What I mean is, why even mention that all the females are reduced to slavering broodmares? Why not have skaven armies consist of an equal mix of males and females because they lack sexual dimorphism? Unlike the drow, this wouldn't affect their general depiction because they aren't otherwise characterized as rabidly patriarchal.
It feels like the broodmare thing is just a lazy excuse for why there aren't any female skaven models. I suspect the real reason there aren't any female skaven models is because the artists would try to make them "sexy" with boobs covered by chainmail underwear or something, then realized how stupid that would have looked and gave up.
I also agree that 'Male oppressor' races are boring, but Skaven are not really that. The nature of their females matters very little to their identity as largely hateful, frightful little nothings that want to eat everything else because they hate everybody else slightly less then they hate each other. The nature of their women comes not from any patriarchy but more akin to 'magic' versions of cloning pods. Gender doesn't really exist to them.
Gender does exist to them, otherwise they wouldn't only force females to be breeders. They'd use chaos magic to mutate anyone into a breeder.
They are male oppressors. It's stated that the females are only accessible to high-ranking skaven, like harems. The
Gotrek & Felix novels feature a moment where a lower-ranking skaven is rewarded by being allowed to mate with a female.
This patriarchy is incongruous precisely because it's irrelevant the overwhelming majority of the time.
Unlike say classic 'Enslaver' orcs or something that kidnap elven ladies to ravage or whatever, Skaven don't really have a space in their mind for sexual pleasure whatsoever. They are more like biological machines focused on consuming all rather than living beings.
You mean tyranids? The skaven behave nothing like tyranids. They have individual egos, a religion, an oppressed sex class, ridiculous amounts of backstabbing... In fact, the highest-ranking tyranids like dominatrices and norn-queens are explicitly gendered as female to the point that some magos biologis research notes speculate the former is the "female" counterpart of the "male" hive tyrant.
I'm sick and tired of seeing single sex/gender races like skaven and asari. In the overwhelming majority of cases, they don't serve any purpose besides either fetish fuel or sheer laziness. It's a pointless and unnecessary erasure of an entire sex class. One should be allowed to criticize this trope without being dismissed as a loony SJW.
Why can't the skaven use chaos magic to cause dudes to grow uteruses? Why can't there be female representation among skaven characters, like that one female grey seer from 1st edition or the four-breasted cheerleaders in
Blood Bowl? Why do the tyranids get better female representation than skaven do and nobody complains about that? Is "skaven cannot have female representation because we refuse to cede any ground to SJWs" really a molehill worth dying on when GW retcons their own shit all the time for the most frivolous reasons?
This whole argument makes about as much sense as arguing that there are no such thing as female imperial guard or genestealer hybrids because there aren't any models for them, even though the lore states that many of them are female. The only reason nobody is arguing that there cannot be any female imperial guard or genestealer hybrids is because their codices never included single paragraphs saying all females were reduced to brood mares like the skaven do.
But, again, I'm not actually invested in this so I don't care if GW doesn't make any changes. I don't expect them too.
If there were skaven players who wanted female representation, although I never heard of any, then why do you think they're playing the game wrong?
The reason why there is resistance is simple and cynical: 1) the typical nerdy aversity to change of any kind and 2) refusal to cede any ground whatsoever to perceived SJW interests.
If GW retconned the skaven so that they always had female representation rather than being male oppressors, then would you actually be upset about it? I highly doubt you would care one bit unless GW announced a press release where they made a big deal virtue signaling about it.
Again, I don't care because I don't like skaven. I'm a cat person.