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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?
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.
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