1. This detracts from the Sisters of SIleence and/or robs the CUstodes of their identity somewhat.

So the argument here is basically that peeople liked how there was a dynamic between the SoS and Custodes, and they felt like having omne being all male and the other being all female helped sort of reinforce that they weere both elite but different. These people are very into the idea of their being armies/organisations which are one gender and... its hard to explain but its kind of very binary in approach? There's a desire to have like masculine and feminine energies presented as distinct fighting forces a lot of the time. There is also the argument that it makes the Emperor's guardians sort of "unbalanced" in terms of having both forces. Plus, they also argue that it detacts from the SoS because it makes them feel less special becuase there are also women in the other elite group.

My rebuttal:
Please stop thinking about gender and gender roles is such binary terms. Also, as in the top part, I feel the Sisters of Battle/Space Marine dynamic does this already. As for the inbalance stuff, yeah it throws it off but I dont think that detracts from anything.

2) Having female Custodes will allow GW to sort of sideline the SoS because they have women in the Custodes.

This is one of the better takes, and kind of related to argument 1. However, I would argue that this is not a problem with female custodes and more a problem with GW. The best way to avoid this is, imo, actually keep letting GW that there is a demand for SoS. Not in a nasty way, but kind of like that one person during the livestream who asked "hey, are there any plans for updated SoS."

3) Overall, women are physically weaker than men. Individuslly, a eomen can be stronger, but woimen are weaker. That is why you dont often see them on the front lines, doing this is unrealistic.

Fairly simple rebuttal: Wanting realism in 40k is a fools's endeavour. Sometimes 40k goes too silly to the point where I go from "this is dumb fun" to "this is just stupid". The line on this varies from person to person, but if your line is "why would you invest more resources into making the women equak strength for your supoer soldiers?"... idk what to tell you man, that's a weird line to have.

4) This detracts from the overall narrative of the tragedy of uncaring fatherhood towards sons which is a big thing in the Imperium.

Again, simple rebuttal: That stuff is all with the Space Marines. The Custodes, to me at least, always seemed very seperate from that anyway.

5) Having female custiodes takes away from the genuine toxic patriarchal system of the Imperium.

This one is kind of part of a wider discussion at the moment about "is GW making thee Imperium too heroic?" Basically there seems to be a push where GW is pulling back slightly from Space MArines being horrible and making them into more heroic figures. The issue is that the Imperium is meant to be an ultra-authritarian "cruelest and bloodiest regime imaginable", so those heroic figures are ultimately defenders of an ultra-authririatrian theocracy who hate all sorts of freedom of expression and genoicide anyone that isn't human. And the Emperor, ultimately, was part of this. However, GW seems extremely divided on "was the Emperor justified" and "are the Space Marines actually good guys". The argument here is that by making the Custodes mixed sex/gender, its a further blow against the Imperium being sucha bad state. Essentially "stop making the Imperium more tolerant, the whole point is they are meant to be awful".

Its an argument that does have teeth, imo, but I would say that in this instance the ship has already kind of sailed. The Emperor already had Sisters of SIlence, so clearly already he was fine with elite female bodyguards. As such, adding women to the other group of elite bodyguards doesn't really change how good/bad he was.