Razib Khan threatens to give in to despair, after hearing some dipshit sociology professor argue for the end of sex segregation in sports – not just because this dame is nuts, but because she’s an example of the general solipsistic trend. Sex is a social construct, race is a social construct, poop is a social construct: wishing can make it so!
Well, despair is a sin, and solipsism isn’t that hard to defeat. People with a fair grounding in reality are much more effective foes.
I am volunteering to do my part. If she agrees, and people put up a reasonable purse, I am willing to arm-wrestle this young lady. And for the loser – vae victis!
West Hunter 
I think you should be more fair about levelling out the genetic advantages and challenge Genzebe Dibaba to a 1500m running race.
I don’t want to be fair: I want to make a point. Surely being over 60 and recovering from heart surgery is enough handicap.
Yeah, I thought about the heart surgery after I posted the comment. On reflection, it would be a very bad idea.
I’m watching now for what Genzebe does at the Olympics. Barring injury or other mishap, she should be a certainty for at least one gold medal, and a possible three or even four. But I think she has focused her training on the 1500, which is her favourite distance.
From a few weeks ago
Genzebe Dibaba’s Coach Arrested For Allegedly Administering And Distributing EPO
http://fittish.deadspin.com/dibabas-coach-arrested-for-administering-and-distributi-1782299751
Oops. Yeah, they all cheat. I should post on that sometime.
What do you think about Katie Ledecky?
My heart wants to think she’s legit. My head is skeptical. She looks like the aquatic frauleins from 40 years ago.
http://www.nbcolympics.com/gallery/model-olympian-katie-ledecky
I don’t know anything about her. But think of it this way: the differences in talent among the very best usually aren’t very big – the distribution is dropping fast as you go out further.
So anyone among the top few would win, if some elixir gave him a half-std boost. So all the rest in the top few have to do the same to have any chance: and so on.
Sometimes the detectives push the cheaters back, particularly if a highly effective method of cheating becomes highly detectable. Like androgenic steroids for women, back around 1990.
Surely they all cheat.
She looks like another Caster Semanya, has anyone checked her T levels?
Greg says the differences in talent among the very best usually aren’t very big. This makes sense, you’re winnowing out differences as you approach the best of the best. But…. why do we see tennis dominated by two or three guys for so long. Why are Messi and Ronaldo able to make fools of their fellow professionals? Schumacher winning all those F1 titles. I’ve always had this hunch (please, no gratuitous insults though I realise that’s common here) that there’s a 1% of the 1% tier.
Keep in mind that the tails of the distribution tend not to match the theoretical ideal – they’re often fatter than theory says they should be.
She’s 19, but she looks like a 35 year old man in a wig wearing one of those old timey full body swimsuits men used to wear a century ago.
It’s tragic. I’m having to assume guilt by association, plus the astonishing improvement in her 1500m times. Really sad.
On the strength of this, I am going to give her the benefit of the doubt, until clearly proven otherwise.
http://runningmagazine.ca/exclusive-interview-jama-aden/
Haters are going to hate.
“the IAAF issued a statement that the police action was the culmination of a three-year investigation into Aden and his group. ”
Aden could be telling the truth. There’s a first time for everything.
You are using your sarcasm font again. I can tell.
On the other hand, if the arrest of the coach was the culmination of a three year police investigation, you would think that would tip WADA off to pay special attention to the athletes he was training. As the breaker of several world records, you would expect Genezebe to come under especially close scrutiny via testing. And if the cops had found anything on her by way of EPO or anything else suspicious (syringes, whatever), they would have arrested her too, no?
I’m wavering. I desperately want her to be clean, just because she’s so good. And she trains against men, because she can’t find any women to train against who can run fast enough to push her, and I give her points for that – she loses against the men, obviously, but she gives it a real good go anyway. On the other hand, it turns out that in-country testing of athletes in Ethiopia is non-existent. Lack of a positive test at the Olympics won’t satisfy many people, who have already pronounced her guilty – absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. So whatever happens, I guess she will always have a cloud over her head, deserved or not.
But then, I wanted Marion Jones to be clean too, and we all know how that turned out.
Wait and see, I guess.
If Allyson Felix tests positive, I might just f***in’ shoot myself.
Interesting quote from this article, which is mostly just fluff, apart from some funny stuff about encountering hyenas when out running.
http://www.vogue.com/13419749/dibaba-family-ethiopian-distance-runners-olympics-2016-rio-de-janeiro/
‘Along with Kenya, Ethiopia is a powerhouse for turning out elite runners. According to David Epstein, author of The Sports Gene: Inside the Science of Extraordinary Athletic Performance, much of the two countries lies in an altitude “sweet spot”—around 6,000 to 9,000 feet. “High enough to cause physiological changes but not so high that the air is too thin for hard training,” Epstein says. As NBC’s Boldon explains, “When the Dibabas come down to sea level—I’m not going to say it’s like Superman coming from Krypton, but it is a version of that.” There’s also the Ethiopian diet, with its reliance on the iron- and calcium-rich grain teff, and the typical Ethiopian body type, petite and narrow, which is ideal for the sport: Tirunesh is five feet three and 110 pounds; Genzebe is five feet five and 115 pounds. “They have a lot of fight in a very small lightweight frame,” says Boldon.
“If you compared them to a car, they would be a Ford Focus with a Ferrari engine.” ‘
The Dibabas’ ancestral village where they grew up is at 9,600 feet, so just above the ‘sweet spot’. And teff or no teff, they eat a whole lot of meat – probably goat meat, with some beef. I’ve seen ’em doing it.
And they are not fussed about flashing their knickers. I haven’t actually seen that…yet.
Anyway, they clearly know about high altitude adaptation and that it gives them a big edge.
Totally off-topic, but I was entertained to discover that Genzebe Dibaba (Ethiopia) and Allyson Felix (USA) chat encouragingly to each other on Twitter. They never encounter each other in competition – Felix is a sprinter, max. distance 400m, and Genzebe is a middle/long distance runner, min. distance 1500m. Both genetically gifted for their respective disciplines. At the Olympics Felix will compete in the individual 200m team, and also I imagine in the 4×400 relay. Genzebe will compete in the 1500m and the 10,000m – bit surprising, because her best distance in the past has been the 5000m. Maybe a scheduling issue, and she’s just running in the 10,000m because she can. I don’t expect great things from her in the 10,000m (but could be surprised), but she should be a near-certainty to win the 1500m, on recent form.
Seems it doesn’t take much to entertain me these days. But it could be salient that Felix is squeaky clean and a banner-waver for clean athletics, so it could be a point in Genzebe’s favour that they are buddies. Both devout Christians, however, so they have other things in common.
I mean individual 200m and 4x400m relay team, obviously. Felix ran a brilliant second leg in the London 2012 4x400m relay, fastest of anyone in the race, and got the USA into the lead after USA trailed Jamaica at the end of the first leg, but the last two runners couldn’t maintain it and they came second to Jamaica.
“Surely being over 60 and recovering from heart surgery is enough handicap.”
An ageist and ableist would say something like that.
Careful, greg. Your graph indicates there is a ~42 yo woman who might like slapping you around, after beating you at arm-wrestling.
Maybe off-topic but she’s pretty hot, in fact many ehtiopian and eritrean girls are hot. Also I’ve never seen a west african woman even close in hotness to kenyan Lupita Nyongo.
Why are east african girls more attractive than west african girls? I reckon they are way more feminine looking. My guess is also that women find west african men more attractive than east african ones. Question is why west africans are more masculine than east africans.
(Yes, I know I went off-topic. I’m bored and was just musing)
They exist. In Kamerun for sure, in Nigeria too. I have performed some personal research ;-p
Ethiopians and Eritreans have some West Eurasian admixture from back-migration. Kenyans don’t seem to have it.
I have to admit that I have not made a systematic study of the relative hotness of East and West African women, which is a serious lapse on my part. I should correct the omission while I still have enough grip strength left to press the keys on my keyboard.
Well, one factor is that the East Africans are leaner/slimmer. West Africans are chunkier with all that quick twitch muscle; hence the East African highlanders with their high altitude adaptation excel at middle and long distance running, while people with West African ancestry make the world’s best sprinters.
There you go – I steered it back on topic.
You really should, I know eritreans/ethiopians have eurasian admixture but also kenyan and somali girls are hotter than west african women. They look decisively more feminine.
I agree with your point that it’s because they are leaner/slimmer and less robust than west africans. And of course there are some hot west african women but on average east african women clearly beat them.
An expat here in West Africa….
I have spent a decade in East and West Africa. Ethiopian women definitely the top.
But there is quite a bit of variation in West Africa. The Sahelian parts such as Northern Senegal, Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger have lots of slim ladies. It’s the coastal parts such as southern Ivory Coast, Southern Ghana, etc. that have the “chunky” ladies. Back to the main topic…
I think the East Africans may be closer to the Eurasian root (the African population that migrated into West Eurasia) even without West Eurasian admixture.
So you might be picking up on some similarities in the facial structure that make them look more “normal” and typical compared to Eurasian people and therefore attractive rather than any objective health, gracility, high estrogen, etc. signal. The West Africans are maybe a little further from your ancestors and the faces you’re used to from your early environment, so seem less attractive.
well this is a matter of taste, but my impression is that populations around the world do not vary that much on female attractivity. There are really beautiful women all around the world , the percentages differ a bit but not that much. With male attractivity something else is going on. My theory is that female attractivity is somehow easier to achieve, because it is more or less about symmetry and lack of any extreme features. For male attractivity on the other side “more is better”. More testosterone, bigger bones, more height etc. This also makes sense when one assume that several relevant differences between populations are due to different selection mechanisms working one males in given social institutions.
I agree with you, although there are some populations where it is difficult to find an adult female who would be generally considered to be physically beautiful (e.g. unadmixed Australian Aboriginal people and Papuans, although there are plenty of ‘hot’ mixed Aboriginal fashion models; tennis player Heather Watson, whose mother is Papuan, is not what I would call ugly) (Tierra del Fuegans, maybe – I read they were not too hot).
But those groups and a few isolated others aside, what percentage of, say, women in their 20s in any particular population group would you say would be classified as ‘hot’? It’s not a very easy question, because the hot ones tend to stand out, get photographed more and get noticed more.
A traditional approach to discipline is to allow the child to suffer the natural consequences of his actions. For example, a toddler who throws her food on the floor doesn’t get a replacement. A boy who breaks his window has to endure the draft for a night, or pay for the repairs out of his pocket money.
Could this strategy inform the current discussion? Perhaps instead of arguing we should say yeah, fair enough, let’s try that. Remain silent as public schools ban gender segregation in sport. And enjoy.
But I know other readers are more concerned about the future of civilization than I am.
I am in favour of giving up sex segregation in sport, for as long as it takes to to establish in the general public the relative strengths of the contestants, their injury rates against all-comers and, beyond all doubt, the relative wages they should be paid for their efforts based on destroying competitors. Then sports could revert to sex segregation, and enjoy the separate athletic skills of men and women, whilst also understanding why men get higher prize money.
As to a 60+ man recovering from heart surgery wishing to compete in arm wrestling competitions with young ladies, I see no reason to fear for his health, because all that matters in life is to have grit, determination, self-confidence, and 10,000 hours of practice.
Go for it, Greg, and make sure you secure the film rights.
I already beat my 19-year old son.. Lost to my 23-year-old bruiser son, though.
Look at the graph: my chances are good.
You’ve been hitting the gym lately!
The quickest way to shut up somebody like this Milner lady is to desegregate UFC fights. Keep the weight classes, of course, to be fair. People forced to watch someone like
TJ Dillashaw beat up on
Rhonda Rousey, who are both 135 lbs, would put an end to this silly idea REAL quick.
I expect that the end of sex segregation in sports would lead to quotas and/or lower standards — which, I believe, is what has happened in the armed forces and law-enforcement.
Maybe – but people care much more about sheer performance in sports than they do in education or foreign policy or whatever.
Sad but true.
As soon as the non gender segregated US olympic basketball team looses to the gender segregated Romanian team, people will get the idea of what is right and what is wrong.
Has anyone seen that recent Romanian study (n = 15,000) that couldn’t find a difference in IQ SD between the sexes? No comment except that 1) smart people have looked at it and 2) it hasn’t yet fallen apart as an obvious pile of shit.
Surprising if true. I thought the male variance hypothesis was in pretty good shape.
I vaguely recall that there are geographical variations in this, e.g from memory of something I saw quite a while ago, there is no difference in Chinese either.
If the study is true, the variance in outcomes could plausibly be caused by something other than IQ – eg risk taking behaviour?
That was my first thought too. That men have the same IQ variance but a larger “moxie variance” or “grit variance” or something.
But that explanation doesn’t hold water. Einstein wasn’t a brilliant scientist because he had lots of moxie, he was a brilliant scientist because he was smart. The world’s top 100 chess players are 99 men and 1 woman. Can we credit that to “moxie”? Every Fields medalist bar one is a man. Is that because of “moxie”?
I can think of low intellect but high moxie things that women are good at, like music. And you’d think that if men were equally smart but more driven, this would manifest as higher IQ scores (they’d try harder, double-check their answers, etc.) Finally, it doesn’t explain the other end of the bell curve – the fact that more men than women are homeless, incarcerated, and subnormal.
This is a surprising finding. I’m not religiously attached to the idea of greater male variance – if it’s wrong, so be it. But I don’t think we have any viable theories to replace it.
I looked it up. They tested SAT students…
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160289606000250
…which brings up an obvious concern: do men and women take the SAT in equal numbers? Muslim women often outscore Muslim men, but that’s not because they’re smarter – the Muslim women getting educations are an elite sample.
I’ve seen a lot of evidence that the IQ difference between men and women is small or nonexistent – only the SD differs. Rushton and Jackson seem to be going against the grain here.
The male variance hypothesis is used to explain the observation that there are more males on the right tail of IQ distribution. Even if you strike down the hypothesis, you don’t remove the observation.
I think people rely too much on the variability hypothesis instead of harping on the observation that girls put way more effort in schooling than boys and that it’s the boys at the top who still bother with schooling and put in enough effort.
Also, the assumption is that the distribution is normal but it may very well be not.
For example, La Griffe uses some talent study’s results but they are quite positively skewed and there were three examples of countries having more female variance but if you looked at the scores curves they didn’t look close to normal.
Here’s a paper on it,
http://www.academia.edu/393769/Vos_P.2005._Measuring_Mathematics_Achievement_a_Need_for_Quantitative_Methodology_Literacy
Mrs Vos’ recommendations appear to refer to national math exams. At class level, each teacher develops a sense of what is the level of difficulty that will cut the students into two groups: those who pass and those who fail. We shoot for a 80:20 selection. Generally, we get it.
The study puts way too much emphasis on children between 2 and 11 years – that’s the bulk of their large N. For adults, before the age when men start declining faster than women (>70), here are Raven’s SPM Plus scores reported in Table 3 (p.57)
age
sex N score
16–17 years
M 104 33.74
F 124 32.40
18–19 years
M 56 33.36
F 61 32.28
20–24 years
M 76 37.66
F 79 33.76
25–29 years
M 63 35.54
F 90 30.56
30–34 years
M 63 30.05
F 84 30.62
35–39 years
M 56 32.64
F 91 30.11
40–44 years
M 61 29.26
F 86 28.52
45–49 years
M 75 29.45
F 98 28.34
50–54 years
M 66 30.12
F 84 27.46
55–59 years
M 46 25.91
F 60 23.63
60–64 years
M 35 24.34
F 41 23.05
65–69 years
M 28 26.11
F 33 22.55
The Ns for individual age groups are smallish but ask yourself a question:
If Raven scores do not differ between sexes, what are the chances that men have higher scores in 11 out of 12 age categories?
Now watch, the sociology professor in question will be a 6’4″ m->f transsexual who used to compete as a bodybuilder….
Nope.
Are sports in fact fully segregated? My impression is that if the New York Yankees found a woman capable of reliably throwing a 100mph fastball, there would be nothing stopping them from signing her. Am I wrong?
And that suggests the answer to this, the great moral crisis of our age! Instead of having men’s and women’s sports, have an “open” category, open to anybody, and a “women’s” category, so that biological women get to win something too. No different from having a “senior’s” category, right? The thing is, since the end result would be exactly the same as what we’ve got right now, this would be one situation where it really wouldn’t be that difficult to just “socially construct” your way out of a problem.
(Or it would be, if anyone other than a handful of academic nimrods thought we actually had a problem).
I believe that you are correct with regard to most professional sports, the “men’s” teams are in fact open to all.
The weird thing about this professor is that if teams were integrated, it would probably cause a dramatic decrease in girls’ participation in sports. I doubt she wants that.
This is clearly a religious thing. Bigotry and discrimination are the Devil, and casting out the Devil by definition leaves protected classes like women better off. So somehow it would work out. How little faith you have!
Hockey fans might remember a woman named Manon Rheaume, who was a goalie that played in the (men’s) minors but also a few NHL exhibition games in the early 90s. I can’t find her stats in those NHL games, which tells me they were probably bad.
It seems if she could play in NHL exhibition games and the minors, she probably could, in principle, have been called up to the majors. Even if there was a rule on the books against it, I suspect the rule would quickly have been thrown out.
During her best year in the minors, her save percentage was ~90%, which is not bad for minor league hockey. But she never played in more than a handful of games each season. I’m not sure if she kept getting injured or if she was only getting played as a novelty in games that were already a runaway.
I would think goalie is probably the most acceptable position for a woman in hockey, since there’s a low threshold for abuse before a penalty is awarded.
Manon Rheaume stats http://www.hockeydb.com/ihdb/stats/pdisplay.php?pid=4537.
No exhibition games from the NHL. Just a couple dozen games in several minor-pro leagues. Not very good… And at 5’7″, 130lbs, she is diminutive by NHL goalie standards.
That is already true in tennis. ATP is not men association (but WTA is a women association). Williams sisters are free to participate in ATP tournaments and nothing can stop them if they keep winning. Problem is, they won’t ever get through qualification for any tournament that pays.
What precisely is “grip strength”. Holding 100 kg doesn’t seem much for the average male at his prime.
They used a handheld grip ergometer (probably something like this: https://www.amazon.com/Digital-Dynamometer-Strength-Measurement-Capturing/dp/B00A8K4L84) – it measures one hand and is not quite equivalent to “holding” something – it’s measuring your ability to actively pull the thing, instead of just hold it statically. For example – the last time I measured my grip strength it was about 135 pounds (one hand) but I can deadlift about 450 without straps. So they’re not directly equivalent.
I’m not worried. The belief that men and women are actually of the same strength seems like a very minority belief. Judging from the NPR interview of the author that Razib shares, the author probably doesn’t believe it either (she says “there could be biological differences”). That figure was posted on a Reddit thread, and the reception appears to be almost entirely positive (okay, it was posted on a Data is Beautiful subreddit, whose audience is presumably more receptive to empirical evidence).
I’ll agree with Razib that most people seem to be unaware of just how big the strength difference is. I wasn’t fully aware until Razib brought it to my attention and I dug around a bit. This is probably in part due to sports segregation, and (again, Razib’s argument) the fact that beating women is hugely disapproved of in the Western world. Also movies in which women beat up men.
There is an existing pattern of nonsense becoming mandatory in just a few years. You may have noticed.
I’ve only been sentient for just a few years, so my perspective is poor. Some study of history helps.
When I was in high school, I was dismissive of the 1960s rash of riots because they seemed wimpy compared to the New York Draft Riots of 1863 or the Nike Sedition. In fact it took me years to understand that many people were actually frightened by them – there’s such a thing as having too much historical perspective.
Read history. It’s fun!
History is bunk.
Nike Sedition ??? Wikipedia doesn’t seem to know.
Probably more commonly known as the Nika Revolt.
Posts like your recent “Trust Issues” also help.
I want to see a movie in which the heroine beats up three big men and then asks her Dad to open the pickle jar for her.
When i was a kid my grandmother was the “go to guy” for opening jars.
It is not all about muscle tone, resolve can make a big difference.
Resolve? Did the men in your family not have the stick–to–itiveness to open a jar?
That may be the saddest story I’ve ever heard.
The 2 statements are not related, she had the whole family beat on both muscle tone And resolve.
She once cracked the head of a guy who tried to snatch her purse.
In the 1960s, I was such a fan of Diana Rigg’s Mrs. Emma Peel in “The Avengers”! Please tell me that it was not all fantasy.
The right woman could certainly beat me up. I have no experience fighting, and the most weight I have ever been able to press over my head proved to be 120 pounds. And I could only partner a ballerina that heavy in pas-de-deux like “Love Remembered”. “Three Preludes” second and third movements would have been tough.
Being a wimp makes me prize the Second Amendment…
I’m in the same boat as many younger westerners in that I had no idea that there was almost no overlap in measured of upper-body strength between men and women. That men were much stronger than women, I knew, but I never knew how ridiculous the gap was. I used to date a really tall, amazon kind of woman who looked strong. I remember being surprised at how ridiculously weak she was at arm wrestling. As a little kid I once got into a fight with a bigger, older girl and she seemed pretty strong to me! Beating on women was of course not something that even crossed my mind growing up and it was not at all a part of the family culture so overall not much concrete experience with female lack of strength. You notice your sister hates lifting things but you think she’s just lazy etc.
It is clear from this graph that we need to focus more attention (and money) on discovering whatever social pressure begins to separate our children by gender around the age of 10.
i expect doctors are sterilizing children around that age for gender confusion as we speak
Some professors present themselves as low hanging fruit for abuse or attack.
I wonder what the dipshit sociology professor thinks of this:
Stanley/Loretta is no more crazy than she is.
During the last Olympics when I was looking at the gender differences(including the higher male variation mentioned above) and feminism’s indefatigable demands to end them, I had to conclude that there is a huge inferiority complex at the bottom of it all which is primarily fueled by female inferiority in strength.
One of the most remarkable things I read was some female journalist going gaga over the manly physique of US women’s soccer team and a turkish journalist being excoriated for pointing out that Olympics was destroying womanhood.
So feminists would be okay with girls getting doped up and competing alongside boys but not being womanly. Feminists love masculinity but not in men!
And these feelings have always been there,
Or even earlier,
“Feminism, the extremist ” and of late years the predominant cult of the Woman’s Movement, is Masculinism.
It makes for such training and development in woman, of male characteristics, as shall equip her to compete with the male in every department of life; academic, athletic, professional, political, industrial. And it neither recognises nor admits in her natural aptitudes differing from those of men, and fitting her, accordingly, for different functions in these. It rejects all concessions to her womanhood; even to her mother function. It repudiates all privileges for her. Boldly it demands a fair field only and no favour; equal rights, political and social, identical education and training, identical economic opportunities and avocations, an identical morale, personal and public.”
Feminism and Sex Extinction, 1920 by Arabella Keneally
Sign me up for total equality of the sexes if it means men will then be able to multiply-orgasm for hours at a time. I would gladly surrender my superior ability to lift heavy suitcases into airplane overhead compartments!
“general solipsistic trend. Sex is a social construct”
Is there any danger about Hillary Clinton who want to demonstrate that by being a president during world war III? Great leaders were remembered as major war leader. For her fame, numerous people would become skeletons, or worse, nuclear ashes.
If we are to accept the view that the bench press is the best available test of all-around upper body strength, the record for a young adult woman in the 114-pound weight class – in other words, a very small woman – is 248 pounds, which is exactly the same as the record for a man in the 74-79 age class, who at the time weighed over 220 pounds. So no matter what that chart may say, there is no way that the typical 80+ man has greater upper body strength that the typical woman in her 20’s.
Peter
How do you infer typical from the record level?
In my very subjective view, based on more than a decade of regular gym going and 2+ years at an often physically tough job, the male strength advantage over (younger) women starts to diminish when the man is about 60 and is gone within five to ten years. For example, the typical 55-year-old man almost certainly is stronger than a woman of 25, but a man of 65 and a woman of 25 are probably about the same.
Peter
No. 65 year old mans joints hurt so he takes it easy in the gym. He’d wallop the 25 yo girl when shit was really on the line like if a bookcase needed to be moved. Try moving furniture with a girl if you’re not sure.
I’m 60, I’ve kept myself in shape without going nuts about it, and I’m not that much weaker than I was at 25. I can still do about the same number of pull-ups and push-ups.
Much less limber though — no more back handsprings! 😦
Subjective view based on a small sample set. Got it.
I would think that a military press or squat press would be the best test, but there is no valid comparison between a world record holding woman, who presumably trains heavily and has made a career out of the sport, and a man who is a casual participant far past retirement age.
I don’t know. My dad is 75 and lifts weights for several hours a day, takes supplements, and exercises all the time for no particular reason. I wouldn’t say he takes it easy, as he has had to install a voice activated emergency call device after being trapped under bar bells a few times.
Still, I never pump iron at all and could easily beat him at arm wrestling (but I let him win, because he sometimes let me win when I was a kid).
Hand grip strength goes last.
Was that a masturbation joke?
Using records for judging male-female difference is misleading since women get more out of steroids. For eg. the sprinting difference for averages is 22% while for the world records is around half of that.
Of course, wikipedia credits it to training difference.
It might be training difference. I could easily believe that the average male is more trained than the average female.
Even if it was de-segregated with the obvious results, I’m sure those sociology professors would be saying what Norway’s are of the ‘Gender Equality Paradox’ there (by the way, Greg is on this show in part 6):
This show is brilliant. All episodes of it.
I will arm wrestle anyone here. Male, female, male-to-female…well maybe not that last one, unless we had gloves or something…
Are you a child? Or do you believe transgenderism is a communicable disease?
He has a different idea of what’s disgusting than you do.
I’ve worked on a children’s psychiatric unit, which are graduate programs for victimhood. You could make a case that transgenderism is spread by contact. I don’t know how sustainable that is, but I have seen it happen.
You’ve seen transgenderism spread by contact? How did you know that happened?
If true, it must spread at a very, very low rate, or there would be more such people around.
“children’s psychiatric unit”
kids learn by copying – monkey see, monkey do
Gay is the root cause but transgenderism is the idea, one that people don’t really think of until somebody else suggests it (at least that’s the impression I get from stories on the internet).
I think crazy people, and for that matter abused children in particular (who may grow up into crazies), are attracted to the idea of turning into somebody they’re not. So I could see that.
Can’t it be that transgenders find each other, even when that young?
There is a tremendous difference between parents who are together and have brought up two children past the age of eight and – everyone else in understanding the world. Wise are those who can see the truth without that practical experience. For the rest of us (me, for example, until my boys were in school) the lessons of sexual differences and where the prejudices against males and females really lie come more painfully.
What Montessori directresses want to be true and insist must be true is quite different from what the kids out on the playground are doing.
Fun fact: Women from the strongest countries (Anglo-Germanics and Slavs) have comparable hand grip strength to men from the weakest countries (those of the Indian subcontinent).
I would imagine that the average woman from Iceland, which is probably the strongest country in the world (amazing performance in World’s Strongest Man and Crossfit competitions despite 300k population) might well be stronger than the average Indian man.
Data link?
Several sources.
I’ll have a blog post prior to the start of the Olympics.
I seriously doubt that, the strongest female weightlifter in the world (russian) is beaten by the chinese world record holder of men 69+ kg. Might be the case with pygmies or bushmen though
this is almost certainly bullshit. i’m 5’8. my female partners have been about the same size in height, and from germanic background mostly. also have some experience with 5’11 female of anglo-germanic background. same.
How malnourished are you? 😛
Seriously though, that’s gotta be a big factor. Anyway, regardless of the cause you are considerably larger than the average Indian male.
also, to give some context. my wife is pretty athletic for a woman. far more athletic for her sex than i am for a male. but when she tries to overpower me physically with the upper body she says it’s like we’re different species.
Sounds like you have a special relationship.
OT. I just watched a documentary about Glen Campbell’s final tour after his diagnosis with alzheimer’s . Do you have any views on progress in treatment for this condition?
“progress in treatment”: there hasn’t been any.
Eat more fibre. No really, eat more fibre.
Do you remember why?
Beneficial bacteria convert the fibre into, among other things, short chain fatty acids that have been shown to reduce inflammation (often indicating auto-immune diseases). There have been numerous suggestions AD is actually an auto-immune disease.
Hasn’t there been a recent study that showed the plaques can be induced as reaction of the immune system to certain bacterria in the brain?
The challenge is a bit risky. Remember Bobby Riggs? He (age 55) beat
top female tennis player Margaret Court (age 30) but lost to Billie
Jean King (age 29?)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Sexes_(tennis)
The grip strength data also cannot be directly apply to arm-wrestling
as the critical parameter, among other things, is torque. Female
generally is smaller and hence smaller arm length and thus
relatively has more torque than the chart suggests. There will be
more overlap region for torque. Also to meet her shorter arm you will
have to position your arm at a less favorable angle while she can
maintain her near optimal angle. An example of a smaller guy
with a shorter arm length beating a larger more muscular longer
arm guy,
I have a special advantage over Riggs: I wouldn’t throw the match.
I don’t know much about tennis but I recall when the Riggs-King match occurred a friend of mine who was a decent tennis player told me that he thought it was hilarious. The world’s top female tennis player was barely able to beat an ancient male player who had never been more than second-rate in his prime.
Riggs was no second-rater in his prime. A former world #1 and two-time grand slam champ. Our host is right; he threw the match. Right now John McEnroe would take Serena Williams to the cleaners.
Seems to me they should make the point of contact between the two guys the same distance from each guy’s elbow. Then, e.g., a guy with a very short arm would basically grab the bigger guy’s wrist. Then it’s a real test of strength, not arm stubbiness.
Then the guy with the longer arm will loose the use of the muscles for flexing the wrist.
I don’t know, Greg. She sounds like a real Neanderthal and, from what I’ve read, a female Neanderthal will certainly crush you.
Where do you reckon Michelle Obama’s dot is?
Sorry, Greg, but I’m not betting against Michelle.
We men should be thankful that orgasming is not a competitive sport. Or, for that matter, the ability to be so sexually aroused while motionless that an elite female athlete (I recall the time a professional lady who had just turned in a respectable time in the Houston Marathon had her way with me) was gasping for breath for 90 minutes with her heart pounding out of her chest.
Sure, if they are the tests of physiological output we excel at, we win! But I was waylaid by what I thought was a platonic (much younger) professional colleague and she copulates for NINE HOURS straight.
Of course, she ended up hospitalized for I.V. antibiotics for a heroic UTI that almost cost her a kidney. I had been a zombie from pulling an all-nighter the day before and was on some meds that impaired my judgement, because if I had had any sense of time, I would not have let her take such a big medical risk. But I let myself slip into autopilot with girls like she presented like and just indulge them.
Often, they are trying to catch up for six months of celibacy in one night.
Only some women can have multiple orgasms. Many have a refractory period similar to men.
It’s a cool party trick, though. According to Juvenal, Empress Messalina once put on a blonde wig, went to the nearest brothel, and challenged legendary local prostitute Scylla to see who could satisfy the most customers. The contest lasted all night and well into the morning, but eventually the Scylla threw in the (somewhat used) towel.
Assuming the story isn’t bullshit, it’s a testament to how safe sex must have been back in the day. Or maybe Messalina didn’t care. Out of eighty four Emperors, only thirty died of natural causes. Being Emperor of Rome and worrying about STDs would be like dangling above a spinning helicopter blade and worrying about tetanus.
I have been designated to escort a certain 40-something lady to the wedding of one of her ex-lovers (the bride, not the groom) this weekend. By way of introduction, my date felt it necessary for me to know that in her early 20s she dated a member of the Houston Rockets basketball team and, when the opportunity presented itself, gang-banged the entire club!
But in terms of actual penetration sex/wear-and-tear, how much sex is that really? I have been with many women who could (and did) copulate for multiple hours continuously. Indeed, I always have a prescription for ciprofloxin with me in case I am waylaid by another lady like that because more than half the time she will give herself a case of honeymoon cystitis.
Alas, at my advanced age and health condition, a woman doing such things would not be “having sex”, she would be “committing elder abuse”. But it has not quite stopped. Indeed, I have to assume that my wedding escort was dropping some sort of hint by telling me we only needed one hotel room with one bed…