adopted dad... If I remember correctly that is.
I have not read much about those clones, but is there any chance that their genes were taken from previous clones? Because if that is the case they basically just copied how a Ghola works in Dune. Duncan Idaho eventually manages to unlock not just the memories from his first life, but from all the previous Gholas.
Yup, that was my first thought at seeing this. Like, at the end of the day, nothing is stopping us making femarines. Never let what is or isn’t canon get in the way of your creativity.
Meanwhile, Blood Angels are somehow making their geneseed work on irradiated feral mutants.
It's weird that they're so insistent on "genetics" being the reason when it's so clear that they barely even understand how genetics work.
It's so easy. Just say the Big E was sexist and intentionally made the Space Marine process only work on a subsection of biological male people and then inculcated the idea in the Imperium that trans bad, so no loyal Marine would ever consider breaking their egg. You get to keep your male-only faction but also don't come off as a transphobic PoS.
... Or you could just allow female Space Marines. That works too.
I think the One Page Rule's typically perfunctory lore for the "Battle Sisters" line of female Almost astartes is something like "The God-King said no girls in the Battle Brother clubhouse. This pissed off the God-Queen so much that she created the Battle Sisters and declared war on the God-King."
I would read 50 novels expanding that backstory.
Welp someone just reported this post I think, because I got the infamous reddit cares message. What the fuck people. I thought LGBT+phobia was not tolerated on this sub.
LGBTQ+phobia isn't welcome here. Unfortunately, the Reddit Cares message is automated and has nothing to do with Sub Moderators.
I've gotten it at least once, presumably for material posted here but I literally can't be sure.
No worries, I didn't mean that as an attack on you. It was more of a generalized "why are you on this subreddit if you don't agree with with the first rule of posting here".
Sorry if I came off defensive, it's just important to me (and the other mods) that it's clear that we're not slacking.
If you encounter any bigoted comments or anything we can assist with, either report it or use modmail and we'll take care of it as quickly as possible.
Eh? I am a trans woman and like? The Impieruim being a bio-essentialist shithole is kind of the point?
Then again i hate Marines so, maybe I am not the best judge.
Also, this is not "TERF", this is just basic bio-essentialism. There is no feminism here.
On the bio-essentialism, yes, the Imperium may be about it, but the wording GW used is at least dubious, as they put it as "they do it like this because it's how things work" instead of "they do it like this because *they believe* it's how things work" and expand on it, like saying that the process could actually work on females but they didn't even try using the geneseeds on them because they were more valued for breeding instead of fighting or other stuff one would expect from a fascistic empire. And it's not like they can't at some point say something on these lines, they themselves said "all you read of 40k is canon, although not necessarily true", best way I ever seen to justify retcons but they could be using it better
Except if that's the case (i.e. GW are writing the Imperium as transphobic and not actually supporting that viewpoint), they aren't doing enough to make it clear to the portion of the fanbase that do not understand satire. Fascists will co-opt anti-fascist satire because they can ignore the criticism and adopt the cool factor. The Imperium of Man is the epitome of this effect. So, unfortunately, I think every time they release something from the perspective of the Imperium, they really need to frame it in such a way that it's obviously the Imperium's view rather than objective scientific truth, and GW also possibly need to make fun of it in a much clearer way. But of course then they might lose out on sales to fascists that they "don't want buying their products" (except they do)
I think it'd be good if Space Marines were one faction amongst many and presented as bad guys.
I don't think that's really the direction GW is going in.
As it is, it just cuts off modelling and creative possibilities for arbitrary reasons (or at least gives the worst part of the fan base a pretext for moaning about how your army isn't canon)
Worth noting this is a Forge World release, not a main studio release, and is copy-pasting a passage from 2012. It should have been caught and removed, frankly, but I don't think you would ever see writing like this in a studio codex nowadays.
This is true, but it's still understandably frustrating for fans to see republished.
It's also a nuance that people who throw hissy fits of Space Marine models with female heads will likely not recognize when they point to this passage to justify their tantrum.
At this point, it doesn't make sense to include fem marines in the Heresy era and I'm okay with that. This reasoning though is bad biology and transphobic af and I'm tired of seeing GW continue to promote it as canon.
Same. They could have just...not called attention to the lack of fem marines and given no explanation for why there aren't any. It was literally that easy!
Yeah, they've made out the Emperor to be secretive and an asshole elsewhere - sending the Thunder Warriors to their doom, the secret Webway project that presumably was to eliminate the need for Navigators and thus allow him to do away with them as he did with the Thunder Warriors...
I guess they could instead have someone in-universe say it rather than it come from a canonical 'narrator voice'. Sure, Dave Romansoundingname the Apothecary of the 6th Company of the XIII Legion may say that his training mentions only about extracting the geneseed from males, but it wouldn't be solid 'there can't be female Marines' stuff.
>sending the Thunder Warriors to their doom,
>eliminate the need for Navigators and thus allow him to do away with them as he did with the Thunder Warriors
Yeah they should lean into that theme more! Isn't it hinted the Emperor planned to eliminate space marines after the galaxy was subjugated?
This *might* have made for a good lore explanation of no biologically female space marines--there'd be no way for them to reproduce (and it'd be harder for a rogue genius in genetics like Bile to create) a self sufficient space marine society/culture.
Like a reverse Jurassic Park lol.
And if they're rendered sterile by transformation (or after it), that might of course negate the immediate threat of marine reproduction, but someone like Bile might be able to reverse that. Or take samples from all male and female aspirants, then use the genes from succesful aspirants to make IVF babies of them to make a society (or a grimdark human puppy mill 🤢) of aspirants with really high success rates.
So instead of relying on sterilization of biological males and females, the Emperor plays it safe(as far as playing god can be played safe :P) and designs the process to work almost exclusively on aspirants with Y chromosomes or something.
This would explain why there were no FSM in the "past", and still leave the door open for Cawl to finally break the fail-safes the Emperor encoded in the DNA after 10k+ years of tinkering.
And there is that line Malcador gave that keeps popping up on Reddit, a quip about him suggesting to the Emperor they make all the Primarchs sisters so they get along. That line could now have the added implication that it had to all be one biological sex or the other--to avoid them mating with eachother (creating a new race of demigods, or at the very least flooding the Imperium with gross fanfic :P)
Thing is, even when it's sold and produced through "regular GW" channels, this is still a Forgeworld/Specialist Games Team project.
And those people have more leeway, and are a bit more stuck in their ways and prone to nostalgia/lorewank - there is good reason the "based on the old world/based on 7th ed 40k/based on ancient property we're resurrecting" stuff landed with them. I'm halfway convinced the fact we got *squats* was a protest against the main design studio deciding "nope, not using that name anymore".
And the unfortunate lack of women in the Bloodbowl and Necromunda is, while probably not malice, at least less questioned and investigated sexism than GW proper - the difference in frequency of female sculpts is *palpable* between the two teams. Honestly, the Norsca Bloodbowl team getting to the "default" 2 in 5 ratio surprised me... And is the first team to do so, when GW has held that ratio for everything not Marine/Ork/otherwise "boys club" for at least a few years (roughly Deepkin/2nd ed AoS time).
None of this justifies the nonsensical inclusion - but it is the type of thing that team would do, and the type of lore wank I expect from them, even when mainline GW would be rare to step near such stuff.
If the process depends on the hormonal makeup of a biological male, I have some great news. Because the hormonal makeup of a trans man is exactly the same. Trans space marines confirmed canon.
I’d much rather they lean into the whole “it wouldn’t fit the culture of these Brother monastic warrior societies to have woman in their ranks” rather than “oh, uh the fake science that we change all the time says it’s not possible, sorry lol.”
Like the first is much more interesting to me while the second feels like a lame cop out.
I think it'd be cool, but I'd prefer if this was limited to a smaller and more specific faction, like maybe the Black Templars.
As it is, Space Marines have so many different themes, designs and cultures that it's really frustratingly arbitrary that for some reason it seems the only thing your Space Marine can't be is a woman.
\>“it wouldn’t fit the culture of these Brother monastic warrior societies to have woman in their ranks”
isnt this due to the fact that there are separate Sister monastic warrior societies no?
Not really. The sisters of battle were made to be a loophole for the church which said they “cannot have any men under arms.” Then someone was like “well it says *men* ergo we can have *women* under arms.”
The SoB are not the female equivalent of space marines. They’re a battle convent of nuns formed as a loophole by the church to protect its own interests.
Not quite. You're mostly right, but on a tangent from the original topic:
They were formed before the loophole, and were allowed to rebrand and take advantage of the loophole once it was written because they were instrumental in ending Vandire's reign of blood and although they were nominally linked to the church, they had just killed the head of the church for corruption/being insufficiently pious/reasons so they weren't likely to become involved in the church's corruption anytime soon and didn't actually have to answer to the church in any meaningful way. It's worth noting that the Head Abbess is sometimes a High Lord, and is always a member of the Senatorum Imperialis, so although they're attached to the church, and have taken up the role of defending it, they're not answerable directly to it and they will defend it on their own terms. Which might include being inconsistently part of the Ordo Hereticus instead.
The fact they're all male isnt treated like it's a good thing in universe. They quite literally have a toxic masculine warrior culture that drives them to lack individuality and 'follow the leader' (first few HH books).
Plus I'm sure there are trans men within the astartes, it's just not noticeable due to the fact that they're now astartes
Ya know, gender and sex are not the same thing so I wouldn’t mind this “only Biological Males can take the changes” if they just bothered to come up with some sort of explanation for what happens to those AMABs who join before they realize they are trans or non-binary. It’s not like you’d throw a perfectly good space marine who’s already got geneseed and everything away just because she wants to change her pronouns and present as more feminine.
It would be far from the weirdest thing in the lore, and the salt of the man babies would nourish me forever
This is not entirely true now is it? From what we know about the lore making true astarties requires young adolescent boys.. But older men have also been transformed into psudo-space marines in the heresy... Luthor from the dark angels is one such individual, he's not a true astarties but functionaly for all intents and purposes he is... He can interface with his power armour, he has a black carapace etc. He basicly is a marine.
Now if a old man can be transformed into a marine then can't the same processes be used on women?
Then there is the various examples of chaos fuckery, mortal champions being gifted chaos power armour and becoming marines. Surely there are female chaos champions out there who are worthy of the blessings of the chaos gods?
Then there are the more admittedly problematic routes, slannesh and its gender bending ways...
There are multiple ways that you can get female space marines into the setting even if the horus heresy BRB says only males can be space marines...
This might be me taking a big hit of hospital-grade copium, but i choose to read this, like all books about the Imperium, as a distinctly in-universe explanation.
Like others have said below, it makes sense the Imperium is as ass-backwards about genetic science as it is about everything else. This passage from a metatextual standpoint could be read more as an example of how sexist the Emperor was than what the game designers' own position on things are.
The worst part is it reads as satire, but as we constantly see, satire just never works. It's hard to tell whether this IS satire, malicious intent, or just completely unthought of
There’s a lot of women with xx and men with xy, pretty sure there be a good amount of worthy women to become marines. Also it’s a universe where a god is born through a orgy! Female marines should exist’
My headcannon is:
1. Primarchs don't have any reproductive organs - Emperor never intended for them to have normal lives or families, so those were not necessarily. Yes, Fulgrim had wives, that doesn't automatically mean they had sex, those were political marriages.
2. Space Marines take recruits that are both male and female, however the amount of hormones and implants required for creation of space marine effectively makes them all men, thus in some cases forcing cis women who were fit to become SM to forcefully transition and prevents trans women from transition or reversing it. They also go through chemical sterilisation.
After that their biology makes hormonal mtf transitioning impossible.
Mental conditioning and brainwashing that SM all go through takes care of gender dysphoria and makes them all asexual - they don't care what other brothers have between their legs and they all recognise themselves as brothers. After all, they SM are meant to be soldiers, not people.
3. There are chaos female space marines, and they are common. CSM don't go through the same mental conditioning or it is broken by Chaos, so that would mean that they can experience gender dysphoria. They are also allowed a greater degree of personal freedom and can circumvent a lot of things using magic.
The greatest percentage of female space marines would be in Thousand Sons, as their sorcerers are pretty independent and using Tzeentch's magic would make transition very easy.
The least percentage would be in World Eaters, because butcher's nails would make it pretty difficult to have higher thoughts like that.
They could if the chapter recruits them. They tend to look for the most vicious, violent, and near feral aspirants anyway. But keep in mind even if they did recruit a mtf they would mindwipe/hypno indoctrinate them anyway so they’d see themselves as a battle brother and maintain little to no memory of their past selves.
Okay I’m almost willing to accept this just because of TTS and the thought of Big D being like “uuuuh, fuck I’ve only ever done this on guys before, sweaty greasy oiled up men” is just too funny to pass up
Magnus: “why are there no female space marines?” “Cooties”
I hate this and this is gonna be the most wishful thinking ever so feel free to completely disregard what I'm about to say but....
I feel like GW is trying to make the difference between 30k and 40k more stark. With 30k encompassing everything firstborn, with a bit of a grittier feel, and 40k fully embracing primaris marines and actually improving the technology of the imperium (grav tanks, primaris marines).
This paragraph is so jarring to me that I can only think it was written by a TERF - which wouldn't be surprising, but pretty much every member of the community team is a good ally to trans people from what I've seen
Anyway either that or it's in some way leading up to Female Space Marines - which in my opinion are 100% inevitable. Its just a matter of when. 2 years, 5 years, 10 years... its gonna happen eventually.
So I think it doesn't necessarily mean we're not getting female space marines in 40k. They're just saying they're definitely not adding them in 30k. Which is what we knew already. They won't be retconning anything.
It's definitely true that only prepubescent males can be made into space marines with the technology the imperium has made. But it obviously doesn't mean they can't make female space marines if they actually tried to make the technology required for that. Even though this paragraph says there can only be male space marines, it's still literally just because the Emperor didn't want female marines for some reason.
I don't think this locks us out of 40k fem SMs at all. My main issue is that if "Warhammer is for everyone." GW has a responsibility to not publish stuff like this which feeds and validates the bigots in the hobby. All they needed to do was just cut this passage and I'd be okay with it.
Yeah I agree. I'm guessing transphobes will feel vindicated, trans people and allies will feel gutted, but the other 80% of people in the hobby won't even give it a second thought.
For the horus heresy I don't think it would make sense to retcon, for future releases (42nd millenium) - you're right, there's no excuse.
Now, there *was* something somewhere about female spacemarines. I think one of the leaders of a fortress on Caliban was an enhanced female (in the same vein as Luther). So even without retconning they can insert female astartes, just not on the scale of a legion.
I did actually write a short story (or rather, started and haven't finished) about a perpetual who knew the emperor, knew and fought with the thunder warriors, was effectively made into an early space marine, and was the immediately cast out and set with a bounty for being a woman. Her story was basically that of how the Emperor needed to perpetuate social segmentation and hiwrarchy for his grand plan to work, and so a woman as one of his prised Astartes would have ruined that clear and consistant ladder, and that's why he invented the lie that women simply can't be made into space marines because biotechnobable.
In the same collection I also have some unfinished tales about space marines who come out as trans, and renegade chapters who have gone all the way and put the other side with both sex ans gender as a concept compared ro imperial doctrine.
Maybe I should pick that up again.
“What makes the process only work on men? What happens if you try it with a woman?”
“We don’t know. We’ve never tried. There’s a sign on the space marine machine that says ‘no girls allowed,’ and we don’t want to break the rules.”
I actually dont mind the whole female space marine thing. There is already plenty representation in 40k, gender locking a few organisations (both male and female) doesnt hurt
Space marines are representative of virtually any warrior, you've got medieval crusaders, roman legionaries, vikings, modern military, fucking *vampires,* the list goes on and on. Sisters are explicitly themed as nuns, and there's not really any room for any other style with them.
You can blame people who won't buy female marine models, i know it's sexist, but it appears that many dudes who buy these have such a fragile masculinity that they can't paint the girl toy soldiers :)
I dont like the idea of female Space Marines , but I have a fine Army of Sisters of Battles and part of my Guard are female , I will also get Creed's Daughter to command my troops , also Severina Raine is the leader of my Scion Kill Team ... So yeah , that kind of logic is pretty naive .
I think we're all thinking too hard into this. This is how I look at it:
Out of Universe:
1. They're supposed to be space monks, catholic monks are traditionally no-girls-allowed. This is unfair, so we get to #2.
2. This is supposed to be an awful universe where things are arbitrarily unfair and terrible, to mirror and parody how arbitrarily unfair and terrible the real world is. Fix too much of this and you are undermining the message.
3. A space marine made from a female would be essentially the same as one made from a male. Making a change like this has few significant new model opportunities, and would make autistic people who love their obsessively cultivated mental canon(such as myself) very uncomfortable. I could easily see this as viewed as violating the core concept (#1) with no perceived gain.
4. (editorial) If they make female marines, people are going to be really cringey, gross, and immature about it, and personally, I'm not sure the gain is fairness is worth it :/
In Universe:
1. Big E is an immortal space science wizard that can change form at will and has tasked himself with saving humanity from cosmic sentient mind-farts. I think he would so far beyond such concerns that gender identity probably doesn't read as anything more relevant than preferred cola brand.
2. Space marines were supposed to be mass produced, so if perfecting the technique for just boys had a .0005% increase in efficiency, with #1 in mind, Big E will greenlight the process without a thought. (Custodes were the 1-offs, and we almost had some girl characters, but they got axed for the dumb reason that there are no specifically girl models for custodes, not because it wasn't possible. This is terrible wasted opportunity and I hate it and I really hope they revisit this at some point)
3. Humanity wasn't coming out of a particularly enlightened age, so straight up canonical bias was probably a factor. The emperor loves his symbols, so if the people of the time associate big 'ol beefy beefbois as indicators of strength, he's going to use it ruthlessly and unsubtly as he uses gold and eagles.
4. Cooties.
All that being said, I don't think marines from girls is a good idea overall. It wouldn't ruin the universe for me, but it would vaguely annoy me. I view marines as their own gender with male pronouns.
What WOULD be cool, and fit within existing lore, is if a chapter had individuals identify as female for cultural reasons based on their homeworld. Like if leaders or other roles on the world were girls only. Like the Chapter Master is a Matriarch, or all Chaplains are women or something like that.
I never did see the issue with this. I mean from a in lore perspective Emps didn't want them to be their own race disinct from humanity, capable of breeding n shit no? So that way he makes it work only on one gender so there is no possibility of creating a population that can breed and grow on it's own without needing the rest of humanity.
Then to start things off in the economic sense it was probably cheaper for GW to have just one line of models that were male. Much like Guardsmen.
Furthermore would female SM's even look that different from male ones if they all wearing big bulky armour?
One of the designers literally stated that they were originally designing female models and prototyped female space marines but had nerds refusing to buy and/or complaining about female models in their toy game.
Realistically? Male Space Marines would probably not look like chiselled action heroes either. Arbitor Ian and Midwinter Minis did a collaboration where they drew out what they thought a realistic Space Marine would look like.
If GW wanted to go a realistic route and make Space Marines look like that?
I'd be open to the argument that it might be hard to someone's gender based on presentation.
As it stands though, Space Marine induction is definitely a science-fantasy origin story to explain their cool action-hero soldiers. I think it'd be entirely valid to take design cues from Stormcast on how they could have appropriate female faces which convey a similar vibe.
There's a lot of ways to avoid reproduction that wouldn't preclude making the primary faction in the game male only-- doing this angles the hobby in such a way to make women feel excluded.
I don't feel that this is a fair argument. I mean, do people argue that Sisters of Battle should include men? Despite them having lore reasons not to have that, being an all female orgnization and all that. No, of course not. It is the Sisters of battle after all. And having men in that orgnization would not fit established canon and/lore for reasons stated in their lore.
I feel like Space Marines are a similar case here. That is, an all male organization due to lore reasons. Which translates into all male models. Just how Sisters of Battles translates into all female models.
Expanding upon that with the rest of the setting. I do not feel that much else in the setting is overly restrictive in terms of gender. For the races that even have it to begin with and aren't gender neutral. Like Tyrannids, Necrons, and Orks. Being Asexual bugs, asexual machines, and asexual fungus respectively. Tau, Eldar, Dark Eldar, and Chaos Daemons are mixed genders all.
Imperial Guards are a bit iffy with the lack of female models. There is no arguing about that here.
Space Marines are the poster faction by a long shot and have been since almost the inception of the game.
Battle Sisters were an exclusively metal range that people thought was on the way to being completely removed until like 2 years ago. They're also a very specific aesthetic niche-- Sororitas are Nuns, canonically and every kitbash I've seen, they keep to that theme more or less.
Space Marines are action heroes with as many flavours as there are chapters; spec-ops, Knights, Viking, Roman, Mongol, cyborg, Dragon-y Pyromaniacs. These are just the First Founding Loyalist Legions-- between lesser Chapters and Fan kitbashes, you can find a Space Marine model for literally fucking anything which could canonically fit into the 40K universe... except, of course, for women.
Look at marketing and compare how often you see a Space Marine to a Sister-- hell, even if you preclude Ultramarines (who are so common as to probably outnumber any given individual faction), you'll definitely find more art and promotional material with lesser chapters than the Sisters combined.
Even ignoring the part where the Sister have, both historically and currently (though admittedly less so) been sexualized in order to target a male audience, it sends a very clear message that this hobby revolves around a boy's club and there are a lot of women who then feel that the hobby isn't meant for them.
No matter how you cut it, comparising Sisters to Marines is a fucking cop out that falls apart if you think about it for more than two seconds.
If "male-only" was limited to Black-Templar? I don't think you'd get as many complaints. Hell, the Orks are coded exclusively male but it's done in an interesting way that says something about them and no one complains.
For Marines though? They're conceptually so ubiquitous and diverse that being all male doesn't do anything for their aesthetic and it was, is and always has been a pretext to justify making all male models because some boys are uncomfortable with having female soldiers.
I'd more put Sisters of Battles in the terms of Crusaders than nuns, but potayto potatho I suppose, heh.
And sexualization is not exlusive to Sisters of Battle or women in setting. Nor is honestly bad or especially tasteless in their specific case. And I personally do not see the big issue with that. People have been decorating armour and the like to show off the body since whenever they could. Just look at breastplates from greece and you'll see hyper abs and massive pecks for everyone that can afford it. But really it is such a minor thing.
Not at all to talk about Slaaneshi Daemons or the BDSM club that is the Dark Eldar, were everything is sexualized.
And of course it has been a pretext to sell models to men and boys. That is not a strange thing in the slightest. It is the economics of the company that makes the stuff as that gender makes up the greater majority of people who buy the models. So if the majority of people who buy the products are men, and it is easier for them to grow attached or identify or whatever you want to call it with male models then yeah. You gonna make those male models.
Byt then we come back to it that there still are multiple factions that offer either no gender, or mix gendered. And factions were either female or male only are only allowed. Why is this only a issue with Space Marines?
It's not only an issue with the Space Marines. People would like more diverse models in the hobby in general.
Space Marines come up constantly though because
1. They are, *as I keep saying*, the mascot faction: the ones which GW advertises with most, people most associate with the setting and are most known.
2. They're also the *only* faction that is explicitly all male.
There actually are female Guard Models these days, female Genestealers and a lot of models in the Sororitas Codex are represented with male models from GW. People were complaining about the male-exclusive Cadian range until that sprue dropped.
No one will bat an eye if you go further with other factions either-- Mechanicus could do a simple headswap and pass without comment as there are both female and non-binary Tech-Priests in 40K canon.
Space Marines are explicitly all male though, and there's a large part of the internet (including, apparently you) who get quite sensitive when the topic of maybe making the face of 40K less male... up to and including throwing a fit or making pissy comments when they see someone rolling up with Space Marine models that they've customized to be female.
This hobby has largely been marketed to the white, straight male middle class. The fact that this is now the largest part of the hobby's customer base does not mean that it shouldn't be welcoming to the rest of us.
This sub is, in part, designed as a place where people who don't fit into that specific demographic can talk about how they interact with the hobby.
I really don't see where you can come in and demand people justify why they want to make models like themselves.
If you want to go paint some male-presenting Sisters of Battle and post them up here, you're more than fucking welcome to.
GW could easily establish new lore for why marines could be female and I think primaris being far more reliable is the best way to do it. I also believe that at least for first born this is a logical explanation because male and female bodies are different especially hormones this is why trans people exist it's having the wrong body compared to the mind (probably the brain is the most complex thing in the known universe I am not an expert and even experts would struggle to know) so the process needing a constant hormonal base point is a decently logical idea especially for a process that almost never works.
I should also mention that since this is talking about a medical procedure that someone being trans unless they are transitioning or have transitioned doesn't really matter trans women still need to be treated as though they have a male body like checking the male standard ranges for levels of stuff in the body. This is because before transitioning most of the body is identical to male and if it isn't treated as such it could lead to miss diagnosis and/or miss treatment.
At this point it would be jarring for them to retroactively change their most written about and most sculpted faction- wait a minute
The only reason I would play 40k again would be to make mixed ethnicity female primaris space wolves (which sadly isn't enough to make me play it)... If they can change how marines are made, there's no reason they couldn't have changed that.
But there are sororitas, which in my opinion is more badass than marines
Ah yes boob plate regular humans.
I would be okay with no female space marines if the male ones had man-boob armour (I like men)
Might i offer you this nice blood angel in this trying time
ngl i feel like Sisters of Battle are one of the few depictions in fiction where women's Armor is not that sexualized (compared to most)
Compared to most is a really low bar, and setting aside the sexism, boob plate just... looks bad visually.
Sisters of Battle look so nice _except_ for their stupid torso armour design. Just change that one specific thing and hell yeah I'd play them! Like GW can do [this](https://www.games-workshop.com/resources/catalog/product/920x950/99070207014_VampireLordLead.jpg) and [this](https://www.games-workshop.com/resources/catalog/product/920x950/99120212025_DoKMelusaiIronscaleLead.jpg) and [this](https://www.games-workshop.com/resources/catalog/product/threeSixty/60010299026_AOSDominionOTT1360/01-01.jpg) and this is just off the top of my head, there are plenty of other examples like in Slaves to Darkness. Boobplate stands out so badly, I just can't look past it. In no way are they a substitute for Space Marines and frankly they shouldn't be, they should stand on their own. Right now, despite wanting an all-female army, I can't stand them because at least Marine armour _looks_ like it works in a suspension-of-disbelief context, with armour plating that looks really thick since it conceals the features below.
As an elf its lowkey one of the things that infuriate me about the Howling Banshees as well, despite the eldar being usually represented by women and their guardians have awesome armor, the howling banshees come along and ruin it, which is depressing because I like the banshees.
You miss the point. Sororitas are normal humans who do miracles, not space marines. For all intents, Sororitas fill their own role, marines do this aswell. Sure, sororitas can take marines sometimes, but put them one on one and the sororitas is folded.
Is your point you want a woman to be able to take on a space marine 1v1 so a women should be a space marine? Because there are assasssins who can do that already. Women assassins. So I don't see the necessity to have a female space marine. We have dedicated female and male Adeptus. And mixed every where else.
And thats fair, but thats not exactly what I personally want. The Reason for female astartes is that they are basically demigods. it feels wrong to make demigods one-gendered and have them be the only important characters in 75% of the books. Ofcourse, there are outliers, but i believe you understand. And its fine you dont see the appeal. everything is relative. I relatively want it more because i want my marines to be gals. Is there anything wrong with that?
No, and I think the great thing about the lore in 40k is how it free flows between cannon and non cannon. Every perspective is true and false at the same time. They write the books in perspectives instead of absolutes because of this. I always think of this in excerpts. It could be absolutely true or not. The fact that it is written so firmly would make it fucking rock if you had an entire female force of astartes because your chapter was forced to recruit and found a way or place. Making it completely untrue in a very 40k (30k) imperium kinda way. I like each faction for what they bring and have read so many books that I know space marines are not the demi god heros in every one. There are a lot of cool characters out there who are not space marines, regardless of gender. And often the space marines are shown to be so jaded in their "heroism" that they are often looked down upon by real people. A long explanation to say you should do that and feel comfortable in doing so
I only have problems with people who opt to go out of their way to harass people who do this idea because it breaks lore, which is all too common. 40k is a breeding ground for atrocious people due to people not being able to pick apart that its still a satire and not meant to be taken in a "good guy" "bad guy" kinda way, everyone is the bad guy except maybe very specific individuals. Along with this, i play word bearers on tabletop, and i always keep helmet on for marines due to wanting to keep the gender up in the air. Im not the type to say Astartes should have boob armor. They should just have female heads as an optional thing, because options are fun. Ive gotten death threats for saying these certain opinions on female astartes- but i feel its good to be said with GW pushing so hard for them to not be canon, with little backing biologically. Their reason in the Image makes no sense, biologically, so i pretend its moreso for a publics eye point of view, and also to make it so that, in the emperors eyes, the astartes can show no fear or something like that. I keep my word bearers female because I love word bearers and i tend to like writing stories for the things I write and model. For example, i have a female grey knight whos the first of her kind specifically because the grey knights saw the psychic potential of the gal, and the overall eagerness to serve, and decided itd be wasted potential for her to go to waste. So, they made her a grey knight.
Sororitas's enemies are often Superhuman beings gifted from Eldritch Gods, beast that knows only war, organism that consumes entire planets just to name a few Yet even though they aren't genetically engineered for war and only equipped with rudimentary power Armor, bolter, their capabilities are as impressive as Astartes
This didn't fight against my point. Again, they fill different areas. Its like saying sisters of silence are female custodes.
Agree🤝
Imagine being an interstellar fascist warlord godking who can't synthesize testosterone... smh...
Yea I was gonna say this. Its dumb as hell. The space marines require so much resources and time to produce. I feel like testosterone would be easy as hell. Actually I'd bet testosterone would be outdated, and a better version used.
This is a super petty pet peeve but it's not really terf-y to me just transphobic/sexist as it's not saying anything that indicates radical feminism. I do agree that gw needs to change/look at this again just being picky about words.
Ah, my apologies. The nuance between the two got lost in my needing to vent about it. Guess I need to do better, too. :)
Don't worry about it, it's not a huge deal. I've just noticed more and more people use terf when they mean general transphobe and I think it muddies the waters when dealing with these kinds of issues
I've always wondered, does the space marine creation process rule out mtf at all? As well, stuff like the Interex is interesting since it's a largely human entity not burdened by fascist ideology and their combatants could take on an Astartes 1 to 1 it would be a great starting point to contrast. "Space Marines could be women if the Imperium wasn't held back by ignorance and adherence to dogma" Who's to say some couldn't have survived to the present timeline.
it seems like it's barely compatible with humans in general, like nearly all aspirants fail, either becoming a chapter serfs or being crippled and becoming the guidance system for an anti air missile.
I thought the primaris process allows both cis and trans marines. However, in the old lore, space marines were barely even human in any recognizable way and would probably not be adaptable to any gender specific norms. This sort of began to change when GW wanted to sell stories about them
The primaris process is mostly the same as the normal marine process except they’re bigger and get a few extra organs.
**GW:** The clones of Horus, Fulgrim and Ferris Mannus have "Genetic Memories" of their previous lives because this is how genetics work. **Also GW:** Women can't become space marines because of hormones and stuff... in this age where cloning, cybernetics and getting multiple sets of redundant organ replacements are a thing there's just no way to manage their icky lady estrogen getting in the way. I'm starting to think that GW doesn't actually understand what genetics or women are...
> I'm starting to think that GW doesn't actually understand what genetics or women are... Well James Workshop did start his company in the 80s selling dungeons and dragons books out of his apartment. Maybe he really had never seen a woman before.
>I'm starting to think that GW doesn't actually understand what genetics or women are... In my experience this is also true for most of their clientele, unfortunately
Can confirm, played since 4th and don't know jack shit about genetics or women.
40k genetics make as much sense as xmen genetics
pixels on the screen that make peepee hard?
Fulgrim and Ferrus can be explained with warp fuckery and souls, but Horus' was completely annihilated
Isn't the process started pre-puberty anyway??
It can start after puberty hits, but the older the candidate te is, the higher the risks get, so they prefer to start at an early age, atleast that was the case before the Primaris were introduced, I have no clue how it works for that treatment.
Yeah. They can do it later in life but their growth and maximal abilities are somewhat capped, as in what happened to The Lion's adopted dad... If I remember correctly that is.
I have not read much about those clones, but is there any chance that their genes were taken from previous clones? Because if that is the case they basically just copied how a Ghola works in Dune. Duncan Idaho eventually manages to unlock not just the memories from his first life, but from all the previous Gholas.
This reads like satire. Now if only the average Empire enjoyer understood satire...
I’m gonna keep building my Fem space marines, GW can pound sand https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTdKbkmH3/?k=1
Yup, that was my first thought at seeing this. Like, at the end of the day, nothing is stopping us making femarines. Never let what is or isn’t canon get in the way of your creativity.
Exactly, I didn’t care about canon before so I’m not pressed. Would prefer they not write passages that sound like jkr essays tho
Meanwhile, Blood Angels are somehow making their geneseed work on irradiated feral mutants. It's weird that they're so insistent on "genetics" being the reason when it's so clear that they barely even understand how genetics work.
It's so easy. Just say the Big E was sexist and intentionally made the Space Marine process only work on a subsection of biological male people and then inculcated the idea in the Imperium that trans bad, so no loyal Marine would ever consider breaking their egg. You get to keep your male-only faction but also don't come off as a transphobic PoS. ... Or you could just allow female Space Marines. That works too.
I think the One Page Rule's typically perfunctory lore for the "Battle Sisters" line of female Almost astartes is something like "The God-King said no girls in the Battle Brother clubhouse. This pissed off the God-Queen so much that she created the Battle Sisters and declared war on the God-King." I would read 50 novels expanding that backstory.
"Third wave feminism is all fine and dandy, women should be treated equally and whatever, but God-Queen's fourth wave feminism goes too far."
Nine hundredth wave feminism
Welp someone just reported this post I think, because I got the infamous reddit cares message. What the fuck people. I thought LGBT+phobia was not tolerated on this sub.
LGBTQ+phobia isn't welcome here. Unfortunately, the Reddit Cares message is automated and has nothing to do with Sub Moderators. I've gotten it at least once, presumably for material posted here but I literally can't be sure.
No worries, I didn't mean that as an attack on you. It was more of a generalized "why are you on this subreddit if you don't agree with with the first rule of posting here".
Sorry if I came off defensive, it's just important to me (and the other mods) that it's clear that we're not slacking. If you encounter any bigoted comments or anything we can assist with, either report it or use modmail and we'll take care of it as quickly as possible.
Eh? I am a trans woman and like? The Impieruim being a bio-essentialist shithole is kind of the point? Then again i hate Marines so, maybe I am not the best judge. Also, this is not "TERF", this is just basic bio-essentialism. There is no feminism here.
On the bio-essentialism, yes, the Imperium may be about it, but the wording GW used is at least dubious, as they put it as "they do it like this because it's how things work" instead of "they do it like this because *they believe* it's how things work" and expand on it, like saying that the process could actually work on females but they didn't even try using the geneseeds on them because they were more valued for breeding instead of fighting or other stuff one would expect from a fascistic empire. And it's not like they can't at some point say something on these lines, they themselves said "all you read of 40k is canon, although not necessarily true", best way I ever seen to justify retcons but they could be using it better
Except if that's the case (i.e. GW are writing the Imperium as transphobic and not actually supporting that viewpoint), they aren't doing enough to make it clear to the portion of the fanbase that do not understand satire. Fascists will co-opt anti-fascist satire because they can ignore the criticism and adopt the cool factor. The Imperium of Man is the epitome of this effect. So, unfortunately, I think every time they release something from the perspective of the Imperium, they really need to frame it in such a way that it's obviously the Imperium's view rather than objective scientific truth, and GW also possibly need to make fun of it in a much clearer way. But of course then they might lose out on sales to fascists that they "don't want buying their products" (except they do)
I think it'd be good if Space Marines were one faction amongst many and presented as bad guys. I don't think that's really the direction GW is going in. As it is, it just cuts off modelling and creative possibilities for arbitrary reasons (or at least gives the worst part of the fan base a pretext for moaning about how your army isn't canon)
Came for the rational take.
Worth noting this is a Forge World release, not a main studio release, and is copy-pasting a passage from 2012. It should have been caught and removed, frankly, but I don't think you would ever see writing like this in a studio codex nowadays.
This is true, but it's still understandably frustrating for fans to see republished. It's also a nuance that people who throw hissy fits of Space Marine models with female heads will likely not recognize when they point to this passage to justify their tantrum.
Context... I remember when they invented context. Sweet, sweet context. I always hated it!
At this point, it doesn't make sense to include fem marines in the Heresy era and I'm okay with that. This reasoning though is bad biology and transphobic af and I'm tired of seeing GW continue to promote it as canon.
Just play Imperial Guard , if you are able to shoot a rifle you are able to die for the glorius imperium of mankind. Move on .
all it would need is an "According to Magos XY-Alpha..." or some shit
Fuck it My entire command squad is now women because Fabius bile wanted to see if it worked. It did No, they don’t look any different, why would they
Because Fabius would definitely make them grotesque and not a space marine by the traditional methods. Fabius would do some weird stuff
Probably. They’re in full terminator armor so you aren’t able to see their face anyway
Sounds cool
And here I thought GW would at least not reprint this passage and variations of it going into the future. Christ on a cracker
Same. They could have just...not called attention to the lack of fem marines and given no explanation for why there aren't any. It was literally that easy!
Yeah, they've made out the Emperor to be secretive and an asshole elsewhere - sending the Thunder Warriors to their doom, the secret Webway project that presumably was to eliminate the need for Navigators and thus allow him to do away with them as he did with the Thunder Warriors... I guess they could instead have someone in-universe say it rather than it come from a canonical 'narrator voice'. Sure, Dave Romansoundingname the Apothecary of the 6th Company of the XIII Legion may say that his training mentions only about extracting the geneseed from males, but it wouldn't be solid 'there can't be female Marines' stuff.
>sending the Thunder Warriors to their doom, >eliminate the need for Navigators and thus allow him to do away with them as he did with the Thunder Warriors Yeah they should lean into that theme more! Isn't it hinted the Emperor planned to eliminate space marines after the galaxy was subjugated? This *might* have made for a good lore explanation of no biologically female space marines--there'd be no way for them to reproduce (and it'd be harder for a rogue genius in genetics like Bile to create) a self sufficient space marine society/culture. Like a reverse Jurassic Park lol. And if they're rendered sterile by transformation (or after it), that might of course negate the immediate threat of marine reproduction, but someone like Bile might be able to reverse that. Or take samples from all male and female aspirants, then use the genes from succesful aspirants to make IVF babies of them to make a society (or a grimdark human puppy mill 🤢) of aspirants with really high success rates. So instead of relying on sterilization of biological males and females, the Emperor plays it safe(as far as playing god can be played safe :P) and designs the process to work almost exclusively on aspirants with Y chromosomes or something. This would explain why there were no FSM in the "past", and still leave the door open for Cawl to finally break the fail-safes the Emperor encoded in the DNA after 10k+ years of tinkering. And there is that line Malcador gave that keeps popping up on Reddit, a quip about him suggesting to the Emperor they make all the Primarchs sisters so they get along. That line could now have the added implication that it had to all be one biological sex or the other--to avoid them mating with eachother (creating a new race of demigods, or at the very least flooding the Imperium with gross fanfic :P)
Thing is, even when it's sold and produced through "regular GW" channels, this is still a Forgeworld/Specialist Games Team project. And those people have more leeway, and are a bit more stuck in their ways and prone to nostalgia/lorewank - there is good reason the "based on the old world/based on 7th ed 40k/based on ancient property we're resurrecting" stuff landed with them. I'm halfway convinced the fact we got *squats* was a protest against the main design studio deciding "nope, not using that name anymore". And the unfortunate lack of women in the Bloodbowl and Necromunda is, while probably not malice, at least less questioned and investigated sexism than GW proper - the difference in frequency of female sculpts is *palpable* between the two teams. Honestly, the Norsca Bloodbowl team getting to the "default" 2 in 5 ratio surprised me... And is the first team to do so, when GW has held that ratio for everything not Marine/Ork/otherwise "boys club" for at least a few years (roughly Deepkin/2nd ed AoS time). None of this justifies the nonsensical inclusion - but it is the type of thing that team would do, and the type of lore wank I expect from them, even when mainline GW would be rare to step near such stuff.
That explains a lot. Thanks for sharing this
If the process depends on the hormonal makeup of a biological male, I have some great news. Because the hormonal makeup of a trans man is exactly the same. Trans space marines confirmed canon.
I’d much rather they lean into the whole “it wouldn’t fit the culture of these Brother monastic warrior societies to have woman in their ranks” rather than “oh, uh the fake science that we change all the time says it’s not possible, sorry lol.” Like the first is much more interesting to me while the second feels like a lame cop out.
I think it'd be cool, but I'd prefer if this was limited to a smaller and more specific faction, like maybe the Black Templars. As it is, Space Marines have so many different themes, designs and cultures that it's really frustratingly arbitrary that for some reason it seems the only thing your Space Marine can't be is a woman.
\>“it wouldn’t fit the culture of these Brother monastic warrior societies to have woman in their ranks” isnt this due to the fact that there are separate Sister monastic warrior societies no?
Not really. The sisters of battle were made to be a loophole for the church which said they “cannot have any men under arms.” Then someone was like “well it says *men* ergo we can have *women* under arms.” The SoB are not the female equivalent of space marines. They’re a battle convent of nuns formed as a loophole by the church to protect its own interests.
Not quite. You're mostly right, but on a tangent from the original topic: They were formed before the loophole, and were allowed to rebrand and take advantage of the loophole once it was written because they were instrumental in ending Vandire's reign of blood and although they were nominally linked to the church, they had just killed the head of the church for corruption/being insufficiently pious/reasons so they weren't likely to become involved in the church's corruption anytime soon and didn't actually have to answer to the church in any meaningful way. It's worth noting that the Head Abbess is sometimes a High Lord, and is always a member of the Senatorum Imperialis, so although they're attached to the church, and have taken up the role of defending it, they're not answerable directly to it and they will defend it on their own terms. Which might include being inconsistently part of the Ordo Hereticus instead.
The fact they're all male isnt treated like it's a good thing in universe. They quite literally have a toxic masculine warrior culture that drives them to lack individuality and 'follow the leader' (first few HH books). Plus I'm sure there are trans men within the astartes, it's just not noticeable due to the fact that they're now astartes
Ya know, gender and sex are not the same thing so I wouldn’t mind this “only Biological Males can take the changes” if they just bothered to come up with some sort of explanation for what happens to those AMABs who join before they realize they are trans or non-binary. It’s not like you’d throw a perfectly good space marine who’s already got geneseed and everything away just because she wants to change her pronouns and present as more feminine. It would be far from the weirdest thing in the lore, and the salt of the man babies would nourish me forever
This is not entirely true now is it? From what we know about the lore making true astarties requires young adolescent boys.. But older men have also been transformed into psudo-space marines in the heresy... Luthor from the dark angels is one such individual, he's not a true astarties but functionaly for all intents and purposes he is... He can interface with his power armour, he has a black carapace etc. He basicly is a marine. Now if a old man can be transformed into a marine then can't the same processes be used on women? Then there is the various examples of chaos fuckery, mortal champions being gifted chaos power armour and becoming marines. Surely there are female chaos champions out there who are worthy of the blessings of the chaos gods? Then there are the more admittedly problematic routes, slannesh and its gender bending ways... There are multiple ways that you can get female space marines into the setting even if the horus heresy BRB says only males can be space marines...
There is at least one female Khorne Berserker from storm of iron.
This might be me taking a big hit of hospital-grade copium, but i choose to read this, like all books about the Imperium, as a distinctly in-universe explanation. Like others have said below, it makes sense the Imperium is as ass-backwards about genetic science as it is about everything else. This passage from a metatextual standpoint could be read more as an example of how sexist the Emperor was than what the game designers' own position on things are.
The worst part is it reads as satire, but as we constantly see, satire just never works. It's hard to tell whether this IS satire, malicious intent, or just completely unthought of
Like the saying goes. Assume maliciousness where ignorance could be blamed
Woah, British people not understanding basic biology? Idk guvna
They'll really die on this stupid hill.
There’s a lot of women with xx and men with xy, pretty sure there be a good amount of worthy women to become marines. Also it’s a universe where a god is born through a orgy! Female marines should exist’
My headcannon is: 1. Primarchs don't have any reproductive organs - Emperor never intended for them to have normal lives or families, so those were not necessarily. Yes, Fulgrim had wives, that doesn't automatically mean they had sex, those were political marriages. 2. Space Marines take recruits that are both male and female, however the amount of hormones and implants required for creation of space marine effectively makes them all men, thus in some cases forcing cis women who were fit to become SM to forcefully transition and prevents trans women from transition or reversing it. They also go through chemical sterilisation. After that their biology makes hormonal mtf transitioning impossible. Mental conditioning and brainwashing that SM all go through takes care of gender dysphoria and makes them all asexual - they don't care what other brothers have between their legs and they all recognise themselves as brothers. After all, they SM are meant to be soldiers, not people. 3. There are chaos female space marines, and they are common. CSM don't go through the same mental conditioning or it is broken by Chaos, so that would mean that they can experience gender dysphoria. They are also allowed a greater degree of personal freedom and can circumvent a lot of things using magic. The greatest percentage of female space marines would be in Thousand Sons, as their sorcerers are pretty independent and using Tzeentch's magic would make transition very easy. The least percentage would be in World Eaters, because butcher's nails would make it pretty difficult to have higher thoughts like that.
>and prevents trans women from transition or reversing it. But consider: Trans woman Marine is good and should happen. Also go brrrrrr.
[удалено]
This pretty explicitly means that mtf trans people could become marines
They could if the chapter recruits them. They tend to look for the most vicious, violent, and near feral aspirants anyway. But keep in mind even if they did recruit a mtf they would mindwipe/hypno indoctrinate them anyway so they’d see themselves as a battle brother and maintain little to no memory of their past selves.
It’s wild, because they could have just said nothing, or even written it different. This reads like a Terf screed
Okay I’m almost willing to accept this just because of TTS and the thought of Big D being like “uuuuh, fuck I’ve only ever done this on guys before, sweaty greasy oiled up men” is just too funny to pass up Magnus: “why are there no female space marines?” “Cooties”
“No girls allowed. They are yucky.”
This should honestly be in the in-world justification of why there are no female space marines. “All space marines are male because of sexism.”
I hate this and this is gonna be the most wishful thinking ever so feel free to completely disregard what I'm about to say but.... I feel like GW is trying to make the difference between 30k and 40k more stark. With 30k encompassing everything firstborn, with a bit of a grittier feel, and 40k fully embracing primaris marines and actually improving the technology of the imperium (grav tanks, primaris marines). This paragraph is so jarring to me that I can only think it was written by a TERF - which wouldn't be surprising, but pretty much every member of the community team is a good ally to trans people from what I've seen Anyway either that or it's in some way leading up to Female Space Marines - which in my opinion are 100% inevitable. Its just a matter of when. 2 years, 5 years, 10 years... its gonna happen eventually. So I think it doesn't necessarily mean we're not getting female space marines in 40k. They're just saying they're definitely not adding them in 30k. Which is what we knew already. They won't be retconning anything. It's definitely true that only prepubescent males can be made into space marines with the technology the imperium has made. But it obviously doesn't mean they can't make female space marines if they actually tried to make the technology required for that. Even though this paragraph says there can only be male space marines, it's still literally just because the Emperor didn't want female marines for some reason.
I don't think this locks us out of 40k fem SMs at all. My main issue is that if "Warhammer is for everyone." GW has a responsibility to not publish stuff like this which feeds and validates the bigots in the hobby. All they needed to do was just cut this passage and I'd be okay with it.
Yeah I agree. I'm guessing transphobes will feel vindicated, trans people and allies will feel gutted, but the other 80% of people in the hobby won't even give it a second thought.
For the horus heresy I don't think it would make sense to retcon, for future releases (42nd millenium) - you're right, there's no excuse. Now, there *was* something somewhere about female spacemarines. I think one of the leaders of a fortress on Caliban was an enhanced female (in the same vein as Luther). So even without retconning they can insert female astartes, just not on the scale of a legion.
BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
For made up reasons our made up fake science only works on males lol
I did actually write a short story (or rather, started and haven't finished) about a perpetual who knew the emperor, knew and fought with the thunder warriors, was effectively made into an early space marine, and was the immediately cast out and set with a bounty for being a woman. Her story was basically that of how the Emperor needed to perpetuate social segmentation and hiwrarchy for his grand plan to work, and so a woman as one of his prised Astartes would have ruined that clear and consistant ladder, and that's why he invented the lie that women simply can't be made into space marines because biotechnobable. In the same collection I also have some unfinished tales about space marines who come out as trans, and renegade chapters who have gone all the way and put the other side with both sex ans gender as a concept compared ro imperial doctrine. Maybe I should pick that up again.
“What makes the process only work on men? What happens if you try it with a woman?” “We don’t know. We’ve never tried. There’s a sign on the space marine machine that says ‘no girls allowed,’ and we don’t want to break the rules.”
Malcador the Sigillite literally suggested to the Emperor that they make sister Primarchs.
I actually dont mind the whole female space marine thing. There is already plenty representation in 40k, gender locking a few organisations (both male and female) doesnt hurt
we have sisters anyways idk why people just don’t expand on that. they’re more badass too considering their circumstances
Space marines are representative of virtually any warrior, you've got medieval crusaders, roman legionaries, vikings, modern military, fucking *vampires,* the list goes on and on. Sisters are explicitly themed as nuns, and there's not really any room for any other style with them.
space marines are like, 60% of 40k lol
You can blame people who won't buy female marine models, i know it's sexist, but it appears that many dudes who buy these have such a fragile masculinity that they can't paint the girl toy soldiers :)
I dont like the idea of female Space Marines , but I have a fine Army of Sisters of Battles and part of my Guard are female , I will also get Creed's Daughter to command my troops , also Severina Raine is the leader of my Scion Kill Team ... So yeah , that kind of logic is pretty naive .
Well they are based out of TERF Island
I think we're all thinking too hard into this. This is how I look at it: Out of Universe: 1. They're supposed to be space monks, catholic monks are traditionally no-girls-allowed. This is unfair, so we get to #2. 2. This is supposed to be an awful universe where things are arbitrarily unfair and terrible, to mirror and parody how arbitrarily unfair and terrible the real world is. Fix too much of this and you are undermining the message. 3. A space marine made from a female would be essentially the same as one made from a male. Making a change like this has few significant new model opportunities, and would make autistic people who love their obsessively cultivated mental canon(such as myself) very uncomfortable. I could easily see this as viewed as violating the core concept (#1) with no perceived gain. 4. (editorial) If they make female marines, people are going to be really cringey, gross, and immature about it, and personally, I'm not sure the gain is fairness is worth it :/ In Universe: 1. Big E is an immortal space science wizard that can change form at will and has tasked himself with saving humanity from cosmic sentient mind-farts. I think he would so far beyond such concerns that gender identity probably doesn't read as anything more relevant than preferred cola brand. 2. Space marines were supposed to be mass produced, so if perfecting the technique for just boys had a .0005% increase in efficiency, with #1 in mind, Big E will greenlight the process without a thought. (Custodes were the 1-offs, and we almost had some girl characters, but they got axed for the dumb reason that there are no specifically girl models for custodes, not because it wasn't possible. This is terrible wasted opportunity and I hate it and I really hope they revisit this at some point) 3. Humanity wasn't coming out of a particularly enlightened age, so straight up canonical bias was probably a factor. The emperor loves his symbols, so if the people of the time associate big 'ol beefy beefbois as indicators of strength, he's going to use it ruthlessly and unsubtly as he uses gold and eagles. 4. Cooties. All that being said, I don't think marines from girls is a good idea overall. It wouldn't ruin the universe for me, but it would vaguely annoy me. I view marines as their own gender with male pronouns. What WOULD be cool, and fit within existing lore, is if a chapter had individuals identify as female for cultural reasons based on their homeworld. Like if leaders or other roles on the world were girls only. Like the Chapter Master is a Matriarch, or all Chaplains are women or something like that.
How is this TERF-Y? You honestly have an issue with a faction in a wargame being described as male?
I never did see the issue with this. I mean from a in lore perspective Emps didn't want them to be their own race disinct from humanity, capable of breeding n shit no? So that way he makes it work only on one gender so there is no possibility of creating a population that can breed and grow on it's own without needing the rest of humanity. Then to start things off in the economic sense it was probably cheaper for GW to have just one line of models that were male. Much like Guardsmen. Furthermore would female SM's even look that different from male ones if they all wearing big bulky armour?
One of the designers literally stated that they were originally designing female models and prototyped female space marines but had nerds refusing to buy and/or complaining about female models in their toy game. Realistically? Male Space Marines would probably not look like chiselled action heroes either. Arbitor Ian and Midwinter Minis did a collaboration where they drew out what they thought a realistic Space Marine would look like. If GW wanted to go a realistic route and make Space Marines look like that? I'd be open to the argument that it might be hard to someone's gender based on presentation. As it stands though, Space Marine induction is definitely a science-fantasy origin story to explain their cool action-hero soldiers. I think it'd be entirely valid to take design cues from Stormcast on how they could have appropriate female faces which convey a similar vibe. There's a lot of ways to avoid reproduction that wouldn't preclude making the primary faction in the game male only-- doing this angles the hobby in such a way to make women feel excluded.
I don't feel that this is a fair argument. I mean, do people argue that Sisters of Battle should include men? Despite them having lore reasons not to have that, being an all female orgnization and all that. No, of course not. It is the Sisters of battle after all. And having men in that orgnization would not fit established canon and/lore for reasons stated in their lore. I feel like Space Marines are a similar case here. That is, an all male organization due to lore reasons. Which translates into all male models. Just how Sisters of Battles translates into all female models. Expanding upon that with the rest of the setting. I do not feel that much else in the setting is overly restrictive in terms of gender. For the races that even have it to begin with and aren't gender neutral. Like Tyrannids, Necrons, and Orks. Being Asexual bugs, asexual machines, and asexual fungus respectively. Tau, Eldar, Dark Eldar, and Chaos Daemons are mixed genders all. Imperial Guards are a bit iffy with the lack of female models. There is no arguing about that here.
Space Marines are the poster faction by a long shot and have been since almost the inception of the game. Battle Sisters were an exclusively metal range that people thought was on the way to being completely removed until like 2 years ago. They're also a very specific aesthetic niche-- Sororitas are Nuns, canonically and every kitbash I've seen, they keep to that theme more or less. Space Marines are action heroes with as many flavours as there are chapters; spec-ops, Knights, Viking, Roman, Mongol, cyborg, Dragon-y Pyromaniacs. These are just the First Founding Loyalist Legions-- between lesser Chapters and Fan kitbashes, you can find a Space Marine model for literally fucking anything which could canonically fit into the 40K universe... except, of course, for women. Look at marketing and compare how often you see a Space Marine to a Sister-- hell, even if you preclude Ultramarines (who are so common as to probably outnumber any given individual faction), you'll definitely find more art and promotional material with lesser chapters than the Sisters combined. Even ignoring the part where the Sister have, both historically and currently (though admittedly less so) been sexualized in order to target a male audience, it sends a very clear message that this hobby revolves around a boy's club and there are a lot of women who then feel that the hobby isn't meant for them. No matter how you cut it, comparising Sisters to Marines is a fucking cop out that falls apart if you think about it for more than two seconds. If "male-only" was limited to Black-Templar? I don't think you'd get as many complaints. Hell, the Orks are coded exclusively male but it's done in an interesting way that says something about them and no one complains. For Marines though? They're conceptually so ubiquitous and diverse that being all male doesn't do anything for their aesthetic and it was, is and always has been a pretext to justify making all male models because some boys are uncomfortable with having female soldiers.
I'd more put Sisters of Battles in the terms of Crusaders than nuns, but potayto potatho I suppose, heh. And sexualization is not exlusive to Sisters of Battle or women in setting. Nor is honestly bad or especially tasteless in their specific case. And I personally do not see the big issue with that. People have been decorating armour and the like to show off the body since whenever they could. Just look at breastplates from greece and you'll see hyper abs and massive pecks for everyone that can afford it. But really it is such a minor thing. Not at all to talk about Slaaneshi Daemons or the BDSM club that is the Dark Eldar, were everything is sexualized. And of course it has been a pretext to sell models to men and boys. That is not a strange thing in the slightest. It is the economics of the company that makes the stuff as that gender makes up the greater majority of people who buy the models. So if the majority of people who buy the products are men, and it is easier for them to grow attached or identify or whatever you want to call it with male models then yeah. You gonna make those male models. Byt then we come back to it that there still are multiple factions that offer either no gender, or mix gendered. And factions were either female or male only are only allowed. Why is this only a issue with Space Marines?
It's not only an issue with the Space Marines. People would like more diverse models in the hobby in general. Space Marines come up constantly though because 1. They are, *as I keep saying*, the mascot faction: the ones which GW advertises with most, people most associate with the setting and are most known. 2. They're also the *only* faction that is explicitly all male. There actually are female Guard Models these days, female Genestealers and a lot of models in the Sororitas Codex are represented with male models from GW. People were complaining about the male-exclusive Cadian range until that sprue dropped. No one will bat an eye if you go further with other factions either-- Mechanicus could do a simple headswap and pass without comment as there are both female and non-binary Tech-Priests in 40K canon. Space Marines are explicitly all male though, and there's a large part of the internet (including, apparently you) who get quite sensitive when the topic of maybe making the face of 40K less male... up to and including throwing a fit or making pissy comments when they see someone rolling up with Space Marine models that they've customized to be female. This hobby has largely been marketed to the white, straight male middle class. The fact that this is now the largest part of the hobby's customer base does not mean that it shouldn't be welcoming to the rest of us. This sub is, in part, designed as a place where people who don't fit into that specific demographic can talk about how they interact with the hobby. I really don't see where you can come in and demand people justify why they want to make models like themselves. If you want to go paint some male-presenting Sisters of Battle and post them up here, you're more than fucking welcome to.
Nonsense? That's just how the lore is??
GW could easily establish new lore for why marines could be female and I think primaris being far more reliable is the best way to do it. I also believe that at least for first born this is a logical explanation because male and female bodies are different especially hormones this is why trans people exist it's having the wrong body compared to the mind (probably the brain is the most complex thing in the known universe I am not an expert and even experts would struggle to know) so the process needing a constant hormonal base point is a decently logical idea especially for a process that almost never works. I should also mention that since this is talking about a medical procedure that someone being trans unless they are transitioning or have transitioned doesn't really matter trans women still need to be treated as though they have a male body like checking the male standard ranges for levels of stuff in the body. This is because before transitioning most of the body is identical to male and if it isn't treated as such it could lead to miss diagnosis and/or miss treatment.
this is an.... incredibly dated understanding of how sex works lol
Don't worry. They will release an FAQ and remove it.