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Culture War Roundup for the week of April 6, 2026

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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?)

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.