Whats your opinion on female space marines? | Fandom (2024)

YASSS AMAZING

You have the Sisters of Battle, isn't that enough?

I don’t think it’s necessary. Not because of the Sororitas but simply because the Astartes being emblematic of the masculine destroyers is an interesting dynamic. It was the difference between Terra and Luna, the Diana of motherly nurture versus the patriarchal potency of the Terran Emperor. Both required but neither willing to submit.

The lore with male and female roles in 40K has developed over decades. We have female guard, knights, inquisitors, sisters of battle and silence, and now a few female Custodes. These are just the way things change over time. But Astartes are not really representative of humanity. They are monsters and angels without restraint. It’s been established that Astartes are male even though this may never have been a good idea. Same as the Sisters of Silence had a genetic tendency to produce blank daughters, it’s a quirk of the lore that is well documented (unlike the female guard, knights, inquisitors or custodians who were never explicitly mentioned but never explicitly impossible either). Whereas the lore has given lots of reasons why Sisters of Silence and Sororitas are explicitly female (one genetic and one a gender based religious rule) and why the Astartes are male (there is a genetic component to male Astartes and there’s a meta-plot component around them being destroyers not creators).

Malcador the Sigilite pointing out that female Primarchs and Astartes might have been a good idea seems to make the point that they stuck with sons and the lack of daughters was an oversight that might have worked out better.

I also enjoy the fact that the name Astartes comes from a female god of war in real life and in universe comes from a female scientist. Another play on the fact that the Sororitas first came about as the “brides of the Emperor” but ended up killing the male architect of their order (the repressed feminine ultimately exterminating their oppressor) and the Astartes are the “ultra masculine sons of war” but they exist only because of a woman who ultimately hated the Emperor (and also sprang from Erda, another mother figure who despised the Emperor’s plans for them).

TLDR: Female Astartes are one area it makes the lore less interesting.

I feel like getting female Astartes makes is counter productive.

The males need genetic modification to be badass, women don't. If you put it that way am sure the people saying there need to be female Astartes will stop.

And I agree w/ Quel that I don’t think it would work that well.

Tough women exist for sure, but they’re the minute exception to the rule which sees the vast majority at a distinct physical disadvantage against men who on average pack about 30% more upper body strength & 15% lower. And that’s just on average, there’s many men who far exceed that.

There’s also the advantage of height which gives men a longer stride & greater reach not to mention greater lung capacity & higher resistance to physical injury due to greater bone density & extra ‘padding.’

That’s not to say women can’t fight or shouldn’t, men are just built differently & are more physically suited to combat in pretty much every category by a noticeable margin.

Take the SEALs for example. They only accept the cream of the crop in terms of physical/mental toughness & even w/ so many tough men applying few manage to make it to the end of the training, it’s just that brutal. And to my knowledge no woman has physically been able to complete it given they are expected to do everything the men must.

Now it’s possible there may come a woman who can successfully manage it, but it would be a one in a million scenario & just extremely unlikely. Now imagine the kind of physical/mental fortitude required to do that & ramp it up by 1000% bc that’s what Space Marine Chapters do, they have to because of the threats they face.

Their aspirants are men of such strength, savagery & mental/physical fortitude that alone they would be counted as legendary warriors of humanity. And for 90% or more of them, it’s still not enough as most will fail or die in the attempt.

And if 90% of said men fail, what real chance would a woman have? The number of women who’d even stand a chance would be so ridiculously scarce that it just wouldn’t be worth these Chapters bothering with in terms of recruitment.

I don’t really think it’s about the normal physical development of men and women. The fact of the Astartes is that it hijacks any normal physical development before primary puberty by introducing a set of genetics borne of a creature which isn’t one of the parents. Astartes are not really men. They are boys radically altered into hybrid orchid creatures.

The hormonal differences between male and female adult development doesn’t occur in Astartes. They are altered earlier than most primary changes occur.

This would also apply to weak children that supplied many of the Emperor’s Children and Blood Angels, or even the weak starved creatures that made up the Barbarusian Death Guard. The latent stock needs to be compatible more than tough. Tough candidates die. Compatible candidates live. For reasons left to the lore, only male candidates were chosen for the Astartes. This is more likely cultural than anything, as many factions on pre Unity Terra reverted to base preferences for male warrior groups. Which makes sense if the ordinary human development takes place. In average, human males after 18 are physically bigger and stronger than average females (not exclusively by any means, but given hormonal profiles, it is common).

But as the lore now includes female Custodians (even if it appears few in number) this defeats any notion of genetic lineage as to post pubescent development. If we have 9ft women who can rip your spine out, it hardly matters what they were as babies. But the difference there is custodians are modified before the age of 4, when human sex hormone divergence is low to virtually nil. Astartes can be made up to around age 14 (with some later but with higher degrees of failure). This suggests the process was simply tailored towards males as it was just hedging their bets on already limited success.

I think the more important reason is not pseudo fantasy genetic engineering though, or any kind of politics, but simply that story wise, the masculine and the feminine tie into different mythopoetic traditions. And 40k is essentially mythopoetic traditions in space (with guns).

I'll try to contribute with some small teasings from Fabius Bile series:

-Fabius believes or implies that there is no real physiological reason to exclude women from becoming Astartes, and believes the Emperor made a mistake with that choice (I don't remember exactly which books).

-There's a female CSM as part of the warband of the Radiant King (or some name like that) in the first book of the series. However, she seems to be the product of some daemonic/Warp-based change. But the excuse is there for, at least, Chaotic warbands.

I know that the author is no longer affiliated with GW/BL, but I would say that Guy Haley has taken after his trend; that Bile doesn't want to just have men enhanced, but women too (for him is a matter of enhancing/creating a whole post human race). In fact, the most prominent of creations are women.

And now we have Bile trying to ally with Cawl. For now, that's not gonna happen, but I think that it's not like Cawl has any mattering ethical or moral issue, or any other kind of bias, that really prevents him for wanting to enhance women too. Rather the contrary.

And... Unless that tech is lost, let's not forget that there's tech around to make Astartes like superwarriors, not just Custodes or Thunder Warriors, but Kor Phaeron and Luther's kind of "half astartes" enhancement too.

So, whay would he the problem with the fan base? That there could be enhanced astartes-like women in the setting, or if there were truly astartes women?