Women Fighters in Reasonable Armor
Just throwing in, now it’s not on my nonexistent regular blog, a plug for the blog Women Fighters In Reasonable Armor, of which I approve thoroughly in the interest of not making my suspension of disbelief hurt any more than it does already when reading Generic Fantasy or other genres that really ought to know better.
(Speaking for my own universe, there are more than enough layers, in between the fabric jacket, the tech compartments, the cerametal-composite armor-plating, the superconductor meshes, and the ablative layer sprayed over the top of all of that, to make telling the gender of anyone wearing the entire-body-enclosing standard-legionary-issue N45 Garrex field combat armor or its cousins damn near impossible unless they’ve got their equally-all-enclosing helmet off, which is never done under combat conditions. But then, that’s a design feature – you’re not supposed to see a person, you’re supposed to see one mean bastard of a legionary who may just be about to ruin your whole day. The key words here are studied memetic overkill.
As for its big brother, the M70 Havoc combat exoskeleton – well, considering that piece of armor is a couple of tons of personal mini-tank that lets you punch out buildings and survive getting in a nuclear-bazooka fight at implausibly close ranges, frankly, you’re lucky to be able to tell what species the wearer is. At least without the sort of prolonged study no-one’s ever been inclined to do when there’s an occupied M70 wandering around the vicinity.)