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 StudentOfEtherium wrote:
my alternate take to all-male space marines and all-female sisters is that we can say the enhancement process for both involves transitioning. ie, the process of becoming a space marine, with the geneseed and all that, brings the recipient's body closer in line with their primarch, making any afab space marines transmasc. you can do something similar for sisters and say that by allowing for the inclusion of trans women, they open up their potential recruitment field even further. after all, trans women are still women, so the "no men under arms" policy would still apply!

That presupposes that people collectively agree what the definition of a woman is (and some people refuse to answer that question) and that trans women are women though.

Personally, I align with vipoid's take. People's obsession with needing to be validated (I play Orks, and no I don't need to identify as an angry mushroom killing machine to enjoy the faction) and have "modern day sensibilities" and trends implanted into every single hobby, piece of media or entertainment, and bad takes on history is incredibly annoying and frankly shows they want the sameification of anything distinct or remotely exclusive in a faction's identity. Especially in a wargame environment like 40k, which is anything but puppies and rainbows and not a slice of life setting, that this is where people demand to get this fix is anyone's guess but it smacks of narcissism to want everything you consume to reflect what you think is their version of reality. May as well go and create a wargame where everyone is amorphous genderless grey blobs that take the form of whatever you want to project, that's your safest bet for representation, but we all know why that doesn't currently exist in a popular format.

 Mr Morden wrote:
And I guess there is not much Sisters of Silence lore....

Which makes it even more of a shame that instead of using the existing female sub-faction to increase female 'representation' in the Custodes, GW instead just chose to lazily retcon in femstodes instead.

Sisters of Silence have been almost comically mistreated in 40K with no serious effort made to explain their inclusion. They never even got models for all of their units in 30K. It's notable that people don't really seem to care if the female faction is treated poorly...

All male Space Marines is pretty flimsy lore to begin with. It's more a tradition than anything that needs to be and it doesn't even really need to be explicitly retconned. The custodes introduction is really all that's needed.

More importantly, Space Marines are the "avatar" faction. They're designed to be flexible so anyone can see themselves as the heroes of the setting. When they were created "anyone" meant boys. These days there's no reason it shouldn't mean "everyone".

 LunarSol wrote:
They're designed to be flexible so anyone can see themselves as the heroes of the setting. When they were created "anyone" meant boys. These days there's no reason it shouldn't mean "everyone".

I'll never understand this need for self-insertion, but apparently that's the first thing everyone cares about these days.

 Lord Damocles wrote:

 Mr Morden wrote:
And I guess there is not much Sisters of Silence lore....

Which makes it even more of a shame that instead of using the existing female sub-faction to increase female 'representation' in the Custodes, GW instead just chose to lazily retcon in femstodes instead.

Sisters of Silence have been almost comically mistreated in 40K with no serious effort made to explain their inclusion. They never even got models for all of their units in 30K. It's notable that people don't really seem to care if the female faction is treated poorly...

This too. Instead of working on SoS within the Adeptus Custodes faction and really building it into a proper "Talons of the Emperor" feel, they're an afterthought. I mean they basically have one unique kit in the whole faction and that's it. But you'll notice it's only ever people wanting to turn explicitly male factions into having females in their ranks rather than the other way around or boosting the representation of existing female factions. It's like people complaining that female sports teams make less than their male counterparts, but those very people never actually attend female sports games.

Sisters of Silence feels like that pet project of one designer who left/got let go and no one else in the office wants to take it up so its been left to languish with nothing.

I was glad to see them rolled into the Custodes, but yeah GW could do so much with them!

 Grimskul wrote:
But you'll notice it's only ever people wanting to turn explicitly male factions into having females in their ranks rather than the other way around or boosting the representation of existing female factions.

Lol, that's bullgak and you know it.

The difference now is that SoB has had a full range refresh and Guard has finally been given a better balance of men/women models after years. People are still clamoring for more Guard models, Catachans especially after Ripper Jackson and Not-Carl Weathers.
In terms of Xenos, Aeldari have always had a good balance, and GSC and the Leagues are pretty even as well. Necrons are skeletons and Tyranids are both sexless and genderless. Mechanicus are more machine than meat so making explicitly male or female models is out of the question without going into smut.

That leaves Marines and Custodes as the only other model ranges that can visibly be shown to not be explicitly male only.

I love their general concept and design, but something about their sculpts always felt off. Not sure if it's their proportions or the studio paint job. I guess I'll have to get a test miniature and see for myself.

I think they skipped adding more SOS models because they didn’t want to add more than a single hero.

Forgetting, of course, that they could have added a cool new anti-psyker assassin kit.

 BertBert wrote:

 LunarSol wrote:
They're designed to be flexible so anyone can see themselves as the heroes of the setting. When they were created "anyone" meant boys. These days there's no reason it shouldn't mean "everyone".

I'll never understand this need for self-insertion, but apparently that's the first thing everyone cares about these days.

It's a thing people push as an argument for why more different groups don't appear within the hobby.

However, as I've argued before, I don't think its the models. The models are toys. Toys you can convert, paint, model and adjust. Heck today the market is saturated with vast amounts of knowledge and access (3rd prints!) to make your own conversions and such.


Where you need the representation isn't in the models or factions. We don't need female orks or gender identity parties for Tyranids - what we need are actual physical real people. Actual women winning the Golden Demon; trans winning tournaments; presenters with GW and other firms of diverse backgrounds. That, I think, is where you'd actually see proper growth. Also that kind of growth would also lead to actual impressions and ideas from those groups coming into the hobby; rather than the core current demographic guessing.

When the primary seller for Warhammer (not 40k, Warhammer) is an all-male army with specific background reasons (shaky as they are) as to why there are no girls, that enforces the notion that Warhammer is for boys.

Would FSM fix that? I doubt it. Would it help to reduce the chuds who cling to Space Marines being male-only as a way to be misogynistic and keep women out of hobby spaces? Yes, in the long term I believe it would.

I guess the setting itself is not very appealing to the masses and without a major change and retcon it won't be

I doubt that having female killers that tramble on civilians in their way to fight everyone who doubt the regime is right will attract more female players

GW tried to mitigate that effect somewhat at the start of 10th with Sororitas being marketed front and center next to marines (not in the starter set, mind you). So I assume they are aware of this issue and are working on it, while still trying to keep SM identity untouched.

 Overread wrote:
My view is that Marines have lore, a story, a structure behind who they are and what they are. That lore does NOT have to reflect modern gender politics.

In fact the VAST majority of factions in GW do not follow modern morality nor social values. Marines will issue genocide orders on whole planets at times.


I don't ask that my Marines observe the Geneva Convention, Human Rights and Articles of War - so why do they have to follow gender balance?




The Marines have a story behind them and yes you can argue that the science might be wonky; but freaking heck this is a sci-fi universe where the factions run around with chainsaws on the battlefield and their main battle tank is straight out of WW1.



Sisters of Battle are the same. They don't have to have Bothers of Battle added to them. Again they've a story; that story defines part of what they are officially.




NOW what I put above is what I feel the official GW angle should be. What YOU do with YOUR army and models - do whatever the heck you want. Female Marines; Hello Kitty Marines; Pony Marines; Mechanical Marines; Brothers of Battle

Do whatever you want. The market is flooded wtih material for conversions and 3D printing has expanded that roster in a massive way.

I'm 100% all for people converting to represent what they wish and to adapt the lore to suit themselves within the bubble of their own game and their corner of the mad, insane world that is 40K.







ps my point about the lore being the lore also means GW should be adding more women to the ranks of the Guard, because they've always been present in the lore and story of the setting. Indeed whilst you could argue the marines are regressive on that front; the Imperial Guard is highly progressive

<Literally this, could not have said it better myself. exalted

I knew a guy one time who had a custom all female catachan guard army. it was a pretty cool idea.

there's no meaningful differences between men, women, or anything else, anyway, so it shouldn't really matter on the tabletop, either

I personally could not disagree more with this from a purely scientific fact based reality. but you do you, id rather keep that real world side discussions and debates out of my fictional world where there is plenty of gender representation across every faction, even if marines can only be genetic male engineered copies of their primarchs. >

 kodos wrote:
I guess the setting itself is not very appealing to the masses and without a major change and retcon it won't be

I doubt that having female killers that tramble on civilians in their way to fight everyone who doubt the regime is right will attract more female players

The issue with this train of thought is that Marines aren't generally presented as horrific murder machines for a fascist empire.

 Gert wrote:
Would it help to reduce the chuds who cling to Space Marines being male-only as a way to be misogynistic and keep women out of hobby spaces? Yes, in the long term I believe it would.

I don't think it would make one bit of difference.

If a group of people wish to exclude another group of people then the parent firm of the game they like making a chance like female-marines would just be seen as "pandering" and the chud group would just ignore that "new lore" and stick to "traditional".

In the end GW could change the lore to happy carebears and it wouldn't matter. For that group the fact that marines are all male is simply an excuse; their actual reason is purely social exclusion.



Plus, again, the models don't matter. Now if the latest winner of GD is a women; if the latest winner of the tournament they attend is a women - if the notable iconic figureheads of the community (not the game) are women. THAT makes the difference. Again I think its really important to separate toys from actual real community people in this regard. Because every time we end up talking about female marines its not actually about the lore; the models; the toys; the game. It's purely about "we think this will increase real people diversity". And to me that just doesn't work. People aren't inspired so much by toys as they are by actual real people. By the paintwork and modelling they do; by the attitudes and charisma they have; by the fun they show being had etc...

You put female marines in and I'd wager it would change nothing of GW's core demographic. You put women on the panels; you have notable sculptors highlighted (seriously there are a lot of women in sculpting and its a huge shame that the market leader sets the tone of "hiding" their sculptors. Beyond a notable few in the early days, we know almost no one who actually sculpts the models we love); you have whole youtube channels presented by; you have the big Warhammer + TV articles, games and more played and engaged with by women.

 kodos wrote:
I guess the setting itself is not very appealing to the masses and without a major change and retcon it won't be

Basically this and I don't think that it should pander to the mythical idea of a "modern audience" that is all inclusive because changing itself to appeal to everyone is an exercise in futility. It's a niche hobby and while it's become more mainstream than it was in the past, it fundamentally is still largely dominated by guys because the baseline setting and the actually hobby itself trends towards a male audience (and a very specific one at that as well) to begin with and you can't force girls into joining just to achieve some abitrary idea of gender parity or diversity. Just like how the cosmestics and fashion industry will be dominated by women, and I don't think you should force changes in products to appeal to men, I think there's fundamentally nothing wrong with having a skew to a particular demographic. Are you going to start hating on how kids are the primary focus for Paw Patrol and that adults are being excluded in that franchise due to ageism? While we shouldn't actively bar women from joining, like Overread said, sweeping changes to the lore are not going to the Panacea you're looking for (and in fact, can do the opposite and dilute the identity of the actual setting if you go gung ho with more and more retcons) and any weird sexist/mysognist stuff is really tied to the local community that should be addressed there, GW isn't going to be able (nor should they) police people's behaviours and you can find arseholes in any hobby, it feels like that particular fear is just a shield to push changes you guys want.

 JNAProductions wrote:

 kodos wrote:
I guess the setting itself is not very appealing to the masses and without a major change and retcon it won't be
I doubt that having female killers that tramble on civilians in their way to fight everyone who doubt the regime is right will attract more female players

The issue with this train of thought is that Marines aren't generally presented as horrific murder machines for a fascist empire.

because murder machines don't make good poster boys if you want to appeal to the mass market and have parents buy toys for their kids

so marketing does not reflect background and people think those are the heroes of the story instead of the average humans

like you did not need to have a female Terminator to make the genre appealing to the masses so females can identify with the Terminator too and not just boys
yet the heroes of the story were Kyle Reese and Sarah Connor

40k can have all the different people as average humans, and those can also be the heroes, good guys and protagonist, but changing the horrific murder machines to be inclusive and hide their murder aspect from the public is the wrong way of making 40k more appealing
you can, but than you need also remove all the work from the past and really reset the background and remove all the old connections

Er... how many people in this thread are women* or have asked women about this? This thread mostly reads as a bunch of blokes who reckon better representation wouldn't work to pull in more female customers. Maybe it wouldn't, but the thread is full of anecdotes at best, and mainly just unsupported assertions.

Meanwhile GW has been shifting to more diversity in their model range for nearly a decade and has access to sales and engagement data we do not. Clearly they think this is a profitable strategy based on that. They may have focus-grouped it. They may have taken some risks and it paid off and they kept the trend. Maybe they did some other kind of market research. Who knows? But clearly they are continuing down this path for a reason, and it isn't going to be altruism by a PLC.

*I am aware of at least one in this thread who is in support of the mixed-gender Custodes.

steelhead177th wrote:
Mod edit - removed

Haha, that post is a lot of crap but I guess someone had to be that guy .
I'd say most people won't even care what gender the people in that thick golden armour have. It's not that big of a deal to proclaim the downfall of the whole game.
The difference between Zulus and Space Marines should be obvious, but I'll help you and point out that one of them is fiction.

Also, to the people saying that "gender politics" are brought into the game I'd say they were always there. Catachans, Orks and Space Marines are western "gender politics" of the 80s in Action. Super Heroes could only be men and couldn't be differently perceived. Times have changed and now equality of genders has become a thing in Western societies as well, the game merely reflects its society like it did 30 years ago.
A cynic might say that the fascist Imperium is not that evil anymore also is a reflection how fascism as a whole is on the rise and underestimated as well but I think that's a stretch and probably offtopic.

If they brought back some satire or reflection on "this is how stuff can go wrong", having a narrators comment on "this is how flawed our heroes are, as they are only men" could be a fun comment. I would appreciate that more than just a retcon.

 Haighus wrote:
Er... how many people in this thread are women* or have asked women about this? This thread mostly reads as a bunch of blokes who reckon better representation wouldn't work to pull in more female customers. Maybe it wouldn't, but the thread is full of anecdotes at best, and mainly just unsupported assertions.

Meanwhile GW has been shifting to more diversity in their model range for nearly a decade and has access to sales and engagement data we do not. Clearly they think this is a profitable strategy based on that. They may have focus-grouped it. They may have taken some risks and it paid off and they kept the trend. Maybe they did some other kind of market research. Who knows? But clearly they are continuing down this path for a reason, and it isn't going to be altruism by a PLC.

*I am aware of at least one in this thread who is in support of the mixed-gender Custodes.

I've asked my sisters their opinion way back who are aware of Warhammer as a hobby I've been part in for a while now, and frankly although I was able to get both sisters into Warcraft 3, the younger one into WoW and the Persona game series and even Yu-Gi-Oh/Beyblade, when it came to Warhammer, at that point in time it was seen as something that has too much up front investment to enjoy casually and they preferred going further into things like anime (for my older sister) and K-pop (for my younger sister). Even when I showed my younger sister the different factions and asked her which one she found looked the best on first impressions, she was drawn to Eldar due to their aesthetic (she likes elves) and Tyranids for their uniqueness and fundamentally never saw marines as something she would start just based on what they looked like and all the stuff I showed her was helmeted so she wasn't aware they were male only. I've asked her if making them female would change anything and she said no, and she said on second glance that the Sisters of Battle caught her attention only because of the overt faith aspect since we're Christian. So I think this idea where seeing one female head on a SM body would be revolutionary is definitely overblown.

 Overread wrote:
I don't think it would make one bit of difference.

If a group of people wish to exclude another group of people then the parent firm of the game they like making a chance like female-marines would just be seen as "pandering" and the chud group would just ignore that "new lore" and stick to "traditional".

In the end GW could change the lore to happy carebears and it wouldn't matter. For that group the fact that marines are all male is simply an excuse; their actual reason is purely social exclusion.

That is a cop-out for refusing to combat poor behaviours in a community. "We can't stop the racists/sexists/homophobes cos they'll always be racists/sexists/homophobes". You can stop them from infesting your community and you can help to prevent them from dragging more people into their orbit by normalising the things they spew hate about.
You can claim it would make no difference but look at the likes of women's football in the UK. The attitude towards the sport is massively different and the support the England team got at the Women's 2022 Euros was huge.
Nobody here is expecting a change overnight but never trying because it might take time is a poor excuse not to try in the first place.

Plus, again, the models don't matter.

Nope, that is complete tosh. SoB got their huge redo and there were a bunch of stories of parents taking their girls into Warhammer shops and the girls getting interested because there were women models. When the White Scars supplement for 8th got released there was backlash because it had an awful rendition of "Asian Marine" that bordered on racism. When more diverse modeling options for faces came for both Marines and Stormcast, the various people they represented talked about how cool it was that GW had finally given the option to accurately represent the diversity of humanity on their models.
Representation works and matters to people.

 Gert wrote:

 Overread wrote:
I don't think it would make one bit of difference.

If a group of people wish to exclude another group of people then the parent firm of the game they like making a chance like female-marines would just be seen as "pandering" and the chud group would just ignore that "new lore" and stick to "traditional".

In the end GW could change the lore to happy carebears and it wouldn't matter. For that group the fact that marines are all male is simply an excuse; their actual reason is purely social exclusion.

That is a cop-out for refusing to combat poor behaviours in a community. "We can't stop the racists/sexists/homophobes cos they'll always be racists/sexists/homophobes". You can stop them from infesting your community and you can help to prevent them from dragging more people into their orbit by normalising the things they spew hate about.
You can claim it would make no difference but look at the likes of women's football in the UK. The attitude towards the sport is massively different and the support the England team got at the Women's 2022 Euros was huge.
Nobody here is expecting a change overnight but never trying because it might take time is a poor excuse not to try in the first place.

I never said that efforts could not be made to combat poor community behaviour. I said that you don't combat it simply by making female marine models.
Changing the gender options of a model in a fictional game won't change the behaviour of those who wish to socially exclude others.


Womens football is also a different comparison and kind of supports my point honestly. Because those aren't toys playing football, those are actual real women. Those are named women appearing winning events; being promoted; shown playing the game itself. They didn't modify football, they didn't change football. They changed who got promoted being played and being shown. They showed that women do have a fun time playing; they created teams and named players and more. They inspired other women to get involved.

They didn't paint the ball pink and stick frills on the goalposts. They simply promoted women players and started to give them more attention.

Again this swings back to my point, the barrier isn't a lack of women in the space marine army roster; as you note the Sisters of Battle exist; the Tyranids exist; the Sisters of Silence - - would exist if GW invested into them. There are options for people who want to play as aliens; as monsters; as male and female dominated armies. The Imperial Guard range is steadily catching up to its lore in being more gender diverse.

I imagine GW will make the leap at some point. After all there has to be a Marine release every 18 months or that section of the playerbase is missing out.

With that said I imagine it won't change very much. I reckon any market of potential buyers who aren't in because Marines are all men but would be if the lore changed is tiny.

As others say - if you want female Marines just make them. Plenty of people have done so.

I know it prompts "no, no, the lore is very different!" - but I think Sisters of Silence have really struggled to define themselves as a thing given the wider Sisters of Battle release. Which is a shame. I'm not sure what direction you'd take them though to carve out a niche.

 Haighus wrote:
Er... how many people in this thread are women* or have asked women about this? This thread mostly reads as a bunch of blokes who reckon better representation wouldn't work to pull in more female customers. Maybe it wouldn't, but the thread is full of anecdotes at best, and mainly just unsupported assertions.

Meanwhile GW has been shifting to more diversity in their model range for nearly a decade and has access to sales and engagement data we do not. Clearly they think this is a profitable strategy based on that. They may have focus-grouped it. They may have taken some risks and it paid off and they kept the trend. Maybe they did some other kind of market research. Who knows? But clearly they are continuing down this path for a reason, and it isn't going to be altruism by a PLC.

well, I know my wifes opinion on the setting, and that she does not like it has nothing to do with Space Marines not being female or that there are not enough female models for the Imperium
as from the factions should is most interested in Eldar as she always plays Elves and they have had female models from the very beginning for their troops

if GW would see a big leap and sales if they change the background, maybe. If they could keep the position they have by killing of their main setting and replacing it with a similar but new one, remains to be seen

Sgt. Cortez wrote:

3. Female Chaos Space Marines should happen as they don't care about stupid "science" of 10K years ago. They also don't care about imperial dogma.

The way I see it, Chaos is a meritocracy. If a woman can murder her way to the top, power to her. My Chaos Knights are led by a woman (I used the carapce from Canis Rex to model her hatch open so you can see the pilot), and I more recently made a Chaos Lord model for her.

Right now, the only thing keeping loyalist Marines all-male is GW, and they can change that with the stroke of a pen. All they have to do is say that due to increasing rates of attrition, Cawl was forced to figure out a way to induct women into the Astares.

In the meantime, if you want to make female Marine models, knock yourself out.

While I do have strong opinions on the matter, I will just limit myself here and agree with Morden.
If this truly goes through, oh boy, there goes any chance the SoS had of having a little bit of spotlight. Such a shame, blanks are so cool; so are secondary armies within armies (Kroots being a great example)

It is now officially official:
https://twitter.com/warhammer/status/1779544596172689822?t=5nhxgvMavfMHYWm5Ahxrdg&s=19

 Grimtuff wrote:
Mod edit - removed

Or, having representation helps people feel like they belong and defangs bigots of at least one tool to try to exclude others.