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Author Topic: Horus Heresy affirms that only males can be Space Marines.  (Read 5960 times)

Wrath of God

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Re: Horus Heresy affirms that only males can be Space Marines.
« Reply #30 on: July 18, 2022, 09:04:08 AM »
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And sisters of battle! The imperium would only make sense if they reduced their entire female population to incubators like Skaven do.

I mean for many generations humanity was very dependent of demographics in day to day survival, and yet there was some % of women taking other professions. Be it dishonorable like whores, or honorable like nuns, vestals and other forms of religious officials.
But aside of very peculiar vanity projects like Army of Dahomey I cannot remember war as being such vocation.



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Habitual Gamer

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Re: Horus Heresy affirms that only males can be Space Marines.
« Reply #31 on: July 18, 2022, 10:05:01 AM »
I wish they had an interesting reason why there weren’t female space marines, similar to what Claymore does.

I always liked the idea that the Emperor simply never considered using women because he's casually sexist in that regard.  Helps bring him back down to human level to some degree.

If, as the lore sometimes says, humanity is really in a desperate fight for survival, then you would need as many birthing people as possible making new baby soldiers. So it doesn't make logistical sense to try to turn women into Space Marines considering how many die in the process.

Of course, this is also true with female Imperial Guardsmen. This is another example of GW saying one thing but showing something completely different. The only logical conclusion is that humanity isn't really in danger and that every bad thing that the Imperium does is just the Imperium being evil.

Running with "women are Guardsmen-generating factories only good to make Guardsmen and more Guardsmen-generating factories", there's still plenty of reasons why a woman might be deemed fit for the IG rather than being kept barefoot and pregnant.  Maybe she can't get pregnant (infertile, past-menopause, etc.), maybe her world has kids raised collectively and she's had hers and is now leaving for service, maybe the Guard caught her between pregnancies, maybe her world/system/sector is under immediate attack and women (and children) are drafted into the Guard anyway, maybe the local IG officers want to try integrating women into units, etc.

BoxCrayonTales

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Re: Horus Heresy affirms that only males can be Space Marines.
« Reply #32 on: July 18, 2022, 10:11:31 AM »
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And sisters of battle! The imperium would only make sense if they reduced their entire female population to incubators like Skaven do.

I mean for many generations humanity was very dependent of demographics in day to day survival, and yet there was some % of women taking other professions. Be it dishonorable like whores, or honorable like nuns, vestals and other forms of religious officials.
But aside of very peculiar vanity projects like Army of Dahomey I cannot remember war as being such vocation.
Yeah, I was being facetious. The Imperium has advanced technology that removes the power differential between the sexes. Anyone with training can fire a gun or pilot a tank. If the conditions are bad enough, then it makes sense to conscript everyone: men, women, children, anyone who can follow orders. IIRC several cultures have cloning facilities that they use to produce conscripts for the imperial guard.

I always liked the idea that the Emperor simply never considered using women because he's casually sexist in that regard.  Helps bring him back down to human level to some degree.
Apparently that may be the canonical answer. One of his subordinates suggested making the primarchs female so they'd be more docile. The Emperor laughed as if it was a joke. Why he laughed is left up to the reader to decide. Under the sexist interpretation, he thought women were docile and wanted primarchs who weren't docile. Under an opposing interpretation, he thought female primarchs would be too dangerous to control.

Habitual Gamer

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Re: Horus Heresy affirms that only males can be Space Marines.
« Reply #33 on: July 18, 2022, 10:16:41 AM »
I always liked the idea that the Emperor simply never considered using women because he's casually sexist in that regard.  Helps bring him back down to human level to some degree.
Apparently that may be the canonical answer. One of his subordinates suggested making the primarchs female so they'd be more docile. The Emperor laughed as if it was a joke. Why he laughed is left up to the reader to decide. Under the sexist interpretation, he thought women were docile and wanted primarchs who weren't docile. Under an opposing interpretation, he thought female primarchs would be too dangerous to control.

Pretty sure he wanted subservient Primarchs. 

Funny thing about that story: there's no way you can spin it without it having a sexist bias.  Either the Emperor thought women would be too docile, or he thought they couldn't take orders.  Which goes back to the idea that some folks aren't going to be happy no matter what.

Svenhelgrim

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Re: Horus Heresy affirms that only males can be Space Marines.
« Reply #34 on: July 24, 2022, 10:10:45 AM »
Anyone who complains about the fact that there are no female space marines should be asked to define what a female is.

David Johansen

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Re: Horus Heresy affirms that only males can be Space Marines.
« Reply #35 on: July 24, 2022, 09:05:19 PM »
It seems very likely to my mind that producing a male child would probably exempt a woman from being drafted into the guard but maybe it should be two.  If you really wanted to make a dark and horrible setting there's a lot of room for horrors down that road.  As GW seems intent on making Warhammer 40k a popular mainstream property it seems unlikely they will ever go there.
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Ghostmaker

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Re: Horus Heresy affirms that only males can be Space Marines.
« Reply #36 on: July 25, 2022, 07:57:38 AM »
It seems very likely to my mind that producing a male child would probably exempt a woman from being drafted into the guard but maybe it should be two.  If you really wanted to make a dark and horrible setting there's a lot of room for horrors down that road.  As GW seems intent on making Warhammer 40k a popular mainstream property it seems unlikely they will ever go there.
The Vostroyan Firstborn regiments have a tradition which involves newly minted regiments of men getting hooked up with girls for a night, so that they can sire another generation.

And that's on the nicer side of the spectrum. Pretty sure the Death Korps of Krieg uses vat-grown children to fill out its ranks.

BoxCrayonTales

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Re: Horus Heresy affirms that only males can be Space Marines.
« Reply #37 on: July 25, 2022, 10:44:39 AM »
It seems very likely to my mind that producing a male child would probably exempt a woman from being drafted into the guard but maybe it should be two.  If you really wanted to make a dark and horrible setting there's a lot of room for horrors down that road.  As GW seems intent on making Warhammer 40k a popular mainstream property it seems unlikely they will ever go there.

Turning women into birthing tanks is a cliché. It's no longer horrifying or even surprising. It's normal and expected now. If women appear in speculative fiction, then they're probably going to be subjected to rape or forced birth because that's just how women are treated. It's an inevitability of being a woman. Even leftists acknowledge this in real life by literally referring to them as "uterus havers" nowadays.

Here's my suggestion to update it for modern times and the technological capabilities of the setting: all soy boys, transwomen, non-binaries, etc get implanted with uteruses and turned into birthing bodies too. The only people that serve in the guard are ultra alpha men with roided up bodies.

It seems very likely to my mind that producing a male child would probably exempt a woman from being drafted into the guard but maybe it should be two.  If you really wanted to make a dark and horrible setting there's a lot of room for horrors down that road.  As GW seems intent on making Warhammer 40k a popular mainstream property it seems unlikely they will ever go there.
The Vostroyan Firstborn regiments have a tradition which involves newly minted regiments of men getting hooked up with girls for a night, so that they can sire another generation.

And that's on the nicer side of the spectrum. Pretty sure the Death Korps of Krieg uses vat-grown children to fill out its ranks.
Cloning vats are honestly much easier to care for than birthing bodies. They don't need to be prepared with lobotomies and amputations (or uterus implants in the case of repurposed non-alpha males), they don't produce piss and shit that you need to constantly clean up, etc.

Honestly, it's more efficient to just get rid of all the women entirely and use cloning vats instead.

Ghostmaker

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Re: Horus Heresy affirms that only males can be Space Marines.
« Reply #38 on: July 25, 2022, 01:33:38 PM »
It seems very likely to my mind that producing a male child would probably exempt a woman from being drafted into the guard but maybe it should be two.  If you really wanted to make a dark and horrible setting there's a lot of room for horrors down that road.  As GW seems intent on making Warhammer 40k a popular mainstream property it seems unlikely they will ever go there.

Turning women into birthing tanks is a cliché. It's no longer horrifying or even surprising. It's normal and expected now. If women appear in speculative fiction, then they're probably going to be subjected to rape or forced birth because that's just how women are treated. It's an inevitability of being a woman. Even leftists acknowledge this in real life by literally referring to them as "uterus havers" nowadays.

Here's my suggestion to update it for modern times and the technological capabilities of the setting: all soy boys, transwomen, non-binaries, etc get implanted with uteruses and turned into birthing bodies too. The only people that serve in the guard are ultra alpha men with roided up bodies.

It seems very likely to my mind that producing a male child would probably exempt a woman from being drafted into the guard but maybe it should be two.  If you really wanted to make a dark and horrible setting there's a lot of room for horrors down that road.  As GW seems intent on making Warhammer 40k a popular mainstream property it seems unlikely they will ever go there.
The Vostroyan Firstborn regiments have a tradition which involves newly minted regiments of men getting hooked up with girls for a night, so that they can sire another generation.

And that's on the nicer side of the spectrum. Pretty sure the Death Korps of Krieg uses vat-grown children to fill out its ranks.
Cloning vats are honestly much easier to care for than birthing bodies. They don't need to be prepared with lobotomies and amputations (or uterus implants in the case of repurposed non-alpha males), they don't produce piss and shit that you need to constantly clean up, etc.

Honestly, it's more efficient to just get rid of all the women entirely and use cloning vats instead.
Yeah, except that never ends well. After the mess left by Corax when he tried to use bulk cloning to restock the Raven Guard, the Imperium has always been a little cautious about mass production of humans.