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[Jopax]

Not a lore one so much as a symbolic one. They're the emperors prodigy in a way, made from the closest things to sons he had and they continue that legacy as the chosen of mankind. He chose to make them all men and until he wakes up to say that doing otherwise is allowed I'm pretty sure it's considered heresy. It's why women were given a chance to serve trough the SoB branch (and I guess the IG, but those aren't modeled afaik) which are about as close to proper SM as they can get.

[Flying Dice]

I'm told there's a significant uproar in the Warhammer 40k community about the concept of female space marines. There is a group that vocally does not want them. Only men can be space marines, because MACHISMO.

How is a woman wielding a heavy machine gun in one hand and a sword made of chainsaws in the other mowing down hordes of roaring orcs not flat-out awesome? In what way is this not literally the sexiest thing you can imagine as a hetero guy? Where did these men leave their penises? Do they remember how long ago it was that they lost them, and do they need help retracing their steps?

That has nothing to do with it in-universe, and nobody argues along those lines. SMs are exclusively male because the geneseed's relatively few compatible targets are male. All SM are ultimately derived from Emps.

Now if you want to make an argument that GW has some misogynistic shitters in charge of important stuff like rules and lore, you definitely have a leg to stand on there, and I would not be entirely surprised if that wasn't part of the reason the lore is as it is.

Likewise as noted, the SoB are basically the toughest human force besides the SM, wear power armor and casually use heavy weapons, and are exclusively female. And they do it without the extensive genetic modification. Never mind that a good chunk of the Guard is female, and good IG are the most badass fuckers in most any setting you can name. There are plenty of female Inquisitors (though that's not necessarily a good thing...), the AdMech doesn't give a shit about gender.... &c. on down the list. Anyone who has ever moaned about women not being represented in the Imperium's military is totally ignorant of 40K and looking for a reason to call nerds sexist. It's literally just the SMs that are exclusively male, and that for much the same reason that everything in the IoM is stagnant as hell (in-universe nothing ever changes out-universe GW doesn't want to change anything and a bunch of silly shit has been added by idiots).

[Taricus]

Well, they did actually throw in a bit of lore about how the emperor tried to make female space marines, but gave up on it due to problems with the implants and all that.

Also, anyone who thinks GW won't move the plot forward... well, they blew up cadia so I think they took a thunder hammer to the status quo

[Rolan7]

Not a lore one so much as a symbolic one. They're the emperors prodigy in a way, made from the closest things to sons he had and they continue that legacy as the chosen of mankind. He chose to make them all men and until he wakes up to say that doing otherwise is allowed I'm pretty sure it's considered heresy. It's why women were given a chance to serve trough the SoB branch (and I guess the IG, but those aren't modeled afaik) which are about as close to proper SM as they can get.

He also abolished all religion, and you see how that turned out.
I'm 99% sure Space Marines are infertile, at least in the normal sense (based on Chapter Master, they can be harvested for a net geneseed profit after death).  I mean they're what, 10-12ft tall?  I think it's an open question whether they even have sex organs.  Everything else about them has been genetically or surgically modified...

My headcanon is that women can undergo the process, and maybe they do in some chapters.  Pretty sure there are canon sources which refute that... but 40K canon changes drastically, if slowly.  It would not be the snowflakiest thing for a chapter to do, by far.

S'not like they'd be obviously feminine, afterward, except certain angles of the face.  I guess some SM chapters have long hair (Space Wolves, and I'm just guessing), but most keep it short because military.  As for chest-fat, they wouldn't even need to go Amazon - just check out female body builders.  And that's un-augmented, SM are on a whole unnatural level from that.

As for the Emperor argument...  I'd be surprised if the psykers who merged to form him were all male.  Though I think maybe that backstory isn't canon anymore...  see what I mean?

Sisters of Battle are neat and all, but they're just one branch of the Ecclesiarchy, and that whole mess is pretty messed up.  And makes the Emperor cry tears from his empty sockets.

[Tiruin]

I'm told there's a significant uproar in the Warhammer 40k community about the concept of female space marines. There is a group that vocally does not want them. Only men can be space marines, because MACHISMO.

How is a woman wielding a heavy machine gun in one hand and a sword made of chainsaws in the other mowing down hordes of roaring orcs not flat-out awesome? In what way is this not literally the sexiest thing you can imagine as a hetero guy? Where did these men leave their penises? Do they remember how long ago it was that they lost them, and do they need help retracing their steps?

That has nothing to do with it in-universe, and nobody argues along those lines. SMs are exclusively male because the geneseed's relatively few compatible targets are male. All SM are ultimately derived from Emps.

Now if you want to make an argument that GW has some misogynistic shitters in charge of important stuff like rules and lore, you definitely have a leg to stand on there, and I would not be entirely surprised if that wasn't part of the reason the lore is as it is.

Likewise as noted, the SoB are basically the toughest human force besides the SM, wear power armor and casually use heavy weapons, and are exclusively female. And they do it without the extensive genetic modification. Never mind that a good chunk of the Guard is female, and good IG are the most badass fuckers in most any setting you can name. There are plenty of female Inquisitors (though that's not necessarily a good thing...), the AdMech doesn't give a shit about gender.... &c. on down the list. Anyone who has ever moaned about women not being represented in the Imperium's military is totally ignorant of 40K and looking for a reason to call nerds sexist. It's literally just the SMs that are exclusively male, and that for much the same reason that everything in the IoM is stagnant as hell (in-universe nothing ever changes out-universe GW doesn't want to change anything and a bunch of silly shit has been added by idiots).

From where I understood it, alongside all that was said and I agree with, visibility may be an issue too
I'm of the belief that many people got their start in knowing 40k by the games, and in said games there's a lot of visibility for Space Marines (and their many colorful chapters), and given where players start off -- their basis can come straight from IRL situations. The Sororitas only seemingly have one Order being represented (The White Rose), and may give off the impression that their hairstyle is...only white (which is characteristic of that Order but not of the other orders in existence), and...I'm unsure about the comparison between how available tabletop gaming is (I seriously wish we had it HERE IN THE PHILIPPINES [or D&D :V but I never got to play any]), but it seems more that the visibility is through the games first. That and there's that note about the Emperor and female space marines before--there's no discrimination anyway, and more focus seems to be placed on the SM's which may cause this kind of thought-out.

Didn't matter to me in the first place though, as it made sense in lore, and that if I was a female aspired by the Space Marines (eg My world is under attack D: I want to serve the Emperor! Space Marines saved me people via drop pods!), it's not like I have a ton of other choices that are just as cool or inspirational despite the ton of darkness and grim feelings every bit of them may provide. That and the most popular SMs aren't jerks, even if there are jerks everywhere And while the Ecclesiarchy can be between 'extreme' fervor and balance, there's still a nice spot in there to consider the Sisters.

That, and reading up the lore, that there's a lot more IG (Female or Male) being re/presented in helping folks and saving worlds than Space Marines given the number galaxy-wide. So...that's what caused me to say visibility.

That and I read a nice game on spacebattles(?).com about a neutral chapter of Space Marines in some quadrant of the galaxy with its head being a female sorceror who isn't really bad or with Chaos, but has been forced into her position by Chaos (or whatever) but stuck with the conundrum that seemingly is visible in the 40k universe: What choices are present when 'this faction' controls 'your side of space'.

[misko27]

Part of it is a focus on the word "Space Marine." Space Marine is, within 40k, a technical term to describe a very specific group fo people, whereas the word "Space Marine" as it is actually used in the Sci-Fi world has a more generic usage. i.e. it's a name, not just "the people who fulfill the role of marines, but in SPACE; and also COOLER." or "people with armor! And guns! And inexplicable melee weapons! IN SPACE." There are most definitely women who fit the latter definitions in 40k.

Space Marines have always been all men. I don't remember if there was ever an in-universe reason for it although I'd bet there is. Suddenly having female marines and pretending that it's always been that way would be kinda dissonant. It'd be like suddenly giving Gordon Freeman full voice-acting; not directly contradicting anything, but against pretty long-established rules. The alternative would be advancing the universe of 40k in order to introduce a reason for female marines to exist, and I understand GW would rather self-destruct than advance the plot of 40k.

Either retcon or new canon, there's a problem: because it's about gender, it will feel contrived at this stage of the game. It'll feel like a choice made so that the game could stay relevant, rather than because whoever writes 40k lore genuinely decided to add it. I wouldn't call it pandering, but it feels artificial and game-y. Like breaking the 4th wall on some weird meta level.

I don't give a damn about the lore of 40k, I just like the memes and videogames. I think female Space Marines would be cool too, all of what Dunamisdeos says applies. At the same time though I can understand why it would rub /tg/ grognards who've been playing tabletop 40k since the 80's the wrong way. I have no idea if what I said above is what they're actually saying, I just tried to put myself in their shoes.

Now see, this is a reasonable approach. Were you building 40k from the groundup, you probably wouldn't design it this way at all, but GW is not doing that (and can we say thank the Emperor for that! Never forget what happened to Fantasy...).

Also, anyone who thinks GW won't move the plot forward... well, they blew up cadia so I think they took a thunder hammer to the status quo

There's still hope. It's not moving the plot forward until it's the 42nd Millenium. Until then it's just a Zeno's Paradox countdown to Midnight/Doomsday, where it keeps going but never arrives anywhere.

But anyway. They have the established conventions, the established fanbase, the established a lot of things; of course GW likes to mess things up, but it's one of the only things they've even been totally consistent on. You'd have to rock a lot of boats to get it added, you'd hear an endless stream of bitching (if not worse) from the people who give the company their most reliable dollar (and 4chan would raise an unholy tantrum), and the complaint that it's forcing in diversity is, not wrong? I mean from a story perspective, the Imperium is quite well established as incredibly, mindbogglingly conservative about basically everything (which is the whole point of 40k! The Imperium prides itself on being as closeminded as possible at all times), so it's not like they don't have grounds for saying it's discordant.

Not a lore one so much as a symbolic one. They're the emperors prodigy in a way, made from the closest things to sons he had and they continue that legacy as the chosen of mankind. He chose to make them all men and until he wakes up to say that doing otherwise is allowed I'm pretty sure it's considered heresy. It's why women were given a chance to serve trough the SoB branch (and I guess the IG, but those aren't modeled afaik) which are about as close to proper SM as they can get.

For my bit, I'd say that the fact that SoB and female Imperial Guard are under-represented despite being very lore-friendly is much more of an issue and a sign of some sexism (in the real world, not 40k) than the space marine thing. I don't play Warhammer myself, but from what I've heard it's a hard life being a fan of the Sisters of Battle. People focus on the space marines because GW obviously favor them and they are the face of the franchise (and the nerd fantasy of the kickbutt action guy who doesn't afraid of anything), but I feel like the focus ignores the underrepresentation elsewhere.

From where I understood it, alongside all that was said and I agree with, visibility may be an issue too
I'm of the belief that many people got their start in knowing 40k by the games, and in said games there's a lot of visibility for Space Marines (and their many colorful chapters), and given where players start off -- their basis can come straight from IRL situations. The Sororitas only seemingly have one Order being represented (The White Rose), and may give off the impression that their hairstyle is...only white (which is characteristic of that Order but not of the other orders in existence), and...I'm unsure about the comparison between how available tabletop gaming is (I seriously wish we had it HERE IN THE PHILIPPINES [or D&D :V but I never got to play any]), but it seems more that the visibility is through the games first. That and there's that note about the Emperor and female space marines before--there's no discrimination anyway, and more focus seems to be placed on the SM's which may cause this kind of thought-out.

Didn't matter to me in the first place though, as it made sense in lore, and that if I was a female aspired by the Space Marines (eg My world is under attack D: I want to serve the Emperor! Space Marines saved me people via drop pods!), it's not like I have a ton of other choices that are just as cool or inspirational despite the ton of darkness and grim feelings every bit of them may provide. That and the most popular SMs aren't jerks, even if there are jerks everywhere And while the Ecclesiarchy can be between 'extreme' fervor and balance, there's still a nice spot in there to consider the Sisters.

That, and reading up the lore, that there's a lot more IG (Female or Male) being re/presented in helping folks and saving worlds than Space Marines given the number galaxy-wide. So...that's what caused me to say visibility.

That and I read a nice game on spacebattles(?).com about a neutral chapter of Space Marines in some quadrant of the galaxy with its head being a female sorceror who isn't really bad or with Chaos, but has been forced into her position by Chaos (or whatever) but stuck with the conundrum that seemingly is visible in the 40k universe: What choices are present when 'this faction' controls 'your side of space'.

Or Tiruin could come in and steal my thunder.

Also, I just briefly hallucinated (it's like a sudden flash, or lapse rather, where your eyes connect things in a way that they aren't supposed to connect) that words of this reply page formed a very distinct image not unlike an Ork, or monstrous hippopotamus. Maybe I should get some sleep.

[George_Chickens]

I'm told there's a significant uproar in the Warhammer 40k community about the concept of female space marines. There is a group that vocally does not want them. Only men can be space marines, because MACHISMO.

How is a woman wielding a heavy machine gun in one hand and a sword made of chainsaws in the other mowing down hordes of roaring orcs not flat-out awesome? In what way is this not literally the sexiest thing you can imagine as a hetero guy? Where did these men leave their penises? Do they remember how long ago it was that they lost them, and do they need help retracing their steps?

Now if you want to make an argument that GW has some misogynistic shitters in charge of important stuff like rules and lore, you definitely have a leg to stand on there, and I would not be entirely surprised if that wasn't part of the reason the lore is as it is.

Sauceplz. GW may be a bunch of horrible and nasty cunts, but that sounds a tad "HE ATE TEN PUPPIES AND KITTENS NO HONEST I SAW IT WITH MY OWN TWO EYES!"-like, with levels of bad stacked on top of that.

GW may be a bad company renowned for its likelihood to sue, threaten, and ^*'fine' while horribly shafting the consumers for an extra few dollars, but hating women is another league of terrible.

_{*local GW stores will extort players suspected of using unofficial models, and if they don't pay the fine they are banned.}

[Reelya]

Haha, I ended up reading about the pro's and con's of the female space marines issue. Turns out GW later wrote in a thing where the emperor told people he had tried to make female space marines (to totally show he's not be a sexist douchebag) but coz of the genes and hormones etc it didn't work out.

Of course, the emperor isn't the one accused of sexism, and "in universe" justifications for what are clearly the author's biases don't actually make any sense to defuse the argument. How about my sci-fi setting in which humans have achieved godlike powers, but unfortunately only white people have the correct DNA structures to achieve it? It's not racist at all, because I explained it within the setting.

Seriously I have zero sympathy for the people who get angry about people questioning this type of "canon". If someone is really that enraged just because someone draws a girl space marine then they clearly haven't grown pubes yet and deserve to get spammed with even more of it.

[Tiruin]

[...]. If someone is really that enraged just because someone draws a girl space marine then they clearly haven't grown pubes yet and deserve to get spammed with even more of it.

It has actually happened. (HAH, I found the thing I remembered!)

Spoiler: The drawing, that is. (click to show/hide)

Medea Altheos. Leader of the Storm Crow chapter. (Reference has the name linked)
Sorceror in Terminator armor.

And people weren't all fiesty about it. In lore, there were no 'HERESY' ideas rolling about too. Just surprise and 'um, okay, you're with us and not Chaos though right?' and it was all not-really-that-bad-at-all.

[Rolan7]

Yeah to clarify, I don't think this is a big deal at all.  I certainly don't think GW are misogynistic that I've seen.
I think they're mostly trying to avoid any issues, while having women in the IG, and that's pretty dang decent!

That, and reading up the lore, that there's a lot more IG (Female or Male) being re/presented in helping folks and saving worlds than Space Marines given the number galaxy-wide. So...that's what caused me to say visibility.

That and I read a nice game on spacebattles(?).com about a neutral chapter of Space Marines in some quadrant of the galaxy with its head being a female sorceror who isn't really bad or with Chaos, but has been forced into her position by Chaos (or whatever) but stuck with the conundrum that seemingly is visible in the 40k universe: What choices are present when 'this faction' controls 'your side of space'.

Definitely, there are a *lot* more IG, and many of them are female.  I'm pretty sure most planets only know the Space Marines as legends, if at all.  Even on the relatively few planets SM have actually visited.  Codex Astartes compliant chapters seem to be capped at 1000 marines...  Whereas planetary defense on a well-populated world is probably in the millions conservatively (or maybe a little higher)

I have a lot more respect for female IG than SoB, honestly.  IG in general are admirable for selflessness and doing more with less, but also I just don't like the Ecclesiarchy.  Especially the SoB.  The Imperium is a crapsack where people must be sacrificed to stop chaos, but they... get weird about it.  Divine cleansing flame and all that.  While ironically perverting the idea of the Emperor, just as the Word Bearers did.

Also, dangit, I was hoping to lighten this post with that image of the Doom Marine in pink armor, grinning, with like...  some stats saying they're part uniform and somewhere between genders?  Can't find it anywhere, though.  I guess it'd be a cheap gag anyway.

As for the sorcerer thing...  Space Marines have psykers, but they're called librarians and have special equipment and training.  This lady sounds like a chaos pawn who just doesn't know it yet.  And/or a Mary Sue
Fakedit:  Ooh, nice image!
But I'm pretty sure she's lacking the Librarian armor-stuff...  Yeaaah, she's playing with fire.  (In this setting she should *not* be able to pull a Drizzt and be good)

[Tiruin]

Fakedit:  Ooh, nice image!
But I'm pretty sure she's lacking the Librarian armor-stuff...  Yeaaah, she's playing with fire.  (In this setting she should *not* be able to pull a Drizzt and be good)

The setting was (IMO) really presented well; the reason of all the shenanigans was 'warp shenanigans and time and something with the Council of Nikea', so they didn't have access to Librarian stuff. But yeah, it's currently on a hiatus but as far as I've read on the wiki and the game, it's nice. There's a bit of (probably blunt) anime behavior character-mindsets, but anyway.

Could I ask how accessibility of tabletop games spread? From one country to another, I'm wholly clueless of how those work and be managed.

[Reelya]

Well we can read real 40K fans getting upset about the idea here:
http://warhammer40k.wikia.com/wiki/Thread:65017

I don't think that the female body would be able to endure the transformation - process of turning into a Space Marine. Also, why would some chaos warband be desperate to recruit women? There is a fair amount of men and women on each planet in the Imperium. The theory that some chaos warband won't be able to find a planet with thousands if not with million men does not make a lot of sense...

Yes, women being soldiers? Inconceivable! Clearly with million of men to pick from and millions of women, not one of those women would be tougher than most of the men.

It is stated in the source somewhere that female bodies are unable to take in the fragment of the Emperor's genome.

Of course, if it's stated in the games books then it's not sexist or arbitrary whatsoever

And like has been repeated before, a female trying to become a Space Marine would obviously die during the implantation process. The female body couldn't handle all of the new organs, since the gene seed implants were made with a male body in mind. Many males already do not survive the implantation process. ... Historically, women never served in any of the militaries some of the chapters are a reflection of.

"Obviously" women would die but men wouldn't when being implanted with a life form that's not themselves. Actually, hold on a minute, that makes no sense at all ...

let's for the sake of argument say that the process was altered enough, by bile or some other gene-wright, to allow the creation of a fully functional female astartes. a female astartes would be a 7-foot hulking mass of muscle but would still be proportional to a male astartes - generally shorter, not as heavily muscled etc. but they would still be an astartes and therefore the pinnacle of human soldiery, just behind male astartes.

Yup, clearly a science fantasy process which is entirely made up with near-godlike powers could only produce inferior specimens when fed a child lacking the Y chromosome. You can see how all this is clearly the fanbase bias but wrapped up in pseudo-science validations.

[Lord Shonus]

Definitely, there are a *lot* more IG, and many of them are female.  I'm pretty sure most planets only know the Space Marines as legends, if at all.  Even on the relatively few planets SM have actually visited.  Codex Astartes compliant chapters seem to be capped at 1000 marines...  Whereas planetary defense on a well-populated world is probably in the millions conservatively (or maybe a little higher)

Damn, that reminds me of a story or comic I came across once about a 40k peasant. It starts out with him going about his primitive life on his primitive planet, feeling sorry for the Emperor because He has to be all alone and watch over everybody. It proceeds through him witnessing an ork? attack that was defeated by a detachment of Space Marines, and ends with him narrating that now he knows the Emperor is not alone, and that he hopes He never sends His angels to this place again.

Wish I could find that. Honestly, I've always found the 40k universe just a bit too over the top to enjoy, but there's a lot of good ideas in there.

[Reelya]

I think little details like the "no chicks" space marines actually detract from the setting because it makes it seem less self-aware. The best part of 40K is the ironic self-effacing humor, but stuff like "eww girls can't be space marines" detracts from that because it makes itself look blindly unaware of how it's own biases play outside the 4th wall.

Orks on the other hand all being male warriors works, because it can be taken as a parody of the Tolkien/D&D genre in which the whereabouts of female monster mooks is never brought up, and WH40K Orks brought in the ridiculous breeding by spores life-cycle to justify the gender bias, which is normally unspoken in other works of the genre. That's how you do commentary. You take an existing genre bias and "justify" it in a way that borders on the absurd. The "Boys Only" Space Marines lore doesn't play with the concept in any way, shape, or form, so it fails in comparison.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

A lot of people forget this, but 40k began life as a kitchen sink parody at most and a derivative pulp setting at the least. While writers and standards have changed massively over the years (with the exception of 1st you'd never have gotten anything resembling FFG's roleplaying until 4th at the least) the influence of this origin remains and sometimes resurfaces in unexpected ways. It's most apparent with the Orks, for whom's fans trying to redact hilariously brutally cunning Space Cockney would be a declaration of war by Geedubs.

The gender restrictions on Space Marines coupled with the existence of the Sororitas as a stand-in are an artifact of this who's original context is lost. Original Astartes were more along the lines of Rambo and/or Superman, as is fitting their crucible of the 80s. And, of course, the Sardaukar of Dune. This would eventually pass on to the more appropriate role of the deathworlder IG as 40k became something resembling serious, while the Astartes developed the whole more than human yet less than human theme.

As the Sororitas existed from the beginning (and are themselves derived from Dune), it is clear that they were developed as the female counterpart to Space Marines, as the idea of female Rambo wasn't particularly kosher by 80s standards. So, at worst, it is a legacy of conforming to past misogyny that was culturally mainstream. If you really want a story retcon, you can say as many do that the Emperor is just a stodgy old man who puts a No Girls Allowed sign on his club. He is 38 thousand years old when the Astartes are made, after all.

As for GW's writers, the only one I consider to seem misogynist is Matt Ward, what for his magical realm hit pieces on the Sororitas.