Females in (Dark) Eldar society

[LordLucan]

Kinda odd if you ask me... Why deliberately put the real women in harm's way so you can then sex-change males into females to keep the population up? Doesn't make sense to me.

Erm, that's not what the Dark Eldar do at all though, and wasn't my point...

They keep the populaiton up through artificial means. Eldar women are no more important or valued in Dark Eldar society than male eldar. Trueborn offspring are a luxury, and a sign of status amongst dark eldar; a powerful eldar female feels secure enough in her own power to get pregnant. It shows the hubris and pride of the eldar in question. Trueborn are then raised by their parents to be cruel and superior to everyone else. Imagine the worst kind of pushy parent (like those ones who pressure their kid's into show business), and magnify it ten fold.

Dark Eldar females are not protected by society. If they want to be protected enough to have a kid, they'd have to ensure their own protection, though various pacts, cunning and maybe hiring Incubi or alien mercenaries to protect them, as only those creatures can be relied upon not to try and murder the female while she's weakened and steal her position of power.

But overall, females are not required to keep the population up. I'm sure the haemonculi have enough female eldar slaves to pillage genetic material from for their half-born creation processes...

[ChaplainCharlie]

Minor point, but I think you might be confusing being gay with being transexual; a transexual who was born a man and becomes a woman might still fancy women for example.

In terms of Eldar views to gender I think Gav T has mentioned they are supposed to be quite fluid.

http://mechanicalhamster.wordpress.c...ections-pt-ii/

"For a long time I dabbled with the idea of having a prominent character who was a male member of the female Howling Banshees. I initially wanted to examine the somewhat fluid nature of Eldar gender and their attitude towards male and female roles and characteristics. In the end I abandoned it because it was too much to get across for a secondary character and would have been more confusing than enlightening; and it simply would have been too much to use such a character as the protagonist for the majority of the BL readership."

Well I never did specify what these people were called, now did I?
The spectrum of human sexuality is very diverse and the mechanisms that cause it are not throughly understood. Adding gender change into the matter would complicate things even further.

However, I do concur that Eldar sexuality is even more diverse than human sexuality. It might not be impossible or even that hard to change the physical gender of an Eldar if they all regularly were born pretty much pansexual, but it would still be a lot more work and as far as I've understood Eldar, they prefer their bodies the way they are, not enhanced or meddled with. That is one thing that separates the Dark Eldar from the Craftworlders anyway. The Eldar no doubt have the technology to make warriors the likes of Space Marines, but don't, because their values won't let them. Wracks are kinda like Space Marines and they are created willingly, but that's more of a last-ditch resort even for the Dark Eldar...

[Lord-Caerolion]

They're "kinda like Space Marines" in that they're modified, but that's entirely where the similarities end. They're not intended as warriors at all, but rather as proto-haemonculi/experiments. I will agree that they're not exactly regarded as sane by the rest of the Dark Eldar, but the Commorrites seem to be fine with tampering with their bodies at least, but I can't see the Craftworlders being willing to do so.

[Poseidal]

The thing about Eldar making Space Marines is that Space Marines are not self-reproducing naturally. In terms of the War in Heaven, I think there was some advantage that your engineered soldier race could be proliferated without excessive micromanagement; just put a reasonable population sample all in one place for a while.

In terms of a 'better' body you are likely correct they don't value them so much, considering they don't even need any part of a body to make one: Wraithguard are powered by their souls alone.

[Aluinn]

It's a number's game, 'sexism' has nothing to do with it, how it 'sounds' or 'feels' is even less relevant. 1 male + 10 females makes for more babies than 10 males + 1 female. A race as advanced as the eldar, who are suffering population problems, would know that.

This is still sexist. For one thing, it assumes that the females will all, even in society with billions of members, assuming that roughly half are female, be willing to devote their lives to being baby-making machines, in spite of having desires that extend far beyond the production of babies and which cannot be fulfilled concurrent with the production of babies (e.g. to be a warrior), or that men will somehow be able to force them into such a role, and ought to do so. All of that is sexist; you might still think that men can and should force women to produce babies when they don't want to, but for one thing, you should be honest and admit that it's misogynistic to the extent that it borders on the endorsement of rape, which is to say, rather, and for another the Eldar would appear to disagree with you.

Finally your equation is an oversimplification and even pragmatism doesn't necessarily justify what you're suggesting (obliquely). For example, it may be risking a "potential mother" to allow an Eldar woman to serve in combat, but if victory in battle saves many Eldar lives, it might be far worse to waste the skills of a "potential warrior" by confining her to the role of a mother, even putting ethical concerns aside. In other words, you assume that women couldn't regularly fight better than men, when, if we make a rough comparison to humans and assume that we're starting from the base of a society with advanced technology (e.g. guns and hand-to-hand weapons that are refined enough to reward skill vastly more than strength, plus transport that obviates of the need to carry around a lot of weight personally) and gender equality, there is no reason why it wouldn't very often happen that a given woman would turn out to be a much more valuable fighter than the majority of men. It is really only cultural bias that prevents modern Western society from taking advantage of this. And, if a woman did prove to be better at fighting than most men, she'd probably be able to preserve far more life by fighting, assuming that Eldar only fight when necessary or when they're simply unable to restrain themselves for whatever reason, and training to become still better at it, than spending the same time having babies and raising children. The same applies of course to many other fields that are necessary to live life in the way that Eldar live it and are apparently unwilling to go without.

In fact, though, if they were to sacrifice everything for raw material pragmatism, and reduce everything to a calculation of breeding efficiency, why would they have art at all? Why would they fight at all? Why wouldn't everyone be either a farmer, a maker of farming equipment and tools, or a "breeder"? The most obvious answer is that, like humans, they value some things more than life, and some ways of life are possible for them which they would find so degrading that they'd prefer death.

[Drasanil]

@Aluinn: You're a bit late to the party but thanks for that feminist rant, I quite enjoyed how you managed to extrapolate an endorsement of rape out of a one line sentence. No doubt your feminista handlers are quite proud of you, alas you're addressing an issue that had already been clarified further down.

Aye, I don't think the eldar would view females as walking wombs, rather I was objecting to the idea that it was sexist to assume the eldar wouldn't realise that there is ratio of males to females that is more beneficial to preserving their species and that on some levels it wouldn't be taken into account despite the specie's lack of gender roles.

--- --- ---

On the other hand if you want to actually debate feminist ideology one could be tempted to point out that the pursuit of 'fulfillment' to the exclusion of all else has already been proven as a failed and dangerous ideology. The case and point being Western Society's inability to sustain itself with out a constant influx of immigration. No one is saying women shouldn't pursue careers or an education, but at the same time if a society is to be sustainable, a balance still needs to be struck and the feminist lie that children and families are unimportant is one of the greatest societal harms still being perpetrate to this day and one that harms both sexes equally.

[Lord Zarkov]

On the other hand if you want to actually debate feminist ideology one could be tempted to point out that the pursuit of 'fulfillment' to the exclusion of all else has already been proven as a failed and dangerous ideology. The case and point being Western Society's inability to sustain itself with out a constant influx of immigration. No one is saying women shouldn't pursue careers or an education, but at the same time if a society is to be sustainable, a balance still needs to be struck and the feminist lie that children and families are unimportant is one of the greatest societal harms still being perpetrate to this day and one that harms both sexes equally.

It's also probably worth noting that the Eldar are acutely aware (being somewhat experienced) of where exactly "the pursuit of 'fufillment' to the exclusion of all else" eventually leads...

[Aluinn]

@Aluinn: You're a bit late to the party but thanks for that feminist rant, I quite enjoyed how you managed to extrapolate an endorsement of rape out of a one line sentence. No doubt your feminista handlers are quite proud of you, alas you're addressing an issue that had already been clarified further down.



--- --- ---

On the other hand if you want to actually debate feminist ideology one could be tempted to point out that the pursuit of 'fulfillment' to the exclusion of all else has already been proven as a failed and dangerous ideology. The case and point being Western Society's inability to sustain itself with out a constant influx of immigration. No one is saying women shouldn't pursue careers or an education, but at the same time if a society is to be sustainable, a balance still needs to be struck and the feminist lie that children and families are unimportant is one of the greatest societal harms still being perpetrate to this day and one that harms both sexes equally.

Now you're suggesting that the Western world is somehow dying out (oh noes, and we're being overrun by dark-skinned people!) because of our failure to breed rapidly enough? I think quite the contrary; it's already been demonstrated conclusively that the world is overpopulated and that this creates (along with other factors which I won't go into) a great deal of poverty, starvation, sickness, and misery, and if we genuinely were consciously doing the world a solid by redistributing population and attempting to reduce birth rates, we'd deserve kudos, though I don't think we are. Birth rates seem to be pretty directly proportional to education levels no matter what society you look at, and almost regardless of cultural factors, e.g. most Italians are Catholic and the Church condemns birth control, but their birth rate is still mysteriously very, very low.

You're not saying that (Western) women shouldn't pursue careers and education, but you are saying that they need to also produce babies, because ... we don't have enough of them by sheer lust and accident? Because in your judgment it is necessary and you somehow occupy a place to be suggesting to women what they should or should not do with their bodies or their lives? This all suggests that you aren't looking at them as people, but rather mechanically as elements in a (very flawed) population dynamics calculus. That was why I went on my feminist rant; because you seem to be insisting on looking at them, if not as walking wombs, as statistics. You can say this is not the case, but the arguments you actually make belie that.

Aye, I don't think the eldar would view females as walking wombs, rather I was objecting to the idea that it was sexist to assume the eldar wouldn't realise that there is ratio of males to females that is more beneficial to preserving their species and that on some levels it wouldn't be taken into account despite the specie's lack of gender roles.

So they shouldn't treat women as walking wombs, you say, but they should "realise that there is a ratio of males to females that is more beneficial to preserving their species" and "take that into account". My point is that this amounts to, at some point, forcing women to play the role of baby-maker, and that that is tantamount to rape, because you would indeed be forcing them, even if via some sort of public policy, to breed when they might, as actual individual human beings (or Eldar, as the case may be) with dignity and unalienable rights, which include the right to decide what happens to their bodies or doesn't, not want to do so.

As Kant says, a being either has dignity or has a price, never both; to "value" women based on their ability to incubate fetuses and assess their role in society based upon that is to deny them an essential element of their humanity and the dignity that all people deserve. They are not more valuable than men; the whole calculation is fundamentally inhumane.

Of course I'm just acting as a mouthpiece for my "handlers", so please don't take any offense to this. After all, it is impossible for a man to be a feminist, so I must be speaking for some horribly confused, silly women.

[AlexHolker]

It's a number's game, 'sexism' has nothing to do with it, how it 'sounds' or 'feels' is even less relevant. 1 male + 10 females makes for more babies than 10 males + 1 female. A race as advanced as the eldar, who are suffering population problems, would know that.

But the alternative is not 10 and 1 - it's 5-6 and 5-6. Letting Eldar females serve in the Eldar military will not cause disproportionate casualties among Eldar females.

[Drasanil]

Now you're suggesting that the Western world is somehow dying out (oh noes, and we're being overrun by dark-skinned people!) because of our failure to breed rapidly enough?

Congratulations, you just proved you know absolutely nothing about immigration policy. Having actually worked in the field I can tell you that Western Immigration policy is generally viewed as flawed not because we're 'overrun by dark-skinned people' but rather because it is a stop gap measure and a band-aid that is slapped on to cover up the underlying fundamental problem (which is incidentally birth rates and an aging population, so yes our failure to breed rapidly enough, you know that is what generally causes things to die out) and does nothing to deal with it. That second and third generation immigrants then have similar birth rates as other citizens only accentuates the population problem further, making us ever more reliant on immigration to compensate the increasing short fall. Which, believe it or not uses up actual resources in order to make new immigrants functional in their adoptive society. Normal, legal immigration has costs too and immigrants don't just suddenly become fully integrated and functional members of society the moment their feet touch the ground.

I think quite the contrary; it's already been demonstrated conclusively that the world is overpopulated and that this creates (along with other factors which I won't go into) a great deal of poverty, starvation, sickness, and misery,

First off, the Western World is not overpopulated, in fact it's under populated as evidenced by the fact that we need immigration to constantly top us off. Secondly most of the overpopulation problems in the developing nations stem from the fact that many of these places are still relying on badly out dated subsistence farming techniques while supporting larger longer lived populations afforded by advanced medicines. It's not so much that there are too many people per say, but rather that they're catching up piecemeal to the West, where one sector is benefiting from the advances while another isn't which causes inbalances and the poverty, misery and suffering which you cited.

and if we genuinely were consciously doing the world a solid by redistributing population and attempting to reduce birth rates, we'd deserve kudos, though I don't think we are.

Redistributing population does nothing to solve the underlying problem, you can't redistribute everyone for one, and the original conditions which caused 'overpopulation' remain the same meaning that in the space of a generation you'd be right back to where you started. If anything we need to foster proper growth and development in those countries as opposed to simply moving people.

Birth rates seem to be pretty directly proportional to education levels no matter what society you look at, and almost regardless of cultural factors, e.g. most Italians are Catholic and the Church condemns birth control, but their birth rate is still mysteriously very, very low.

Yes because 'modern' societies have bought into the notion that children and families are secondary concerns. Self gratification is easy, having kids isn't, having a few kids even less, in a society of predicated upon convenience I wonder which of those tends to win out.

You're not saying that (Western) women shouldn't pursue careers and education, but you are saying that they need to also produce babies, because ... we don't have enough of them by sheer lust and accident?

First off are you implying that having children and a career are mutually exclusive? Because that's what it sounds like to me, quite a sexist underestimation of women's capabilities, not to mention a completely sexist disregard for the modern stay at home dad. Second to your point about not having enough children, was this meant as some sort of trick question? What exactly did you think our aging/declining population problem was, pixies?

Because in your judgment it is necessary and you somehow occupy a place to be suggesting to women what they should or should not do with their bodies or their lives? This all suggests that you aren't looking at them as people, but rather mechanically as elements in a (very flawed) population dynamics calculus. That was why I went on my feminist rant; because you seem to be insisting on looking at them, if not as walking wombs, as statistics. You can say this is not the case, but the arguments you actually make belie that.

I'm looking at it from a societal point of view, societies should encourage families and children because those are the things said societies' future are built on. That you think such is somehow sexist, I frankly don't care but feel free to continue debating the point, you're just making yourself look all the more like an extremist.

So they shouldn't treat women as walking wombs, you say, but they should "realise that there is a ratio of males to females that is more beneficial to preserving their species" and "take that into account". My point is that this amounts to, at some point, forcing women to play the role of baby-maker, and that that is tantamount to rape, because you would indeed be forcing them, even if via some sort of public policy, to breed when they might, as actual individual human beings (or Eldar, as the case may be) with dignity and unalienable rights, which include the right to decide what happens to their bodies or doesn't, not want to do so.

Only the worst sort of ideologue would equate a society encouraging (not forcing) the growth of families and working to ensure the next generation as a call for institutionalized rape. Like I said previously, your feminista handlers must be quite proud of the work they did on you.

As Kant says, a being either has dignity or has a price, never both;

I deal in practicalities, not the frivolous extremes of philosophies which are free to espouse all sorts of absolutes in the vacuum of pure theory. That said, once you step out into the real world I feel you'll be in for quite a shock.

Of course I'm just acting as a mouthpiece for my "handlers", so please don't take any offense to this. After all, it is impossible for a man to be a feminist, so I must be speaking for some horribly confused, silly women.

Define 'feminist' because from the approach you seem to be taking to it (one of ideological extreme/purety) it's something that most women don't even subscribe too and the few men who do from my experience are generally (not always, mind you) insincere hypocrites, intellectually neutered or just self-hating.

[Zenithfleet]

In a valiant but probably doomed attempt to distract this discussion from becoming a full-blown Puritan vs Radical inquisitorial war that leads to the thread being declared Perdita and possibly fusion bombed...

...as others have brought up earlier, I've wondered on occasion if there's an Eldar Path for mastering sexual desire. (I think they'd definitely need one). 'Path of the Nympho' - maybe not, but 'Path of the Lover' sounds reasonable. It'd probably be a bit like tantra. All about control, and probably putting your partner's pleasure ahead of your own, to avoid any selfish Slaaneshness.

Presumably you can become trapped on the Path of the Lover.

There are probably Exarch equivalents.

I'll leave you with that thought.

[Aluinn]

Congratulations, you just proved you know absolutely nothing about immigration policy. Having actually worked in the field I can tell you that Western Immigration policy is generally viewed as flawed not because we're 'overrun by dark-skinned people' but rather because it is a stop gap measure and a band-aid that is slapped on to cover up the underlying fundamental problem (which is incidentally birth rates and an aging population, so yes our failure to breed rapidly enough, you know that is what generally causes things to die out) and does nothing to deal with it. That second and third generation immigrants then have similar birth rates as other citizens only accentuates the population problem further, making us ever more reliant on immigration to compensate the increasing short fall. Which, believe it or not uses up actual resources in order to make new immigrants functional in their adoptive society. Normal, legal immigration has costs too and immigrants don't just suddenly become fully integrated and functional members of society the moment their feet touch the ground.

First off, the Western World is not overpopulated, in fact it's under populated as evidenced by the fact that we need immigration to constantly top us off. Secondly most of the overpopulation problems in the developing nations stem from the fact that many of these places are still relying on badly out dated subsistence farming techniques while supporting larger longer lived populations afforded by advanced medicines. It's not so much that there are too many people per say, but rather that they're catching up piecemeal to the West, where one sector is benefiting from the advances while another isn't which causes inbalances and the poverty, misery and suffering which you cited.

Redistributing population does nothing to solve the underlying problem, you can't redistribute everyone for one, and the original conditions which caused 'overpopulation' remain the same meaning that in the space of a generation you'd be right back to where you started. If anything we need to foster proper growth and development in those countries as opposed to simply moving people.

Yes because 'modern' societies have bought into the notion that children and families are secondary concerns. Self gratification is easy, having kids isn't, having a few kids even less, in a society of predicated upon convenience I wonder which of those tends to win out.

But all of this is only valid if you view Western society as being fundamentally dependent upon the physical survival of its racial progenitors (i.e. Europeans), rather than their cultural legacy, which can be and has been for quite a long time passed on to immigrants who come from other parts of the world, and more fundamentally if you view the survival of Western society as being the primary concern of anyone dealing in population dynamics, which is, needless to say, arbitrarily West-centric. In other words, all of this is predicated on the idea of some sort of "clash of cultures/societies" which is the invention of people who view their own culture/society as superior to others, and therefore in need of some kind of defense against them--to be fair it exists in the East as well, and you'll find the same sort of thing there, but in any case it dismisses the concept that the world is increasingly not composed of warring societies (and perhaps should not be to whatever extent it may), but rather is becoming ever more interconnected both economically and culturally, and that the underlying concept is potentially dangerous and the sort of thing which tends to cause world wars, imperialist policies, genocide, and snappy uniforms.

So why is it, objectively speaking, a problem if Western society is dying out? If this is true, doesn't it simply suggest that our heyday has passed and that, as with all things, Western society is not going to last forever, at least not preserved in some immutable form?

First off are you implying that having children and a career are mutually exclusive? Because that's what it sounds like to me, quite a sexist underestimation of women's capabilities, not to mention a completely sexist disregard for the modern stay at home dad. Second to your point about not having enough children, was this meant as some sort of trick question? What exactly did you think our aging/declining population problem was, pixies?

No, I was not implying that. I was implying that some women may not want to have babies, and that to tell them that they must is wrong because they are human beings and because having babies dramatically affects their lives: If they want to do it, fine, and from a global perspective plenty of them naturally have always wanted to without being told when, where and/or how to do it by anyone; indeed, if our biological imperatives were so failing us, we'd be an evolutionary dead end. Yes, having children affects the lives of fathers as well, and more broadly of men in general, but that's no refutation of the point; I'm not suggesting that they don't deserve equal consideration. No one should be told they must have children, and that's not a problem, because enough people always will, owing to biology, that we're in no danger of becoming extinct because too many people are unwilling to have them (else we'd "deserve" to become extinct in some sense, i.e. we'd be an evolutionary failure); your view of it exclusively through the lens of Western societies in the contemporary historical period is clouding your judgment.

I'm looking at it from a societal point of view, societies should encourage families and children because those are the things said societies' future are built on. That you think such is somehow sexist, I frankly don't care but feel free to continue debating the point, you're just making yourself look all the more like an extremist.

Only the worst sort of ideologue would equate a society encouraging (not forcing) the growth of families and working to ensure the next generation as a call for institutionalized rape. Like I said previously, your feminista handlers must be quite proud of the work they did on you.

First of all, whether my views are extreme (which I'll assume to mean "deviate from those of the majority in [place which has yet to be defined]") or whether I am an ideologue or not has nothing to do with the validity or lack thereof of my arguments; those are ad hominem judgments which can only serve to distract from the substance of a debate. I personally don't care whether you or anyone else thinks I am "extreme" or "idealistic"; judge what I say, not what I am, else your arguments are fallacious.

If you would say my arguments are extreme rather than that I am an extremist, this is still a fallacy; that most people may disagree with me does not make me wrong.

And, second, you are still relying on this "clash of societies" view which is addressed above but, to say something more of it, may or may not be relevant to the life of an individual woman; if not, we ought to respect that, based on human dignity and fundamental human rights, rather than to say that she ought to be having children when she might have no desire to. Again, once you bring this to the level of the individual it completely falls apart and its inhumanity becomes apparent, and it becomes irrelevant and falls apart again when you bring it to the global level. You say you're only advocating "encouragement", but how does that work exactly? Are we to indoctrinate female (or male) children via the school system to believe that having children is crucial to their role in society? That might on the surface look very different than rape but there is a conceptual parallel, and anyway it probably won't work, because statistics show that how many children someone has is generally proportional to their level of education--thus, it will work on people who probably would have had children anyway, and not work on those who would not have. This leaves you recourse to either abandon the endeavor or to begin "forcing" (or, at best, coercing), which looks a lot more like rape.

I deal in practicalities, not the frivolous extremes of philosophies which are free to espouse all sorts of absolutes in the vacuum of pure theory. That said, once you step out into the real world I feel you'll be in for quite a shock.

If you think ethics has no practical application or that arguments from reason can have no relevance to the "real world", I don't know what to say, except that you don't seem to know the Western society that you're so concerned with very well, nor any other.

Define 'feminist' because from the approach you seem to be taking to it (one of ideological extreme/purety) it's something that most women don't even subscribe too and the few men who do from my experience are generally (not always, mind you) insincere hypocrites, intellectually neutered or just self-hating.

Sure: Feminism is the defense of, and in political/economic terms the expansion of, women's rights (thus the "fem-"), based on the idea that women and men are fundamentally equal, based in turn on Enlightenment (and, *gasp*, Western!) concepts of basic human rights. I think most women do subscribe to that, or would if not for lack of education, and that most men who do not are misogynists (or as might be more meaningful to you, let's say fundamentally invested in a patriarchal societal structure), or again lacking education--for which, I should note, I don't blame them--but who may or may not be in the majority does not prove who is making the better argument nor who is right.

In a valiant but probably doomed attempt to distract this discussion from becoming a full-blown Puritan vs Radical inquisitorial war that leads to the thread being declared Perdita and possibly fusion bombed...

...as others have brought up earlier, I've wondered on occasion if there's an Eldar Path for mastering sexual desire. (I think they'd definitely need one). 'Path of the Nympho' - maybe not, but 'Path of the Lover' sounds reasonable. It'd probably be a bit like tantra. All about control, and probably putting your partner's pleasure ahead of your own, to avoid any selfish Slaaneshness.

Presumably you can become trapped on the Path of the Lover.

There are probably Exarch equivalents.

I'll leave you with that thought.

I really didn't mean to derail the thread so much as has been done, but just felt obliged to respond to the criticism, because I feel it's an important issue; anyway I do apologize and this will be my last post on the matter so as to increase the thread's changes of avoiding Exterminatus .

And, yeah, that idea is reasonable. I don't think the Eldar are prudes, nor that, as in the argument above, they view sex as having special status because of its role in procreation; their attitudes towards sex are probably the same as towards anything else that one might pursue excessively (including such blase' things as painting ), and, thus, it makes sense that there would be a Path. (The only flaw in it is a flaw that comes up with all the Paths, namely that they sometimes lead to excess and might even cause it via their laser-focus on one way of life, embodied in the concept of Exarchs.)

[Lord Zarkov]

But all of this is only valid if you view Western society as being fundamentally dependent upon the physical survival of its racial progenitors (i.e. Europeans), rather than their cultural legacy, which can be and has been for quite a long time passed on to immigrants who come from other parts of the world, and more fundamentally if you view the survival of Western society as being the primary concern of anyone dealing in population dynamics, which is, needless to say, arbitrarily West-centric. In other words, all of this is predicated on the idea of some sort of "clash of cultures/societies" which is the invention of people who view their own culture/society as superior to others, and therefore in need of some kind of defense against them--to be fair it exists in the East as well, and you'll find the same sort of thing there, but in any case it dismisses the concept that the world is increasingly not composed of warring societies (and perhaps should not be to whatever extent it may), but rather is becoming ever more interconnected both economically and culturally, and that the underlying concept is potentially dangerous and the sort of thing which tends to cause world wars, imperialist policies, genocide, and snappy uniforms.

There's only a certain level of immigration that can be easily integrated into an existing population - if you get too many you tend to get ghettos forming of immigrant populations (especially if they speak a different language), which can lead to social pressures (and loss of social cohesion) and localised violence and crime.
The larger the initial population the more immigration you can integrate (assuming they're evenly dispersed), so obviously you want some population growth from your naturalised population (including second and later generation immigrants).
Social cohesion and sense of nationhood are important for social security measures, and because it assists with democracy (e.g. you don't have a minority oppressed by a majority they don't feel part of; and people will agree to some degree of wealth transfer from richer to poorer areas). For example, part of the problem in Europe at the moment is that they're trying to force a unified government when there is no unified European demos - instead a collection of distinct, self identifying, groups.

And, second, you are still relying on this "clash of societies" view which is addressed above but, to say something more of it, may or may not be relevant to the life of an individual woman; if not, we ought to respect that, based on human dignity and fundamental human rights, rather than to say that she ought to be having children when she might have no desire to. Again, once you bring this to the level of the individual it completely falls apart and its inhumanity becomes apparent, and it becomes irrelevant and falls apart again when you bring it to the global level. You say you're only advocating "encouragement", but how does that work exactly? Are we to indoctrinate female (or male) children via the school system to believe that having children is crucial their role in society? That might on the surface look very different than rape but there is a conceptual parallel, and anyway it probably won't work, because statistics show that how many children someone has is generally proportional to their level of education--thus, it will work on people who probably would have had children anyway, and not work on those who would not have. This leaves you recourse to either abandon the endeavor or to begin "forcing" (or, at best, coercing), which looks a lot more like rape.

On your point about number of children and education levels - I don't know how it is in America, but in Britain the reverse is true - well educated people tend to be more career focussed and have less children and later (as the incremental cost is greater). People that are less educated however tend to have more children and start earlier.

As for how you provide encouragement to have children, you build it into the tax and benefit system - for example in Britain there is Child Benefit paid by the Government for upkeep of children - so you can choose not to have children, but if you do have some then the Government gives you some money in assistance. Now you do have to be careful with this as it can lead to perverse incentives where less well off people have more children then they can reasonably look after (which can lead to social problems), but if well designed (as is sadly not the case in Britain) it can work.

[Aluinn]

On your point about number of children and education levels - I don't know how it is in America, but in Britain the reverse is true - well educated people tend to be more career focussed and have less children and later (as the incremental cost is greater). People that are less educated however tend to have more children and start earlier.

That is exactly what I was saying; I don't know how you got the opposite out of it. It is true not only in Britain but everywhere in the world, unless some policy is in place that effectively forces people to procreate in a certain way, e.g. the One Child Policy in China, which is kind of the opposite of what Drasanil seems to be advocating, or where what he's advocating would have to lead in my estimation, because that's generally the only effective way to regulate anyone's procreative activities beyond paying them to have babies or taking more of their money if they don't (i.e. "child tax incentives") ... which I'll address here (below) I suppose.

And, in fact, coercive economic policy seems not to work very well either, because some countries do have that and it doesn't seem to counteract other influences, much less push effectively in the opposite direction.

Anyway the point was that since this universally seems to be true, it would appear that attempting to genuinely just encourage people to have children via e.g. a PR campaign or indoctrination via public education is not going to work, since cultural influences such as the stance of the Catholic Church are more or less the same thing and seem to already be far weaker than the education factor (cf Italy vs. Mexico). In the case of teaching children that they ought to have children, for example, educated people would probably realize that it was an indoctrination program in hindsight and disregard it (even though childhood influences can't be overcome completely all the time), and uneducated people who would not would have been more likely to have children in the first place. If any, its effect would be minimal (and most often result in teen pregnancy which is a problem itself) and not enough to counteract population trends, and this would be one of the more extreme non-coercive measures you could take; heck, some people would call it coercive in the first place.

As for how you provide encouragement to have children, you build it into the tax and benefit system - for example in Britain there is Child Benefit paid by the Government for upkeep of children - so you can choose not to have children, but if you do have some then the Government gives you some money in assistance. Now you do have to be careful with this as it can lead to perverse incentives where less well off people have more children then they can reasonably look after (which can lead to social problems), but if well designed (as is sadly not the case in Britain) it can work.

This amounts to coercion; if you effectively pay people to have children (which you're advocating, consciously or not, as opposed to simply helping them cover the cost, which would provide little incentive because it would not actually reward them; in other words, it would never encourage anyone to have kids who otherwise would not unless there is some "profit" built in, or unless they desperately wanted them but were holding off only for economic reasons, but evidence suggests that people who desperately want kids tend to have them whether they can afford it or not for the most part), this is equivalent to economically punishing people for not having children, which is definitely coercive policy. And, as you said, it causes other social problems, which is generally the case with things which are considered unethical, and often part of the reason why we consider them unethical (see my point about the relevance of ethics in the previous post).

Depriving people (especially women, but men as well) of opportunities for education would probably work as a measure to increase population but I hope I don't have to argue that it would be morally reprehensible and should be off the table, and even if you didn't consider it to be it would be counterproductive towards the aim of preserving a certain culture/society.

Okay this is really all I'm going to say on it, again in the interests of not getting this sent to the Wastes or deleted. I'd like to respond to your points about immigration but I think we should probably stop the debate because it's a little off-topic, though not completely unrelated to the fluff topic; certainly the immigration part has no relation to Eldar or what they might do about their birth rates.

[Zenithfleet]

Actually, I can picture the Eldar themselves having very similar debates. (Well, maybe not the immigration bit.) It's likely there are differing schools of thought within each Craftworld, and between them.

Eldar #1: "It's the duty of all our females to have children and save the species. We shouldn't endanger them on the battlefield."

Eldar #2: "I refuse to coerce our citizens into such behaviour. It's up to each individual to choose her own Path."

Farseer: "Folks, this is all very interesting but we don't have time right now. I foresee a whopper of a Chaos incursion. Everybody who can hold a gun, get out here quick, otherwise we're all dead anyway."

...and so on.

[Kuja]

I can guarantee that almost all of you (included me) would have prefered to be a woman in the past, without education and with babies. Going to war is probably one of the worst things that can happen to anyone (immensily worse than not having education and spend your life having babies). It is not a game, it is like a 99% chance of a terrible dead after living an scenary of pure horror, and the fact that only men were send there, that was totally UNFAIR and SEXIEST (but logical, sadly, I can't deny it).

[MvS]

This all suggests that you aren't looking at them as people, but rather mechanically as elements in a (very flawed) population dynamics calculus. That was why I went on my feminist rant; because you seem to be insisting on looking at them, if not as walking wombs, as statistics. You can say this is not the case, but the arguments you actually make belie that...{snip}... My point is that this amounts to, at some point, forcing women to play the role of baby-maker, and that that is tantamount to rape, because you would indeed be forcing them, even if via some sort of public policy, to breed when they might, as actual individual human beings (or Eldar, as the case may be) with dignity and unalienable rights, which include the right to decide what happens to their bodies or doesn't, not want to do so... {snip} to "value" women based on their ability to incubate fetuses and assess their role in society based upon that is to deny them an essential element of their humanity and the dignity that all people deserve.

It's too sweeping to suggest that all human cultures possess the same measures of fulfillment and value, let alone trying to extrapolate that across the an alien civilisation in a sci-fantasy setting.

Who's to say that women would have to be 'forced' by men to view motherhood as more important and fulfilling than, say, being a soldier? Who is to say that in a dying culture where the population numbers are declining, motherhood hasn't become an ideal to aspire to? Also, looking at the fictional Eldar, who is to say that a civilisation of beings who are both mercurial by nature and yet monastic in their rigid discipline and self-control, where dedicating oneself to a 'Path' of learning and experience to the exclusion of everything and to the benefit of one's society, ideas such as monogamy or the 'family unit' as it might be perceived by whatever human measure you care to draw on would be considered odd and pointless?

Who can say that there wouldn't be a formal and ritualised Way of the Mother, for instance, where Eldar women who have proven not to be sterile (or whatever) choose to Walk the Path of Isha, the Mother Goddess, and try to produce and rear as many babies as possible with as many Eldar males who are also deemed able and willing to reproduce? Who is to say that this is any less 'fulfilling' or 'fair' or any less culturally aspirational than any other Path or Way that the Craftworld Eldar pursue?

It's not even necessarily a question of whether it's males who force the idea onto females. We're not talking about human society with its history of imbalance between the sexes, which then codes are perceptions and comments. We're not talking about a place where 'we' can refer to women as 'them' as if they're not even part of the decision making discussion, even if 'we' (the noble males) are defending 'their' (the suppressed females) "unalienable rights". Where "rights" in this context presumably refer to the constructs of "human rights", which are not necessarily even relevant to an alien species and civilisation.

We're talking about the Eldar, where females seem to have been equal to males from the outset - perhaps more important/relevant in some cultural senses, perhaps a little less in others, but equal across the civilisation. If 'the Eldar' came to decide that they needed more children and that all females able to conceive and bear a child should do so, then this isn't automatically the same as, say, a male dominated fascist society pushing women into forced breeding camps or whatever.

The decision makers and 'norm entrepreneurs' are equally female as well as male. So the critique isn't necessarily the same. We might as well ask why males should be forced by female Eldar to fight when they have a 'right' to stay at home as loving fathers. The answer, in all cases, tends to be something about survival and what is most likely to assure it. We know that all Eldar can be called up to fight if their Craftworld is in danger, hence the Guardian role. So being on one Path or being dedicated to a specific Way doesn't exclude Eldar from fighting necessarily. So it isn't an either/or question.

In fact, to the Craftworld Eldar, the Children of Isha, the Mother Goddess, where duty to the people and the survival of the species seems to be regarded as the greatest cultural good and personal aspiration, I could see motherhood as being regarded as something of incredible (if not holy) value. yes fighting to protect the Craftworld is important, and both males and females can do that. But as Eldar physiology seems to share with humanity that only females can get pregnant, well then battles can always be fought by males and women who cannot conceive. Females who can conceive might naturally aspire towards motherhood, or at the very least see it as their grave duty and honour to do so.

EDIT

As for whether a female could get trapped on the notional 'Path of Motherhood' like a kind of Exarch... that's an interesting question. I would guess that even the long lived Eldar would get past a point where they could no longer conceive or carry babies. Their bodies must suffer some wear and tear. But then motherhood isn't just about giving birth, so perhaps a female Eldar who is trapped on a Motherhood Path might be the ultimate full-time nanny. Perhaps a communal mother to any number of babies/children, or perhaps the mother who teaches younger Eldar females how to best rear their children into strong and constructive Eldar adults. Who knows?

[Lord Zarkov]

EDIT

As for whether a female could get trapped on the notional 'Path of Motherhood' like a kind of Exarch... that's an interesting question. I would guess that even the long lived Eldar would get past a point where they could no longer conceive or carry babies. Their bodies must suffer some wear and tear. But then motherhood isn't just about giving birth, so perhaps a female Eldar who is trapped on a Motherhood Path might be the ultimate full-time nanny. Perhaps a communal mother to any number of babies/children, or perhaps the mother who teaches younger Eldar females how to best rear their children into strong and constructive Eldar adults. Who knows?

Perhaps some combination of nanny and midwife? Like the Path of the Warrior Exarchs teach the new Aspect Warriors how to fight in their discipline, perhaps the equivalent on the Path of the Mother teach the young mothers the best way to give birth and nurture a child etc.