Monday, February 23, 2009

Men vs Women - Strength

This was found by AM´s Otis the Sweaty and was just too good, to not blog about it (Kudos to you Otis). It is so out of this world and sureal, I am wondering if the gals at feministing really were taking the subject seriously. That is why I gave it the "bizarre" label.

I´ll start with what most humans know. Men are on average stronger than women. This has something to do with testosterone, but I´ll let Wikipedia do the talking.
Testosterone effects can be classified as virilizing and anabolic, although the distinction is somewhat artificial, as many of the effects can be considered both.
  • Anabolic effects include growth of muscle mass and strength, increased bone density and strength, and stimulation of linear growth and bone maturation. - from Wiki
  • On average, men have a greater capacity for cardiovascular endurance. This is due to the enlargement of the lungs of boys during puberty, characterized by a more prominent chest.
  • On average, men are stronger than women. This is due to a greater capacity for muscular hypertrophy as a result of men's higher levels of testosterone. - from Wiki
Not if anyone with common sense needs evidence. We just have to think about Olympia and we know why sexes are separated in competitions. So that women are able to win medals, too (this is true for most sports).

Speaking of Olympia, comparing the weight lifting records really makes this obvious.

The strongest woman in the highest weight class can barely beat the strongest man in the second-lowest weight class. The rest of the female world record holders can´t compete. The difference between the highest total weigth is almost 150 kilos.

Testosterone is used for doping purposes as well:

Testosterone may be administered to an athlete in order to improve performance, and is considered to be a form of doping in most sports. There are several application methods for testosterone, including intramuscular injections, transdermal gels and patches, and implantable pellets.

Anabolic steroids (including testosterone) have also been taken to enhance muscle development, strength, or endurance. They do so directly by increasing the muscles' protein synthesis. As a result, muscle fibers become larger and repair faster than the average person's. - from Wiki

And if you cut off the supply of testosterone, your muscle mass will decrease. That is why the IOC is accepting transsexuals

Transsexuals were cleared Monday to compete in the Olympics for the first time.

[...]

Some members had been concerned whether male-to-female transsexuals would have physical advantages competing against women.

Men have higher levels of testosterone and greater muscle-to-fat ratio and heart and lung capacity. However, doctors say, testosterone levels and muscle mass drop after hormone therapy and sex-change surgery.

[...]

"In some sports, the physical superiority of men over women is very significant." - from here

and why castration leads to a decrease in muscle mass. This is the explanation on something we all know. Men are stronger...

Now we enter the surreal world of feministing:


All from here:

In truth, this assertion of women being as strong as men is correct. There are many statistics that will show women to often be physically weaker than men, but I have yet to hear of any significant portion of society to even consider any reason for that statistic other than that women having a biological disadvantage. That is not the reason for those statistics. Anyone who cares to think about the process of evolution can immediately see that a biological disadvantage is evolutionarily impossible. Every biologist knows that, in nature, most of any given individual creature's competition for food, shelter, etc. comes from members of its own species. Men and women, in nature, without technology or civilization, eat the same food, live in the same type of shelters, and are in competition for everything that might be in limited supply. As little as ten thousand years ago, there was no such thing as law, culture, or civilization. Every individual cared for themselves, first and foremost, just as it is with nearly all other animals. If one person were stronger than another, the weaker would starve to death as soon as there is any shortage of food, or be killed as soon as they irritate the stronger person. If one group of people were stronger than another, such as men being stronger than women, then the weaker group would be wiped out, except for any individuals that were strong enough to fight off members of the stronger group. Their children would then all be that strong. The fact that women survived in that time period is proof that they have the same physical abilities. within a single species, evolution forces equality.
Translation: But it does not make sense that women are weaker so women are not. Brilliant logic, that is called sexual dimorphism. Another shot:
In all the history of feminism, I am unaware of any unbiased experiment being done to actually determine whether women are weaker or not. The scientific community has as many sexists as any other, and male scientists benefit from patriarchy as much as any other males. This is not to say that there is anything wrong with male scientists in general, but I would be shocked if there weren't those among them working to make women look weak using biased or altogether fake science just as has been done with racism, and other aspects of sexism. There was a time when it had been "scientifically proven" by all German scientists that German people were superior to all others. Most of us find that rediculous. Some day the idea that women are weaker will be just as rediculous to us as that.
Male scientist lie. Yeah that is it. It goes on:

Men, on average, are stronger than women simply because men on average are larger than women. They simply tend to be taller and women have more body fat (its healthier for us to have more body fat... its for all that childbearing stuff). It is these factors that make men seem stronger, the fact that they are bigger and therefore just have more pound for pound muscle and that women have different levels and spreads of body fat to deal with.
Tall equals strong? So basketball players would make great weightlifters? Hehe....no. It is all because we tell women that they are weaker:

I many cases girls are trained from birth by their parents to think that women are weaker. [...] If a person truly believes that they are physically weak, they will limit the amount of strength they will be able to acquire and use. Girls are also often less supported in sports and other muscle building activities, giving them little incentive to be strong. As if that weren't enough, men are pushed by society to do all heavy lifting and other muscle building activities for women around them, meaning that women don't ever have an opportunity to build real muscle. If men were subjected to that same oppression, i firmly believe that they would be no stronger that the average woman.
Brilliant. It is opression after all. But this one finally takes the cake:
Furhtermore, even with thier slightly smaller size, a woman who can put the sexist teachings out of her mind can become as strong as any man.
Any man? All because of sexism? Yeah that must be true....

17 comments:

  1. You know what those feminists sound like? Flat Earth theorists! ;~}

    Never underestimate the will-to-believe!

    Women on average, are just as strong as men on average. . . AND the earth is flat! And don't you forget it!!!!

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  2. This is great news for Rey Mysterio - the Undertaker isnt actually stronger, he's just bigger!

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  3. There have been studies done that show that female muscle of the same size as a male is actualy stronger and has more fleability and indurance.It has also been shown or proved that muscle size is determined by bone size. this means that males of the same bone size as a female can not build a larger muscle than the female because his bone size will not allow it. Put these two points together and it means females have the potential to be stronger than the male! Why? Because if female muscle of the same size as the males is actualy stronger than the male's and they are both of the same bone size than the male can not build a larger muscle than the female then it follows that both the female's and the male's muscles will be of the same size because their bone size is the same but because female muscle of equal size to a male's is stronger than it follows that a woman with a 12 inch biscep when compared to a male bisecpt of the same size will be the stronger muscle. Hence women have the potential to be stronger than the male this is why many girl wrestlers in high school have surprised themselves and spectators and shocked the boys by winning wrestling matches aganist boys of the same bone size. In such wrestling matches it is the boy wrestlers who are disadvantaged.Perhaps to make the wrestling match fair the male wrestler should be of slightly larger bone size otherwise the advantage goes to the female.

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  4. omg omg omg..... PLEASE tell me you have some form of scientific proof for this one David.

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  5. Nah, he won't. Because it doesn't exist.

    Plus, his explanation fails the logic test. It isn't just muscle quality or bone size; it's the potential for building them.

    His theoretical "woman with a 12-inch bicep" makes as much sense as "woman with 12-inch wheels". Both would require medical intervention.

    Women don't produce the androgens required to build bone and muscle of that size and quality. They would have to take anabolic steroids and other supplements in order to have the androgen levels to build the "12-inch bicep" in the first place - and would have to take them in quantities that would probably render them amenorrheic and sterile.

    Just ask the female Olympic swimmers from the old DDR. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_Germany_at_the_Olympics#Doping_of_the_East_Germans)

    Aside from the fact that the high-school wrestling example is completely anecdotal, has he never encountered the fact that girls mature earlier and more quickly than boys? Does he not remember the girls being taller than he was, or his height, by 8th grade but seemed not to get much taller?

    Females usually achieve their full height around 17 or 18, while males continue to grow into their early twenties. (I grew another inch between 18 and 23, FWIW.)

    In the early part of high school, when the wrestlers are 13, 14, etc., the greater maturity - not size - of the bone and muscle structure could present an advantage, especially in weight categories as narrowly defined as those in wrestling. We won't even get into the issue of fine motor control...

    Which brings us back to the original question - which no one has addressed: Why do we still have separate events for men and women at the Olympics?

    More to the point, why is it that the world's strongest woman in the highest weight class beats only the three lightest weight classes of men? Why is it that the difference between the two record holders is 300 lb? Leaving sheer strength/bulk aside, why do the long-distance running records look similar, if less one-sided.

    All this stuff about discouraging women from sports and telling them they're weak and fragile is nonsense, too. There are societies where women are encouraged and praised for sports far more than they are in the U.S. (Australia, for example), but their women still can't compete with their men, especially in sports where strength is a major factor.

    In a world where physical strength matters less and less (except in professional sports, combat, etc.) trying to "disprove" the idea that strength is one of the very real physical differences between men and women is a waste of time and an ideologically-driven one, at that.

    It all boils down to the fact that (1) human females bear human children and (2) human children are unable to survive on their own for a decade or more. To the ideological feminists, this - and all the glandular baggage that goes with it - is monstrously unfair and an affront to their personhood.

    They are driven to deny it and they cannot rest - or be happy - until that "problem" is "fixed".

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  6. Ahem...Having noted some lack of logic, organization, and detail from bloggers on both sides of the debate, I would like to inject some of my own logic.I flatter myself that as I am more interested in truth than an answer that favors my own sex, my logic will be fairly objective.
    Sooooo...where to begin. Perhaps with basic biology? Yes, that's a good place to start. Let's look at how basic biological differences affect males and females in humans, and in other species:
    To really understand the sexes, we must understand the origination of the sexes in the first place. Sexual reproduction, or the production of offspring through a combination of the parents DNA, contained in gametes, was a revolutionary result of evolution. Mutations allowing for sexual reproduction were favored in some species, as they allowed for genetic variation in populations. This genetic variation ensures that even when an organism's environment changes, some of the population will likely be able to adapt and survive to reproduce and pass down their beneficial genes. There are two kinds of gametes (sex-cells) and they are known as the egg and sperm. (okay, let's get the giggles out now. Better? Good, now we can be serious)The egg producer is known as the female, the sperm producer as the male. Sperm fertilize the egg by attaching to the egg's sperm cell receptors. Their DNA (of which both cells have an equal amount)combines to form a zygote. From there the zygote/embryo is directed by transcriptional factors from the abundant cytoplasm in the egg, to become a group of more and more specified cells. Gradually, the organism forms.
    Another trait of sexual reproduction to keep in mind is sexual dimorphism.

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  7. Sexual dimorphism is a result of sexual selection, which acts more heavily upon males than females. This occurs as a direct result of energy input in the stages of miosis. Males, through meiosis create four gametic cells from every parent cell they put through meiosis. However, females, whose gametic cells (eggs) must contain more cytoplasm (remember, the egg must provide transcriptional factors to develop the organism, also known as cytoplasmic determinants, and nutrients). So for every one parent cell put through meiosis the female only creates one gamete capable of reproduction. As they put more energy into each gamete, natural selection favored females that were more picky about their mates. On the other hand natural selection favored males that were far less picky, and mated whenever they could. This 'pickiness' results in sexual dimorphism. Females choose mates with phenotypic (visible traits) that suggest a high likelihood of survival, of finding food, fighting off predators, or other traits that suggest healthfulness, depending on the species such traits may very widely. There you go men, be healthy, the ladies like it. Males, and this can be reflected in pop culture (every tv show seems to have a seriously hormonal guy), are far less picky, as they put much less energy into each gamete. So, sexual dimorphism more heavily influences males, thus the often colorful variation of males in species from females. Think of the manes of male lions, or the antlers of male deer, or even the beautiful feathers of the male peacock. All are the result of generations and generations of sexual selection and the consequential sexual dimorphism.Now, armed with this basic knowledge of sexual differences, perhaps it is time to address the complex interactions between the sexes of social animals, such as ourselves. The basics of sexual dimorphism are no different in humans than in any other organism, in that females are instinctively more choosy.

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  8. Humans, being organisms with complex social interactions, this can be somewhat more difficult to spot. With human beings we must take into account culture, gender roles, societal expectations, familial expectations and other influences. While power struggles and other motivations can create gender bias, biology influences gender roles as well. For example, due to the presence of a steroid hormone present in males known as testosterone, males are widely considered the stronger of the two. Indeed, men, in general are stronger than women of the same size, and women often have a higher percentage of body fat. The most obvious difference in strength is upper body. Men have a much stronger upper body than women (again, on average, there are always exceptions). Men also have better endurance and speed, again owing to muscle strength. On the other hand, women tend to have much better flexibility (again, on average, there are always exceptions)and women also tend to live much longer than men and can withstand harsher environmental conditions more easily,such as cold or extreme hunger (not that anyone really enjoys that).

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  9. Now, perhaps we out to consider mental/emotional capabilities and differences between men and women. The idea that men excel in mathematics and science more than women, and the theory of women being more intelligent in the arts has widely been dismissed as nonsense, and indeed, it is. The psychological differences between men and women do not influence such factors, and in actuality, the skill level in different academic and art areas depends on the individual's combination of nature (in born talent or tendency) and nurture (the development and teaching of the individual), not on gender. This is because while men and women's thought processes differ, they often reach the same end. Oh, and just an added thought, there were studies done, and male brains to tend to be larger. However, size does not count (at least, not in regards to brains). Keep in mind that this is simply a direct correlation with body size - other mammals have larger brains than humans but they are not smarter as a result. Now, as children, the male brain more quickly develops the areas of math understanding than females. However, this inequality can balance out by the time adulthood is reached. Females develop language skill areas of the brain in both the left and right hemisphere of the brain, and develop these language skills sooner than males. However, this too, tends to balance out by adulthood. Additionally, females have a thicker corpus callosum (connective tissue between right and left) than males, perhaps the cause of women's better memory. In addition, women can more easily identify emotions and changes in voice tonation than men. The areas of the brain that pertain to restraining and controlling anger in women are also larger, more actively used and stronger than those areas in the male brain. However, women are more likely than men to experience anxiety and depression. While men have a harder time controlling their anger, they have less trouble in fighting long term depression. (This does NOT mean a depressed man is not manly)In the end, though, each and everyone of these brain differences is heavily, heavily influenced by nurture. We must keep in mind that humans are learning beings, and while we have great, reliable instincts, humans have a incomparable ability to learn and all of these mental traits can be morphed or switched and entirely changed by nurture.

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  10. And now for my own philosophy:
    Not all people are equal. Sorry. There are some cruel, screwed up people out there. However, I believe that everyone deserves a chance. And this chance at goodness, no greatness, can only be achieved by equality within law, culture, and society. In regards to men and women? The gender of a person is hardly what we out to judge them by. Men and women equally deserve, well, equality. Our differences divide us, but they also connect us. It is no magical coincidence that in general our strengths and weaknesses balance out mentally, physically, and emotionally, it is science. Women, men are not all stupid fat pigs with disgusting habits and an extremely sexist attitude.Men, women are not all stupid, shallow and weak human beings. While men are stronger than women physically, women are strong enough to survive (in general) in their environment, which is all a species really needs. Women have a better grasp of linguistic skills and communication, but men can get there point across, which is all our society really requires. Some of us cannot see the forest for the trees, others cannot see the trees for the forest. We should be judging others purely on their qualities as an individual - not as a man or a woman, because frankly, those categories are far too massive for soothing generalities of any kind. There are roughly seven billion people in the world. About half are men and half are women. Perhaps its time we learn to provide equality for men and for women, and judge each person individually as it is clearly more effective.

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  11. I would like to add my point
    with in the last few decades there came be many woman right were made with in that time woman strength has got stronger and stronger.I dont think its fair to judge woman stranth yet for centeres woman have bin shuned for even lifting a weapon cuz thinks they were told they didnt have the strangh to use it and now with some rights in what 50 years some benching 150..thats kind of a big improvement in a little of time and with more heroins in the media more woman r trying to be like them. Sports intcerigment is a plus however men sport team get more media and that seem to be the key to most changes in human behavior these days So wen girls see just as much media for singers and actors in there gender they feel like they must copy them to be excepted so this overwrites most of the population witch in truth means the athletes we see today are only fraction of the capability of the female gender.I will say that some grate work done in Hormonal study's and but we have not unlock all the true potential of these hormones david was right is some areas estrogen make mussels have more flexibility and endurance that makes tars less likely.testosterone can help increased muscle, bone mass,both r found in Male and Female and depending on the person there can be different levels even in one defendant gender.So it is mabey possible. I would keep a open mind in-till then and never make general assumptions on people life is better that way enyway :)-sorry for the spelling i get exsided with human behavor and Biology

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