" I guess that my female Space Marines could be from […] amazon planet " – so, does that mean that they have terrible working conditions, or that they're often deployed for union-busting..?

Another great video Ian! Interestingly my 7 year old daughter has started playing 40k this year and has created her own successor chapter to the blood angels (the Peace Angels); she just assumed half of her marines are female (she has named many of them and made character sheets for some of them).  My son and I didn't want to correct her and neither did our local GW manager when my daughter was painting/playing in the shop so her chapter is mixed gender.  Her female lieutenants wear helmets - so do her male ones.  It really makes no difference!

Many hobbyist forget that they can do what they want with their hobby. They do not have to wait for GW to give them permission to make a female space marine. I have been in this hobby for 30+ years and I have encountered a handle full of female space marine players over the years. I've never witnessed other players making fun of them or refusing to play the army. This fixation with gender inside a Grimdark fantasy game has been a bit odd to me. Everyone can make their arguments for or against, but at the end of the day the hobbyist has the power to make their vision come to life. That is the true power.

Gw should just flesh out the sisters of silence, they're way cooler than space marines and could really use some love.

Imagine if they did Cyber Mastiffs, Excrutiatus Squads and Captured Psykers!!!

I played Eldar, and I loved that the Eldar Guardians (at least the 90s metal-ones-with-plastic-arms) had some female warriors in the mix - but the aspect warriors were all male, except the all-female Banshees.

We don't talk about how fucked up space marines look out of their armour often enough.
Part of me wishes that instead of just a straight upgrade to old marine models, Primaris would have been like an astartes version of ogryns. Someone's attempt to breed bigger, better humans backfires into a "race" of deformed and basically lobotomised mutants, destined to be abused as draft animals and cannon fodder by their fellow humans.

With the upcoming release of the Ursula J Creed mini, I think her head would be a perfect example of what you could use for a kitbashed female space marine. I'd love to see GW release more non-conventionally attractive heads like that.

One of the core ideas that has carried forward from the Rogue Trader days is that your army is your army; you do what you want with it. While GW are the arbiters of the official cannon they have ,very consistently, left the door wide open for players own interpretations (you essentially pointed to this in the video all be it in slightly different terms). So if people want female Space Marines they should make them as they see fit, which I guess is the point behind the 28mag challenge. As for asking GW to make it cannon that Space Marines can be female I think this might be missing that previous point; that your cannon is greater in importance than official cannon.

Where I do think there is a bit of a genuine grievance is lack of appropriate female heads and other parts (for a number of ranges) maybe we should be looking at third parties or the community (STLs) to create the heads you suggest in your video, if GW won't or can't make those?

The only thing I disagree slightly with in your video is that I don't see that making female power armour look different to male power armour is an issue. If female Space Marines look exactly like their male counterparts then that just seems a little boring honestly. Don't get me wrong, I'm not arguing for thongs, but some differences to denote that the person underneath is different is too good an opportunity to miss for the sake of realism (which isn't really a driving force behind 40k anyway).

Great video Ian, keep 'em coming and can't wait to see your take on the subject!

IMO: occasional appropriate head swap on a character model. Don't think it'd be unreasonable for a few space marines to have less rugged aesthetic looks, it's more common in certain chapters such as Blood Angels.

If you see the 9th edition cinematic you can see GW's strategy here.

They are going to raise Sister of Battle to a level of prestige as Space Marines.

This way they can have their cake and eat it.  Give female characters a killer place and portrayal, don't piss off some of your current fans who will feel you are bending to outside pressure. You also have 8 foot tall Sisters of Silence. There is a ton unsaid about them. They will eventually be revealed as being a genetic engineered creations.  Why piss off  a chunk of your fan base when you can already have  spaces for really evocative female characters? There is no win for them to having Female Space Marines.

I personally think that all space marines, (regardless of what gender you decide to make them) should just wear their damn helmets. Doesn’t matter what gender you are because even in the grim darkness of the far future, safety should always come first.

Since I couldn't find anyone mentioning this: isn't one of the main aspects of the power armour SM wear that they can be mixed and matched together however available anyway? Basically so that if need be a marine could replace a broken piece of armour with one from a fallen brother?
So even from a logistical and logical perspective female SM would wear the exact same armour as their bretheren.
My headcanon is that there had always been female SM but no one could tell the difference and they are referred to as brother as well internally just because it's the traditional way of addressing each other. "Brother Maria will be in charge of fotifying the 32nd district."

Slightly tangential, but I've always found it weird how few-and-far-between the female Imperial Guard models are. These folks are meant to be our Colonial Marine stand-ins - where's our Vasquez, Ferro, Dietrich? Not technically a marine but where's my goddamn Ripley?

There's not even a vaguely canonical reason behind this, and it's always bothered me, right from childhood. They don't have to be sexualised, just throw us more female heads please.

I know there are a billion opinions but might as well add one more. I think it's all down to effort. Kitbashes like The Great Clean One or Loyalist versions of Traitor marines are still incredibly well done despite not being Canon™. If someone wants female space marines, go for it, it will maybe diversify the hordes of primaris slightly which is always a good thing. Lore wise, you could always use the canon of the second primarch being a women and go from there but I doubt there will be official minis. Love the video by the way Ian

I have a weird relationship with how I view the possibility of female space marines. I'd say it's just that I don't trust GW to do it right but that aside I have no problem with people kit bashing female marines (be they realistic or 'stripper' in design) and I have even included female marines in a fan reworking of the setting with a different set of 40 legions (but I digress) where I'm trying to explore different concepts, one of which being female marines. I've taken an approach similar to that stated in the video where 90% of the time they look just like male marines the remaining 10% are those who just look more like their Primarch who in fact is the only one who is meant to look conventionally attractive and even then that's more in a Fulgrim sense sense than anything. I'm still trying to find a theme for them as I want them to be more than FemMarines

I honestly couldn't care either way. They could bring back Sanguinius for all I care. So long as what ever is done, is written in convincingly. I'm sure Cawl could do it to be fair 🤣

A lot of the comments  are making me think that people didn’t watch the video

If the narrator can be wrong, this means the Squats are coming back.
(I'm not weighing into the female space marine debate, not my fight, I just want my f___ing Space Dwarfs dammit GW.)

1:33 … exactly. Nuff said. No need to consider anything else.

Another thing about hight. Space Marines are giant by Terran standards. By Martian standards they would be tall. Human height would be greatly influenced by gravity conditions during development.