Content Warning: racism, misogyny, gender stuff

Yes I’m going there and I’m potentially putting myself in harm’s way to do so. I don’t want any excuses. It feels like a broken record at this point, arguments spinning and churning like so much spoiled butter. No, I don’t want to “just play sisters of battle” as much as I do enjoy them. I don’t care if it contradicts the lore. Warhammer is built out of retcons. Know that when you start talking about testosterone I can see into your soul, so think before you speak. Doubly so if you think the Stormcast Avengers or women in the Astartes Custodes were a mistake. We need female space marines now more than ever and I’ll tell you why.

First, it’s no secret that like black metal alongside it, miniature wargaming and specifically Warhammer 40K has become a favoured pastime of nazis. If you’re not on some level both aware and angry about that, you’re part of the problem. The reasons are muddy and have a lot to do with ideology. Apparently making the protagonists of your tabletop game genocidal, ultra macho super soldiers who worship a dead zealot is something they find very cozy indeed. Who knew that they’d miss the little sticker on their rulebook with the word “satire” scrawled on it in fine print? Everyone needs a hobby, after all.

Second, miniature wargaming is also the cushy, consumer version of something that still to this day is considered a weapon, or at the very least a deterrent. Wargaming and its conjoined twin serious gaming is a very lucrative business. Both have long been almost entirely the domain of cis white het dudes* and so that’s where most of the money comes from.

Last but not least, when I was growing up, no-one called a vacuum cleaner by its name. We always called it a “hoover”. Almost nobody asks if you want to play a video game. They ask if you want to play League of Legends with them. When it comes to the business of moving intricately detailed, self-assembled toy soldiers around on a table nobody calls it a wargame. That’s Warhammer. Nothing else comes close.

Adoption by the far right. A history steeped in the militarisation of play by toxic masculinity. Our capitalist society’s tendency towards monopoly and putting brands over the folk traditions they represent. This is the unholy trinity of stench that continues to steer me in circles around a past-time I otherwise find creative, refreshing and exciting. There are indeed other games I could be playing and indeed do that take the best parts of the game formerly known as rogue trader and make it more accessible to those less well off financially or otherwise marginalised. You’ve probably never heard of them and may never bother to look. I have to stress that it isn’t a moral failing if you haven’t done this.

Games Workshop, the producer of 40K has in recent years taken some steps in the right direction. Official promotion materials consistently contain people that don’t fit the stereotype of a wargamer. We got female Custodes and box art that consistently shows models with more variations in skin tones. Developers within the studio have told its worst customers they don’t want their money. But let’s not kid ourselves. They’re handling thermite with a tea towel. Because as long as it spends the same, retailers will take the cash anyway and wire it over to them, because money has no smell.

Am I saying that most of GW’s revenue comes from white supremacy? Of course not. That’s a paranoid take that I don’t have the data nor testimony to corroborate. But I do know that there’s also another massive game franchise owned by a publicly traded company featuring a genetically enhanced super soldier in power armor. Said soldier is also a woman. It’s called Metroid, and it came out for the Famicom in 1986. One year before the release of 40K’s first edition. That means one of the forenamers of this hobby is getting shown up by something that does a chirping, pixelated striptease for you if beaten in under half an hour. Think about that.

When I look at a space marine I don’t see a man. The armor with the helmet on is so big and bulky they may as well be a walking tank without a soul. There could be anyone hiding in there. Given the inclinations of and inspirations behind the imperium of man it makes sense to assume the one piloting it identifies as male. The third reich was nothing if not gender essentialist and misogynist. I’m also not trying to make the argument that it’s inherently wrong to have games featuring an improbably male cast, just look at Lisa the Painful. But when the poster child of how you spend your free time gleefully parades these particular freaks around as the default faction of “goodies” and each fan in your row throws a tantrum when I ask why they can’t look like me, it’s kind of like they’re each telling me to fuck off. Having the sisters of battle be their own thing only serves to reinforce decades old power structures in real life. To simplify, I no longer feel fully safe nor good about asking people to play the space nazi game. I realise that name doesn’t fit it all too well, but at the very least it cuts to the heart of the issue.

So here’s what I propose: we must cross the rubicon. Not only are female space marines, they’re in your army right now. Some of them either used to or still identify as female or non-binary**. We manufactured them before and we can do it again. Concerns, you say? Oh don’t worry, they execute heretics all the same. Flood the stores with models featuring long hair, round features and smooth skin of all colours and sizes. Testosterone is but one of the stimulants we use to achieve might, my child. There are others.

Now. I want you to take that knife and plunge it into the tar-soaked cancer at the root of the game. Yes, that’s it. Twist. Did I order you to stop stabbing, private? The emperor demands his frilliest evening gown to be dyed red. Swing harder! People have burned dozens of plastic models over less than this. Keep going, and don’t you dare stop until the conservative rage boiling inside their stomachs spills out of their mouths like a river.

*There are famous, historical instances of women and other minorities shaping the history of the tabletop wargaming hobby and related pastimes. Women, queer people and people of colour have always been a part of this and I hope they continue to be. This rant isn’t about them and honestly they deserve their own article.

**Trans masc marines. I was referring to the already canon possibility of space marines who are trans men or related queer labels. I just didn’t want to interrupt the flow, sorry.