Battybattybats said:

The Imperium itself might not be sexist, but that doesn't mean the Emperor wasn't.

We know that the Primarchs don't need or have anything as dull as normal organs inside them, so it would seem that their outwards gender-role is probably just a matter of choice, rather than function.

Just a hypothesis of course, but whereas I can see reasoning for 'no female space marines' due to incompatability with genetic modification, scarcity of suitable female warrior cultures as 'stock' and physiological reasons, the only limit on primarch gender would appear to have been the Emperor's will and perhaps bias.

Well, if he used his own XY genome, perhaps he just took the shortcut and only keyed it to XY chromosomes. Or because you don't want to take breeders out of the population, or because he read too many comic books in the 1990s, or any number of reasons. Has nothing to do with SM junks.

Siranui said:

That the Emp may be sexist is an idea that had occured to me and is a good argument. Certtainly it'd fit in his fathering a bunch of kids and never checked back on the mothers to learn they existed.

The Sororitas seem to get some decent warriors, so i doubt lack of warrior women was too big an issue.

Fenrisnorth said:

I doubt bird wings for Sanguinous would be easier than making a female primarch.. as birds don't have X and Y chromasomes! They have Z and W chromasomes!

A better argument is that he didn't want the Primarchs breeding. After all if the aim is to preserve mankind creating superbeings which can replace mankind isn't really achieving the goal. And that too may be the reason for there being no female marines (other than Slaanesh champion doubled-result of hermaphrodite which causes a sex reversal as per ROC vol 1), as if any of the marine alterations had even a faint chance of being or becoming hereditary it'd risk the marines replacing humanity rather than protecting it. And there we have a possible reason for marines being possibly rendered infertile and/or impotent and/or castrated.

And for those who might support such an idea.. what if a chapters geneseed mutation rendered them potent and/or fertile unlike other marines? (space wolves behaviour possibly being a wolf-genes effect on the geneseed undoing this precautionary aspect of the geneseed, and some in the inquisition at least would consider that a potential threat to the stability of the imperium!)

Wings... well, that's what happens when you leave the screen door open on the Imperial Palace, and chaos steals your children. Those be a Warp Mutation, like Magnus's one eye, or Russ's giant teeth.

A better way to "prevent" the Primarchs from breeding was to make them 10 bloody feet tall.... though I hear some of the lady Ogryn are kinda hot in a "My Down's Syndrome Gal" sorta way. Bits hafta fit to make babies.

In all seriousness, there is not ONE piece of evidence (that has been brought to my attention) that suggests that Marines are Neutered, or that they are incapable of getting busy. In fact, both codex and BL novel seem to suggest they are in working order, or are meant to be.

Though I will admit, a Legion based around Penthesilea would have been frickin cool.

Battybattybats said:

Or the opposite question- why would you make a female space marine? If we can agree (here come the flames) that the male body has certain built-in advantages in the combat arena then to make a FSM would require extra tweaking. So what would the motivation be to create a female space marine?

@Fenris- bits don't have to fit, you could always put them into a cup or turkey baster and still attempt to impregnate. Provided the lil' swimmers didn't have unnatural strength or toughness you'd be fine, wouldn't you?

@ charmander, Joke INCOMING

I always assumed that Sister's of Battle and Callidus assassins made up for girls not being space marines. "My Black Templar believes in the Emperor, why can't I make cool miracles happen? I'm one of his chosen sons!"

Battybattybats said:

He's a nasty little fascist **** in almost every other way, after all.

I don't think 'normal' chromosomes are probably even present in the Primarchs. They're merely human-shaped, after all.

Charmander said:

Agreed.

I always rather assumed that the nuns-with-guns existed mainly so that teenage boys can buy 25mm figures with boobies.

History is replete with female warriors to show the proof that while male female traits have a bi-modal distribution so that the average man is stronger than the average woman there's plenty of females far stronger than the average man and plenty of males far weaker than the average woman. And the advantages from the added organs, training and powered armour would likely outshine any sex based differences.

Actuallly ideal candidates for super soldiers could be Transdgender and Intersex people. Not only do Transgender and Intersex people disproportionately volunteer for military service for their demographic numbers (though in many countries are thrown out if discovered, though this is swiftly changing) but i'm told that higher-than average skills in intuitive ballistics are a consequence of the neurological differences.

The Emperor would have had reasons for not making female marines. Good reasons or bad reasons. If he could make primarchs and could bio-engineer all that goes into marines it should surely be easy.

So what are the possibilities?

* The Emperor is sexist. He did come from stone-age Shamans merged consciousness, patriarchy, male-dominated society, largely is thought to have risen with the beginning of city-based civilisation which he was possibly responsible for creating. He also appeared to have slept around without having meaningful relationships for him to unknowingly create the Sensai, which may support him being sexist.

* The culture he built the Empire from may have been extremely sexist. So as not to make too many waves the Emperor might have stuck with a male-based setup if the earth when he set out to unify it was degenerated into sexism. While the empire he built may have become swiftly more enlightened the die might already have been cast. Though this would suggest poor foresight on the emperors behalf.

* Following from the last one: The Emperor intended the marines to be a short-term solution. I've heard it suggested that he didn't foresee the heresy and expected the marines to only be needed till he had won the crusade.

* The emperor didn't want to replace mankind with an upgrade. Lets face it, geneseed is grown through complicated means. He could have bio-engineered warriors who would be marines from birth. It'd probably be far easier. And then you would have female marines and marines reproducing sexually and marines descended from marines.. but they wouldnt be human anymore and they wouldn't NEED humanity anymore. It seems to me the Emperor may have set the system up to keep the marines connected to and reliant on humanity for their 'reproduction'. So he needed the complicated geneseed system so applicants will have had a human childhood, human connections and so that was true of every generation. If he had female marines he may as well have used normal reproduction to make more and then they could just replace humanity. The risk of them taking over and enslaving humanity remains but not of them replacing humanity.

I think that the lack of female marines, the complicated geneseed method and any hypothetical impotence/sterilisation/castration/anti-arousal-hypno-training or whatever were all intended as security measures to limit the marines and prevent them usurping natural humanity.

My 2 cents: hermaphrodism (hemaphroditism?) is a common mutation among the Children of the Emperor chapter. So, if they didn't already have male genetalia, wouldn't that just turn them female?

or to big E idea of miss universum body type clad in adamantium plates that can spit venom was so disguisting that he said: NO! because I said so!

and that brings other great question! if FSM would exist, does black carapace removes breasts? because i dont find miss universum type girls interesting, and if we add black carapace with all that holes for armour plugins it can cause mental trauma...

Maybe it was simply an unintentional GW decision to make space soldiers that all became men, and they kept it to keep some sort of simple continuity?

But in fluff/In universe concepts, you got to realize that the simple act of a marine having sex (if they can) would easily kill a human woman, man, large animal, vehicle within moments. Even if they are going gently, and through some fluke of nature their member is human size, I don't see much other than a ogryn being able to survive it intact.

As for why no Female Space Marines, IMO the emperor could have wanted to make his army as simply as possible to outfit and create. Having to do all the organs so they work with XX and XY would double the work (I'm no geneticist, just making a common sense argument) as well as making all the power armour in male and female, rather than every single one the Adeptus or Forge make be the same pattern for simplicity sake. Much easier for a primarch to get the 10000 suits he needs, rather than checking how many male and female their are, and then ordering extra of each, and hoping the place he is doing it from has both etc. Streamlines it rather nicely.

But I do see them as having their genitals, but for the most part they may be assexual due to a lack of companion, or perhaps are like the sacred band of thebes. When fighting for the Imperium, Emperor or Chapter isn't enough, fighting for the one you love could be.

Fenrisnorth said:

Battybattybats said:

I don't buy it- just because people can break from the 'average' doesn't mean if you're building a Ubermensch assembly line and are following the already male oriented systems of the empire (co-ed units are the exception, not the rule, etc.) you're going to try to key organs to two different genders rather than one. I'm not saying it's not possible, I'm saying if you're dealing with numbers guys have the physical edge, and given the fluff that clearly states the organs are incompatible with female biology that is a strong implication that you'd have had to go and make a second set of organs that would be only compatible with women. Which means double the effort. If you're going with organs that can only be keyed to a single gender, you're going to go with males because they have the numbers on their side. That's in ADDITION to all the other more gender biased and misogynistic elements of the Empire.

Battybattybats said:

Maybe in theory, and with a recent, modern light shined on it, but it doesn't work in 40k for a number of reason, not least of which is marketing.

Battybattybats said:

He may have had reasons, good or bad, but I don't know they ever said the buiding of the primarchs was 'easy' as the empire has no way of replicating the practice and it involved psychic powers.

Battybattybats said:

This is a pretty interesting theory here, I really like the bit on human childhood to keep human connections, in an attempt to keep them related to their protectorate. But that's outside of the sex debate the way I look at it.

If you buy the whole thing about him having sex with women all over the earth and them having sensai, wouldn't he have been more worried about his kids being humanities upgrade than making a bunch of marines that would then make marine babies? If he's off sleeping with everyone he doesn't appear to have that much of a concern about progeny.

Battybattybats said:

History is FAR from replete with female warriors. They are always the noted exception rather than the rule, and I can't actually think of a culture where -historically- the women did as much -or more- fighting than the men. If we want to chalk that simply down to sexual repression and male-domination of society then that's fine and can render the entire point moot. But then in today's military things are a lot more open, and yet still -in 'teeth' units and SF- there is a massive difference in ratio. For either physical or psychological reasons; men seem to make better warriors.

Secondly, I completely disagree with your comments about strength. If you speak to a female elite athlete they'll always cheerfully admit that men and women cannot and should not compete on the same level against each other, because men are simply physically stronger in almost every discipline. Just take a look at sports records for just about everything and you'll note that it's the men who have the physical edge. I date an elite athlete, and despite not getting up at 6am to train every day and knowing the value of a good triple-decker bacon sandwich with fried mushrooms and cheese, I can still out-perform her simply because I'm naturally stronger, larger, and better genetically built for it.

Sure: Very strong women are stronger than weedy guys. But we're not talking averages. We're talking about skimming off the elite and turning them into super-soldiers. Why start with a clear and demonstrated physical disadvantage, or limit your selection pool by looking for not only the finest warriors, but also the finest warriors from a gender not normally disposed to breeding them.

Speaking of 'upgrading' humanity... anyone wonder how we've gone 40,000 years in the future without any clear evolution?

Siranui said:

Because natural selection goes kind of by the wayside once can modify your environment with technology?

Because on an evolutionary timescale, 40,000 years really isn't that long anyway?

Because evolution requires mutation, and the Imperium is really, really, really down in mutation?

Also: Psykers?

Chastity said:

+1+1+1+1+1!!!!

We are only selecting for physical attractiveness anymore, and even that falls by the wayside, because uggos (yes I'm an uggo, so shut up) just put bags over each other's heads to breed.

Humans in 40k don't modify their environment on plenty of planets. Canon tells us that Ogryns were human once, and a butt-ton of Marine Chapters are drawn from populations modified by their environment (salamanders et al), as well as dark-adapted, cold adapted, high gravity adapted and even radiation adapted stock. There are plenty of cases in the universe of environment-adapted humans. And despite the Imperium being anti-mutant, they don't get rounded up and shot. And nobody that I'm aware of is suggesting that the Salamanders/Blood Angels/Space Wolves are mutants and should be wiped out.

40,000 years is nothing on evolutionary scale? Tell that to horses, domestic dogs, et al! Evolution moves pretty darned quick when it needs to. The idea that it's horribly slow is a bit outdated.

Psykers are a valid case, although how much is evolution, and how much warp-influence?

So: We've got lots of cases of evolving to adapt to a hostile environment, but nothing that's a general 'upgrade' for humanity. Which is kinda weird.

Unless your humans are wandering around naked, not using tools, and sleeping on the floor, they still modify their environment.

And horses, dogs and other domestic animals aren't the products of evolution, unless you mean evolution by artificial selection which is technically a *form* of evolution, in which case you can add "because the Imperium doesn't do forced breeding programs on humans" to the list.

I'd also point out that you seem to be citing the existence of stable, human-derived mutations which evolved to adapt to the conditions on different planets as evidence that humanity hasn't evolved in the setting, which seems to be exactly the opposite of the conclusion that you should draw.

So umm, yeah, there has been some "evolution" in the setting. Humans "evolved" into Ogryns in high gravity environments, into very dark-skinned humans on planets with intense solar radiation (although for some reason the Blood Angels are all blond and pale-skinned despite their homeworld being a desert).

If by "why has there been no evolution" you mean "why haven't humans, as a whole, become noticeably superior to modern humans" then the only real answer I can give is "because evolution doesn't work like that."

I'd also point out that - as I believe you've observed yourself before now - 40K is basically a fantasy setting anyway, so a scientifically correct answer actually isn't necessarily helpful.

Siranui said:

Books seem to indicate that the human psykers are mutants (evolution) and are essentially the future of the human race. The issue is that the rest of human evolution hasn't caught up with the whole 'we can tap into the warp' bit which is why the Empire keeps them on (or tries to) such a short leash. It's commented in some of the older books that one of the Emperor's main goals is protecting the race until humans can evolve sufficiently to control/use their powers completely. It's also commented that the reason most Eldar have psychic powers is because they've had more time to evolve than humans.

As for evolution being slow, the theories of punctuated equilibrium may have rapid evolutionary spikes but they are also accompanied with long periods of nothing going on, which is what the last 40k years could be said to have been. And I'm not sure you'd see a lot of 'general' upgrades for the race because of the way humans are scattered to hell and back across the universe. Thus the whole Ogryn, Squat, Ratling trees. What is common enough in the Empire to become a generic upgrade?

Of course thinking about it, ironically, Psykers are one of the things that makes *least* sense from an evolutionary perspective. Evolution is all about passing on traits to your offspring that make those offspring more likely to survive and produce offspring of their own, and that very much *isn't* true of psychic powers, which are very likely to cause you to go mad or get eaten by Daemons (not only which, the Imperium effectively artificially selects *against* psychic power, by rounding people up for the Black Ships).

They only make no sense from that perspective in that the human race is still around in M41 though, and that's a direct intervention thing from the Emperor (n theory)- other animals have evolved traits that didn't turn out to be that good of a plan.

Remember folks XX and XY aren't incompatable.. we all start out as proto-female and the smae proto-organs go one way, the other, niether or both depending on in-utero hormones as much as chromasomes. I have friends (inluding the head of the Australian chapter of OII Organisation Intersex International) who are genetically XXY and XX/XY chimera as well as other Intersex vaieities like AIS, Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome such as is suspected of being the case with the runner Caster Semenya (which if the case means her high-testosterone levels aren't a factor in her superior running as AIS means your immune to testosterone). Plenty of current internal organ transplants get swapped from male to female and vice versa.

As marines get their musculature augmented again there being a strength difference at an elite level is less important. That difference has been shrinking as more women get involved in sport and as more women lead more phsyically active childhoods so those with natural advantages become more likely to enter sport and to have had the crucial developmental activity that males often get.

We've seen that with Transgender atheletes who after only a short period of artificial hormonal change end up able to fairly compete in their affirmed-sex category not their birth-sex category as seen with the golfer who despite protests that she'd have an intrinsic advantage failed to smash aside her opposition the way that was predicted.

Not only would augmented women likely be as strong as augmented men based of these examples they are wearing powered armour which further augments their strength.

And History only needs to show a sufficient number of exceptions, which it does even if many of them are not as famous as Joan of Arc or Grace O'Malley and many wars have included women crossdressing in order to enlist, to make women warriors valid and so women potentially valid as marines. And the technology was assuredly possible and available to the Emperor.

Seems to me pretty clear though the Emperor didn't want to!

Oh and the Sensai are all born barren, like mules, IIRC.

Chastity said:

That's not always so. There's plenty of evolutions that are consequences of advantages. For example if you have one copy of a gene you get malaria resistance, two copies and it's sickle-cell aenemia, so the family prospers even though some members have the harmful side-effect. Hereditary Schizophrenia is found in some members of families that have increased creativity, again the pay-off for the advantage is increased risk of schizophrenia.

One form of evolution is called Kin Selection. Where a gene exists to help the family line and so prospers. This is most strongly seen in social insects like Ants where one sibling gets to reproduce and thousands of the others simply work to help out the group and therefore the reproducing sibling.

Also.. don't many of the adaptations of humanity date back to the Dark Age of Technology? We need to consider the history of the Imperoum in the development of humanity.

For better or worse Humanity has gotten very anti-change. Understanding technology is heresy. It progresses usually only when better old things are found and the Mechanicus ok them. Xenos tech is studied but not copied or utiilsed except for radical inquisitors. (The Grey Knights are very naughty naughty boys, and i wonderif the deathwatch could end up in conflict over their use of Xenos tech and hanging around Jokaero?).

Battybattybats said:

Yeah, but none of those really apply to Psykers, as far as we know there's no "Psy-trait" along the lines of sickle cell trait which would allow for a selection advantage for people with partially psychic tendencies, nor is there any evidence for kin selection (again very much the opposite, an unchecked Psyker is a danger to everybody).

When people talk about humanity "evolving" into Psykers in 40K they're talking about a pop-culture version of "evolution" - gradual progress towards a higher or more perfect form - rather than actual evolution - natural selection in favour of random mutations. This is perfectly reasonable in setting, because let's face it this game has *wizards* in it, but it's not proper evolution.