My Thoughts on Female Space Marines

[templargdt]

I personally saw an Imperial Guard army at a tournament that was all converted GI Joe characters.  Good for that guy, love the initiative, etc.

That doesn't mean I want a special guest appearance by GI Joe in a GW novel.  When you decide to take a dump on decades old well developed IP to cater to a certain very vocal group of people on twitter, you get what Star Wars is now.  Disney can afford to take a 2.2 billion dollar loss after driving a money printing machine like Star Wars into the pavement.  GW isn't Disney.  

[BitsHammer]

Just gonna throw in a quote from metalmammoth that I hadn’t considered before, but is probably one of the best points against female astartes.

 

 

“Also, think about perhaps the most heinous aspect of your idea: Little girls taken from their families and subjected to all the horror and agony of Astartes training. Sound fun to ya? Does it?! The mutilations, vivisections, beatings, and outright torture? The grotesqueries of failed implantations? And all this, by keeping in mind the point above: Likely they didn't want to be there...”

 

Taking little girls from their families and subjecting them to the astartes process seems.... way far past grimdark then I hope anyone is comfortable with.

My problem with this line of logic is that it implies that it's somehow alright to do to boys.

 

The Imperium is a dark place. Human lives are merely meat for the war machine and their blood merely the grease for the wheels of bureaucracy. Saying that they should value any gender over another doesn't fit the Imperium's death cult like nature (and don't tell me anyone who doesn't decorate with that many skulls isn't in a death cult, not to mention they preach that death is the duty of the loyal and faithful). Plus I'd point out that most chapters recruit volunteers. You have to take trials to be a Marine. They very rarely, if ever (at least no chapter I know of canonically) take just anyone they find. Marines aren't going around snatching up kids like a 40k version of the Krampus.

[templargdt]

 

 

I can't understand why some people are so vehemently opposed to the idea to be honest. Does it really matter what kind of sex bits the original human had before they were completely remade into a transhuman killing machine, where behind inches of ceramite you can't tell the difference anyway?

Yes.

 

Why?

 

Because it's a Knightly brotherhood.  The chapters are modeled (heavily) off the religious knightly Orders of medieval Christianity.  The Lore on this is 30+ years old.  It is the very fabric of the material.  How many times have you read "Battle Brother" or "Brother Sergeant"?  

 

You destroy what these things are by changing that.  It's destroying the meaning of it.  I would go *much* further but I do not want to violate the forum rules.  

[Sarvis]

 

Yes I think it’s worse. It comes off as rapey and makes me uncomfortable to think about. Torturing lttle girls is just too far over the line for me. Can’t help how I feel.

Of course you can't help how you feel. You can however recognise that that is a double standard and avoid using it as an argument.

It’s not a double standard. Boys are brought in by other men, and seen as future brothers. And men are naturally more resistant to physical hardship and in general have more muscle mass to help them through the process. The survival rate difference between the two sexes would be... large.

[BitsHammer]

Couldn’t there be “super Sororitas” that eschew ties with the Ecclisiarchy with gene-seed implants and “beefier” power armor akin to the Space Marines and go from there?

 

Then you’d have an exclusively male faction and exclusively female faction, made the same way and doing the same things - both operate out of fortress monasteries, fight for the Imperium on their terms, etc.  They could even be part of the same Adeptus.

 

Hell, for all we know “Cawl already did this” and GW is simply waiting for the right time to produce the models.

 

I’m not even sure the models would be all that different - there’s some body variation amongst Marines, but it seems to be more in the size aspect, and some of the underlying birth features, but there’s also a lot that gets remade (or should get remade if we weren’t playing with magitech space wizard science).  So you’d probably have your pick of conversion material depending on whether you wanted your “Adeptus Astartes Amazonius” to be smaller (convert from SoB figs) or larger (convert from Gravis figs).

 

The grimdark monstrousness of the creation method remains the same, regardless of who it happens to - it could happen to frogs, and it would be monstrous.

My arguement for female Space Marines has always started and ended at heads. Just give them different heads. That's it.

 

I mean GW doesn't give us people of various heights already, even when there are canonically massive Marines like Silas Albrect running around in the setting, so I don't think height would really be a thing to worry about.

[Bryan Blaire]

Because it's a Knightly brotherhood.  The chapters are modeled (heavily) off the religious knightly Orders of medieval Christianity.  The Lore on this is 30+ years old.  It is the very fabric of the material.  How many times have you read "Battle Brother" or "Brother Sergeant"?  

You destroy what these things are by changing that.  It's destroying the meaning of it.  I would go *much* further but I do not want to violate the forum rules.  

 

Some are, some like the Raptors, Raven Guard, Space Wolves, Iron Hands, Salamanders, and others this quick list won’t encompass, very much are not.

 

This extant lore doesn’t destroy the Marines or their meaning.

[BitsHammer]

 

 

 

I can't understand why some people are so vehemently opposed to the idea to be honest. Does it really matter what kind of sex bits the original human had before they were completely remade into a transhuman killing machine, where behind inches of ceramite you can't tell the difference anyway?

Yes.

 

Why?

 

Because it's a Knightly brotherhood.  The chapters are modeled (heavily) off the religious knightly Orders of medieval Christianity.  The Lore on this is 30+ years old.  It is the very fabric of the material.  How many times have you read "Battle Brother" or "Brother Sergeant"?  

 

You destroy what these things are by changing that.  It's destroying the meaning of it.  I would go *much* further but I do not want to violate the forum rules.  

 

I'd like to point out that as long as we've been fighting wars women have been fighting too. We know historically that women had even pretended to be men to serve in the military, which means they too could be part of a "brotherhood" forged in the fires of war.

 

As for the knightly order, that's maybe 1/4 of the chapters? Maybe? As I talked about in my refutation of the claims that all Marines are space monks: the chapters have a MASSIVE range of cultural influences, and not all of them tie to Middle Ages Europe.

 

 

Yes I think it’s worse. It comes off as rapey and makes me uncomfortable to think about. Torturing lttle girls is just too far over the line for me. Can’t help how I feel.

Of course you can't help how you feel. You can however recognise that that is a double standard and avoid using it as an argument.

It’s not a double standard. Boys are brought in by other men, and seen as future brothers. And men are naturally more resistant to physical hardship and in general have more muscle mass to help them through the process. The survival rate difference between the two sexes would be... large.

 

You do know that the boys brought in haven't even started puberty in most cases, correct? At that stage of life neither sex has a distinct advantage over the other.

[BitsHammer]

 

 

Couldn’t there be “super Sororitas” that eschew ties with the Ecclisiarchy with gene-seed implants and “beefier” power armor akin to the Space Marines and go from there?

 

Then you’d have an exclusively male faction and exclusively female faction, made the same way and doing the same things - both operate out of fortress monasteries, fight for the Imperium on their terms, etc. They could even be part of the same Adeptus.

 

Hell, for all we know “Cawl already did this” and GW is simply waiting for the right time to produce the models.

 

I’m not even sure the models would be all that different - there’s some body variation amongst Marines, but it seems to be more in the size aspect, and some of the underlying birth features, but there’s also a lot that gets remade (or should get remade if we weren’t playing with magitech space wizard science). So you’d probably have your pick of conversion material depending on whether you wanted your “Adeptus Astartes Amazonius” to be smaller (convert from SoB figs) or larger (convert from Gravis figs).

 

The grimdark monstrousness of the creation method remains the same, regardless of who it happens to - it could happen to frogs, and it would be monstrous.

My arguement for female Space Marines has always started and ended at heads. Just give them different heads. That's it.

 

I mean GW doesn't give us people of various heights already, even when there are canonically massive Marines like Silas Albrect running around in the setting, so I don't think height would really be a thing to worry about.

Aren’t the Sororitas, various aeldari, and Sigmarines heads suitable for converting? Any marine helmet is gender neutral. The options are there, as they always have been.

 

Sisters heads are a little small as are the Aeldari (at least on Primaris bodies), and while the female Stormcast heads are the right size, they (and the heads made by Statuesque) are also pretty generic. Fine if you want something like Ultramarines or Imperial Fist style chapters, but lacking something for a chapter based around Space Wolves for example.

 

And helmets do help, but it'd be nice to see some options with some flavor.

[Gederas]

Taking little girls from their families and subjecting them to the astartes process seems.... way far past grimdark then I hope anyone is comfortable with.

And taking little boys doesn't? I know you're not saying that, but come on, let's not go there. There are some parts of the 40k universe that undoubtedly reflect the horrors of the real world that are not elaborated on for good reason. If this topic is going to stay open, steer clear...

Just gonna throw in a quote from metalmammoth that I hadn’t considered before, but is probably one of the best points against female astartes.

 

“Also, think about perhaps the most heinous aspect of your idea: Little girls taken from their families and subjected to all the horror and agony of Astartes training. Sound fun to ya? Does it?! The mutilations, vivisections, beatings, and outright torture? The grotesqueries of failed implantations? And all this, by keeping in mind the point above: Likely they didn't want to be there...”

 

Taking little girls from their families and subjecting them to the astartes process seems.... way far past grimdark then I hope anyone is comfortable with.

My problem with this line of logic is that it implies that it's somehow alright to do to boys.

 

From a human biological standpoint.... Sadly, yes. Because men are the expendable ones. That's been a thing for humanity for basically all of recorded history. Yes, women fighting in wars is  thing, but those are always seen as unusual/rare until recently (as in: the last forty or so years, compared to nearly 5000 years of recorded human history)

 

And since the previous topic was locked, I'd like to reiterate a point I made in the other one:

 

"Additionally, while "No female Space Marines" started because of nerds in the 80s, the lore has been expanded in that the Astartes process was coded based on the Emperor's genome for male (XY) subjects. Even today we have issues due to transgender people not informing doctors of their birth gender because certain drugs affect men (XY) and women (XX) differently, to the point of some being potentially lethal when used on the wrong person.

 

Modern day science, which is very likely safer than 40k. And the Astartes process is way, way more invasive than modern medicine."

 

Brother Tyler posted the in-lore justification, which has stayed the same in some/all of it since it was stated the first time. The process works on XY genes. Period, end of discussion. Female Space Marines would require a retcon of 30 years of established lore.

[Valkyrion]

But women are still fighting in the game, and real life women are not prohibited from playing the male only fictional faction of space marines.

 

None of this is an attack on inclusivity.

 

You go ahead and put female heads on your space marines and if someone one day says 'Er, dude, you know there aren't any female space marines, right?' you can pick up your miniatures and say 'Sure there are. Look.'

[BitsHammer]

 

Taking little girls from their families and subjecting them to the astartes process seems.... way far past grimdark then I hope anyone is comfortable with.

And taking little boys doesn't? I know you're not saying that, but come on, let's not go there. There are some parts of the 40k universe that undoubtedly reflect the horrors of the real world that are not elaborated on for good reason. If this topic is going to stay open, steer clear...

Just gonna throw in a quote from metalmammoth that I hadn’t considered before, but is probably one of the best points against female astartes.

 

“Also, think about perhaps the most heinous aspect of your idea: Little girls taken from their families and subjected to all the horror and agony of Astartes training. Sound fun to ya? Does it?! The mutilations, vivisections, beatings, and outright torture? The grotesqueries of failed implantations? And all this, by keeping in mind the point above: Likely they didn't want to be there...”

 

Taking little girls from their families and subjecting them to the astartes process seems.... way far past grimdark then I hope anyone is comfortable with.

My problem with this line of logic is that it implies that it's somehow alright to do to boys.

 

From a human biological standpoint.... Sadly, yes. Because men are the expendable ones. That's been a thing for humanity for basically all of recorded history. Yes, women fighting in wars is  thing, but those are always seen as unusual/rare until recently (as in: the last forty or so years, compared to nearly 5000 years of recorded human history)

 

And since the previous topic was locked, I'd like to reiterate a point I made in the other one:

 

"Additionally, while "No female Space Marines" started because of nerds in the 80s, the lore has been expanded in that the Astartes process was coded based on the Emperor's genome for male (XY) subjects. Even today we have issues due to transgender people not informing doctors of their birth gender because certain drugs affect men (XY) and women (XX) differently, to the point of some being potentially lethal when used on the wrong person.

 

Modern day science, which is very likely safer than 40k. And the Astartes process is way, way more invasive than modern medicine."

 

Brother Tyler posted the in-lore justification, which has stayed the same in some/all of it since it was stated the first time. The process works on XY genes. Period, end of discussion. Female Space Marines would require a retcon of 30 years of established lore.

 

Space Marines are based on the Primarchs who are partly made of Warp stuff of some kind. Modern science and medicine is useless to use as a justification for anything. Plus, you know, it's 40k years in the future where even the science they barely know is still dozens of generations beyond our own.

[Brother Tyler]

I've hidden a few posts that delved too much into modern political issues. There are a few others that I'm eyeballing.

 

This issue can be discussed without violating the forum rules. The information that Fulkes provided in the other topic - Alan Merrett's explanation - lay the foundation for what can be a constructive dialogue.

 

The problem we're having now is that too many people on both sides of the issue are responding in an inappropriate manner. If it keeps up in this way, we'll have to close the discussion, which would be unfortunate.

 

I've also removed a number of sabotage comments - comments made to point out how they don't like the discussion. If you can't participate in the discussion in a constructive manner, just stay out of it. Sabotage comments will result in disciplinary action.

[BitsHammer]

But women are still fighting in the game, and real life women are not prohibited from playing the male only fictional faction of space marines.

 

None of this is an attack on inclusivity.

 

You go ahead and put female heads on your space marines and if someone one day says 'Er, dude, you know there aren't any female space marines, right?' you can pick up your miniatures and say 'Sure there are. Look.'

Let's be honest, there is already a problem with the "Well ahktually" part of the hobby community in general. Taking ammunition away from a group that tends to be toxic in favor of letting people have more creative freedom (and even actively supporting said creative freedom) wouldn't hurt.

[Brother Tyler]

Note that I've merged the two topics.

[Valkyrion]

I agree that the 'well ahktually' folk are often overbearing and irritating but they aren't usually totally wrong. They are the ones who know the established lore well enough to 'well actually...' at people. 

 

The established lore is that space marines are male. It is a major retcon to try and squeeze in female space marines. I'm not saying there won't ever be females in the space marine organisations, but there cannot be any female space marines without upturning the history.

 

GW could decide to retire Scouts, both from the tabletop and from new lore, citing that since the advent of primaris, all new space marines are immediately fully grown inductees of the 10th company (like Blood Claws are) but a new pseudo space marine female vanguard unit has been created with half of the organs and they are used by space marines in the role that scouts previously fulfilled.

 

This would be new, and justified (and terrible, but I'm not a GW fluff writer!). This is the only way the space marines can include females - distinct and separate but part of the whole.

[BitsHammer]

I agree that the 'well ahktually' folk are often overbearing and irritating but they aren't usually totally wrong. They are the ones who know the established lore well enough to 'well actually...' at people. 

 

The established lore is that space marines are male. It is a major retcon to try and squeeze in female space marines. I'm not saying there won't ever be females in the space marine organisations, but there cannot be any female space marines without upturning the history.

 

GW could decide to retire Scouts, both from the tabletop and from new lore, citing that since the advent of primaris, all new space marines are immediately fully grown inductees of the 10th company (like Blood Claws are) but a new pseudo space marine female vanguard unit has been created with half of the organs and they are used by space marines in the role that scouts previously fulfilled.

 

This would be new, and justified (and terrible, but I'm not a GW fluff writer!). This is the only way the space marines can include females - distinct and separate but part of the whole.

I disagree, as I mentioned in my original post/blog post when the Raptors where made (before the Alpha Legion mucked the project) the limitations we understand Marines to "need" to fall under could be turned off. Implant rejection for example became no longer a thing.

 

With someone like Cawl or Bile running around there could a "switch" that could be turned off that others don't understand.

 

That said, there is always room to add more into the setting. 40k is a sandbox where the rules are made up and have never followed real world logic *coughSOLIDRIBPLATEScough*

 

 

But women are still fighting in the game, and real life women are not prohibited from playing the male only fictional faction of space marines.

 

None of this is an attack on inclusivity.

 

You go ahead and put female heads on your space marines and if someone one day says 'Er, dude, you know there aren't any female space marines, right?' you can pick up your miniatures and say 'Sure there are. Look.'

Let's be honest, there is already a problem with the "Well ahktually" part of the hobby community in general. Taking ammunition away from a group that tends to be toxic in favor of letting people have more creative freedom (and even actively supporting said creative freedom) wouldn't hurt.

So it’s not necessarily a modeling or inclusivity thing, it’s sticking it to a perceived ‘well akshully’ crowd. The creative freedom is there, as are existing modeling options. People just want GW to put their foot down on a real world political stance and tell thousands of ‘nerds’ their archaic way of thinking is and always has been wrong. That’s what rubs people on the other side of the argument the wrong way.

 

Sticking it to them? No. Taking away their ability to crap all over the work of others? Sure.

[Valkyrion]

I'm not saying that GW couldn't find a way to allow for female space marines, I'm saying that by doing so they would be undoing 30 years of work.

 

I think one day we will have a female power armoured ultramarine on the cover of a white dwarf, but it won't be a space marine as God The Emperor intended. 

[Marshal Loss]

 

That's been a thing for humanity for basically all of recorded history. Yes, women fighting in wars is  thing, but those are always seen as unusual/rare until recently (as in: the last forty or so years, compared to nearly 5000 years of recorded human history)

 

I'm not going to lecture you on the historical side of things because nobody wants to read a wall of text from a self-aggrandising academic, and won't touch a sentence involving human biology with a ten foot pole, but I will say this: let's just say for the sake of simplification that women have been a negligible part of warfare for the past 5,000 years. Warhammer 40,000 occurs tens of thousands of years in the future. We shouldn't be pointing to female representation in our own past to justify what occurs in a science fiction setting where our emotions are sentient and want to murder us, toasters are worshipped by a machine cult, and blowing up a planet is seen as a sensible kind of conflict management.

 

Women also weren't an important part of religious or political institutions until relatively recently, but we're totally OK with them assuming those kinds of roles in 40k. Why, therefore, would we point to women not traditionally being a part of warfare in our own past? Sorry, that's simply not a good argument.

[Ayatollah_of_Rock_n_Rolla]

 

 

 

 

I can't understand why some people are so vehemently opposed to the idea to be honest. Does it really matter what kind of sex bits the original human had before they were completely remade into a transhuman killing machine, where behind inches of ceramite you can't tell the difference anyway?

Yes.

 

Why?

 

Because it's a Knightly brotherhood.  The chapters are modeled (heavily) off the religious knightly Orders of medieval Christianity.  The Lore on this is 30+ years old.  It is the very fabric of the material.  How many times have you read "Battle Brother" or "Brother Sergeant"?  

 

You destroy what these things are by changing that.  It's destroying the meaning of it.  I would go *much* further but I do not want to violate the forum rules.  

 

I'd like to point out that as long as we've been fighting wars women have been fighting too. We know historically that women had even pretended to be men to serve in the military, which means they too could be part of a "brotherhood" forged in the fires of war.

 

As for the knightly order, that's maybe 1/4 of the chapters? Maybe? As I talked about in my refutation of the claims that all Marines are space monks: the chapters have a MASSIVE range of cultural influences, and not all of them tie to Middle Ages Europe.

 

 

Yes I think it’s worse. It comes off as rapey and makes me uncomfortable to think about. Torturing lttle girls is just too far over the line for me. Can’t help how I feel.

Of course you can't help how you feel. You can however recognise that that is a double standard and avoid using it as an argument.

It’s not a double standard. Boys are brought in by other men, and seen as future brothers. And men are naturally more resistant to physical hardship and in general have more muscle mass to help them through the process. The survival rate difference between the two sexes would be... large.

 

You do know that the boys brought in haven't even started puberty in most cases, correct? At that stage of life neither sex has a distinct advantage over the other.

 

A few comments. Technically speaking puberty begins by the age of eleven, while most SM recruits are 12-14 in the lore if i remember correctly (age of 10 is the lowest possible and 16 the highest). In schools this is exaclty the age when a massive drop in girl's  interest in sports happens due to worsening performance in comparision to boys. While the physical differences are obviously not as sharp as between the fully mature humans, they exist and would, in my opinion, severly restrict number of girls passing the trials which most commonly involve some sort of competition between the recruits. But that's disputable to large extent.

 

What is however undisputable is that ALL space marines chapters are based on military orders. All-male warrior brotherhoods living in fortress-MONASTERIES, organising their lives around daily military training and PRAYERS, adorned in RELICS and lead to battle by CHAPLAINS. Come on.

 

And yes, women were and are present on the battlefields. But just compare the numbers. Women fighting were (and in most countries still are) exception. It's like arguing that aerodynamics are fake because there was this one F-15 which made it to the base without one wing.

[BitsHammer]

I'm not saying that GW couldn't find a way to allow for female space marines, I'm saying that by doing so they would be undoing 30 years of work.

 

I think one day we will have a female power armoured ultramarine on the cover of a white dwarf, but it won't be a space marine as God The Emperor intended. 

Hate to break it to you but the God Emperor isn't real, and the original intention was 25% of every army being female.

 

And allowing women to be Space Marines undoing the past is kind of like saying anything women gained socially in the last hundred years undid the history that came before it. That's not how history works. No one is asking for GW to retcon the Horus Heresy, or make half the Primarchs women.

[Halandaar]

Because it's a Knightly brotherhood.  The chapters are modeled (heavily) off the religious knightly Orders of medieval Christianity. 

 

Some are. Others are not. Look at the Space Wolves as a single example, based on a real world culture where there is archaeological and historical evidence that supports the notion of women fighting alongside men in organised warfare, albeit not anywhere near the scale and frequency a certain TV show would have us believe. There's no reason that chapters which do not follow that Knightly Order theme should have to abide by it's rules.

 

The Lore on this is 30+ years old.  It is the very fabric of the material.

 

The lore on not being able to improve the process of creating Space Marines was 25+ years old when Primaris became a thing, and look what happened there. Related to the previous point, the Dark Angels used to have a significant native American theme to them. It was only later that they got retconned into the "Knightly Order of Medieval Christianity". GW has frequently been prepared to update, change, amend and ignore previous lore that people think of as definitive.

 

They can recontextualise things, imply that statements we took for granted are Imperial propaganda or cite unreliable narrator. More commonly, they simply say a thing and it becomes true without invalidating what went before. How many times have brand new units and weapons appeared in a Codex but been presented as if they were always there, we simply didn't know about them before? In two editions time the Codex might be written in such a way that female Space Marines have always been there, or that Space Marines are in fact completely gender-neutral and the term "Brother" is an honorific. 

 

When it comes to citing the oldest sources of lore, remember: Everything is Canon. Not everything is true.

[BitsHammer]

 

 

 

 

 

I can't understand why some people are so vehemently opposed to the idea to be honest. Does it really matter what kind of sex bits the original human had before they were completely remade into a transhuman killing machine, where behind inches of ceramite you can't tell the difference anyway?

Yes.

 

Why?

 

Because it's a Knightly brotherhood.  The chapters are modeled (heavily) off the religious knightly Orders of medieval Christianity.  The Lore on this is 30+ years old.  It is the very fabric of the material.  How many times have you read "Battle Brother" or "Brother Sergeant"?  

 

You destroy what these things are by changing that.  It's destroying the meaning of it.  I would go *much* further but I do not want to violate the forum rules.  

 

I'd like to point out that as long as we've been fighting wars women have been fighting too. We know historically that women had even pretended to be men to serve in the military, which means they too could be part of a "brotherhood" forged in the fires of war.

 

As for the knightly order, that's maybe 1/4 of the chapters? Maybe? As I talked about in my refutation of the claims that all Marines are space monks: the chapters have a MASSIVE range of cultural influences, and not all of them tie to Middle Ages Europe.

 

 

Yes I think it’s worse. It comes off as rapey and makes me uncomfortable to think about. Torturing lttle girls is just too far over the line for me. Can’t help how I feel.

Of course you can't help how you feel. You can however recognise that that is a double standard and avoid using it as an argument.

It’s not a double standard. Boys are brought in by other men, and seen as future brothers. And men are naturally more resistant to physical hardship and in general have more muscle mass to help them through the process. The survival rate difference between the two sexes would be... large.

 

You do know that the boys brought in haven't even started puberty in most cases, correct? At that stage of life neither sex has a distinct advantage over the other.

 

A few comments. Technically speaking puberty begins by the age of eleven, while most SM recruits are 12-14 in the lore if i remember correctly (age of 10 is the lowest possible and 16 the highest). In schools this is exaclty the age when a massive drop in girl's  interest in sports happens due to worsening performance in comparision to boys. While the physical differences are obviously not as sharp as between the fully mature humans, they exist and would, in my opinion, severly restrict number of girls passing the trials which most commonly involve some sort of competition between the recruits. But that's disputable to large extent.

 

What is however undisputable is that ALL space marines chapters are based on military orders. All-male warrior brotherhoods living in fortress-MONASTERIES, organising their lives around daily military training and PRAYERS, adorned in RELICS and lead to battle by CHAPLAINS. Come on.

 

And yes, women were and are present on the battlefields. But just compare the numbers. Women fighting were (and in most countries still are) exception. It's like arguing that aerodynamics are fake because there was this one F-15 which made it to the base without one wing.

 

Now seperate yourself with 38 thousand years of history, to include a period where all of humanity was forced to fight for survival against the Men of Iron and the Age of Strife that followed where worlds where regularly attacked by Xenos as well as wars being waged by human tribes.

 

Modern day logic doesn't hold up. You're using 2021 to define M40.999, and a lot of culturally redefining stuff happens between the two.

[Marshal Valkenhayn]

I prefer Space Marines as a fraternity of heroes, and it'd bum me out to see that walked back. Every other faction in the game that isn't Marines or Chaos Marines has females in it (barring orks, who don't even have 2 genders). Sisters get to be an all female army with male support, why can't we have Space Marines as an all male army with outside female support? It isn't hurting anybody, people who want to kitbash can still kitbash, but let's try and stop retconning things. It usually isn't very gracefully done.

 

After all, making Space Marines that were MORE manly caused half of us to hate the other half because it disrespected what we'd built. I can't imagine it'd go down any better in the other direction, and it wouldn't be because those of us who don't like it are sexist. We just don't like having the rug pulled out from under us.

[Schlitzaf]

So I haven’t read thread so forgive me:

But there is absolutely no reason within context of the lore we CANNOT have female or accurately a women who is a space marines. Let me elaborate, beside physique, why is someone or more percisely a “character” a women?

 

Well the literal answer is because that is how the character is idenitified. Beyond that (and how the character idenififes themselves likewise with males and men).

 

The “female” space marine could be transgender Women (is that the right term?). And then you could even apply the traits or otherwise applied to women. Lets even expand that, as part of this chapter hyper conditionining they enforce it. And force an individual to identify as “Sisters” Marines or whatever.

 

There a whole avenue of chapter mythology to explore with that. And as of the lore right now, nothing is stopping someone from doing that.*

 

*This is assuming desiring of female space marines is not just because model physique

[Valkyrion]

Again, it's not that anyone would be against the existence of female space marines had it not been explicitly stated that the process only works on males. 

 

Had that line never existed, and people just assumed every space marine was male, then that's a different thing. But it's been outright stated to be the case. 

 

The next iteration of fluff could make it so that some of the process works on females, and that marine chapters are creating new units using females and certain organs then that is one thing. Saying that space marines can now be female is something else entirely.

 

I know the arguments about fluff being mutable and that the Chief Librarian of the Ultramarines was once a half eldar hybrid, but that was discarded once the next edition rolled around. Other fluff points have similarly fallen by the wayside. This hasn't. Space Marines are male, it's been written in every codex for 30 years. It's a huge, and unnecessary, upheaval to change that.