The reception of the new video has been surprisingly pleasant considering we said some of the no-no words in it, so first off: thank you all for being radical folks :)

However there's an idea I'd like to discuss that was brought up in the 'mildly pissy' section of comments...

Some say that the poor female representation in 40k (especially in the past) is fine because, canonically, the Imperium is a totalitarian nightmare and the repression of women in such a regime makes sense.

Which, whilst broadly true, I feel misses the point a little.

40k is not real. It only exists as a piece of media in our actual, real world. As such, it is not exempt from critique just because there's an in-universe explanation for it (it is, after all, a choice by the author), nor does such critique mean the authors are bad people.

Furthermore, these decisions made can have tangible, real world effects. For example: The decision to make Space Marines all male has lead to a lot of sexist sentiments in the fanbase like 'well women just aren't strong enough to be marines'.

Which is basically just toxicity legitimised by canon. And also helped create an atmosphere that prevented a lot of women (and many others) from engaging with the media.

40k may (very broadly) be a satire but not everyone has got that message, after all.

Am I saying that 'if there were female Space Marines from 40k's inception then there would be no toxicity in the fanbase'? No, that would be silly.

But I am saying that uncritically accepting in-universe elements as self-justifying is not particularly useful.

As a side-note: I think this stuff is often why some people get upset with us being "political" in videos. We look at the tangible things like books and models, our perspective is more 'these things as media' rather than 'what does this mean to the lore?'

Not that there's anything wrong with the latter at all, it's just not what we primarily do. And sometimes that means we need to make reference to the media's place in the world and how it can be perceived. Sometimes that may even involve the dreaded "politics".

But yes, you are allowed to love something and be critical of it. And in 40k's case it seems like the authors agree with us since there's been a visible push to be more inclusive over the last few years. Which is great! Shouty bald white men are great but variety is always nice!