This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
Been watching avengers and thinking about black widow, and I hear a lot about how women can't beat men in a fight, how most women are weaker than most men, etc. Seems culture-war adjacent because of the whole trans in sports and such.
Setting aside superpowers, I don't dispute the truth of this fact, and I don't dispute the truth that elite men will be much stronger than elite women, and well-above-average men will be somewhat stronger than elite women, but it seems people take this too far and think even a trained woman can't beat an untrained man, and I don't see why THAT is true.
I've seen a study that said women of the same size as men, on average, will have 50% the upper body strength, 50% grip, 65% leg strength.
Surely these are just average joes and average janes? Do you mean to tell me if the woman trains for a couple years, and is healthy / responsive to training, she wouldn't be stronger than the majority of men that don't train, or are just fooling around in the gym / not really progressively overloading? (to what degree am I overestimating performance of average jane after several years of training? I'm guessing there was a large genetic component to why powerlifting women are so strong? What is the average ceiling for strength for a woman that trains powerlifting AS A HOBBY for a few years?)
Don't most women just avoid actual strength training / bulking out of temperament/desire for their body to look a certain way and not out of inability to do it and see results that would put them above-average for men?
I'm just not that familiar with female athletes, with exception of powerlifting and streetlifting spaces where there were strong women who could do shit like bench 200, squat 400-500, etc while being pretty lean. In retrospect those were probably very elite women, but are you seriously saying average joe is stronger than them?
And, if those women just decided to start learning some MMA for a few years. I could see a black widow-esque level of performance against men who are buff but not trained in MMA, or trained in MMA but not buff? Add in some genetic talent, special training, equipment etc. and it isn't so far fetched to have someone like black widow. Maybe she'd need to be a bit bulkier to be realistic but still.
Are dudes supposed to just walk into a gym, being sedentary, and start benching 200? Is that a normal thing for men? (genuinely asking, I'm a dude but have a very small frame. maybe some big frame people out there just naturally have strength? But again, those wouldn't be average joes.)
How much of this is a question of female temperament? Are they simply not encouraged to weightlift , bulk, or train for combat as frequently? And most MMA girls are mainly training skill and don't have a powerlifting base to build off from? If a 5'10 girl bulked to 180 or so, and does powerlifting as a hobby, how much weaker is she really than an average 5'10 joe who isn't trained? 5'10 criminal joe that comes up to mug her or something, are you really telling me 5'10 powerlifting mma chick doesn't clock him?
Note I am making sure to equate the sizes of the woman and man in question. I'm not making 5'4 hero chick go against 5'10 criminal with ease, but if the sizes are equal I just don't see how the hero chick loses. Although if you make 5'10 criminal (who likely has some training, but doesn't powerlift) into 5'10 average joe, then even against 5'4 powerlifting mma chick...just how much of a disadvantage is the size if strength is equal? It's gonna be a close fight at least, no?
I've been training Muay Thai for 10 years and coaching for 4.
Not only do men start at a higher baseline, they also respond better to training over a set period of time. If you take a man and a woman of similar height, weight and age, the man will have advantages in three traits:
The first means that any strength for strength activities will go the man: grappling, jostling, pinning, etc. The second means that men can dish out more damage, because force = mass x acceleration, and denser bones and muscles mean more mass. It also means that men can take more damage, because density resists manipulation, i.e. muscles don't tear as easily and bones don't crack as easily. The third and most important trait means that not only can men express more force in a shorter amount of time, resulting in more damage, they can also perform other fighting actions quicker: movement, defense, reactions, etc.
As I mentioned before, this is just the baseline. Over time, men will respond to training better than women on average. They will become more dangerous, able to express their advantages in more effective ways. And these are just the physical explanations. Mentally, men seem to have an animal like ability to deal damage, take damage, and enjoy it.
All this to say, the deck is stacked against women. In order to overcome this asymmetry, the skill differences needs to be significant, which I have seen plenty of times to be fair, but it's not common. These differences are important to know so that training can be shaped accordingly. When men and women spar together, due care and understanding is paramount so as to prevent injury. When women compete against other women, strength and conditioning makes a larger difference than when men compete with other men.
More options
Context Copy link
Biology and anatomy seems to be the basic answer. Male and female bodies are built differently, puberty enhances that, and while women can train and bulk up on muscle, unless they're also going to dose up on testosterone they won't build as much muscle as men.
Yes, a trained woman possibly could beat a trained man, but it's the same as the saying: a good big guy will always beat a good little guy.
yeah, that makes sense. I think people exaggerate sometimes that make it seem like it's literally impossible. I agree with how you put it though.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Relevant recent experiences:
Over Easter I was up at my in-laws, which means I got to visit my other BJJ gym a few times. While there I got the chance to do something I've wanted to do for a while: I rolled with a female purple belt.
For context, I'm a white belt at BJJ, I've been going for about a year and a half, and I suck. I am not a graceful person. To start I was reasonably strong and in above average cardio condition; but I'm nothing to write home about as a natural athlete, across all sports for thirty years I've capped out at the level right below the level where it would be interesting to be that good. I'm 6', 195lbs, probably between 15-20% bodyfat. A reasonably approximation for a clumsy goon in a superhero movie.
Up to this point, while I've occasionally rolled with girls, I try to avoid it because it's just too embarrassing. The whole time I'm typically in my head trying to avoid going too hard and being a jerk because I'm beating up on the girl, or going too soft and being a jerk because I'm not offering her a decent roll. And God forbid one of them asks me to drill with her, which happens every few weeks, and coach picks a move involving a "chest post;" after a few times of THAT, I carefully position myself far away from any females before we pick partners to drill with.
In rolling against a fellow female white belt or blue belt, my experience is that I'm basically in control the whole time. I can "let her work" as much as she wants, when it comes down to it I can escape or muscle out. Out of ~100 rounds, I've tapped to a girl once, and that was in the particular scenario of drills starting from front headlock, and I think I let her start way too close to finishing the submission, and I'm not sure I couldn't have burst out of it if I were to muscle out as hard as I could but I wasn't about to do that during drilling. Generally when I roll with girls, I try to use as little strength as possible and only take moves that are perfectly technically executed on my part. Where against one of the men in the "equals" category I'm willing to just muscle him into a Kimura, against the girls I'm trying more wacky technical stuff.
One of our white belts is a female competitive powerlifter. Honestly, bros, on the platform some days she might hit bigger numbers on the barbell than I do, and I know for a fact she squats and deads much more than some of the other guys at the gym. She's probably around 180 and her deadlift is extremely impressive! But her functional strength on the mats is little better than the pretty 125lb girls. This is true of a lot of competitive powerlifters male or female: they're hyper optimized for particular movement patterns, and comparatively a 1rm squat test isn't telling you as much about them compared to an untrained woman. She can, and has, helped me move a couch, she's not a weak person in a day to day sense, but she's not much of a threat on the mat to a similarly skilled male. I roll regularly with guys that she outlifts in powerlifting, and I'm clearly stronger than they are, but not to the scale I am stronger than her on the mat.
All of which brings me to Good Friday, when I finally got the opportunity to test myself against a female purple belt. I've wanted to for a long time, for science. Purple is the first belt where I'd say it consistently means something, whites come in all shapes and sizes, and blues can sometimes sneak in or get a pity promotion, but I've seen few purple belts who didn't at least mostly know what they were doing. Typically, a purple belt means four years of training at least three times a week, studying and thinking about the sport regularly, and probably competing at least occasionally, so by any reasonable standard an expert. For scale, I've rolled hundreds of times with male purple belts. Typically against a male purple belt, I will lose 95% of rounds, even if they don't sub me there's no need to keep score it's just obvious who was dominating the round. This holds even against a purple belt 40lbs lighter than me. Every now and then I get lucky and catch a straight ankle or a kimura, but never anything like a head and arm choke or a triangle that requires set-up. Against a female purple belt, rolling casually in a morning class so probably more like 75% than trying to kill each other, without using a ton of strength or leaning on size I was rolling about even. She was clearly technically better than me, and presented problems I had to put effort into solving. It wasn't the case that I could just pass her guard at will, or leave anything open and she couldn't take it. I had to play tight, methodically break dilemmas, and build towards wins. Ultimately the rounds would have scored at worst 50/50, I tapped her a few times and she didn't tap me but I didn't positionally dominate the rounds as much as the submissions would indicate, partly because if she started to get close to submitting me I was more willing to use strength to escape. In enough rolls, I would guess she'd win at least 1/5 if we both brought our A-Game. And she would probably be able to tap out a totally untrained male, she would have dominated me eighteen months ago.
So FiveHourMarathon's n=1 trials indicate: being a competitive powerlifter will not make a female defeat a male who is equal as a lifter, being a trained expert female will not allow her to defeat a novice male in reasonable shape.
That all being said, I don't really find female superheroes any stupider or more Suspension-of-Disbelief-breaking than male superheroes. When you consider how absurdly unrealistically fit and capable Batman has to be to beat up fifty goons or whatever, adding an extra factor of 2x in there because Batman should be twice as strong as Batgirl doesn't really change the math for me. If Batman is 50x a male black belt, it doesn't really make a difference to me to have Batgirl be 100x a female black belt. In my recent WoW run, I'm playing a female Night Elf hunter, both for lorefag reasons (Night Elf females were Sentinel warrior/rangers, while Night Elf males were druid-hippies) and because I think the slim female build in WoW looks better for an archer than the muscular male build, which in my opinion only really works aesthetically for a warrior. Given that a casual questing hour involves killing fifty orcs, thirty men, ten ogres, and a three headed dragon...I don't think I'm really worried about the chromosomes in terms of realism. The far more realism breaking thing for me in WoW is Gnome warriors, but I get why it's set up that way.
Interesting to see a real anecdote! I'm really surprised a powerlifting girl couldn't translate the strength to the mat, huh. What do you think if she was also a purple belt? Even then it sounds like she'd only have a slight upper hand, not really black widow performance level.
I mainly watch MCU so, captain america I just explain it was the serum he took. Hawkeye doesn't really do anything all that crazy for a trained man hand to hand, although his coordination is supernatural and I'm not sure how to head canon it. rest of the avengers have obvious superpowers. But black widow isn't supposed to have any, so I have been head canoning that black widow is just a powerlifter who trained combat a bunch but perhaps I'll have to up my head canon...just actually suspend disbelief instead of trying to explain it haha. Maybe she has some mutations or something that aren't enough to be considered an actual mutant, but just in the top 0.001% in every genetic factors that exists relevant to combat. Thus we haven't seen a woman like her in our world but not technically impossible.
I've never watched any of the MCU, so I'm a little out of my depth.
I'll let you know in four years! I suspect at that level of experience she would probably move from "can't-beat-me" to "can-beat-me" but I doubt she'd make it to "should-beat-me" or "will-beat-me-every-time." Which are the basic categories of people at the gym in my taxonomy.
I still hope to get the chance to roll with a female black belt or an equivalent female competitor, I still want to meet a girl in the "will-beat-me-every-time" category, to see what that feels like. But in general I can say that a purple belt gets you to "can-beat-me," so more strength might get her to a push where we roll even.
Important to keep in mind: this is me, I'm a decent comp for a mook in a movie, I'm fairly big and muscular and I've trained BJJ pretty hard for a year. I'm not an average American man. So when I say I roll even with her, that means she'd smoke the average American man, who doesn't really work out and has no experience with BJJ.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
There is/was a German TV host that can serve as our "slightly above average man": Stefan Raab. In the early 2000s, he had several successful TV shows, one of them was pretty simple: a challenger needs to beat him in a tournament of random tasks. Quizzes, shooting pool, racing cars, rock climbing, race of cutting bread loafs, classic tug of war, ball games. The details are not terribly important, but Raab was comically difficult to beat. He destroyed a long list of (perfunctorily) competent looking opponents.
He's also relatively tall and heavy. And he had the bright idea to challenge Regina Halmich, female world champing in flyweight boxing for 12 consecutive years, to a boxing match. He reportedly trained for 4 weeks, and she destroyed him in 6 rounds, breaking his nose in the process. And it was not close. He had absolutely no chance, only a freak knockout could have saved him - but he can't really touch her at all, making that difficult.
So that's one data point. I'd put Raab at around +1 SD of the adult male, both in general fitness and in boxing. That is not enough for the female +4 SD, at least not in boxing. I'm sure wrestling and MMA would have looked different... but maybe not, not sure if 4 weeks of training is enough not to end up falling on top of the female world champion - just to get choked/arm barred immediately anyway. Also, Halmich (above) is a flyweight. A heavier/stronger woman, one who additionally is trained (and allowed) to kick, might shift the difficulty for the average man again.
Still, looks nothing like Black Widow, obviously.
I think boxing would be different, though. There's the old division between a fighter versus a boxer; the nadir of the heavyweight bouts was when the weight category was dominated by big, flabby, slow guys who just soaked up punch damage and managed to last the longest. Skills and the knowledge not to get in close and be trapped by your opponent probably helped the female champion.
More options
Context Copy link
I think that’s the crux of the issue. If Marvel had been casting women who look like this instead of Scarlett Johansson, this thread probably wouldn’t have been made. When they think of a female athlete, most people in this thread are imagining a 5’3 petite woman with maybe a little bit of muscle, not Sarah Scheurich.
Hell, they can't even seem to bother casting women who look like this.
More options
Context Copy link
Also, Black Widow isn't meant to be an ordinary woman, she's been trained and subjected to biological augmentation (her story has been developed over the decades from a standard honey-pot spy as she started out to what she is now). So it's the same rationale as Buffy the Vampire Slayer - the whole point is that Buffy looks like a standard cheerleader type and not the kind of super-fighter that she is due to being The One.
More options
Context Copy link
I find that people often struggle to break away from the average vs average comparisons they have in their head. Yes average woman vs average man has the man taller, but there is a pretty fair amount of overlap still too. Especially among athletes.
For example, the average height of a WNBA player is almost 6'1, that is four inches higher than the average male. (NBA average is 6'7). Real life elite athletes are statistic and genetic freaks in so many areas. Sure elite women's teams might still lose to the high school teams, but it's also not like many of those high school teams are a random assortment of men. The average male high school team is still going to be the disproportionately trained genetic freaks compared to the student body, (even if not as freaky as the elites are relative to the population) because they're the jocks of the school. The high school basketball club men are still gonna be taller, leaner and stronger than the average male student.
More options
Context Copy link
Yes. Same goes for the fighting style itself. Black Widow goes in close, often for a quick take down.
The tactic that worked for Halmich was staying out of range with far better leg work, provoking strikes at his range limit to tire him out, dodging/blocking them easily and then going for low risk ripostes as he obviously ran out of gas after a few rounds. Doesn't make for good cinema.
Even in that fight Halmich got caught in a grapple.
Most realistic version of the Hollywood fight is (a taller) Black Widow kicks him in the leg until he can't fight back. Never Back Down did it and it was perfectly cinematic (and accurate, it really would take only a few), it just isn't as cool as acrobatic jiu-jitsu.
Boxers do that all the time, right? No real penalty for doing so, so you don't have to avoid it. Getting on his inside and using her shorter levers and better technique might even have been advantageous. But yes, catastrophic for her in an MMA fight.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
How do we know he actually wanted to win, rather than make compelling drama?
We don't, same way we don't know that he didn't have insider knowledge of what the next set of "random" tasks he excelled at would be. But he's know to be comically competitive and overambitious, it would be out of character for him to throw a fight or cheat. But yes, we can't know.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Surprised no one is sourcing any data on this. Here's what I found with some googling:
https://carthalis.ca/articles/average-bench-press
Beginner (0-25th percentile)
Men: 0.5x - 0.8x body weight - - - Women: 0.3x - 0.5x body weight
Intermediate (25-75th percentile)
Men: 0.8x - 1.2x body weight - - - Women: 0.5x - 0.8x body weight
Advanced (75-90th percentile)
Men: 1.2x - 1.5x body weight - - - Women: 0.8x - 1.0x body weight
Elite (90-99th percentile)
Men: 1.5x+ body weight - - - - - - Women: 1.0x+ body weight
Taking midpoint for these ranges, it looks like a 95th percentile woman is roughly the strength ratio of a 50th percentile man, but we probably expect the man to be larger and weigh more (since the woman will have to be fit rather than obese to be in this range), so she's probably closer to a 40th percentile man, or we need the 99th percentile woman to get up to the 50th percentile man.
So, black widow would be an even match against a completely random Joe off the street who maybe hits the gym a couple times a month. Add some martial arts training and she could probably win.
Put her against any sort of grunt in an evil organization whose job involves being and/or looking tough? Someone who hits the gym regularly because their job uses physical strength, or it's just part of their self esteem and they don't want to get mocked by their peers? Not a chance. Once he passes the 75th percentile he's going to be at unreachable levels she cannot realistically attain.
Any fantasy or super hero story that wants female fighters needs to use their magic or powers to give them super strength, even if only enough to reach the level of their male peers (I recall reading a story that had a ritual a woman could do to literally gain the strength she would have had as a man, but it generally doesn't need to be quite this explicit)
More options
Context Copy link
Yes. Same thing for fighting.
The best female athletes in the world across a variety of sports roughly equal the athletic performance of ten to twelve year old boys. That's the general physical capability of extreme female athletes.
Across a variety of sports? Have you actually seen elite female athletes? Katy Ledecky is 6 feet, 159 pounds (183cm/72kg) and her 1500m freestyle record beats the male world record from 1973. There’s a similar pattern across most sports where current female athletes outperform the top males from 50-100 years ago.
While puberty starts earlier these days, I highly doubt there’s many 10 year old 6 foot tall supermen running around beating the top male athletes of the mid 20th century.
More options
Context Copy link
No need to go overboard here. Let's go with 15 year old boys on elite teams. Not doable without at least some testosterone and some training.
No women's team in any sport has ever defeated a U-15 boys team at anything except whinging about not getting paid enough for that level of play. The equality comparison must be lowered. Shall we compromise on thirteen?
What percentage of thirteen-year-old boys do you think the average untrained adult male could whip in a fight?
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Depending on the sport, I would say it is more likely to be high-school level athletes - and given the culture of American school sport the best high-school level athletes are training to a semi-professional standard. The boys' team that the US women's national soccer team trains against is a State all-star team of elite high school athletes, for example.
But a guy who has the necessary skills for the sport and a basically active lifestyle (American car culture means that most Americans who don't intentionally work out are couch potatoes, but this is not true elsewhere) but doesn't train is going to beat club-level women, and a decent club-level male athlete is going to beat elite women.
Not sure if this was intended for me, but I'll take a crack.
Male advantages increase as the sport more closely resembles what sports aspire to replace. In soccer? Female skill and conditioning could overmatch untrained males. Grappling? Not nearly as much. MMA? Even less.
The closer you get to actual combat, the premium on male advantages rise and compound. Very athletic women average ~150lb. The average adult male is 200. On average, a top female athlete is giving up fifty pounds to the untrained joe.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Average or above average does a lot of work here. The problem for women who train hard is not average guys, who some they could probably beat and some they probably cant based just on genetics. Its just that once a guy gets off his ass and gets into any kind of shape, the woman is toast.
By way of example, I wrestled approximately ages 6-18, and I was pretty good. State qualifier in a fairly competitive state good, placed in states a few years in middle school, never in HS. When I was 11/12ish I had a girl as an opponent. It lasted one round. I won. This was before puberty.
She then went on to attend a good, not great, wrestling high school and made varsity as a freshman. She had a losing record. The next 3 years she was relegated to JV by one elite talent (Iowa good) and 2 other okay talents at her weight class. Then she almost immediately went on to win the female Olympic trials. So we are talking about basically the best 18 year old girl in the country who had been previously relegated to the JV squad at her high school by guys who mostly were unremarkable, and barely into puberty (we are basically only talking about freshmen in the weight classes relevant here).
This difference peaks in the 16-25 range, but also legacy effects from the differences in general training methods and banked strength go on quite long. I've worked office jobs for 15 years at this point, my workouts consist of pushups and walking. This still means something like 99% of women would lose to me in any combat sport. We are basically only talking about professionals having a chance. And when I was in the 18-25 age group, something approaching 0%.
That is really the problem with the movie hero-chick is that the emphasis is always on hand to hand combat. Its literally the place where the disadvantage is greatest. All the male advantages converge in that space. Further, the enemies in these depictions are never average Joes as you postulate, they are always hardened criminals. To be succinct. Approximately no one in the world is interested in an average fat guy fighting a super fit lady. Its always like 6'6'' Ivan who looks like he's been on steroids for 5 years.
If you wanted to make a realistic female combatant you'd make Female Hawkeye (aka Katniss Everdeen in book 1), you'd make her a sniper or other sort of gunfighter that never gets into melee range. In those fights, skill dominates, and there is little evidence for male skill exceeding well trained females (in fact, for archery it seems to lean female). Or you could have some sort of pure long distance racer girl, or whatever. But the people making things are at war with reality. And so we get what we get.
More options
Context Copy link
Size and powerlifting movements are easily measurable, and if you only look at the spreadsheets and stats, it might look plausible. But strength is compounding in a lot of odd ways when the body is used in totality. Add in leverage through technique that compounds with your entire body and one should see why comparing raw strength numbers even between men can become a gross oversimplification of all the variables at play.
For example, it's not enough to presume that the reason why someone with a lot of grip strength feels strong is just because of their measured strength on a hand dynamometer. Until they are holding on to your wrists and you can't get them to let go you might not have considered that the size of their hand, or the thickness of their fingers is a clear advantage. Or how thin your own wrists are in comparison. Now compound that advantage with every single muscle and joint in their body as they hold on to your wrists and pull you around. From their bigger hands, longer limbs, broader shoulders... It literally does not stop at any point. From skeleton to skin. Even their feet and toes are larger, giving them bigger contact area with the ground.
To make a long story short, when you truly ask for a size equal woman to man, and look at that woman, you will not feel like you are looking at a woman. It's something that doesn't exist in any relevant number in the human species outside of complete anomalies or extreme growth hormone abuse. And even then it's often not enough. Categorically, men and women are different. And when we abstract ourselves away from reality with weight numbers and height measurements we are just playing a game on ourselves. If you want an answer to the question that is in any way relevant for normal humans, then you've already invalidated the effort with your caveats and hypotheticals.
To that extent the trans angle of the question is over and I'm not sure what else you were trying to get out of this.
Interesting points, so your main point here is that strength as it matters in combat, is not adequately measured by powerlifting numbers. Isolated muscular strength may not be that unequal between men and women, but other factors make it so that practical combat strength is markedly different.
Honestly I'm not trying to get anything out of this, just avengers movies spiked my curiosity regarding this culture-war adjacent topic.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
A lot of responses that are non-central to your question. Grip strength, powerlifting, etc. You (originally) asked about fights. It’s my understanding that many if not most fights end up as glorified grappling contests, especially when at least one of the participants is untrained. As such, it’s far more fair to consider fights as grappling contests. Especially when we are talking Black Widow comparisons. Think "half-drunken skirmish outside the bar by people who hate each other". Time and time again most fights pretty soon devolve first into close contact, one or both grabbing the other and attempting punches or other action with a free hand, and then pretty soon it goes to ground. If both people are really out to do damage, at this stage the fight usually doesn't last an incredibly length either.
In this context, a few hard truths. Weight matters a LOT. Like a lot, a lot. Wrestling is very very narrowly sliced up into 10 or 15 pound windows for a reason - and other combat sports too! ~50-60 pound weight advantage is massive that even a very skilled grappler will have trouble with. This is not linear: say a 20% body weight advantage is big, a 50% advantage might be insurmountable. Critically, in uncontrolled grappling, the skill advantage is even weaker, because there aren't really "rules" limiting what you can do. Remember that body weight scales better than muscles do, essentially, in humans. Why weight? Mostly, inertia, though bulk can help. Sheer mass makes it more difficult to be swept, moved, submitted, etc and it doesn't usually take much skill to leverage weight offensively either. Moving a huge weight is really exhausting. Factor #1 is almost always weight.
Now, I know you said "I'm making sure to equate the sizes of the woman and the man" so forgive me if I've gone off on a tangent, but "all else equal" isn't very realistic. Pure weight matters more than almost anything else, and weight differences are pretty common. The other things are more fun to talk about, and sometimes have culture war implications, but weight is the boring but accurate answer.
Gender is probably #2. Upper body strength is actually pretty important in grappling, and men have more even just proportionally, plus men with their broader shoulders and generally longer limbs and height (even denser bone!) can have some real substantial advantages in leverage, which is a force multiplier. Men have better muscle fiber density and explosive power. All else equal, it's probably true that a gym-trained woman can beat an untrained man pound for pound, but even a bit of training erodes that.
Skill falls probably down to #3. As mentioned, chaos is less kind to skill than sport is. Okay, one caveat: I think pound for pound skill probably comes above gender (!!). But skill scales much, much worse. Most fights, again, are not pound for pound. Your question is fundamentally asymmetrical: how much does the skill of a very fit woman impact her fight chances?
Gym training is probably #4. It's real but usually overstated. Functional strength encompasses wider ranges of movement, better positional awareness, flexibility, etc. It's fun but unrealistic to isolate this completely from #2 as well, as we do use our muscles regularly in daily life, not just in the gym. Many men use muscles in their work or leisure. So gym training has some limited upside, and we all know that you get up against diminishing returns pretty easily.
So, a few illustrative matchups:
170 pound fit regular guy vs trained 170 pound trained grappler. Grappler wins north of 90% of the time. Skill is super potent when things are roughly balanced.
170 pound pretty good grappler vs 240 pound untrained but not pure fat regular guy. That's a big ask, probably near the tipping point I think. On the feet the bigger guy can just fall on the grappler. Bigger neck, wrists, legs all make pins harder and escapes can be exhausting.
140 pound fit very trained woman vs 150 pound untrained but healthy guy. The woman wins a pretty large chunk of the time. Competitive but not dominant - grips on arms are hard to get out of, in the chaos of an uncontrolled fight raw explosions of strength can be a problem, but if she's willing to fight dirty and is smart on her feet she should be able to do fine.
200 pound top tier male powerlifter vs 185 pound guy who did a good amount of wrestling in college 5-10 years ago. The lifter is crazy strong and has amazing grip, posture, resistance, etc. But the wrestler has spent years shooting levels, sprawling, controlling wrists, and understanding base. The lifter doesn't know what a double leg feels like coming at him, has no hip defense, and will be exhausted in 45 seconds of real scrambling. The wrestler wins this handily.
On top of all this there's an irreducible source of variability of the chaos of a serious fight. Humans can get injured easily on some uncontrollables. Someone slips, hits their head in a weird way, uses a makeshift weapon, makes a passionate error, all this means there's usually an upper limit to how dominant any single person can be. I think this is actually the silent killer, the black mark against a Black Widow: sure, maybe she can take down 4 guys in a row especially with surprise at her back, but it only takes one time to mess up when the margins are thin and so maybe a fifth will go wrong.
(I didn't talk about tech or weapons, of course, that's a whole other ball game. Black Widow has like, stun guns and stuff, but also guns exist for everyone.)
Hmm yeah, so I think I've been underestimating importance of weight then. I figured if black widow trains some powerlifting lifts, her muscles would be strong enough to manhandle big dudes but I'm not really considering that she has very little inertia herself, so...would be hard to translate that muscular strength into moving the bigger guy's body?
And regarding weapons, yeah, especially in infinity war she's got those electric things and maybe even the suit has some protective qualities idk, those obviously boost fighting ability.
More options
Context Copy link
As a formerly skilled wrestler, I disagree with your evaluations.
The 170 LB Male Grappler Beats the 240 regular guy. I was 140 and would routinely beat significantly trained 215 guys in high school. The weight is important, but only when we are talking about winning titles.
140 Woman very trained does not beat 150 man unless the training AND fitness gap is immense. I'd give her an advantage only if she is basically a professional, and he is older or fatter than me.
Last scenario is absolutely correct. I would routinely "out strength" people who beat me in every weight lift in HS during wrestling matches.
I’ll yield to experience, but I do want to follow up. Just to be clear: are you sure this would still apply in real fight conditions? As I mentioned, most all grappling comes with some rules for what you are and aren’t allowed to do, and objectives differ. Because in a real fight, it’s probably more “do enough damage to make them give up” not just “make them temporarily helpless” - or even “knock them out” or “attempt to kill them” in other cases. It’s clear that many wresting and grappling and even combat sports evolve differently because they fundamentally have “repeat customers” and need to reach a certain safety and risk (and skill expression) tolerance to make that happen. It’s “sport selection bias” at play. When you were 140 vs 215, what exactly did victory look like?
Real fights end more quickly, are more random, and often weapons of some sort are involved. This equalizes and randomizes, but the trends are the same.
Real fights reward explosive action more than combat sports, often the winning move is first to get the other person's head to hit something hard.
When I was beating bigger guys in wrestling, it was quick takedowns (which translate to real fights) and stamina (which doesn't as much).
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
As far as I can tell, what it seems to you according to this sentence isn't reflective of the actual reality; it seems to me that people don't take this that far, except the Lizardman Constant. The idea that you could take some random 50th percentile man from the street and have him face off against, say, an MMA world-champion-caliber female and have him consistently come out on top is something I've seen pretty much no one ever express, except in cases of extreme differences in weight (controlling for which is usually already built-in anyway in competitions like this in regular cases). Or comparing deadlifts with a world-champion-caliber female power lifter or anything of the like. The point of comparison when comparing elite female athletes unfavorably to males has always been with male athletes, in my experience, usually ones that are even higher level than, say, a local rec soccer league (which is already a much higher level compared to the median man off the street).
More options
Context Copy link
No. Do the math, and it shakes out that elite women only reach the 50th percentile of men in a bunch of categories. Even if they match strength, they are still smaller at the same height. The average woman at 5’10” (1.5% US population) isn’t the same weight as the average guy at that height. Men also bring anatomical advantages, too, in the form of denser and thicker bones (useful in a fight). Go do BJJ or Judo and the differences will be obvious to you. Or, watch elite women’s Basketball or Soccer. They display less athleticism than just about any non-selective high school varsity team with a class of a couple hundred.
Nope, but (fit) women walk into a gym and start benching <45 pounds. Seriously!
Yes, but that doesn’t matter when women are much smaller on average, and much much weaker even at the same weight. They can’t make up the difference, and there is no way to literally grow a thicker skull. I would not want to roll the dice in a street fight on those odds.
True, some other commenters have mentioned other things matter beside isolated muscle strength, like skull thickness / bone size etc. I wasn't considering that other factors determine how well you can express your isolated muscular strength in combat.
I'd like to think black widow is some kind of mutant on the down low, has some mutations that make her bones denser/thicker, more like a man's, without being enough to actually be considered an MCU mutant. But at that point we are outside the realm of our world's reality anyway. Heck that's what my head canon is for most male action stars like Ethan hunt in mission impossible. I just head canon that he has high bone density mutations and maybe some kind of fast metabolism for healing injuries, but not so much that it isn't possible in our world if all the genetic factors came together in the same person.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I suspect a lot of discussion of athletics focuses on biological advantages because the discussion is often about elite athletes. At that level, it can be assumed people have coaches, regiments, etc that are dedicated to squeezing every ounce of advantage out of things they can be doing to improve their performance. So focus goes to biological advantages. Not because those are the biggest differentiators across the entire performance spectrum, but because they can be large differentiators at the level of elite athletes. At a more beginner/amateur level more hours spent practicing is almost certainly more valuable than all but the largest biological advantages. Like, the reason I could squat 400+ lbs five years ago, but can't now, is not because I am became biologically incapable of squatting 400+ lbs in that time, I just spend a lot less time in the gym than I used to. At non-elite levels the amount of time and effort you put in can have very large effects.
More options
Context Copy link
Also ditto this whole question for small men vs larger men. Look at people like llamar gant, 120 lbs 5'2 and deadlifting pretty much 700 lbs, bench 350 at 130 lbs (with bad leverages, he had severe scoliosis so his arms are actually average-length). Is that dude seriously weaker than average joe at 6'0? Or even 6'5? I mean when you get to that level of strength, you can manhandle anyone no, even if they a foot taller than you?
Like if you can squat the taller dude on your back and regularly throw around 300 lb+ weights in the gym, are you really at much of a disadvantage in a fight? I guess striking you would be due to body length of course.
Is the hard part the statistics that its difficult to get to that level of strength at that height? I just don't see how these things work exactly. Why dont more MMA fighters get to those powerlifting numbers? Llamar gant had the leanness for MMA but the strength for powerlifting, why isn't that combo more common, and why wouldn't it make a big difference going against heavier folk? I'm assuming everyone must be training powerlifting to the same degree and their MMA training just doesn't let them recover well enough to get as strong, pound for pound, as people like llamar gant? A sort of deal where everyone is training equally hard and some are just also bigger than others, thus they win?
How much is genetic and how much is will / desire to be strong? How much is frame size a factor?
a) Weight classes in competition are fake weights. A guy who cuts to compete at 130 probably walks around much heavier between comps. So he's still a small guy, but much less small than you think he is.
b) Availability is the most important ability for any athlete. When you push yourself in the weightroom, you risk injury, so serious athletes tend to go easy in the weightroom, or do partial RoM or odd lifts that target specific movement patterns while reducing odds of injury.
Interesting, that makes sense. Makes me wonder if going from a powerlifting-only background where you spend all your recovery points on weightlifting, to an MMA background where you lift just enough to maintain that strength (or would that still be too much?), could be an athletic history that produces special results? I wonder what would happen if eddie hall just lifted minimally to maintain his strength as much as he could while training 100% MMA or something.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Opportunity cost. MMA fighters also have to be technically skilled and have a gas tank and be at the best weight for their professional prospects . All of that takes training time and conflicts with being as strong as possible.
And at a certain point height does just matter. Jon Jones comes from a family of athletes. MMA fans joke that he's actually the worst performing of his entire family. He has a horrible vertical and just can't seem to put muscle on his legs. But he had the perfect body type for light heavyweight because he was a great wrestler and out-ranged everyone. Daniel Cormier was an Olympic wrestler and he couldn't get past the height difference to take Jon down.
And maybe that is the other thing: MMA simply doesn't attract top talents as easily as other sports. Jon Jones - one of the greatest of all time - is essentially a fuckup who ruined his wrestling career which is why he jumped into MMA so young.
makes sense. Too bad though because it would be interesting to see what happens if you take one of the powerlifting freaks, get them to maintain strength as much as possible, and get them proficient at MMA. I know there are some dudes in MMA that would probably have high powerlifting numbers tho, Ngannou probably does.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Yes, reach is a bitch. Based on limited personal experience, a large height gap strongly overcomes a muscle gap. Top tier athlete/power lifter might swing the balance back, I would guess, and all of this is assuming no particular training discrepancy, but a foot+ of height advantage is massive.
Wow that's crazy wouldn't have thought height gap mattered more than muscle gap.
I had almost this exact scenario come up once, in the last real fight I got into in high school. A short guy who had spent the last year getting jacked, after my 6'+ ass quit all sports and devoted the previous year to D&D and Warhammer. He hit me with a sucker punch while I was kneeling at my locker, and then let me get up for a proper fight... and then didn't land another hit. It honestly felt easy. He just has so much further for each punch to travel. It felt like I had so much time and space to react.
Put it this way: I had to angle down slightly to punch him in the face, and if my fist was hitting him at full extension, then his fist was whiffing inches short of my chest.
There's probably some ratio where things flip. A height gap of 3" wouldn't matter like that. But a foot or more? It's like an adult versus a tween. Would have to be a hell of a tween. And again, training or skill differential will matter more. My examples are "teenage idiot versus teenage idiot".
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
It's not fighting, but there's at least one grip strength study showing mean and standard deviation for men and women.
https://file.scirp.org/pdf/Health20111100008_37035818.pdf
Men are roughly 2.5 SD ahead of women, so the -3 sd male score is just below the female mean and the male mean is just below the +3 SD female performance.
I would guess most physical characteristics are going to have a similar standardized distribution.
Whether that difference overcomes training is probably going to depend quite a bit on the activity and rules.
Huh pretty crazy. I guess there's less variability than I thought, so the average differences didn't sound as big. Figured it would be about 1sd deviation personally.
More options
Context Copy link
There's still a surprising amount of overlap. With a randomly sampled man and woman, the woman has about a 7.1% chance of a stronger grip.
More options
Context Copy link
Also, once you are grappling, grip strength seems directly relevant.
Grappling/Fighting is the place where all male advantages basically come together.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
There's actually a pretty easy way to check this, compare women's elite performance in weightlifting to the men's beginner weightlifting.
So let's check.
ChatGPT gives me for a 25 year old male.
So let's say 135 to be really fair to our untrained male, top of a beginner who has already done a few sessions. And that's the high end according to this comment
Wikipedia says
457.4>135
Obviously this is the record, but I think we can take from it that trained women elites can be stronger than the typical untrained man. IDK where the numbers come from but this strengthlogs site also shows that advanced/elite women would beat beginner men and its cutoff for "elite" is only 198, less than half the record. Also backed up by this other site with beginner men at 103 and intermediate women at 111. I checked three others as well, intermediate women > beginner men also applies to shoulder presses and deadlifts as well. And in dumbbell curls, even novice women beat beginner men there
Yeah, and from following weightlifting spaces this is why I couldn't wrap my head around the sentiment, that may be a minority sentiment nonetheless, that untrained men are as strong as trained women. I think it is a question of temperament too, probably an untrained man is stronger than your average fit woman, because that fit woman isn't trying to bulk up significantly and add muscle mass. That being said I've seen some strong girls doing weighted dips and pullups who aren't that bulky just a bit more bulky than a black widow body type. I mean, imagine black widow can bench 450. I think that makes it a lot more likely she can do what she does in the films. Although this Ashleigh Hoeta record-holder probably is taller than black widow I'd think, and doesn't have the time to train combat like black widow does. But still, say black widow benches 250 at least.
What other commenters have been arguing against this point is that, isolated muscle strength doesn't translate into combat prowess in a straightforward way. Black widow might bench 250 but her overall bone structure and weight/inertia make it hard to translate that into actual combat results, in the real world. I could see that, although I'm not totally convinced. Especially if she also deadlifts 400 or something. That's a lot of strength, seems like it should translate, but there are good arguments against it.
Mind you, no one has been able to actually show any empirical evidence for it, because professional fighting sports women are extremely rare to begin with and them fighting untrained typical couch potato men is even rarer than that. It's been entirely Just So narratives, something they've made up in their head that being able to do better weightlifting and exercise of various kinds can't possibly translate into victory, despite us knowing of the few examples such things have happened, where the trained woman won like this and this one where a pro MMA woman beat two men with knives.
There's a certain type of guy who just can't fathom that men and women while statistically different do actually have a lot of overlap still. The average WNBA player is four inches taller than the average man for instance! It's not "all women are tiny 4'9 and all men are big 6'7", there are tall women and short men. There are strong women and weak men. Men are faster than women on average but the fastest women can definitely outrun basically every single one of the nerds here. So many men out there who think walking a mile is a long distance essentially seem to think they'd beat a ultramarathon pro just because that pro is female. Yes the typical male pro player can beat Serena Williams, lazy and fat couch potato man ain't gonna do it when he's out of breath after a few minutes of running.
They overlap sometimes, especially when the women are peak training and the man is just a random piece of shit trying to mug people and probably doesn't work out at all, and the man gets his ass beat up cause actually she was a high elite fighter.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Bench press is a training exercise, not a useful combat skill. It is not a bad training exercise, but it is a middling one. Most weight lifts are. Combat itself is where male advantage is at its height. If there was a woman 5% taller, 5% heavier, 5% better than me on bench and squat, I'd estimate she is probably a professional athlete, and secondly, has almost no chance against me in a wrestling or judo match. Boxing maybe higher if she is a boxer, because striking is not my best attribute.
And I am not near my peak skill wise. Things are just how they are.
Maybe but that is a lot harder to empirically examine given that real life fisticuffs basically does not exist anymore. Even in simulated rule governed combat like judo and wrestling, there's not many serious cases of elite judo woman vs couch potato guy to be examining. To begin with if untrained couch potato guy is participating in a wrestling or judo event, he probably isn't actually typical untrained couch potato guy. Because that guy is at home on his couch instead of participating in combat sports. But a quick search found that yes, trained woman can beat men, not just couch potato men but presumably beginner/intermediate men.
Here's a pro MMA woman who beat two would be robbers with knives. This is apparently a trained female grappler vs an untrained man
The only empirical thing we really have to go off here is the bench presses, deadlifts, curls, etc cause those deal with raw numbers and are actually comparable. And those, unlike the hypothetical thought experiment of what you think might happen, do point to trained intermediate women >.untrained men in many areas including some real life examples. The data is imperfect, the rarity of examples isn't great, but it definitely seems better than a completely imagined scenario like your argument as evidence.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
That's not a great example. "Equipped" is cheating and that women has higher testosteronal than any natural man.
Which is why I put the raw bench for the comparison and not the equipped bench.
Yeah that isn't unbelievable she is on roids, but the other sites I provided also do seem to suggest that the intermediate and up women can beat out beginner men in various weightlifting categories.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
There's certainly a couple big caveats in here. First is how long you've been training. The original comment said stuff like "a couple years of training". There's obviously going to be a significant effect of how long they've been doing it for how far along the progression toward "elite" they will be. You're grabbing stats from record-setting women. It would be much more nuanced to take, say, some sort of typical progression after 2-5 years.
The second big caveat is body weight. A quick look at April Mathis on OpenPowerlifting puts her around 250-260. I doubt ChatGPT is really considering this. I happen to be freshly training a newbie right now. He's male, about 160lbs. It's been a couple of months (I just checked my records, and it's been eight bench sessions). I haven't done any 1RM training with him, just very slowly progressing on a beginner program. He's shown absolutely no sign of plateauing; I'm certainly not pushing him to progress maximally quickly; we're just taking it slow and steady. With what he's already done, my estimate of his equivalent 1RM would be about 165lb. So, I'm pretty confident the ChatGPT estimate is quite low. I'm sure ChatGPT's estimate would be even worse if the guy had a bigger frame and body weight.
It would certainly be interesting to consider body-weight-equivalent trajectories for men/women. I'm 100% confident that if both were completely untrained, the male would be able to bench more than the female. I'm also 100% confident that for two elite, been training specifically for powerlifting for a decade or two, lifters, the male would be able to bench more than the female. Interesting questions would be things like, "About how many years of training does it take for the body-weight-equivalent female to surpass the completely untrained male?" Also, how do those trajectories progress? I'm thinking of a plot where the x-axis is something like "Number of months of training for the male" and the y-axis is "number of months training for the female". Each data point would be a point at which they are roughly equal in performance. My guess is that the second derivative of such a plot would be positive (that is, each additional increment of training for a male would require even more increasing increments of training for a female). And obviously, the plot would just tap out at some point, because even non-world-class male lifters will be able to surpass the female world records.
Well yeah, trained males always beat trained females without any hormonal fuckery. But in trained females vs average untrained male, it doesn't seem to just be elites but intermediate level according to the two benchmark sites I had found. I don't know how exactly they determine what intermediate even means, but the same thing that decently trained women > untrained men seems to be evidenced in multiple ways there.
I really don't know, but based off that, the strength benchmark sites and the Reddit comments in that one thread I linked, it seems like it's just that your guy is actually just very high if he can bench over his body weight. Maybe he's just built different or maybe he has a more active job/lifestyle than many untrained men do.
Well yes but again the topic is untrained male vs trained female. Not both of them having done training for years.
This is what I tried to basically give a conjectured definition of:
You also use the phrase "decently trained women". Like, what is that? This is what I'm getting at.
I think you're going off extremely few data points and seriously underestimating how effective a moderate amount of training and technique can accomplish.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
A competition bench press very much does not equal to what a recreational gymgoer is doing for reps. They're essentially gaming the fuck out of the rules to do the least amount of bench press possible and I'd wager the gap would be a fair bit smaller if you took the average beginner (physically) and taught them the proper technique for absolute max 1RM. Also if you google April Mathis you're not exactly getting a typical phenotype.
But yeah definitely the strongest woman in the world is going to beat the average man at most sports
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Doesn't seem to be the case, as the repeated instances of 14 year old high school boys beating (and usually outright demolishing) women's Olympic teams, World Cup teams, etc. would demonstrate:
US Women's soccer team loses to an under-15 boy's team, score 5-2
https://www.cbssports.com/soccer/news/a-dallas-fc-under-15-boys-squad-beat-the-u-s-womens-national-team-in-a-scrimmage/
Australian Women's soccer team loses 7-0 to an under-16 boy's team
https://www.standard.co.uk/sport/football/australian-womens-national-team-lose-70-to-team-of-15yearold-boys-a3257266.html
High school boy's team beats Olympic US women's team at hockey, 2-1
https://www.espn.com/olympics/news/story?id=2281644
And there are countless more instances of this. I'm sure these high school boys are more fit than typical boys their age, but male physical strength generally peaks between 25 and 35, so they are likely physically weaker than the median untrained adult male.
The numbers I've seen over the years (I'd have to try and track them down) are that a woman has to be in roughly the top 5 to 10% of women to beat a male in the bottom 5% of male strength.
Edit: found a chart of female vs male grip strength, you can see that they barely overlap. Grip strength is hardly the only form of strength, but from my recollection other forms of strength show similar trends:
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Mahmut-Eksioglu/publication/279634285/figure/fig3/AS:718522762137613@1548320584635/Frequency-distributions-of-dominant-hand-GS-of-females-and-males.png
That is crazy. But look into powerlifting numbers, this is why I'm biased in favor of the trained woman. A powerlifting woman can be quite strong, bench record is 450 and deadlift record is 650. I agree a good male powerlifter is going to be better than elite female ones, but most men are way weaker than a "good" male powerlifter. And most combat athletes, I THINK, are also way weaker than a "good" male powerlifter. Unless all the heavyweights are indeed deadlifting 600+ and benching 400+. Hence, assume black widow is a powerlifting savant and also good at fighting, then it's not unrealistic she does what she does to big dudes who just haven't put in the time to get those kinds of numbers. Maybe it's assuming the powerlifting PLUS fighting skill that's unrealistic, in that how are you going to train both with limited recovery.
That's why I'm saying it's a question of temperament. Women aren't going out and trying to get damn strong for the most part, but they could, hence black widow is not unrealistic, is my argument. Might not be a valid argument. Team sports results surprise me. Those sports probably require fast-twitch ability, and maybe certain kind of coordination is favored in men and not really trainable by women, like innate visual-spatial sense?
Others have mentioned the grip strength data; it's an interesting point in that grip strength seems to be one of those more fundamental things that maybe doesn't change all that much by training it. And like others have argued, women have a lot of those weird little (mostly untrainable) factors against their favor like bone structure, maybe nervous system things / fast twitch, thickness, leverages, inertia, etc. that make raw strength not as useful in combat.
I do think most people seem to be underestimating how strong women can get though.
More options
Context Copy link
This study has quite different distributions from the one atelier posted above, and yields about a 1.2% chance with a randomly sampled pair that the woman is stronger, compared to 7.11% with the other study. 1.2% is very small! I wouldn't want those odds in a fight. And if the distributions are truly normal, then the fatter tails on the male distribution mean the upper end is basically 100% men.
More options
Context Copy link
These are well above average, albeit usually not literal top 1%, 14 year old boys.
More options
Context Copy link
In 2009, the Pittsburgh Pirates lost a spring training game to Manatee Community College. In 2019, Chelsea lost to their own youth team. By your logic, the Pirates should have forgotten about Andrew McCutchen (who played in that game) and signed some of the Manatee players, who were readily available. I do not believe any of them ever got so much as a rookie league contract.
The US Women's team thing wasn't even that level of a loss, because it wasn't even a real scrimmage, because national teams don't do scrimmages. They were sharing a training facility in Texas with the boys youth team and when the youth team came over to watch them practice/get autographs they ended up agreeing to play a kick around game. They don't play games like this a tune-ups or anything because the team members would have played about 60 games per year between the pro and national teams. The only reason anyone even knows about this is because that particular camp was interrupted by contentious contract negotiations with US Soccer, and US Soccer decided to release the results without any context to gain leverage (while sabotaging their own product). Just think about it for one minute: If you're a player or a coach, are you going to risk injury by trying to win the game? Or are you going to treat it like a fun treat for the kids that under normal circumstances nobody would hear about? Look at the NFL; they play fewer games than soccer players but are averse to playing in the preseason and absolutely allergic to the Pro Bowl. Now imagine that you aren't making nearly as much money and that your pro career can end in an instant.
This is simply slander against the U-14/16 team they played. Those boys won. They would have won unless the refs cheated in favor of the females. The gap between Chealsea youth and the professional team is orders of magnitude less than between Chelsea men and the US female world cup team.
What are you basing this on?
Watching soccer. The women at the time stunk. They still are bad.
More options
Context Copy link
Presumably that youth players often rise to the full team when very young (I think Walcott got in at 16?) but no woman has. And then we can look at their relative level of competition to see if it's just bigotry
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Yeah but those are generally rep/professional-pathway squads so it's not random athletic averages.
Even in BJJ terms I've trained on-and-off with a woman who's the best woman at her weight class in the world and has good arguments for being the best woman in BJJ overall. She's about 120 pounds, I'm about 260 pounds and have been training long enough to 'lolnope' her. I've also seen her absolutely tool athletic big units (admittedly not spazzing their hearts out but that's not really an effective way of beating her unless you fluke an injury) on their first classes at my size.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
When people say men are generally much stronger than women, there's usually the implicit caveat that it's women without exogenous testosterone.
That said, holding height constant, and comparing a natural woman who regularly lifts heavy to an average man who doesn't work out at all, I think the woman would be able to come out on top, at least sometimes. But with those restrictions, you've limited the population to something like the top 1% of women. And if the man works out at all, she's never coming out on top in a purely physical conflict.
Yeah, the third caveat that I didn't mention in my comment above is chemicals. Both male/female world-record type stuff is obviously contaminated by all sorts of gear.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link