So... Are we over hating Twilight now?

[Keltest]

I think the argument is "(physically) stronger people can do everything not-so-(physically)-strong people can do, but not-so-(physically)-strong people often can't do what (physically) strong people can. And like it or not, men are physically stronger than women by quite a wide margin. There are outliers, of course, but that doesn't change the general rule."

I honestly don't see what's so offensive about acknowledging that men are indeed considerably physically stronger than women.

Its not offensive exactly, but one's gender is significantly less of a contributor to one's level of strength and fitness than one's lifestyle. An active person who regularly does physically demanding labor will be stronger than a couch potato even if the active person is a woman and the couch potato a man.

Now, men do tend on average to be taller, which is relevant in a fight and not an obstacle that lifestyle can overcome with any consistency, but technology is rendering that largely moot anyway outside of very specific circumstances. Footstools are a thing.

[2D8HP]

Its not offensive exactly, but one's gender is significantly less of a contributor to one's level of strength and fitness than one's lifestyle....

To a point. The small boned (male) apprentice I mentioned upthread would never be able to drill into concrete and set anchors as long without injury as someone larger, he just plain had smaller hands than most (probably all) of the men and even both of the women on that crew. He could have worked other tasks if the stinking supervisors would have let him (as it was I don't even know if he got to finish the apprenticeship).

From working in another local (San Francisco) I saw some guys and a women that small who made Journeyman, so I know they're some decent shops will allow such individuals to stay working (unlike F. W. Spencer and Son, rot in Hell you scumbags!)

...Footstools are a thing.

Footstools?!!!

Really?!

How 'bout folks showing solidarity and forcing the employers to provide chainfalls and pulleys like the Steamfitters use instead of having men so desperate to keep a job they break their backs to lift pipe in place, or forcing the hospital to hire extra hands to lift the increasingly heavy patients the lifting of which is injuring more and more nurses.

One poster upthread said "We don't live in the freaking Hyborian Age, with the use of technology psychical strength basically doesn't matter anymore", which sadly is very far from true, but if employees would organize and refuse to work without extra hands and proper tools we could get closer to that ideal, but no, instead we compete for crumbs from the stinkin' owners.

While we're at it we should force the owners to pay enough so their employees can buy homes and send their own kids to college instead of having to have at least three generations toil and save for those privileges!

NOT THAT I'M BITTER OR ANYTHING!

BAH!

[AMFV]

Its not offensive exactly, but one's gender is significantly less of a contributor to one's level of strength and fitness than one's lifestyle. An active person who regularly does physically demanding labor will be stronger than a couch potato even if the active person is a woman and the couch potato a man.

Now, men do tend on average to be taller, which is relevant in a fight and not an obstacle that lifestyle can overcome with any consistency, but technology is rendering that largely moot anyway outside of very specific circumstances. Footstools are a thing.

It is not though. Look at the source documents I linked. The top ten percent of women are as strong as the bottom 10 percent of men. That means that only the really weakest men are weaker than the really strongest ladies. Like I said we had a laborer who had previously worked retail and before that was a flagger, neither of which are physically demanding jobs, he was grossly obese and lazy, and y'know what he was physically stronger than the female laborer who had been doing that job for years. That's not an aberration either, it's just the way it is.

Most of the people who make that claim "well an out of shape man is going to be weaker than an in-shape woman" haven't really had that much experience in terms of physical activity and comparing men and women.

[Lemmy]

Its not offensive exactly, but one's gender is significantly less of a contributor to one's level of strength and fitness than one's lifestyle. An active person who regularly does physically demanding labor will be stronger than a couch potato even if the active person is a woman and the couch potato a man.

That's not entirely true. Despite what movies tells us, the difference in strength is quite wide.

The active woman will probably have more stamina and be healthier in general, but when it comes to physical strength, it's very likely that she'll still be behind the couch potato man, unless we are talking about some serious outliers. EDIT: Or if her physical training is particularly specialized at building physical strength, like a body-builder or something like that.

That's why even professional female athletes can struggle to compete against relatively unexperienced male athletes. Remember when the professional female soccer team lost to a bunch of 14~15 yo boys?

[Z3ro]

Well, if your wife and coworkers are tossing hay all day... heh rhymes...Who is getting all the other work done, that isn't just tossing hay?

Alright, all day was a bit of an exaggeration. But they spend several hours moving hay everyday, in addition to all their other tasks, most of which are equally physical.

Your wife has a a hayloft at her zoo?

Cause I'm not talking about feeding animals with bales of hay, I'm talking unloading by hand a truckload of hay and then tossing the bails feet into the air for somebody else to catch. As far as feeding animals with bales of hay, I was doing that just fine when i was 11. So I assume that's probably something women could do, but I sure as hell could not have done unloading a freight truck worth of bails by hand into a hayloft 20 feet of the ground. It's a different thing.

I'm sure that at most zoos you'd use a pallet jack.

She's at a smaller zoo, and they do literally have a hay loft they toss hay up into. Another person stands on top and catches, just like you described. They don't have the space on the ground level for the hay; the zoo was converted from an old farm, so they can't just use a pallet jack.

[Peelee]

To a point. The small boned (male) apprentice I mentioned upthread would never be able to drill into concrete and set anchors as long without injury as someone larger, he just plain had smaller hands than most (probably all) of the men and even both of the women on that crew. He could have worked other tasks if the stinking supervisors would have let him (as it was I don't even know if he got to finish the apprenticeship).

From working in another local (San Francisco) I saw some guys and a women that small who made Journeyman, so I know they're some decent shops will allow such individuals to stay working (unlike F. W. Spencer and Son, rot in Hell you scumbags!)




Footstools?!!!

Really?!

How 'bout folks showing solidarity and forcing the employers to provide chainfalls and pulleys like the Steamfitters use instead of having men so desperate to keep a job they break their backs to lift pipe in place, or forcing the hospital to hire extra hands to lift the increasingly heavy patients the lifting of which is injuring more and more nurses.

One poster upthread said "We don't live in the freaking Hyborian Age, with the use of technology psychical strength basically doesn't matter anymore", which sadly is very far from true, but if employees would organize and refuse to work without extra hands and proper tools we could get closer to that ideal, but no, instead we compete for crumbs from the stinkin' owners.

While we're at it we should force the owners to pay enough so their employees can buy homes and send their own kids to college instead of having to have at least three generations toil and save for those privileges!

NOT THAT I'M BITTER OR ANYTHING!

BAH!

My pitchfork is sharpened and torch is ready for lighting!

[AMFV]

Alright, all day was a bit of an exaggeration. But they spend several hours moving hay everyday, in addition to all their other tasks, most of which are equally physical.



She's at a smaller zoo, and they do literally have a hay loft they toss hay up into. Another person stands on top and catches, just like you described. They don't have the space on the ground level for the hay; the zoo was converted from an old farm, so they can't just use a pallet jack.

Well, I'm sure that she can probably manage that, but I bet you 50 bucks two guys could do it faster and better. That's why when my friend who is a physically strong woman unloads hay bales she calls her friends. Although I wouldn't put that necessarily as an "impossible task" for a lady, just one that men are better at.

Like, that wasn't on the my list of tasks that I thought that females couldn't typically do, it was just a task where if it was between a female and a male, I'd call the guy, cause he'd be better at it. So it's possible for a woman to do that, but not to do it so well as it would be for a male.

[Tvtyrant]

Does anyone honestly think they are unbiased enough to objectively look at sexual dimorphism? The subject is so saturated in cultural values I find it hard to believe anyone is actually seeing what is happening instead of just discarding what doesn't fit and accepting what does.

Even if an object observer (sentient robot or slugman from the Planet Zorq) came and did the tests, at this point there would be protests if the findings didn't match cultural expectations.

[AMFV]

Does anyone honestly think they are unbiased enough to objectively look at sexual dimorphism? The subject is so saturated in cultural values I find it hard to believe anyone is actually seeing what is happening instead of just discarding what doesn't fit and accepting what does.

Even if an object observer (sentient robot or slugman from the Planet Zorq) came and did the tests, at this point there would be protests if the findings didn't match cultural expectations.

The problem is that as far as strength benchmarks go, we have a HUGE amount of unbiased numerical data, that shows that men are generally stronger than women, even that untrained men are generally stronger than trained women. There are even studies done on places that didn't have the same cultural hangups and they still show that. There is a definite biological reality here that can't simply be wished away or explained away as being cultural.

[Dr.Samurai]

Does anyone honestly think they are unbiased enough to objectively look at sexual dimorphism?

Regarding what's been covered here in this thread? Yeah.

Were men, and are men, unproductive? No, that's rubbish. Anyone knows that. That's an unbiased fact.

The rest of the stuff I think pretty much goes without saying as well, however people are disputing it.

Can women do physical labor? Grueling physical labor? I think they can. Does that mean they do it as well as men? No. I don't think this is a biased opinion.

With regards to the conversation about violence, my position is not coming from a position of bias. I'm not a violent man. I'm not vested in proving that the violence of men is useful because it somehow validates me. I'm not a soldier. I do think that violence, and it's use in competition, is integral to shaping the world as we know it today. I can't imagine a world as it would have evolved without violence and the capacity to do violence. If women were the more aggressive, risk-taking, stronger sex, I would hold the same position. My position may be wrong, but I'm willing to be proved wrong.

The subject is so saturated in cultural values I find it hard to believe anyone is actually seeing what is happening instead of just discarding what doesn't fit and accepting what does.

Even if an object observer (sentient robot or slugman from the Planet Zorq) came and did the tests, at this point there would be protests if the findings didn't match cultural expectations.

Protests don't matter. Someone would be wrong because it's not a matter of opinion. Who would be wrong? I don't know.

If you want objective, go to the wikipedia page on sexual dimorphism between human sexes. It describes how men are bigger, stronger, faster, heal quicker, have higher lung capacity, etc., among other traits. This seems enough to me to explain why some jobs are dominated by men.

My totally unexpert opinion is that culture develops around biological norms and reinforces advantages, which drives/supports biological selection and on and on and on.

But the idea that culture is the reason that women don't work construction... I mean, prove it to me I guess.

[Tvtyrant]

The problem is that as far as strength benchmarks go, we have a HUGE amount of unbiased numerical data, that shows that men are generally stronger than women, even that untrained men are generally stronger than trained women. There are even studies done on places that didn't have the same cultural hangups and they still show that. There is a definite biological reality here that can't simply be wished away or explained away as being cultural.

I don't think anyone disagrees in the general, it is the particular that is decidedly difficult to pin down.

For instance women are on average smaller then men ane larger percentages of their body mass is fat deposits. Size makes a colossal difference in strength and longevity, so are we comparing a woman of the same size as a man when we say she is weaker? Does it matter that the same thing that makes men stronger in their youth kills them in their old age?

The argument about in shapeness vs. Sex is a good example of this. I am the same height as my workout partner in height but much heavier, and overwhelmingly stronger. I am also ovetwhelmingly stronger then my female coworker who also lifts weights, is shorter then us but the same weight as my workout partner. She has nore fat and less bone then him, but their weight is roughly equal and she lifts more then him.

[AMFV]

I don't think anyone disagrees in the general, it is the particular that is decidedly difficult to pin down.

But for purposes of this discussion, the particular is not really that crucial. Figuring out why men tend to be stronger is not as important as that they are. Since we are discussing areas where men's strength have helped them to be significantly productive.

For instance women are on average smaller then men ane larger percentages of their body mass is fat deposits. Size makes a colossal difference in strength and longevity, so are we comparing a woman of the same size as a man when we say she is weaker?

Well even if you take women of the same size as men, the men are still stronger. I suspect that there are too many factors in play here to be boiled down, but you have, more bone density, greater amounts of testosterone, more muscle mass, better leverages, better center of gravity for lifting. And that's before you start getting into finicky little things that can make all the difference.

Does it matter that the same thing that makes men stronger in their youth kills them in their old age?

Not for purposes of this discussion, since we're talking about men's productivity in an industrial society and when they're old they wouldn't be productive any more so it's not that meaningful a thing. In fact one could argue (if you were feeling macabre) that men dying out once they can no longer work is helpful to society's productivity.

The argument about in shapeness vs. Sex is a good example of this. I am the same height as my workout partner in height but much heavier, and overwhelmingly stronger. I am also ovetwhelmingly stronger then my female coworker who also lifts weights, is shorter then us but the same weight as my workout partner. She has nore fat and less bone then him, but their weight is roughly equal and she lifts more then him.

Well that is certainly not normative. Although I will say that gym lifting is actually an area where women find that they can bring up the gaps a lot because it's very controlled and what-not. Like if you compare the differences in female Powerlifting and Oly lifting to their numbers in strong women competitions there's a very big gap. But no it is very unusual that your female friend would be able to outlift your male workout buddy.

Although from what I recollect you've previously said that your male workout partner doesn't always put in maximal effort so it's very likely that if he were pushed that he could outlift her.

[Tvtyrant]

This discussion is going to be way too involved for my phone at work. I'm ducking out until tonight, sorry.

[Spiryt]

The gap in general athleticism, physical ability, not just strength, is gargantuan between the sexes.

Meng Suping
weighs above 260 pounds, and won the Olympic weightlifting gold with 177 kg clean and jerk.

Sarah Robles is well over 300 pounds, with 160 kg c&j.

Such records are well attainable for men who weigh in at 123 pounds...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_Qingquan


American Football has combine where they are evaluating potential players agility, among other things.

You have 40 yard dash, where women world record is 4.7 seconds.

Such speed is matched, or beaten, by scores of 270+ pounds linemen overeating behemoths... Whose speciality aren't agility tasks, of course.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trey_Hendrickson

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terron_Armstead

There's no point in even stating how much quicker lighter guys are.

Women's specialist's record holders frequently have way worse scores that male generalists.

Female world record in high jump is 209cm - score which is being beat right now by some decathlon guys (meaning they train 9 other things very hard) no one had ever heard about.


There's huge difference in tasks covering rapid, explosive movements, like throwing stuff, strikes etc. in particular.

Absolute women's record in javelin (600 g, lighter than mens) is 72.3m.

Said record is getting beaten daily by some under 16 years old boys, despite the fact that they're mostly already throwing 700 g javelin.

http://www.qldathletics.org.au/Porta...andRecords.pdf


There are cases like Women's NBA (pinnacle of the sport), where dunking is pretty much unheard of.

While dunking is the staple of men's basketball on any level.

Such sexual dimorphism isn't exactly unusual among large herbivore/omnivore mammals, in facts it's perfectly common, so humans aren't big surprise.

[ThunderCat]

Well the conclusion was that one particular incident was exaggerated (by the omission of extenuating factors) on one occasion. Which is not a surprising thing, given that lots of people exaggerate to make a point.

Since no one is gathering statistics, I had to go with examples, and AMFV wasn't giving any. He made a blanket statement that when Olympic female association football teams have matches with male high school teams "they lose badly", in general. If that was the case, a story about a female team having a training match with the male youth team of a professional club, in a sport with a high degree of randomness involved, without bringing their a-team, with the explicit purpose of testing out new tactics and give more inexperienced players time to play rather than trying to win, and losing badly, wouldn't have been 'shocking'. It wouldn't have blown up like that, being written about in the papers and made its way across the Atlantic as a go-to example of biological determinism. It would happen all the freaking time.

Also, it's pretty misleading to talk about 'high school boys' as if they were just a bunch of regular school children playing for fun when talking about American high school teams. Educational institutions in the USA tend to fill the same function as professional clubs do in other parts of the world, so it's not surprising when male American high school athletes give professional female athletes a run for their money, or even surpass them on occasion, considering that we're talking about a group of young men who're often only a few years away from becoming professionals themselve, and taken from a bigger talent pool in the first place.

[ThunderCat]

The gap in general athleticism, physical ability, not just strength, is gargantuan between the sexes.

Meng Suping
weighs above 260 pounds, and won the Olympic weightlifting gold with 177 kg clean and jerk.

Sarah Robles is well over 300 pounds, with 160 kg c&j.

Such records are well attainable for men who weigh in at 123 pounds...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_Qingquan

I'm not sure why you're picking those examples. Maybe you were, as Liquor Box say people often do, "exaggerat[ing] to make a point"? You talked about a record, but the female Olympic record is 193 kg clean and jerk, not 177 kg, and has proven attainable by men who weigh 152 lb, but not the ones who weigh 123 lb. Why this need to exaggerate the differences?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o..._weightlifting

Also, it's interesting looking at these figures, because if wikipedia (the source you chose to use) is correct, the women's records are subject to quite a lot of fluctuations. The men's records have a steady small to medium increase with each weight category, as you would expect in a sport where size is paramount. But the jumps between weight categories for women appear to be a lot less even, with the total (not even the %) increase between the second heaviest and heaviest categories being bigger than the men's, and the women's 75 kg records actually being higher than their 90 kg records, which should not happen.

It's an example of why it's not always illustrative to compare male and female records, because the male records are a result of a much bigger competition, between a lot more people and with a lot more resources behind it. The female records are often a matter of whether the woman capable of setting a record just happened to be among the few girls/women who do sports on a high level to begin with, and who happened to get the optimal support to reach that goal. And both of those are much less likely for women than for men.

[Liquor Box]

Since no one is gathering statistics, I had to go with examples, and AMFV wasn't giving any. He made a blanket statement that when Olympic female association football teams to have matches with male high school teams "they lose badly", in general. If that was the case, a story about a female team having a training match with the male youth team of a professional club, in a sport with a high degree of randomness involved, without bringing their a-team, with the explicit purpose of testing out new tactics and give more inexperienced players time to play rather than trying to win, and losing badly, wouldn't have been 'shocking'. It wouldn't have blown up like that, being written about in the papers and made its way across the Atlantic as a go-to example of biological determinism. It would happen all the freaking time.

Also, it's pretty misleading to talk about 'high school boys' as if they were just a bunch of regular school children playing for fun when talking about American high school teams. Educational institutions in the USA tend to fill the same function as professional clubs do in other parts of the world, so it's not surprising when male American high school athletes give professional female athletes a run for their money, or even surpass them on occasion, considering that we're talking about a group of young men who're often only a few years away from becoming professionals themselve, and taken from a bigger talent pool in the first place.

Most of that is probably true, although when I hear 'high school team', I generally think of a pretty good team (the best players from a school of a thousand or so) - but that may vary from country to country.

I must say that I completely agree with AMFV that men are generally physically stronger and more athletic than women. Putting aside sport, that is demonstrated by other data that has been linked in this thread, like that showing that the strongest 10% of women are of comparable strength to the weakest 10% of men the same age. That suggests that, for strength at least, gender is a much bigger factor than conditioning.

Where I don't agree with AMFV is:
- His suggestion that the net effect of human on human violence (or at least human on human violence committed by men) has been a positive thing for humanity. Beyond disagreeing with him, I think this assertion is actually a bit silly.
- His emphasis on the importance of strength and athleticism on human productivity nowadays. While I accept that there may be some minor efficiency advantages to a minority of roles in being a strong man, rather than a less strong woman, I don't think it is as crucial to human productivity as his posts seem to suggest.

Where I agree with both you and AMFV is that men are often productive and contribute to society in a variety of important ways. I disagree with Zimmerwald that men are unproductive.

[ThunderCat]

I'll try to keep this shorter by responding to overall points rather than individual lines, but feel free to tell me if there's anything you said I haven't addressed.

I hate to be the one to tell you this but a "moving company" is NOT hard physical labor, it's like mild labor. And it's the kind of labor where "bodybuilder" type guys could get away being lazy. I bet you that if you put them working on a gas well they'd shape up fast. And I bet you that even at their lazy moving job they still outperform women. And also temporary help is always shoddy and lazy.

If the amount of labor one can do is almost exclusively a matter of strength, and moving things is only mild labor, how come big men with big muscles still get tired by it? And knowing these types, they wouldn't lie about something like that, because they're all about showing off, hence why they tend to start off with heavier loads than the professionals. So I don't buy your explanation that they're just pretending in order to be lazy.

And the Chinese still used men for heavy construction.

Small men, for the most part. Your exact claim was that "There are certain kinds of labor that women cannot do and men can". Or in other words, there's a minimum strength requirement for these types of labor which practically no women can live up to. But since size plays a big role for strength (which it must do, or there wouldn't be weight categories for the most strength-based sports), how come many of the oldest civilizations in existence are/were from parts of the world where the inhabitants were much smaller than modern westerners? How did they do it? Are you telling me that 1/2 a foot of height, often coupled with a more slender frame, doesn't mean anything noticeable as long as you have testicles?

Rare in terms of it's importance in Western Civilization. Which is what we are currently discussing as you reside in the UK, if I remember correctly.

Why is it such a common assumption among Americans that unless otherwise specified, every general claim only applies to their part of the world? Why not specify what you're talking about to begin with, instead of continuously narrowing it down (only agricultural societies, only western societies, etc.) every time someone contradicts it? Even if I were British (which I'm not), I hope I wouldn't be this imperialistic. I'm also not Asian, but you had no way of knowing where I, or Zimmerwald for that matter, were from when you made your original argument.

I clarified, and Dr. Samurai responded to my clarification while you were ignoring it. And I have had to continuously repeat my clarification every single post.

You keep saying you didn't mean it that way, and yet you keep defending it. You seem to claim to be arguing something along the lines of "different but equal", but practically all your arguments boil down to "men>women". You constantly belittle women's work, argue that it's less important, less demanding, less significant, lesser in scale, less defining for a culture, etc.

Take those damn female rice paddy workers. I started by giving you an example of hard physical agricultural labor which (at least in the area I was talking about) is mostly done by women, and which an authority on the subject said women did better, despite being paid less. You could have chosen to specify that you were only talking about the western world. You were aware by now that I interpreted "for the last 10,000 years" to mean for humans in general, and the only thing you bothered to clarify was that you were talking about societies with large-scale agriculture and large stone buildings. Since the image didn't look especially western, it would have been an obvious place to clarify that you also weren't talking about anything outside of Europe or European colonies, so we could move on. But instead, you chose to make an unsubstantiated claim that the reason these women were paid less was that they couldn't do this kind of job as well as men.

When I countered your argument, you agreed that maybe women were better at the job despite being underpaid, but again, you couldn't just let that point stand, you had to label it "a rare kind of agricultural work", downplaying its prevalence and significance, as if you needed to oppose the idea that women might actually do an equal or greater share of any kind of important and physically demanding work on principle. It's only when I pointed out that this kind of work is the opposite of rare that you started arguing that the discussion was only ever about the western world, and even then, you chose to take a jab at these women's work, contrasting European crops with rice and calling European crops "labor intensive", as if rice farming didn't take a huge amount of backbreaking labor.

At every step, the pattern is the same. You claim you didn't mean any of the things you said, that it was just phrased badly, that there were assumptions/limitations to your argument that people should have been able to guess, that you're not trying to say that men contributed more, etc. And yet at every step, you do nothing but exalt men's work to an almost religious degree and insisting it's completely undoable for women, while taking every opportunity you can get to argue against the significance of women's work, the skill it takes, how hard it is, etc., even if it means ignoring what the work actually is or what it does to the human body.

[Amazon]

So can we just end this conversation?

Women can do everything men can do, maybe not as well but they can do it.

Just as we have skills guys are not as good as.

But the point is that life is not a sport, it's not a competition, if a elderly woman who is 100 year old wants to farm or fish in freezing waters with diving gear, and she does it well, she'll do it because she doesn't care if a guy could do that XXXX% times faster because her life doesn't circle around men.

Is that clear?

Or is that a problem for someone?

[ThunderCat]

Most of that is probably true, although when I hear 'high school team', I generally think of a pretty good team (the best players from a school of a thousand or so) - but that may vary from country to country.

That's why the term is misleading. To a lot of people (including me, until I remembered what it means in the USA), 'high school team' implies a bunch of amateur children playing semi-seriously, but the kind of high school athletes who set records and play against national female teams tend to be the same as the youth divisions of professional clubs, which frequently means 16-18 athletes hoping/training to become professionals.

I must say that I completely agree with AMFV that men are generally physically stronger and more athletic than women.

But who here argued otherwise?

Putting aside sport, that is demonstrated by other data that has been linked in this thread, like that showing that the strongest 10% of women are of comparable strength to the weakest 10% of men the same age. That suggests that, for strength at least, gender is a much bigger factor than conditioning..

Training matters. If their bone structure is anything to go by, European women 5000+ years ago had stronger arms than even female athletes today, simply from the work they did. I must have missed the link you're talking about, but if it wasn't comparing professional athletes, it's going to be even less conclusive, because men are generally much more physically active than women. Not only are they far more likely to have a physically active job, they're also more likely to do sports, and they're especially more likely to work on their strength. I frequently see statements from fitness instructors urging women to do more lifting instead of cardio, and assuring them that they wont put on too much muscle, because that's an actual thing some women are afraid of.

Of course, professional sports isn't conclusive either, as my example with Olympic weightlifting illustrated. Women's records are much more dependent on chance, because there just isn't a big enough pool to draw on (see my above point about women being less physically active than men in general) to ensure that top talent will always emerge. When women enter a sport in larger numbers or when they get more funding and more opportunities to focus on it full time, the gab between men's and women's records tend to shrink. Since we're nowhere near the point of equality/similarity, in professional sports or among the general population, I'd be skeptical about any absolutist claim about the exact nature and size of human sex differences.

[Liquor Box]

So can we just end this conversation?

Women can do everything men can do, maybe not as well but they can do it.

Just as we have skills guys are not as good as.

But the point is that life is not a sport, it's not a competition, if a elderly woman who is 100 year old wants to farm or fish in freezing waters with diving gear, and she does it well, she'll do it because she doesn't care if a guy could do that XXXX% times faster because her life doesn't circle around men.

Is that clear?

Or is that a problem for soemone?

I don't think many people would see your comments as a problem, but why end the conversation? It is interesting (at least to some people), so it may as well continue as long as people feel like replying. And I think that generally discussion on the topic will lead to people being better informed, as a variety of views appear to be represented.

If you decide not to end your own part in the conversation, I would be interested to know what things you think women can do that men cannot? Are you talking about learned skills (like sewing or being a pilot) or more inherent abilities (like strength or intelligence)?

[Amazon]

We can survive better for example ^^

http://www.pnas.org/content/early/20...701535115.full

http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcthree/articl...7-ac2a0b6f8591

Respond Better Than Men to Competitive Pressure

https://hbr.org/2017/11/women-respon...itive-pressure

Among other things naughty things multiple orgasms ;)

[Liquor Box]

But who here argued otherwise?

Well a few people appear to have argued that the strength difference was much less significant than I think it is:

• Knaight said in post 301 "Strength differences due to sex are utterly dwarfed by strength differences between people who routinely do hard physical labor and people who don't"
• Satancoaldo appeared to be suggesting over several posts that the strength difference was not so great that a man who was a couch potato would not be able to beat a woman with some training in a martial art in a fight,
• Keltest at the top of this page said that "n active person who regularly does physically demanding labor will be stronger than a couch potato even if the active person is a woman and the couch potato a man."

Training matters. If their bone structure is anything to go by, European women 5000+ years ago had stronger arms than even female athletes today, simply from the work they did. I must have missed the link you're talking about, but if it wasn't comparing professional athletes, it's going to be even less conclusive, because men are generally much more physically active than women. Not only are they far more likely to have a physically active job, they're also more likely to do sports, and they're especially more likely to work on their strength. I frequently see statements from fitness instructors urging women to do more lifting instead of cardio, and assuring them that they wont put on too much muscle, because that's an actual thing some women are afraid of.

Women from 5000 years ago may have had stronger arms than female athletes generally nowadays, because most female athletes dn't rely on arm strength (so a female soccer player might have arms that are only moderately stronger than the average woman. I would be surprised if the average european female from 5000 years ago had stronger arms than an accomplished modern female weight lifter or shot putter or rower.

The link I referred to was posted by AMFV in post #411. I quoted text on grip strength from wikipedia at post 367, which indicated a similar disparity (comparing ordinary men to female athletes). As I understand it, AMFV's link was not specific to athletes (although it did break it down by age).

Even if you are right that men are more active, I don't think it is true that nearly all men are more active than nearly all women, but the link does say that nearly all men (90%) are stronger than nearly all (90%) of women (of a similar age to one another).

Of course, professional sports isn't conclusive either, as my example with Olympic weightlifting illustrated. Women's records are much more dependent on chance, because there just isn't a big enough pool to draw on (see my above point about women being less physically active than men in general) to ensure that top talent will always emerge. When women enter a sport in larger numbers or when they get more funding and more opportunities to focus on it full time, the gab between men's and women's records tend to shrink. Since we're nowhere near the point of equality/similarity, in professional sports or among the general population, I'd be skeptical about any absolutist claim about the exact nature and size of human sex differences.

It is possible that higher male participation rates and higher funding has some influence, but I wonder if you overestimate the extent of it.

If we take sprinting as an example - given that running fast is a pretty easy talent to identify (so its not likely that there are lots of super-talented potential sprinters that never gave sprinters a try).

The world female world record for 100m is 10.49s (Florence Griffith Joiner, for USA in the 80s). The US High School record for 100m is 10s (Trentavis Friday, 2014 - this may also be the world High School record, I don't know). That is a huge difference in time.

Now in USA the NCAA rules (link to FAQ below) heavily regulate funding for sports by gender in USA, so I don't think* women's sprinters can receive less funding. Certainly it seems doubtful that adult women who have sprinted through high school, college, and then post college (in national US sprint teams etc) can have received less coaching and funding that a a boy who has not yet attended college or had any post-college coaching.

* I know a little about it because my (female) cousin has a sporting scholarship to a US college. But I am not American myself and did not attend a US college, so I will defer to someone who knows more about it then me.
http://www.ncaa.org/about/resources/...sked-questions

So while opportunity to participate and funding/coaching may have some influence in some sports and some countries, I think they explain a much smaller part of the strength/athleticism differences between men and women than simple sexual dimorphism.

As I think someone pointed out, that is consistent with other mammals, where the male of the species tends to be bigger, more athletic and stronger (with a few exceptions, such as Hyenas, where females are stronger).
That tends to be the case even where the female of the species appears to have the more active lifestyle, such as lions, where it is the female that hunts.

[Liquor Box]

We can survive better for example ^^

http://www.pnas.org/content/early/20...701535115.full

http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcthree/articl...7-ac2a0b6f8591

Respond Better Than Men to Competitive Pressure

https://hbr.org/2017/11/women-respon...itive-pressure

Among other things naughty things multiple orgasms ;)

I can certainly buy the first two. I think it is widely known that females tend to live longer (although that may sometimes be attributed to lifestyle factors), and it makes sense that females would survive better in a famine given that females tend to be smaller, so eat less.

As to the third, there are other studies that indicate the opposite (that men perform better under competitive pressure), which I can link to if you like. We can say the jury is still out on that one, or we can dive deeper into it if you prefer.

Do you believe the stereotypes that women are more empathetic than men etc?

[ThunderCat]

Well a few people appear to have argued that the strength difference was much less significant than I think it is:

• Knaight said in post 301 "Strength differences due to sex are utterly dwarfed by strength differences between people who routinely do hard physical labor and people who don't"
• Satancoaldo appeared to be suggesting over several posts that the strength difference was not so great that a man who was a couch potato would not be able to beat a woman with some training in a martial art in a fight,
• Keltest at the top of this page said that "n active person who regularly does physically demanding labor will be stronger than a couch potato even if the active person is a woman and the couch potato a man."

So none of them argued that men aren't generally stronger than women?

Women from 5000 years ago may have had stronger arms than female athletes generally nowadays, because most female athletes dn't rely on arm strength (so a female soccer player might have arms that are only moderately stronger than the average woman. I would be surprised if the average european female from 5000 years ago had stronger arms than an accomplished modern female weight lifter or shot putter or rower.

The study compared them to different types of athletes, including rovers. And they got it from working, not training professionally. So how much of a difference do you think it makes that men are far more likely to work in jobs that are physically demanding in a way which builds up strength? Do you really think it has little to no effect on averages?

The link I referred to was posted by AMFV in post #411.

So a study that didn't control for level of physical activity or previous experience?

Even if you are right that men are more active, I don't think it is true that nearly all men are more active than nearly all women, but the link does say that nearly all men (90%) are stronger than nearly all (90%) of women (of a similar age to one another).

Again, you're falsely claiming that anyone here argued that the scores would be equal in an equal world. But there's a difference between saying that men wouldn't be stronger on average in an equal world (which you've presumed everyone is saying), and saying that current differences are explained by more than genetic determinism.

Do you understand that difference? Really understand it? I'm going out on a limb here and say no, because the only other reason to keep bringing it up would be malice, and I don't want to attribute that to you. So I'll try explaining it. If you watched the video I linked to, you'd have seen the example of a professional male athlete capable of winning professional MMA fights beating a strongwoman at arm wrestling, which was turned into "average man beats world's strongest woman". Do you understand why that argument is wrong? Do you understand that even if the average man is stronger than the average woman and the average male athlete stronger than the average female athlete and the very best male athletes stronger than the very best female athletes, this does not prove that average men are stronger than big women who train to increase their strength?

Or to give another example, some people point out that black people in the USA supposedly commit more crime on average than white people, and so argue that the higher black incarceration rate has nothing to do with racism (the youtuber from before has a video about that too btw). But that argument only works if black people receive sentences comparable to those of white people for the same crimes. If, say, black people committed 30% more crimes but were incarcerated 80% more, that would still mean the actual difference in criminality is smaller than many people make it out to be, even though the difference is still there. "Black people are more likely to commit crime" is not a counter to the argument "The difference in incarceration rate is affected by racism". Because "the baseline is different" is not the same argument as "outside factors are negligible in their effect".

Or take intelligence, which you referred to as an inherent ability like strength. Some of the people arguing that it's largely a matter of heritage points to how IQ differences between unrelated individuals grow over time, as an example of how heritage continues to manifest itself throughout life. But everything we know about proactive person-environment interaction says that people are more likely to seek to out activities which they excel at and which strengthen their existing identity. So school children who do better in primary school are more likely to continue to high school, and students who do well in high school are more likely to continue to college. And education increases IQ scores. The brain works a lot like the rest of the body, responding to outside demands, to the point where some studies find that children's IQ drop during the summer holiday, because they're not training it. So even if an IQ difference is relatively small to begin with, it's likely to grow over time, as more intelligent individuals seek out higher education while the less intelligent ones are more likely to leave school early. And over time, that difference adds up.

When talking about the relative strength scores or athletic ability of men and women, that same phenomenon applies. Boys grow up playing more physically active games and emulating more physically active male rolemodels. They're less likely to be expected to be quiet and more likely to be allowed to run wild. In my part of the world, they seem to play sports in clubs in higher number than girls even in childhood. In their teens, they're more likely to get jobs which require physical activity, especially strength, and when they start going to the gym, they're more likely to focus on strength exercises than burning calories. They start out with an overall (average) advantage, but that difference grows throughout their lives. That's why measuring the end product is highly unlikely to give us a precise image of the starting point.

The world female world record for 100m is 10.49s (Florence Griffith Joiner, for USA in the 80s). The US High School record for 100m is 10s (Trentavis Friday, 2014 - this may also be the world High School record, I don't know). That is a huge difference in time.

It's less than 5%. Hopefully you don't think the difference between a professional athlete and a couch potato is ever going to be anywhere near that small? And we're talking about an athlete who was 18-19 at the time, an age where other male sprinters have participated in the Olympics, and who was training to become a professional, which he did just 2 years after setting that record.

"US High School" is used to communicate "even school boys can do it", but in actuality, we're often talking about legal adults who're training like professionals, will go on to become professionals in a couple of years and could be winning Olympic medals a few years after that.

Now in USA the NCAA rules (link to FAQ below) heavily regulate funding for sports by gender in USA, so I don't think* women's sprinters can receive less funding.

They can receive fewer and smaller sponsorships, which is where most money in professional sports is. High school sports is probably different, even in the USA, but there's still a surrounding culture to account for. Take the world records for male and female marathon runners:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/athl...03/2945709.stm

The increased speed over time for both men and women happen too fast for changing genetics to account for it, leaving only environmental factors. But the more interesting part is how the male and female records are getting closer and closer over time. As the culture changes and women are allowed to participate in more marathons and encouraged more than before, and as the number of female marathon runners increase, they become significantly faster. The curve has been flattening out in recent years, suggesting we're nearing the point where inherent sexual dimorphism probably account for most of the difference, but how can you say for sure that we've reached that point in all sports today? If you'd made the same argument as you're making now in the 1960-1970s, we'd be looking at men running marathons at 2/3 of the women's time, rather than 9/10. Everyone seems to believe that they live in the era where sexism is finally dead and where every observed sex difference is solely due to nature, but they're always wrong. What makes our time so special?

[deuterio12]

I can certainly buy the first two. I think it is widely known that females tend to live longer (although that may sometimes be attributed to lifestyle factors), and it makes sense that females would survive better in a famine given that females tend to be smaller, so eat less.

There is a very important genetic pressure for women to be healthier than men. Women need to get pregnant to pass on their genes, and pregnancy is a 9-month long process that's extremely taxing in the woman's body. A male only needs to be healthy for 9 minutes to pass on their genes now and then, a woman needs to be in great health for 9 months non-stop to pass on her genes, and multiple times in her life if the human population is to grow.

That can be observed long before any lifestyle factors kick in. Male fetus outright have a higher chance of natural miscarriage than female fetus and premature girls have higher chance of survival than premature boys too.

Notice also women have a higher percentage of fat in their body mass (to help with pregnancy and nursing), which also comes in handy when food is scarce.

[Liquor Box]

So none of them argued that men aren't generally stronger than women?

No, they argued (to quote one of them) "Strength differences due to sex are utterly dwarfed by strength differences between people who routinely do hard physical labor and people who don't", which is where I disagree with them and agree with AMFV (and several others) who think that strength differences between the sexes are larger than the difference between active people and inactive people. I think that most women who are active are weaker than most men who are inactive. I think that only exceptional women will approach an ordinarily inactive man in strength.

The study compared them to different types of athletes, including rovers. And they got it from working, not training professionally. So how much of a difference do you think it makes that men are far more likely to work in jobs that are physically demanding in a way which builds up strength? Do you really think it has little to no effect on averages?

I found the study,it says those women were 30% stronger than modern women, where most studies indicate that modern men are more than 80% stronger than modern women. So even hugely active (more active than even modern women who train for strength) women were still significantly weaker than your average modern man (most of whom are not active). That alone suggests that sex difference is greater than the activeness of the individuals concerned.

So a study that didn't control for level of physical activity or previous experience?

The one I linked to compared average men to female athletes, so it more than compensated for activity level - all the women were active (being athletes), the men were average (which means most were not).

AMFV's study didnt need to be controlled for activity. Almost all men were stronger than almost all women. Even if only 10% of women were active, that 10% is still weaker than 90% of men (I don;t think you would claim that 90% of men are conditioned for strength). So, unless you are making some pretty outlandish assumptions about men being more active than women, it does show that an inactive man is significantly stronger than an active woman.

Also, obviously the comparisons of world records that have been discussed (or of high school teams playing adult national teams) does control for activity - being elite athletes clearly all the women will have high activity levels.

Again, you're falsely claiming that anyone here argued that the scores would be equal in an equal world. But there's a difference between saying that men wouldn't be stronger on average in an equal world (which you've presumed everyone is saying), and saying that current differences are explained by more than genetic determinism.

I made no such claim. I challenge you to find anywhere where i suggested that anyone had said men and women are equal, or would be.

On the contrary, I have been consistent in saying that almost all men are stronger than almost all women (of an age with one another) and gender is a bigger factor in strength than activity level, as evidenced by weak and inactive men(say, 20th percentile) being stronger than active and very strong women (say 90th percentile).

Perhaps read what I have written, rather than going with the vibe you get....

Do you understand that difference? Really understand it? I'm going out on a limb here and say no, because the only other reason to keep bringing it up would be malice, and I don't want to attribute that to you. So I'll try explaining it. If you watched the video I linked to, you'd have seen the example of a professional male athlete capable of winning professional MMA fights beating a strongwoman at arm wrestling, which was turned into "average man beats world's strongest woman". Do you understand why that argument is wrong? Do you understand that even if the average man is stronger than the average woman and the average male athlete stronger than the average female athlete and the very best male athletes stronger than the very best female athletes, this does not prove that average men are stronger than big women who train to increase their strength?

I didn't see that video. But I'm not at all surprised to find incidents of people exaggerating such things. I am also unsurprised when I see people exaggerating (or minimising) in the opposite direction. Exaggeration happens. Frequently. But I see no evidence that it happens more by people one one side of this (or any) argument than the other. If you see me relying on an exaggerated account (or exaggerating myself) please point it out. But to point out incidences of exaggeration that i have not relied on is irrelevant, and just as intelectually dishonest as the exageration itself.

Or to give another example, some people point out that black people in the USA supposedly commit more crime on average than white people, and so argue that the higher black incarceration rate has nothing to do with racism (the youtuber from before has a video about that too btw). But that argument only works if black people receive sentences comparable to those of white people for the same crimes. If, say, black people committed 30% more crimes but were incarcerated 80% more, that would still mean the actual difference in criminality is smaller than many people make it out to be, even though the difference is still there. "Black people are more likely to commit crime" is not a counter to the argument "The difference in incarceration rate is affected by racism". Because "the baseline is different" is not the same argument as "outside factors are negligible in their effect".

I don't think it productive in this thread to talk too much about a potentially controversial topic like why black imprisonment rates tend to be higher than white in USA, and it is probably against forum rules. Intuitively I imagine it is multi-factorial (which is I think what you are saying), just like strength differences. Whether one of those factors is dominant over the others, like sex in strength difference, I don't know. Can we drop this example? I think it has served its purpose, and if not, can you suggest another.

Or take intelligence, which you referred to as an inherent ability like strength. Some of the people arguing that it's largely a matter of heritage points to how IQ differences between unrelated individuals grow over time, as an example of how heritage continues to manifest itself throughout life. But everything we know about proactive person-environment interaction says that people are more likely to seek to out activities which they excel at and which strengthen their existing identity. So school children who do better in primary school are more likely to continue to high school, and students who do well in high school are more likely to continue to college. And education increases IQ scores. The brain works a lot like the rest of the body, responding to outside demands, to the point where some studies find that children's IQ drop during the summer holiday, because they're not training it. So even if an IQ difference is relatively small to begin with, it's likely to grow over time, as more intelligent individuals seek out higher education while the less intelligent ones are more likely to leave school early. And over time, that difference adds up.

I have no idea what bearing this has on out discussion. It feels like you are trying to illustrate that strength is increased by by training - which is obvious. If that's your point, I agree.

When talking about the relative strength scores or athletic ability of men and women, that same phenomenon applies. Boys grow up playing more physically active games and emulating more physically active male rolemodels. They're less likely to be expected to be quiet and more likely to be allowed to run wild. In my part of the world, they seem to play sports in clubs in higher number than girls even in childhood. In their teens, they're more likely to get jobs which require physical activity, especially strength, and when they start going to the gym, they're more likely to focus on strength exercises than burning calories. They start out with an overall (average) advantage, but that difference grows throughout their lives. That's why measuring the end product is highly unlikely to give us a precise image of the starting point.

So your proposition is that men tend to be more active, and to do more physical activity than women. Do you have anything to support that?

Because the following link demonstrates that a significantly higher proportion of men in USA are overweight than women.
https://www.kff.org/other/state-indi...2:%22asc%22%7D

I think you are relying on your perception that men more often do really physical work than women. You might be right. But I suspect that men also more frequently do completely sedentary work (office work) than women. I think women more frequently home keepers and children raisers, which I suggest is between heavy work (like construction or farming) and sedentary work (like office work) in terms of activity levels. Whether that would play out to men or women being more active on average i have no idea, but I very much doubt it is particularly significant in men being nearly twice as strong as women on average,

It's less than 5%. Hopefully you don't think the difference between a professional athlete and a couch potato is ever going to be anywhere near that small?

No, I think the male couch potato outperforming the female athlete applies only to strength. In athleticism (like sprinting) the difference is less pronounced, but still exists.

And we're talking about an athlete who was 18-19 at the time, an age where other male sprinters have participated in the Olympics, and who was training to become a professional, which he did just 2 years after setting that record.

"US High School" is used to communicate "even school boys can do it", but in actuality, we're often talking about legal adults who're training like professionals, will go on to become professionals in a couple of years and could be winning Olympic medals a few years after that.

Actually "high school student" is usually used to communicate someone who goes to High School. I could understand your objection to the term if we were talking about someone who was outside the normal high school age range (because they had been held back or because they had returned to high school as an adult), but that is not the case here.

But if you think he is too old, that is no problem. Such is the male/female disparity that the record 100m time by a fifteen year old is still faster than the woman's record (Darrel Brown of Trinidad and Tobago - 10.36 seconds).

They can receive fewer and smaller sponsorships, which is where most money in professional sports is. High school sports is probably different, even in the USA, but there's still a surrounding culture to account for.

It says "female and male student-athletes receive athletics scholarship dollars proportional to their participation", so the average size of sponsorship must be equal. Whether there are more male or female sponsorships depends on participation. Do you any evidence to suggest that women receive fewer?

Take the world records for male and female marathon runners:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/athl...03/2945709.stm

The increased speed over time for both men and women happen too fast for changing genetics to account for it, leaving only environmental factors. But the more interesting part is how the male and female records are getting closer and closer over time. As the culture changes and women are allowed to participate in more marathons and encouraged more than before, and as the number of female marathon runners increase, they become significantly faster. The curve has been flattening out in recent years, suggesting we're nearing the point where inherent sexual dimorphism probably account for most of the difference, but how can you say for sure that we've reached that point in all sports today? If you'd made the same argument as you're making now in the 1960-1970s, we'd be looking at men running marathons at 2/3 of the women's time, rather than 9/10. Everyone seems to believe that they live in the era where sexism is finally dead and where every observed sex difference is solely due to nature, but they're always wrong. What makes our time so special?

You say "leaving only environmental factors", but then go on to assume that the environmental factor in question is women's participation. There are a huge amount of factors that could account for ever improvements from the 50s to now, such as improved training techniques, improved understanding of pre-race nutrition and how energy from food releases over time, the electrolytes that are in the Gatorade (or whatever brand) marathon runners now drink during the race. Given that they are not on uniform courses, it may simply be that a recent trend is to use flatter courses.

Also, Radcliffe's time that the article refers to was in a mixed race (with men) which means she was able to pace herself against someone faster (a man won the race where she ran that time, not sure how many men beat her). Radcliffe's best time when she did not have someone faster to pace herself against (which was also a world record for women) was not as fast as Peters' time (where he obviously could not pace himself against someone faster). See what I mean about these little exaggerations and inaccuracies going both ways?

Also, the article only addresses the trend up until early 2003. Since then the reverse has happened. Radcliffe's time in a mixed race has not been beaten. On the contrary the men's record referred to in the article has been reduced from 2.05.38 to 2.02.57, which is an improvement of more than 2 and a half minutes.

Even if we put all those factors aside, a narrowing gap in one particular sport does not prove very much. It may be the exception. You would need to show a trend across most sports (or at least most sports of a particular type). We can see that if we look at the other example we have discussed - sprinting. Flo-Jo's record from the 80s still stands whereas men have improved their own sprint record several times since he 80s. That suggests that any increase in women's participation in sport or increased funding may not have influenced women's performance at the top level any more than the same has influenced men's performance.

[Liquor Box]

There is a very important genetic pressure for women to be healthier than men. Women need to get pregnant to pass on their genes, and pregnancy is a 9-month long process that's extremely taxing in the woman's body. A male only needs to be healthy for 9 minutes to pass on their genes now and then, a woman needs to be in great health for 9 months non-stop to pass on her genes, and multiple times in her life if the human population is to grow.

That can be observed long before any lifestyle factors kick in. Male fetus outright have a higher chance of natural miscarriage than female fetus and premature girls have higher chance of survival than premature boys too.

Notice also women have a higher percentage of fat in their body mass (to help with pregnancy and nursing), which also comes in handy when food is scarce.

I don;t disagree. I'm suspect that women's higher life expectancy is multi-factorial (as most things)with both genetic contributors and lifestyle contributors. Which is the dominant factor, I'm not sure.

[Worira]

So your proposition is that men tend to be more active, and to do more physical activity than women. Do you have anything to support that?

Because the following link demonstrates that a significantly higher proportion of men in USA are overweight than women.
https://www.kff.org/other/state-indi...2:%22asc%22%7D

food my dude

[S@tanicoaldo]

We also are less likely to violently attack someone, sexually assault or feel the need to commit murder.

I also hear that we ‘mature’ far earlier than males, but I have no data about that.

It seems we are also better at being responsible adults: