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The Strength of Men and Women
A few weeks ago, @joepas posted about his friend who took great offense at the notion that men were stronger than women. I found this absolutely astounding, because it seems that abundant evidence of this fact is everywhere and easily experienced. But apparently, somehow, this basic truth has now been turned into an opinion in some quarters. I came across this today: Transgender track athlete wins CT state championship, debate ensues.
Apparently, two transgender men who identify as women just came home with a bunch of blue ribbons after competing in girls’ track and field. This predictable outcome is not the topic of this post, however. And, in truth, what more needs to be said?
But, here is some of the “debate” (italics mine)
“You have some people who believe men are stronger and faster so I can understand if an athlete is born male but identifying as a female and compete as one, some females will feel a particular way about it,” Clinton Baker said.
“If she identifies as a girl then I think she should be able to run in the race because she can use the ladies room, she can wear a skirt, why not run and stay active,” Natasha Morgan said.
“The cream rises to the top,” Baker added. “Athletes now will tell you if you put UConn women on the court with men, UConn men might lose. It’s all in the spirit of competition, hard work and heart.”
I don’t know who this Clinton Baker is — I’m assuming he’s not the friend of @joepas — and if he isn’t, more than one person in the world thinks that males’ superior strength is merely a matter of opinion.
Where on earth is this coming from?
I first suspected that some gender studies professor somewhere was the culprit, and did some brief searches on the web for “women stronger than men.” Interestingly, the top search results all blared the headline that science has now proved that women are the stronger sex. But. of course, the study referred to from January 2018 did not refer to feats of physical strength but to the fact that women live longer and survive “extreme mortality hazards,” e.g., famine, better than men. I can believe that. I also find we are much more functional with head colds than men.
So, yes, depending on how you define strength, you could say that women are stronger than men. But unless there’s an extreme famine, I don’t think I’ll be seeing the UConn Women’s basketball team beating the UConn men anytime soon.
Published in General
Definitely no absolutes here, but it wouldn’t surprise me that men and women have different biological dispositions which are reinforced culturally. Babies are a font of biological emissions, most of them gross, and they must be dealt with. That tends to fall to women so I could see some selective evolutionary pressure there.
So, going back to my post, I cannot understand how anyone could not concede to the proposition that men are stronger than women on average when it comes to physical strength. On all other dimensions of what might be considered strength-emotional, constitutional- I think there is likely to be a lot more variation, but still some group differences.
I just did a quick Google search on whether men or women complain more when they’re sick. Apparently, there is some support for my proposition about head colds:
“Experts discovered men are more likely to exaggerate illnesses to try and gain maximum sympathy when laid low by a bug or virus. It also emerged that, while women are likely to complain about minor ailments on a daily basis, men feel more sorry for themselves when they are actually ill.” -Metro News
It’s literally anti-science. It’s in defiance of physics and math — longer limbs (better leverage), more muscle mass — on average. We live in the age of the Big Lie that anyone denies this.
I also theorize that men find aging more discouraging than women do, even though aging is objectively pretty darned rough on us (hot flashes, nausea, yet more mood swings, etc.). If I’m right, I’d say the explanation is simply that women are accustomed to our bodies doing strange, uncomfortable, debilitating things, whereas men’s bodies are generally fairly reliable until the years catch up to ’em.
But my information on this is entirely anecdotal and subjective.
My theory is that there’s a lot of cultural pressure on men to “take it like a man” and “suck it up” and “he’s so tough he never took a sick day in his life.” Therefore when a man takes a sick day, he may feel a need to exaggerate his symptoms in order to justify himself and not be perceived as insufficiently macho. Whereas when women get sick, they aren’t trying to prove anything to anyone so they can be more honest about their symptoms.
This fits the theory as well. Women are more comfortable sharing these things, while for men it’s a sign of weakness so we keep quiet about it until we can no longer hide it, b/c we need to take a sick day or go to the doctor, then we switch into exaggeration mode to justify that it’s so serious we had no choice but to take that sick day.
This has definitely been my experience with my parents: my mother has had two hip replacements, a knee replacement, really bad arthritis, and my father has been incredibly blessed with no problems like that whatsoever, but for a long time, my mother was far more mellow about growing old than my Dad was. Not being able to do the things he always did made him so angry; he was a rather grumpy old man for a while, but ever since he turned 90, he has mellowed out so much. He is happier now than I have ever known him to be; it is such a blessing to see his transformation. He has always been a great man and a great father, to see him so happy in his golden years is an incredible blessing, but it took a while to get to this place. Being old used to really irritate him :)
Anti-science, anti-see it with your own eyes! In fact, it is so egregious, that I think it can be used as a means to persuade reasonable people as to why you shouldn’t believe anything asserted by the post-modernists.
A possibly related question: Do you wear that cossack outfit in the delivery room?