Female Models - Open Discussion

[Charleston]

Before the Rumour Thread gets out of controll on this topic and mods start wearing hats again, I would like to create a thread for a topic which I really like to discuss about:
Female Models in our hobby.

I know that people have a lot of different opinions on this topic, therefore I would like anyone participating in the discussion to keep respectful even when opinions differ drasticaly.

This thread is all about female models and anything beyond. From talking new and old sculpts, talking about trends or flaws in GW´s (or other manufacturers) design approach or even about what importance the depiction of women has on our hobby, or even society.
As Kick Off I would simply quote the mentioned rumour thread posts that the discussion started with this time:

Spoiler

1 hour ago, HollowHills said:

Regarding store models, GW are clearly on a gender equality crusade in the last few years. In fact, it's a gender and racial equality crusade. I mean look at the fact that the main character of the comic is a black woman stormcast. 

We keep getting female stormcast as store models because they can't make female space marines. They don't want to release two white male characters as store exclusive models. 

I suspect this is why sisters of Battle have become a priority for 40k at this moment in time as well. 

 

42 minutes ago, Rogue Explorator said:

Starting with Soulwars they have been releasing almost gender balanced models for those units and armies who would be mixed per lore. So for roughly a year they have been actually modeling releases according to their own lore  where they haven't before, sometimes through decades (cadians for example),  despite a fair amount of request for it. And they probably did it because their current method of designing and dividing sprues actually allows to do so, as much as due to changed sensibilities. And all this they have been doing quietly without much fanfare or attached rethorics.

I don't really see how that's a crusade.

And they clearly stated that Sisters are coming because of their survey results. Which is quite probably another reason for the change, GW makes an effort these days to at least try and match demand among their customers.

 

 

42 minutes ago, TheNotebookGM said:

I'm failing to see the purpose of this post other than to point out that the poster is seemily adverse to representation in gaming.

 

39 minutes ago, Zanzou said:

It is definitely tipping more and more female with each release. Even Tree-revenants were all male when released, but the Arch-Revenant is female.  To me this is only a bad thing if they begin ditching their artistic visions in favor of "equality", as things will become more generic (more about representation than creative passion).  Where that line actually is though, is blurry.

 

19 minutes ago, Carnelian said:

Don't worry, I think if you talk to any of the sculptors and designers you'll find they are probably designing more female models because they want to do so and they look frikkin sweet than for any other reason. 

Can we agree to call that an end of this discussion before it spirals out if control? You can always start a seperate thread if you wish to debate representation etc 

 

 

[TheCovenLord]

I don't understand the aversion to female miniatures. I also play Darkling Covens and the dark aelves have traditionally had a few female torsos present on some of their unit sprues. 

 

I wish more executioners sculpts had female torsos as they are far and away the most useful unit in the army and I field a large number of them. 

 

 

[HollowHills]

To clarify by crusade I meant more a concerted effort to deliberately improve representation of women and ethnic minority people in warhammer. 

Even at the launch for AoS stormcast were all male and so were khorne. Then a little while ago, probably around the time of blightwar, there was a big change. Suddenly kits are much closer to an even gender split across a lot of age of sigmar armies. 

The reason I raised this with regard to the store models. GW clearly like making limited models represent their two core armies, stormcast and marines. Now as marines are all male in long established canon, GW can't suddenly release female models for them. As such we are in the position where they are releasing lots of female stormcast as exclusives. 

[amysrevenge]

I'll entertain the discussion of "forced diversity" when female figures get to 51% of the line, but not until then.

Until my own collection reached 50-ish%, I would preferentially buy female models if given the choice (not exclusively, just more).

[CB42]

It’s strange that when GW starts adding some female miniatures, but still well fewer than half of the range, people call it a gender equality crusade. I think that when people say that, they say a whole lot more about themselves than they do about GW. And I don’t think they get to excuse their choice of words by saying “oh, it’s just because it used to be 100% male and now they’re trying to balance it”; a crusade is a loaded term that you shouldn’t throw around lightly.

 

When people go to GW and can’t find enough male models to make up 25% of their armies that are mixed gender in lore, then you can call it a crusade. But right now, many mixed gender armies have all male or primarily male miniatures, and if GW gets backlash from the community for literally just including a few female torsos and heads on sprues, or including a few female heroes amidst a veritable wave of male hero models, that speaks to a mindset that many people in our community have really, really wrong.

[HollowHills]

5 minutes ago, CB42 said:

And I don’t think they get to excuse their choice of words by saying “oh, it’s just because it used to be 100% male and now they’re trying to balance it”; a crusade is a loaded term that you shouldn’t throw around lightly.

Clearly you mean me, which is fine and I'm happy to respond, so "they" is unnecessary. 

You're right it's a loaded term and I am slightly against the way they are handling it. I think it's a bit silly to pretend a biologically female warrior is going to be as strong and equipped for war as a male warrior. The exception being aelves who seem to be fairly androgynous. 

Now of course some might respond "but it's fantasy realism doesn't matter when you have flying sharks and rat people", which is to some extent true. At the same time though, those things exist within the internal logic of the setting. However, there isn't any clear internal logic in the setting as to why human women (who have the same bodies as real life women) would be as strong or capable for war as human men.

[Zanzou]

I think gender differences within different factions can make things characteristic and interesting.  In our own history, obviously events of men going to war to protect the women and children was a theme.  As long as GW is still comfortable to play with whatever themes they want with gender (and that we don't hear about designer's ideas getting nixed for not being "50/50 ALL THE TIME"), then we are golden.  It is only when representation is enforced at all times across every single faction would things get dull and boring.  Because even in a fantasy world, that would probably be overly generic and hard to believe.

For example, they are fine with making all-female factions.  As long as they do not get pressured out of ideas to make a new all-male faction that they want to make, then there is really no issue.

[CB42]

2 minutes ago, HollowHills said:

Clearly you mean me, which is fine and I'm happy to respond, so "they" is unnecessary. 

You're right it's a loaded term and I am slightly against the way they are handling it. I think it's a bit silly to pretend a biologically female warrior is going to be as strong and equipped for war as a male warrior. The exception being aelves who seem to be fairly androgynous. 

Now of course some might respond "but it's fantasy realism doesn't matter when you have flying sharks and rat people", which is to some extent true. At the same time though, those things exist within the internal logic of the setting. However, there isn't any clear internal logic in the setting as to why human women (who have the same bodies as real life women) would be as strong or capable for war as human men.

Sadly, unfortunately, you’re not alone. Many people agree with you, which is why I didn’t want to imply that you’re the problem; you’re just one of many.

Lore-wise there are female stormcast. Because there are women who are heroic warriors in life who then get called upon by Sigmar and changed by magic to be superhuman. The models should reflect this gender split.

I frankly don’t care that you dislike the idea of women in fantasy as breaking your immersion. There are women in fantasy in the lore, and there should be women in fantasy in the model range. If you don’t like that, you don’t have to use any female sculpts! Just use male sculpts. You’ll certainly have a MUCH easier time than someone trying to only use male sculpts for mixed gender armies. But don’t try to pretend that fantasy lore should match your personal conceptions of what doesn’t need to be realistic (apparently everything but gender) and what needs to be realistic (apparently just gender).

[stratigo]

27 minutes ago, TheCovenLord said:

I don't understand the aversion to female miniatures. I also play Darkling Covens and the dark aelves have traditionally had a few female torsos present on some of their unit sprues. 

 

I wish more executioners sculpts had female torsos as they are far and away the most useful unit in the army and I field a large number of them. 

 

 

Yes you do

 

it is uncomfortable to acknowledge it, but there are flatly a noticeable number of people in this hobby that are misogynist. As gamers we should openly acknowledge this problem and work to address it and not  tiptoe around the subject

[Forrix]

I'd love a female model for my Fyreslayers. It feels weird to have such a human seeming faction has absolutely zero female models and barely any mention in the lore (dwarves in general). With Fyreslayers in particular, I get that a warrior society would have more male soldiers but its still that army that features RuneFathers and Runesons and places a premium on hertitage but doesn't even have a picture of a woman in it. It would be easy to add a Runemother to its priests units and make the army feel more alive.

Or they could just go with my original Fyreslayer headcannon and make the Magmadroths the female Fyreslayer form.  "Aye man-ling, when Vulkatrix and Griminir's essences combined we swore only to take Magmadroths as wives to honor ter union"  Runefather answering a Freeguild General's question about why he's never seen a Fyreslayer woman. Runefather is slowly stroking a Magmadroth's leg while the General looks on in bewilderment and horror.

[CB42]

2 minutes ago, Zanzou said:

I think gender differences within different factions can make things characteristic and interesting.  In our own history, obviously events of men going to war to protect the women and children was a theme.  As long as GW is still comfortable to play with whatever themes they want with gender (and that we don't hear about designer's ideas getting nixed for not being "50/50 ALL THE TIME"), then we are golden.  It is only when representation is enforced at all times across every single faction would things get dull and boring.  Because even in a fantasy world, that would probably be overly generic and hard to believe.

For example, they are fine with making all-female factions.  As long as they do not get pressured out of ideas to make a new all-male faction that they want to make, then there is really no issue.

The Fyreslayers battletome just came out and is explicitly all male. Skaven, goblins, FEC are all male or androgynous. Khorne is all male except for three heroes. Beasts of chaos are all classically male Minotaurs. The ONLY recent battletome with more than 10% of their models looking female would be Slaanesh.

Tell me again how a limited time model for stormcast and the existence of two all-female lines (slaanesh and Daughters) means you’re afraid there’s no artistic room for all-male lines.

[Sete]

I love these new female miniatures.

There is no reason for a woman to be less heroic and less worthy than a man to receive the power of Sigmar.

 

Edited June 20, 2019 by Sete

[jaebird]

11 minutes ago, HollowHills said:

Clearly you mean me, which is fine and I'm happy to respond, so "they" is unnecessary. 

You're right it's a loaded term and I am slightly against the way they are handling it. I think it's a bit silly to pretend a biologically female warrior is going to be as strong and equipped for war as a male warrior. The exception being aelves who seem to be fairly androgynous. 

Now of course some might respond "but it's fantasy realism doesn't matter when you have flying sharks and rat people", which is to some extent true. At the same time though, those things exist within the internal logic of the setting. However, there isn't any clear internal logic in the setting as to why human women (who have the same bodies as real life women) would be as strong or capable for war as human men.

please, purge your brain of this bioessentialist tripe. at BEST it makes you look like a ****** who wants to exclude women "if it makes sense". women's bodies are varied and different and diverse as much as men's bodies are. women have fought, and will continue to fight, regardless of whether their bodies fit some kind of ideal of "masculine warriorness". Not ever man who has ever fought was a 6-ft mountain of muscle, and it's bizarre to imagine that women have to some how be exceptional to have similar results from train and practicing with weapons.

[Zanzou]

3 minutes ago, CB42 said:

Tell me again how a limited time model for stormcast and the existence of two all-female lines (slaanesh and Daughters) means you’re afraid there’s no artistic room for all-male lines.

...? I didn't say there was a problem.  I was talking about what the hypothetical good principals of designing new factions would be moving forward.

[CB42]

Just now, Zanzou said:

...? I didn't say there was a problem.  I was talking about what the hypothetical good principals of designing new factions would be moving forward.

I think it's absurd to talk about it as if it's a potential problem when the real problem is that players like HollowHills will lash out at GW for including female models in explicitly mixed gender armies. When there is absolutely zero evidence of one issue (GW won't feel comfortable with all-male lines) and tons of evidence of the opposite (GW releases tons of all-male lines versus two all-female lines and is comfortable with mixed gender lines being 90%+ male), the real concern should be that GW doesn't feel comfortable releasing as many female sculpts as their artistic vision suggests they should.

Do you think that, in all the years of GW operating and producing miniatures, no one at GW has had the artistic vision of female guardsmen? The artistic vision of female space marines? Female cultists? The artistic vision of female necrons, or tau, or orks? Except for a few HQs here and there, it seems like the player base has mostly pushed against artistic vision only when that artistic vision is of female models, and that's super weird to me.

[Lucky Snake Eyes]

So Personally I collect Hedonites, so I guess I can say that army is exactly 50/50? 

My second army is legions of nagash... yeah literally just vampires for things that visibly have a gender and even then it'd just be the foot vampires (until we hopefully get new vamp units) that could get more varied sculpts since the coven throne are all female and blood knights are in heavy armour so it doesn't matter. Albeit I love the designs of the old Vlad and Isabella models from 8th ed fantasy and would love to see more vampires of both varieties follow similar design schemes. An old hag necro or witch would be neat tho since our sculpt options for those are limited to a single sculpt and a long dead fantasy character.

i also recently started a small KO force, so I don't know if it's still cannon but I recall fantasy stated that dwarf birth rates where 75% male or something crazy like that? Regardless of whether that's cannon KO are all wearing heavy suits so any physical signs of gender would likely be hidden anyways.

Most armies can realistically include female sculpts without causing a fuss anyways, and in many cases you wouldn't be able to tell the differences between men or women either due too armour or racial biology anyways.

While I don't really care what direction GW takes with future sculpts I will be all for any sculpts that are good, because in the end that's what matters. I don't care if the next 50 sculpts shown off are all female as long as they're quality sculpts. 

As for the minor point of racial representation, they all come grey just paint them how you want, they're your models after all. Who cares what the official paint scheme is? I usually don't follow them anyways.

[RuneBrush]

+++ MOD HAT +++

Sorry folks, I appreciate the intent of the topic, but this kind of conversation rarely ends up in a good place so I'm locking the thread before we get there.