If anyone's curious about the views of someone who 110% thinks Warhammer needs to be more welcoming and inclusive of women, but thinks female Space Marines are still a bad idea, here's a thread: https://twitter.com/nataliereed84/status/1312521341677887489

One thing I forgot when writing that thread though:

- GW would probably fuck it up immensely. Trying to create female Space Marines before fixing the overall culture and attitude at GW and Black Library is putting the cart before the horse.

I wonder if women getting into the hobby would even feel so strongly about it if GW actually did the BASICS properly and had lots of badass women in the other factions? Like people LOVE the new tough-looking Battle Sisters, and Sergeant Ripper Jackson was a hit, right? So if…

…they just had MORE OF THAT… badass women in the Guard, cool women Autarchs and Aspect Warriors (besides just Howling Banshees) and Spiritseers and stuff, stylish imperious female Archons and spooky witchy Haemonculi, etc etc… if they managed all that, and all the OTHER…

…armies had these cool badass minis of women, which look, like, powerful and awesome, for women hobbyists to relate to, rather than like porny things for male hobbyists to jerk off to, then… maybe it would no longer feel exclusionary for the astartes to be all-male? Because…

…they'd be UNIQUELY gender segregated, like the Sororitas, in contrast to all the other factions? Rather than the current reality, which is that pretty much EVERY faction is virtually all-male, with, at best, 1-4 token units or characters. Even Aeldari have all their HQs and…

…stuff being almost exclusively men. Space Marines are just the only one which is all-male in the *lore*, rather than just in the reality of what minis the company actually makes. :P

Like, it sure would be fucking nice if trying to have women officers in my non-sororitas armies didn't mean constant conversions, kitbashes, re-interpretations, and orders from third parties.

And tbh, that's a much higher priority to me than Space Marines with boob plate. :P

Holy fuck I just remembered that my "a trans SS officer is not good for trans representation" example actually fucking happened in Vampire: The Masquerade https://whitewolf.fandom.com/wiki/Totentanz_(VTM)