Chastity said:

Ah but that's as far as we know. A single psy gene might give you excellent hunches and intuition which keep you alive and help you prosper (rather like fate points). We know the Navigator gene is a hereditary genetic trait.

There's other possibilities with Psy emergence.

Time-delayed genes left behind by ancient Slaan seeded throughout humanity. Some evil plot by the Deceiver. Direct intervention from the emperor. A side effect of humanities constant exposure to the astronomicon... who knows.

Chastity said:

The background book Xenology mentions genetic variations found between 'baseline' humans and psykers.

Between that, and the occasional mention of "the pariah gene", there's plenty of evidence of a genetic link to heightened, diminished and/or negative psychic potential.

Chastity said:

True enough on one level, but at the same time, the conditions in which Mankind exists within the 41st Millennium aren't like those on present-day Earth. With the presence of, and interaction with, the Warp (remembering that all but the tiniest fraction of humans possess some basic level of psychic awareness), there is an influence upon human existence that we have no contemporary reference to or proper understanding of... and that influence has been getting demonstrably stronger for the last fifteen thousand years or so.

The Warp plays havoc with the natural order of things; it is literally anathema to the natural laws of the universe, and its influence defies the way we understand the universe to work.

Battybattybats said:

So the 40k books specifically state the organs and implants for the spcae marines are incompatible with women, flat out, that they're keyed to male genetics and hormones. So regardless of whether or not you can create Chimeras, or whether or not current organ transplants can be done between members of the opposite sex is really kind of a non-issue, whatever happened, the implants were designed to work only in dudes. This would imply quite heavily that in order to create implants that work in non-dudes would require a lot of additional work.

And I'm not sure how you can cast aside baselines, because when looking at a marine you're looking at someone at the elite level. The augmentation is going to be on top of nature, not in place of it. Bionics would be in place of, which isn't what the marines are doing. You don't get an implant and suddenly get all your stuff replaced, it get's improved upon. When building yor super soldier assembly line you go with known quantities and the best baseline, not the exceptions to the rules.

Charmander said:

I think battybattybatbats' point is that while this is a clear statement, it's also *pseudo-scientific gobbledygook*.

"Male genetics and hormones" is a meaningless concept - women do in fact have "male" hormones, and are in fact affected by them. Nor does it make particular sense for the genetic manipulation applied to space marines to require a Y-chromosome - I mean you can say it does, but it makes no biological sense - the Y-chromosome is actually pretty freaking crappy, it's not where all the genes for being good at fighting are located (also: there *aren't* genes for being good at fighting).

I mean the books might as well state that Space Marines have to be male because the magic pixies said so for all the scientific sense it makes.

There are plenty of good reasons why the Imperium *wouldn't* make female Marines (most obvious being "Imperial society is kind of sexist and the Emperor obviously didn't think to make female Primarchs") but there's no valid scientific rationale behind it.

N0-1_H3r3 said:

There's also quite explicit references to humanity "evolving" into a race of psychics. 40k is a soft-SF setting, and the way "genetics" and "evolution" work are pretty much nothing like they work in the real world. This has nothing to do with Warp Influence and everything to do with the fact that it's a soft-SF setting with wizards and elves in it.

Hey, the Y chromosome isn't crappy! That is a blatantly sexist statement in and of itself, and I am highly offended!

.... ok I'm not offended, but still...

Fenrisnorth said:

Sorry, all I meant was that it's actually a small, weedy chromosome, it's got about a quarter as many genes on it as the X-Chromosome, very few of which actually do anything important. It simply doesn't do very much. Ironically the one thing which Y-linked genes almost certainly *are* responsible for is the one thing that people are insisting Space Marines don't need - sperm production.

Chastity said:

The books might as well state that... but they don't.

The processes involved in creating Space Marines aren't scientific in any way that resembles real science, no... but then, in-setting, they were created by an immensely powerful psychic being who had accumulated the sum total of all human scientific, technological and arcane knowledge devised during the tens of millennia of his existence.

The "Primarch Project" involved far more than science (the feats attributed to them are beyond anything that mere flesh and blood, no matter how advanced, could accomplish, and all of them were psychic in some way), and its fair to say that the Astartes are the result of more than science and technology, being derived from the same processes.

Chastity said:

Acerbic much? The tone of your posts seems to be more than a little harsh...

40k is, in my experience, far closer to a fantasy setting than a sci-fi setting in the first place - it may include starships and lasers, but the fantasy elements are far more prevalent than the sci-fi themes. "Warp Influence" is the "A Wizard did it" of 40k, and consequently 90% of instances of things not working as they would in the real world can, and probably should, be regarded as the result of "Warp Influence".

N0-1_H3r3 said:

Sorry if that came across as acerbic - I'm an acerbic person.

For what it's worth we seem to be saying the same thing in different words. As you say "Warp Influence" is the equivalent of "A Wizard Did It" - it's a non-explanation, roughly the equivalent of saying "you probably shouldn't think too hard about this, because it's just not that sort of game." I'm not complaining that things don't work as they should, I'm just pointing out that the way things work in 40K isn't the way that they work in reality in a context in which people seemed to be assuming that they did (I've been responding to two points on this thread - one being the observation that it made no sense for Humanity not to have evolved in 40,000 years, which fundamentally misunderstood how evolution works, the other being a discussion about the extent to which it was plausible for Space Marine implants to only work in men).

Who can say what new insights regarding technology and medicine humanity gains in the course of the next dozen millenia? The arguments being presented here base on the knowledge of today, which is not the end of the line. Sure, we understand genetics and heredety transmission and we have a "rough" overview of how our chromosomes work, but there can theoretically be room for more.

I'm reading here that it's completely impossible from a scientific perspective that space marines have to be male. In my opinion, no one can be sure about that because no one can predict which biological possibilities are there some thousand years from now.

Example: How about space marines have to be male because the creation process alters the y-chromosome of the candidate. Perhaps additional sequences are being added to the chromosome via a process unknown today. Perhaps this only works with the y-chromosome because the x-chromosome has to stay unaltered for cell (re)production to function properly, while certain areas of the y-chromosome, which today are regarded as "crap-areas" that do nothing are suitable for alteration and/or addition.

That's a quick idea I made up in about 5 minutes, I just want to point out that we cannot (or only in a VERY restricted way) argue about technological or biological possibilities from our present perspective, because the availability of new possibilities and insights is one of the key elements of sci-fi.

Arkhan said:

I think that's a common misconception about Science Fiction actually. You absolutely *can* discuss the technological and biological possibilities in a work of science fiction from a modern perspective, because while modern scientific understanding is imperfect it is still for the most part *right*.

Science Fiction is still fiction, and it's legitimate to look at it as fiction. Whatever the technobabble explanation provided in canon the *real* answer for "why are there no female Space Marines" is "because the setting is slightly sexist and has an oversimplistic attitude to gender".

I mean when you get right down to it, 40K is a 1980s Space Fantasy setting, it's not *entirely* surprising that it's a bit blind when it comes to gender issues. Although it does strike me that there's technically no reason by canon that you couldn't play a transgender Space Marine (although I suspect that the Imperium isn't terribly sensitive to trans issues either).

Chastity said:

What are they being blind to, they blatantly say there are no FSM, and any interpretation outside of it goes beyond the realm of the canon they created? That in and of itself is a gender issue, and can speak to your setting, that it, like ours, has sexist elements in it. You're spot on about it being a 1980 Space Fantasy setting, it's kind of expected- and of course that's where the debate comes in, we're applying modern knowledge to 1980s ideas and characters in an attempt to 'upgrade' it.

In regards to your prior post about "Male Genetics and Hormones" - point taken, and yes in our current frame of reference and hard science this is a bit odd, and why someone would need to tie improvements to muscle and tissue to a Y chromosome is a stretch, and the whole zygote comment seems to show a misunderstanding as well. But as has been said this is a realm where the books indicate the bolts of a boltgun are filled with super dense heavy...hydrogen...which makes no sense either.

But you're right, there is no canon reason you couldn't play a transgender Space Marine, though the social implications are probably pretty dire for most (though you're in an Empire, so if you're important enough you get to do as you please)., and I doubt the captains would be very suportive of any sort of operation to change your physical identity.

Charmander said:

I think that's more or less the issue they're blind to, though. I don't for one nanosecond believe that the absence of female Space Marines was supposed to be evidence that the Imperium had outdated notions about gender roles - it's just that when the setting was originally being put together, it was taken as read that the supersoldiers would all be male - that's not a critique of 41st millennium gender politics, it's an uncritical application of late 21st century gender politics. I don't think that's much of a problem (I don't really play 40K for its stance on social justice issues), I think it's just important to be honest about where these things come from.

Think about who the target group of buyers for the W40K products originally was then you know why space marines originally were male only. Be honest, roleplaying was (and still is) a hobby mostly for male people (for whatever reasons). Go on any convention, play in (almost) any group and you see it.

After W40K became popular, Sororitas were implemented when GW felt they had to approach the female players as well.

Question: Why is W40K what it is?

Answer: Because GW thought it would sell best this way.

Chastity said:

All very true, I just think the lack of female representation (in just about all the armed forces) plays nicely into the (current) representation of the setting. But you and Arkhan are right, the setting was designed to sell minis to boys with too much money, but I think that helps generate the debate- we attempt to reconsile an older setting into our current frame of reference.

Battybattybats said:

I'm not really buying that, as for most of our history and indeed pre-history, women have been very physically active. It's more an artificial change of civilisation that has artificially prevented a lot of women from leading more active childhoods. And even if there's not 'much' difference at an elite level, then that's enough to make a difference, because we're picking the best of the best.

I wouldn't ever call Joan of Arc a warrior. She was a figurehead and leadership figure with no martial background. Marines eventually become leaders, but they are first and foremost warriors in the more technical sense of 'being really good at fighting', and historical examples of that amongst women are *very* few and far between. Perhaps mostly due to our social systems, for sure, but the fact remains that a Chapter full of 16 year olds of any gender, colour or creed, with no martial background and a habit of choosing strategies based on dreams wouldn't be my first pick as elite infantry!

Perhaps more important than the physical side of it is the recruiting pool. The Astartes seem to recruit from warrior cultures. How many female warrior cultures are there in the Imperium? If you cut your potential recruitment pool down drastically via any means at all, then you might well struggle for quality.

Arkhan said:

Interesting idea which could either result in inheritable characteristics (and hence a danger if fertile heterosexual marines had sex with non-marines) or which could effect fertility rendering marines sperm no longer able to properly create a viable embryo.

Charmander said:

Well this depends on how Transphobic the Imperium is.. and i expect that most of the imperium is pretty darn prejudiced in almost every way conceivable! Especially since the heresy where it has even further degenerated under mountains of heresay and superstition. That said marine chapters are a varied lot. A world with a higher incidence of Intersex and Transgender genetics or which recognises the advantages of Trans and Intersex folk in military areas could well end up recruiting significant numbers of marines from such people and develop chapter traditions around them, which after all is a lot less extreme than some chapters genetic variations. Still it may not be so well considered by other marine chapters.

Perhaps for example a chapter recruited from a world with a very high incidence of XXY people, who still have the Y chromasome.

It's not like scifi hasn't included Intersex (or false but common myths about Intersex) as for example in Alien 3 the prisoners have an Intersex condition, they have an extra Y chromasome, they are XYY. This was once believed to result in hyper-masculinity and to result in stronger more aggressive people more likely to be murderers rapists criminals etc and if we were to hold this past belief to be true then they'd likely be often marine candidates unless the apothacaries screened them out for some reason.

Arkhan said:

Actually while womens participation in gaming culture is rapidly increasing there's been a strong gay etc element for a very long time, though it's often been subtle and hidden within early material. I don't have to bother with Dungeons and Dragons Girdle of Gender Change as an example of this.. Warhammer 40,000 has it right therefrom the early days in one of the very popular marine chapters! For those unaware of it the Dark Angel chapter and it's Primarch are named for a poem about the struggles of being secretly gay written by a gay poet!

As for Soritas they were in the 1st ever 40,000 rulebook, though we had to wait a long time for the miniatures the Sorirtas existed in background and in one artwork (replete with lethal looking nipple spikes on the armour and a nuns headgear!)

Siranui said:

There's still a huge difference in ther kind of and amount of activity between boys and girls accross a range of cultures currently. Even in the 3rd world where transportation is rare the boys are encouraged to be more active. In hunter-gatherer societies boys are encouraged to hunt, girls to gather, both from a very young age (of course many of these were more open to Transgender people both male-to-female and female-to-male as well as to Intersex, for examples see the Two-Spirit traditions of the native americans, the Muxe of mexico, the fa'afa'fine of Samoa the sistagirls of the Torres Strait islands etc). Of course back when we were regularly on the menu of predatory megafauna any human that could not fight was a problem for the continuity of the species especially with our extraordinary long childhood compared to other species.

Joan of Arc may not have had martial training but she went into combat. The claim of the discovery of her armour came from identifying damage and repairs which corresponded to accounts of her injuries in battle! And she was hardly the first nor the last woman to be involved on the battlefield. From women crossdressing in order to fight in the American Civil War, War of Independance etc through to Boadecia and warrior-women of the scythians and related groups believed to have been the inspiration for the amazons of legend and whose remains have been excevated with bwhat apear to be womens skeletal remains along with used functional arms etc. Sure the examples are on the low side but then to overcome societal oppression in order to become warriors thats hardly surprising. And our socieities sexism ensures that many of the examples that do exist are far from common knowledge. Women were less often philosophers teachers and mathematicians but pointing out the scarcity of the like of Hyapatia of Alexandria in the historical record is little argument against the capacity of women to excell in those fields.

As for recruitment worlds, we could expect plenty of tough warriors from a number of worlds to be female. Deathworlds for example would result in very tough women (where are the women gurads from Catachan?)

We know the Imperium does have it's elite warrior women of course, assasins, death cultists, sororitas (hmm a transgender sororitas order would not seem too impossible, like the priestesses of Cybele in ancient times the initiation ritual of self-castration with a sharp knife and no anesthetic seems appropriatly fanatical for the imperium) but then there's also sexism still evident from GW, though it has been improving, where even the lines with better representation of women in their numbers like the Eldar and Dark Eldar are still solidly unbalanced (and i know a lot of people who long for more female torsos for their eldar armies).

As the world marches on we have to either adapt our living fictional worlds to shed the biases of the past or to explain them, as an explanation for the sex divide in themarines in an imperium with gene-bulked combat servitors and callidus assasins and the near-limitless powers of the dark age of technology or the abilities of psykers and the emperor it seems silly to assume the emperor was just unable to make a female primarch and female marines and make far more sense that he just chose not to. Patriarchal mysogynist? Perhaps he was/is. Or it could have been as i've suggested before a way to try and control the vast power he was unleashing in the creation of his Astartes to prevent it from usurping unaltered humanity. That makes far more sense than to suggest someone capable of taking down a Ctan with spear and sword and travelling to mars before humanity had reached the end of the middle ages and who was alive throughout the dark age of technology was incapable of making a female primarch and marines.

Ah Batty, where have you been all this time?

Battybattybats said:

While we'll never know (likely never, anyhow) the authors true intent but one could equally argue that it's not an undertone of homosexuality in the Dark Angel's chapter but rather a similar struggle with a 'dark secret' that had to be hidden from others and trying to atone and deal with what they feel is a 'sin.' It doesn't mean that there is a true homosexual undercurrent to the Chapter.

Battybattybats said:

But that hardly makes her, or others, what you would pick as the 'best of the best' now does it? No one is saying that women can't or don't fight, or that there aren't women out there that are actually really quite good at it, the point being is it's typically easier to find a group of dudes that is really good at it than it is to find a group of women- if that were not true than wouldn't we find the opression/discrimination against women less prevalent in our history?

Battybattybats said:

Back home being repressed

Battybattybats said:

I don't suggest he was incapable, I suggest that he was either uninterested or that it was simply more trouble than making his marines all dudes. That and GW wanted to sell minis and Arnold Schwarzenegger fills more seats.

this might have already been said, but I could conceive of a scenario in which the emperor was testing gene seed implantation on a group of equal men and women and found that in his test group there was a 0.97% survival rate with men and a 0.95% survival rate with women. well gene seed is too precious to implant in a woman if you can maximise the chance of creating a space marine by only implanting it in men.

Battybattybats said:

That's a massive generalisation. Tell that to any tribe where it's 'woman's work' to carry the water from the source.

Joan of Arc was a combatant. Not a great warrior. In a period where the fighting elite trained from childhood, she was a figure from peasant stock and no martial training. How do you think she'd do against a trained knight? Not very well. Hardly inspiration for warrior women, though great inspiration as... an inspiration. Many women have been recorded in history for venturing onto the battlefield. But for every one, ten thousand men never got a mention despite being in the same place. I can think of a successful female duellist, but as far as actual martial capability is concerned, on an even playing field I can't think of one female combatant famous for her actual martial prowess, rather than for just being there. We are talking 'best of the best' here, and it's just not a level playing field for women.

As to Deathworlds breeding strong warrior women... I'd go the opposite direction. On worlds where survival is a difficult proposition, it's far more important to protect the people who can give birth and ensure long-term survival. Men are essentially meatshields for the far more crucial women. Women combatants are to my mind something that is more likely to appear on 'safe' planets than on ones where staying alive each day is a tricky proposition.

I certainly believe that the Emperor was a mysoginistic xenophobic ass of the highest order, but I don't think that affected the choice to go for female Astartes. I think that was a choice based on convenience and practicality.

Now for first I would like to point out a few things about sexism and fictional settings. The difference between fictional settings (like 40K) and Real World is that there are things in real world that we cannot decide. The nature decied them for us. Like, say, is it horrible gender issue that only women can (have to?) bear children and men can't (don't have to?) do it? Or is it horribly unfair that only males can fall ill with hereditary haemophilia and women can't?

Now if we take the issue of Male Marines Only, I do not think it has anything to do with sexism. Why?

Simple facts:

1) Original sources where the Space Marines were first introduced in 80's did make Marines "male only", much because they were "Monks with Guns". There were also "Nuns with Guns". There were Imperial Army units which were mixed gender. There were Inquisitors, Assassins and other prestigious characters which were female.

2) The "in world" explanation is that Space Marine geneseed somehow works only with male genes. Thats the established scientific "reality" inside that setting. Ranting against that saying its mysogynic is like I would, in real world, say that real world is misandric because haemophilia (the heretditary disease) is keyed to male chromosomes and only males can get it. Not fair for males, I'd say.

3) You can always get paranoid and say the 2) is a result of the game developers being misogynic, but I can always counter that by pointing that in terms of the socio-political situation of the time and place they were in the 1) says they were actually very liberal indeed.

4) You can always get in-setting-paranoid and say that 2) is a result of Emperor being a misgynic pig and not even trying with women, but I can always counter that by pointing out that we don't really know that and 1) says that it is quite likely he wasn't.

And lastly, we can go about with 3) and 4) endlessly and it doesn't change anything. Setting is what it is and trying to "retcon" it to fit our delicate 3rd millenia western sensibilities and political correctness won't change the text in the books. It doesn't change the situation of pregnant mothers and haemophiliacs, either.

Charmander said:

My pc up and died, so it was a while before i got a new one.

I agree that the Dark Angels Chapter is not itself neccessarily gay,, but like the vast majority of any kind of bisexual/homosexual/transgender material untill quite recently any amount was coded or suggested or subtle or in analogy only. The lesbian relationship in The Thousand Sons novel was a nice sign of the changes in the freedom of authors to be inclusive these days but its still an ongoing gradual improvement. It will likely be a couple more decades before 40,000 gets an official Sacred Band of Thebes equivalant.

As for women of Catachan i reckon that a sororitas order recrutiing from there or a death cult would be a great excuse out of that bit of GWs sexist past.

Sure we all know that in the past GW was dealing with a profoundly more sexist and bigoted culture and a more sexist and bigoted market. And that while those elements remain there is serious change and generational change at that which may oneday seriously impact GW. The future of GW as more and more girls play the game is going to be either large swathes of ret-con or finding creative excuses and ways out of the bind.

Polaria said:

I don't want to blow your mind or anything but you'd be surprised what happens in nature that is surprisingly common yet rarely ever spoken about (so great is the Taboo that plenty of Doctors don't know about this stuff and patients often have to teach their doctors about it!). For example one of my friends and soon to be deathwatch players is a man with ovaries. Not a transsexual like Thomas Beattie but someone Intersex, born with some degree of male and femaleness. And they are 1.7% to 4% of all live births. For example on Wednesday i finally met face to face someone i've known online for years, Zoe Brain, an Australian Rocket Scientist who seemed to be male on the outside till aged in the 40s then the body, on it's own, changed to female! (almost killing Zoe in the process!). Zoe is the biological father of a child, despite being a woman. A surprising number of men can and have been pregnant, a surprising number of women can and have been fathers. And thats without starting on Transgender at all.

And through science men theoretically can carry transplanted embryos in their abdomen, it's dangerous just like a woman having a baby thats attached in the abdomen outside the womb is dangerous but it is possible and who knows what the future may make possible.

Oh and there's a fair amount of reasonable argument that one of Europes greatest swordsmen, the Le Chevalier D'Eon Du Beaumont was likely to be Intersex rather than just a crossdressing french spy. Someone who while dressed in womens constrictive garments beat many of Englands greatest fencers (in fact making a living from winning fencing matches) who were dressed in proper fencing gear and who were much younger than herself

Now thats just darn interesting.

About castration, isnt it a sin in the 41th millenia to defile the human form? mutilation might be something most space marines dont do, unless its for a good reason, like "showing dedication for omnissiah" and crap like that. Why chop their balls of?.And dosnt castration **** alot of stuff up in the human body, since the balls conjures up stuff we guys need. (im definitly not a doctor as you can hear, but i have seen enough bad documentries to know something)

In my opinion, its better roleplay if they can feel affection, love and temtation and resist it, then just not having to care at all. why not just make them cyborgs then? A space marine seems to know fear, but manage to control it in the extreme, atleast according to DW. Why not do the same with sex and love? Whats the problem of resisting chaos if you dont feel anything at all?

It's worth adding that i started the discussion while waiting for my copy of deathwatch to arrive, since then i've noticed the Chem-Geld trait is in the main book, it gives several corruption points if i recall correctly (i'm on holidays and didn't bring my books with me) something not given to space marines as standard but in the rules. So by the deathwatch book at least standard marines are not rended impotent. Whether they are fertile is another matter. And a GM should consider quite carefully the consequences of romance as well as reproduction.

What effect if any on a child would there be from having a marine father.

A marines life is filled with fighting, training for fighting and studying the theory of fighting with a little choir-practise, scrimshaw, smithing, prayer etc for variety. There's not a lot of opportunity for love. If a relationship were to develop, say between an inquisitor and a marine then the romance could be quite the forbidden one, with great difficulty required to get time together. That in itself could be a fascinating thread of plot for a game.

Marines won't get much occassion for sewing their wild oats either, most sexual activity in warzones are warcrimes after all. But on diplomatic missions there may be exceptions to this. And different chapters may have different views in favour or against any excursions to the red light district.

I doubt physical change is anything like a sin in the 41st M though, as imperial tech is built on a foundation of radical body alteration! Servitors abound, cybernetics are very common. There are marines that practice body-modification whether polynesian style tattoos (silver skulls) tooth sharpening (Charcaradon aka space sharks) or unneccessry cybernetics (Iron Hands). This is a world where there are tech-priests with chainsaws sticking out of metal animal-skull faces, where artificial cherubs are made out of children, where forklifts are made out of labotomised people and machinery, where parts of people are built into and plugged into guns to fire them. It is a world where machines are often more important than people and where people have been turned into machines.