Come on… Are we really going to argue that on average, men are not stronger and taller than women? That doesn’t make women inferior to men. Men will, on average, go bald more often and earlier than women. That doesn’t make men inferior to women.
When you optimize for the top men vs top women, you’ll often see men come out on top. (Though there likely also is an element of men being encouraged to go into sports, rather than women, so they are disadvantaged not only because of biological differences.) The part of the OP you skipped is “inherently weaker”. There’s a problematic viewpoint, while not taken literally most of the time, of all women being weaker than all men. Or that they should always be weaker, whether physically, or just in the “being subservient” way.
With your response having missed the point, it basically shows you’re falling for that propaganda. I invite you to rethink.
When you optimize for the top men vs top women, you’ll often see men come out on top.
And the middle. And any other reasonably comparable subset of men and women.
The part of the OP you skipped is “inherently weaker”.
Because it’s a wild assertion made without evidence. OP feels this is part of a vast concerted planned conspiracy…
(Personally I think if there is a conspiracy, it’s to create fights like this on the Left. It sounds like the Left is saying that men aren’t generally bigger and stronger than women, which, for anyone who has ever seen multiple people, must seem a pretty wild claim.)
What we’re arguing is whether the definition of “strong” is tuned so that men are “stronger” than women. There are far more sports that focus on the upsides of having large amounts of anabolic steroids (such as testosterone) in your blood than ones that give space to the downsides, or that look at features unaffected by it.
Imagine a soccer game where all players were restricted to 1500 kcal and 80g of protein per day in the month leading up to the match. Suddenly “stronger” men would be malnourished, woozy and easily outmaneuvered by relatively clear-headed and fit women. It’s not like you can argue that this isn’t falling in the sport tradition of measuring military performance by proxy either - an army marches on its stomach, and soldiers might not always have access to full rations.
But no, our very conception of “strength” discounts the entire infrastructure behind it. In sports as in the wider world. Physical and metaphorical. Wars have been lost because the “strength” of armies did not account for the logistics of supplying them. Was the US army “stronger” than the Taliban in Afghanistan? Did it win?
And yes, men are taller than women, but there is a sport for jumping over hurdles and not a sport for ducking under them. There is a sport for jumping over the tallest gate but not for crawling through the smallest hole. There is a sport for being the lightest load on horseback, though, and ever since women were unbanned they’ve been climing in the rankings and now they’re getting wins as you might expect. Being taller is not an advantage unless the sport’s ruleset makes it so. But somehow it is an advantage in almost every olympic sport. Curious.
If “strength” only meant the peak force that a human limb could generate we wouldn’t be having this conversation. If “strength” only meant the capacity to do violence we wouldn’t be having this conversation. Nor if it only meant virtue, or capacity for labor, or excellent feature, or mechanical load bearing capacity, or ability to sit through a funeral without crying like a healthy person. But it means all of that and more.
“Strength” is the patriarchal ideal of masculinity and our worldview distorts to see it as the natural way to excel, despite reality constantly showing us otherwise.
I get that this might feel like an extremely online take. So did Socrates’ takes to the people of Athens. It takes a distance from society to be able to see its structure and question its base assumptions.
I get that this might feel like an extremely online take. So did Socrates’ takes to the people of Athens. It takes a distance from society to be able to see its structure and question its base assumptions.
I think your comment was an excellent articulation of what I was thinking, although I think you risk a significant distraction by using Afghanistan as an example when talking about sex and gender. I think comparing yourself to Socrates is overly aggrandising.
But yeah I agree. It’s not that men are better at sports, it’s that the patriarchy has defined “sports” as what realmen™ are better at.
Come on… Are we really going to argue that on average, men are not stronger and taller than women? That doesn’t make women inferior to men. Men will, on average, go bald more often and earlier than women. That doesn’t make men inferior to women.
This feels like an insanely online take.
When you optimize for the top men vs top women, you’ll often see men come out on top. (Though there likely also is an element of men being encouraged to go into sports, rather than women, so they are disadvantaged not only because of biological differences.) The part of the OP you skipped is “inherently weaker”. There’s a problematic viewpoint, while not taken literally most of the time, of all women being weaker than all men. Or that they should always be weaker, whether physically, or just in the “being subservient” way.
With your response having missed the point, it basically shows you’re falling for that propaganda. I invite you to rethink.
And the middle. And any other reasonably comparable subset of men and women.
Because it’s a wild assertion made without evidence. OP feels this is part of a vast concerted planned conspiracy…
(Personally I think if there is a conspiracy, it’s to create fights like this on the Left. It sounds like the Left is saying that men aren’t generally bigger and stronger than women, which, for anyone who has ever seen multiple people, must seem a pretty wild claim.)
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Are you really arguing trans women are men?
Individuals aren’t averages or I’d be taller, and men aren’t competing in women’s sports.
What we’re arguing is whether the definition of “strong” is tuned so that men are “stronger” than women. There are far more sports that focus on the upsides of having large amounts of anabolic steroids (such as testosterone) in your blood than ones that give space to the downsides, or that look at features unaffected by it.
Imagine a soccer game where all players were restricted to 1500 kcal and 80g of protein per day in the month leading up to the match. Suddenly “stronger” men would be malnourished, woozy and easily outmaneuvered by relatively clear-headed and fit women. It’s not like you can argue that this isn’t falling in the sport tradition of measuring military performance by proxy either - an army marches on its stomach, and soldiers might not always have access to full rations.
But no, our very conception of “strength” discounts the entire infrastructure behind it. In sports as in the wider world. Physical and metaphorical. Wars have been lost because the “strength” of armies did not account for the logistics of supplying them. Was the US army “stronger” than the Taliban in Afghanistan? Did it win?
And yes, men are taller than women, but there is a sport for jumping over hurdles and not a sport for ducking under them. There is a sport for jumping over the tallest gate but not for crawling through the smallest hole. There is a sport for being the lightest load on horseback, though, and ever since women were unbanned they’ve been climing in the rankings and now they’re getting wins as you might expect. Being taller is not an advantage unless the sport’s ruleset makes it so. But somehow it is an advantage in almost every olympic sport. Curious.
If “strength” only meant the peak force that a human limb could generate we wouldn’t be having this conversation. If “strength” only meant the capacity to do violence we wouldn’t be having this conversation. Nor if it only meant virtue, or capacity for labor, or excellent feature, or mechanical load bearing capacity, or ability to sit through a funeral without crying like a healthy person. But it means all of that and more.
“Strength” is the patriarchal ideal of masculinity and our worldview distorts to see it as the natural way to excel, despite reality constantly showing us otherwise.
I get that this might feel like an extremely online take. So did Socrates’ takes to the people of Athens. It takes a distance from society to be able to see its structure and question its base assumptions.
I think your comment was an excellent articulation of what I was thinking, although I think you risk a significant distraction by using Afghanistan as an example when talking about sex and gender. I think comparing yourself to Socrates is overly aggrandising.
But yeah I agree. It’s not that men are better at sports, it’s that the patriarchy has defined “sports” as what realmen™ are better at.