Tell the truth and shame the devil. In this house beset by devils and illusions of the mind, this is more important than ever. And more difficult.
Go read this: How To Believe False Things. (And for the tragically x-less.)
This hit me particularly hard, because this is a young man I met personally and whose number I just recently deleted from my phone with a plethora of others from the Denver science fiction community, because … Well, because I’m many many miles away and I thought too that chances were he was so far on the other side that the chances of his ever wishing to speak to me were none.
I don’t exactly regret it, because the chances of his needing to talk to me are still low, considering how far away I am and how disconnected from the community that was once mine. But if he called, I probably would answer.
If you read those links, there are people asking him how it’s possible that he didn’t see in sports that men were very different from women, but I understood. I too can watch games and not see the difference. My visual interpretation is not great.
I can see I might not have noticed the difference if I weren’t lucky enough to have grown up with young men, and to have given birth to boys. As it was, I realized early that boys were stronger than I, but even then, perhaps because for a woman I was freakishly strong (until menopause) and unusually … well, determined is the polite term, I didn’t realize until my younger son — then a strippling — was fourteen, out of shape and skinny easily lifted a 100 lb bag of cement that I, in reasonably good shape, couldn’t even budge that I realized the magic sauce of testosterone.
But before that I’d come to realize while humans can — and should — have equal rights under the law, not all humans are born equal. By which I mean not everyone is the same, nor do we all have the same capabilities.
And the reason I knew was in myself. I couldn’t write on the line until I was ten or so, and I couldn’t write legibly till I was fourteen. My hand and eye didn’t work together (besides my having bad, undiagnosed astigmatism.) Things that people I KNEW were far dumber than I could do easily, I couldn’t. On the other hand, I could learn much more easily than they could.
I had illusions for a while. You have to understand, you could tell the kids whose parents left the village to immigrate. When they came back on vacation they looked… glossy. I suspect we all had malnutrition, in a society without refrigeration and where vegetables were suspect enough mostly you ate them after they’d been boiled grey, and that was only part of it. I was lucky, because my family was … not well off, not in the sense we’d use it, but educated, provident and hoarders of books.
So I reasoned that if the other kids in the school, the ones who were struggled, had some help, if they could borrow my books, if I could have them over for food, if– I figured it would make them like me.
It didn’t make them like me. I mean, in some cases, here and there, it made a big difference. In others, it made no difference whatsoever. But it made none of them like me, not in essentials, because well…. because they weren’t me.
But it took, I think, watching my kids grow up to figure out that everyone is inherently different. Sure, they are worthy of the same chance, capable of greatness in their own way, but people don’t even WANT the same things, and it’s stupid and evil to think that everyone should achieve the same results.
Proscustes bed shortens everyone.
Why did it take me that long? Because we all grew up under the Marxist ethos, where we’re encouraged to think if someone doesn’t do as well, it’s unfair, they’re oppressed, someone is rigging the game.
I’m telling you not only is the game rigged from the get go, but every time we try to unrig it we destroy people.
Seriously, if you read the young man’s tweet above, why would someone think that men and women would be equally strong? Why is being like a man the measure of a woman’s greatness?
Women are intrinsically different than men, from the womb. Yes, there is a spectrum. See where I was freakishly strong until menopause. I could actually fight back against most men. But the spectrum doesn’t mean that statistically, as a group, men and women aren’t different. We are.
One thing we know for instance, is that more men are geniuses. And more men are morons. There are women who are geniuses, sure. And women who are morons. But most women cluster in the middle.
Is that the explanation for the glass ceiling, and the lack of women at the top in business and sciences?
It’s part of it. The other part is that men and women want different things, and are driven to different things. yes, a lot of us will end up running mostly in the world of men, but most women prefer occupations that involve people. And most women aren’t willing to spend the hours in service of impersonal business or by-the-numbers-science. Most women prefer to have personal lives. Sure, most men too, but statistically speaking, more women than men are motivated by things other than emotionless pursuit of success.
The “Success” as society views it is male success. The attempt to erase the differences between men and women has pushed a lot of women into paths in which they are seriously unhappy.
Because, listen to me, women are not men. And why should a man’s measure of success be a woman’s? Women can be powerful in their own way — if you think that’s not true, you never met a matriarch, even in a seriously patriarchal society — and they can set their own goals and have their own success.
Believing that everyone is alike just pushes everyone into a path in which only very few are happy. (And more men than women.)
And the same applies to other differences than the differences between the sexes. It applies to other intrinsic differences. This strange measure of success whereby everyone has to be a corporate executive or one of another handful of “scripted” “Successful” roles leaves no-account artists who can’t hold to that, and can’t even want to, scrambling and feeling maimed and inferior. It leaves people whose main motivator is social or pedagogical feeling like they failed.
A lot of the “capitalism” young people rebel against has absolutely nothing to do with the free market. Instead, it has to do with this expectation that we’re all the same, and we all have to succeed the same way and be happy the same way.
… and this is why even if you’re a woman — it’s much, much harder for us to stand up and stand out from the group — it is very important not to lie.
It’s very important to stand up and tell the truth and shame the devil.
Because even if you’re not a believer, you should know the devil is chaos and destruction and enslavement to paths you don’t wish to be on. That’s a devil you should believe in, because he’s all through our society and eating it from the inside.
I won’t lie to you and tell you that when you tell the truth it will be great for you. It won’t.
Trust me. Going by my experience, when you go against the group, the all-pervasive propaganda and indoctrination that is a tissue of lies, you’ll be considered evil, crazy, untrustworthy.
Heck, the most amusing thing is being told I sold out. I don’t know what they think I sold FOR. There is no money on this side.
Sure, I largely survive, but if I’d stayed on the path and told the lies — and yes, I’m quite smart enough to know which to tell and tell them well — I could have done amazingly well. My kids would have no debts, and we’d have been able to afford everything we desired.
But there are values bigger than personal reward. And maybe that’s the way I’m broken.
However, while around me lies are taking society apart, I couldn’t contribute to the lies. I couldn’t stay quiet, even.
Because there are bigger things than personal achievement. And because I had to look at myself in the mirror.
I know some of you can’t — just can’t — stand up and tell the truth.
But do the measure of what you can. Don’t lie unless you absolutely have to. And when you can?
Tell the truth. Tell the truth and shame the devil.
Because the devil of chaos and destruction is eating the future.
And the future needs the truth.
According To Hoyt 
There’s a good reason that morals and ethics are touted by societies and religions.
Avoiding real life with substances or behaviors is both self and societal destructive.
Then there’s the warning of the story of the Trojan Horse so many fail to “see.”
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The thing that jumped out at me in the X post, besides the mentioned, is the push away from understanding.
Yeah, the visual medium spent more time looking at pretty girls kicking ###.
See also, why my husband mostly plays female characters, and why most games’ design for male characters is so freaking ugly, I do, too.
There’s a Bill Engval (“here’s your sign”) skit about how men’s magazines are full of half-naked women. Women’s magazines are full of half-naked women. Women are pretty, and nobody wants to look at hairy lumpy guys. (Imagine this stretched out to like 15 minutes, by someone who is funny.)
It’s not the truth, but there’s enough truth to it to be amusing, and to understand various design choices.
Especially if folks have a reason that they can’t just say “I want a pretty main character” or “it’s so much more impressive if a girl is fighting,” and have to come up with some socially acceptable reason.
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AH much like the rabid rants of anti gaming feminists screaming about “why do males always choose female characters to play in RPG”. And the answer is basically due to the fact that in many RPG and FPS games your camera tends to follow in 3/4 view from behind your character. Is it deeply astounding that an average teenage boy LIKES to watch the backside of female (with jiggle physics in the modern world) rather than the fundament of a guy?
Honestly it is often hard to get a game to let me look even vaguely like my general oblate spheroid shape. One game that let me do that was Elite Dangerous, although there I did dial the weight slider back a bit as it involved tight space suits and no one wants to see 50 lbs of crap stuffed in a 30 lb bag. Trust me I do NOT wander around in skin tight latex.
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I just wish they’d make good looking guy characters more often, as part of the variety!
Like, the Stars Reach beta has literally a handful of prefab characters — one male one female for the base before Kickstarter races– and the guy human actually looks GOOD.
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Sadly I can usually replicate my face which although my wife has been fond of it for 40+ years is at best unusual. I wonder if at least in the west the standards of female beauty are better understood than what makes a man appealing. Modern art teams usually have both male and female artists so maybe they don’t put as much effort into things?
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I can be fair for a lot of types of masculine attractiveness– like, getting body hair right?
Anybody who has met my husband can realize that “hairless” isn’t in the cards for what I find attractive.
But getting that in a still shot is really difficult, never mind animating it.
I sentence htem to watching anime for a few years to find attractive men!
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There are lots of attractive anime men. Many of the mentor characters for Shonen protagonists for one.
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There’s a new anime that is “What if Dr. House was a Japanese lady doctor” and they are doing an amazing job of showing a realistic range of body types– the Watson is quiet, mousy, polite, and a giant. Which is why he carries himself so nobody notices. :D Totally crush-worthy character.
Also, there’s Japanese Columbo. Who is Columbo-ing all over.
No straight up fan service, but — wow, SUCH a good job of the art.
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Yeah my wife jokes that somewhere in my 40’s my hair migrated from my head to my back. Until recently modelling hair especially more sparse hair other than as a texture was hard and certainly at the limits of Game and home computer systems and AAA games take 2-5 years of development so it is unsurprising they skipped that. However, these days even a lame PC or last gen Xbox one can do a fair bit.
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There are at least a FEW games out there that have gorgeous male models…but they are definitely fewer in number!
After I heard a guy explain WHY he preferred playing female characters (if you have to stare at a character’s butt for hours on end, what would he prefer?) it made sense to me. That’s not why *I* usually play female characters, but it does make sense. And now that I am older and wiser…I don’t find it offensive. And for all the “feminist” shrieking about “skimpy armor”…I would posit that a good half (at least) of the modders out there making sexier armor for female avatars in games are actually women.
Honestly, my only pet peeve remaining at this point? Those stupid jiggle physics. BOOBS ARE NOT JELLO THAT IS NOT HOW IT WORKS AND IT LOOKS SILLY!! :D
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On skimpy armor– there’s also that animating cloth, leather, or chain mail, is an utter pain.
So a chain-or-fur-bikini on either sex? Very easy to animate.
Ditto second-skin type clothing.
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Indeed part of my career(~20 years) was in Computer Graphics (mostly CAD/CAM not games or animation though I worked supporting Softimage and Maya on DEC ALPHA hardware near the end). Hair and cloth are similar in how you model them (basically series of springs) and require a boatload of CPU/calculations. Pixar’s Geri’s Game (1997) is one of the first major attempts to physically model cloth draping on a human. And Brave with Merida’s hair is the first long form use of cloth draping and curly hair. Brave came out in 2012. That was cutting edge work getting published in SIGGRAPH ( ACM computer graphics journal) 13 years ago and required server farms to do the calculations. These days a high end graphics card can make a decent pass at that kind of stuff in near realtime (30FPS or better).
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Clipping issues. ALL THE CLIPPING ISSUES.
And then figuring out how to make it actually work, because different weights of cloth don’t even … yeah.
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For cloth clipping is a minor peccadillo :-) . Simulating a decent sized piece of cloth or clothing may take a model involving low hundreds to low thousands of spring nodes. And they’re ALL interdependent, It’s a giant ass mesh of linear differential equations. I think some clever approximations/shortcuts were found after Geri’s Game but I think they were only good for specific cases.
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Yeah, I can see that. Not as big an issue nowadays as in more primitive eras, where I expect trying to both model a female form AND armor/clothing that didn’t look awful on it was a bit more of a challenge than on the basic male form. (I recall reading that Lara Croft’s ginormous boobs came about because one of the designers was showing off the tool they used to change sizes on things, and either they forgot to change it back, or started giggling like schoolboys and left it as it was. Of course, it’s now iconic, even if the idea of doing those kinds of gymnastics with boobs that big make any real-life woman wince in pain, lol)
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I, too, am here for equal opportunity fanservice.
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“Is it deeply astounding that an average teenage boy LIKES to watch the backside of female (with jiggle physics in the modern world) rather than the fundament of a guy?”
Um… I suspect it might not be just teenaged boys. *whistles innocently*
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Patrick we are not supposed to say the quiet part out loaud :-) . But Honestly, You and me both brother :-) .
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Took my beloved to his annual heart exam yesterday (all is well) and stayed outside because we have all finally caught something significant and I didn’t want to share whatever it is with elderly heart patients (my beloved is well on the way to recovery).
So I found myself watching a young lady head for the hospital entrance carrying a sack from the Cheesecake Factory in each hand. Rear view. Perfect hourglass figure. Very snug blue jeans. So round, so firm, so fully packed.
I am straight, thank you very much and I still enjoyed it. Why shouldn’t guys?
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The US Womens team, winner of 2024 olympics gold and 2022 CONCACAF (North American championship) in its earlier form (2017) was soundly beaten 5-2 by the FC Dallas Under 15 league team. The 2024 team appears to have played a collection of Retirees and a few current players from the Red Dragons (a 4th form league in britain, think like a single A baseball team in the US) and beat the (admittedly now mostly retiring US womens team) 12-0. No one has ever bothered to say play Juventus or the Brazilian national team against a Olympic champion women’s team. Asking the internet it appears the Australian National team beat an Australian Army team in 1994 5-2. It is not clear if this is the exception that proves the rule (as I see no other version of this in the last 31 years) or if it says something about the Australian army
The Women’s world record in the mile is 4:07.64, The US national High school men’s record is 3:53.43 nearly 14 seconds quicker. The Men’s World record is 3:43.13 , ten seconds faster than the high school record and 24 seconds (nearly 1/2 minute) faster than the womens world record. The fastest women at the mile in the world could not even qualify for a US high school record.
You say wait women do better in endurance than males. OK, Consider the 2024 Boston Marathon. The men’s winner finished at 2:06:17. The women’s winner finished in 2:22:37 on the same day in the same conditions. Overall she was 34th, i.e. 33 men (including the winner) finished before her. Without a women’s class she hasn’t a paper dogs chance in hell of getting a medal.
Go longer you say a marathon at 26.2 miles is not long enough. Alright, let us consider the Ultramarathon, a 100 mile run. At present the Womens record is 12:42:40, formidable indeed. That is until we look at the 10:51:39 of the reigning male record nearly 2 hours faster.
Are there women faster than men? Of course, almost any vaguely athletic woman would beat me a, chonky 64 year old ex programmer, at anything much more athletic than bocci or tiddlywinks. But at the far right end of the bell curves, very athletic males (even YOUTHFUL ones like the U15 soccer team) seem to beat very athletic females consistently. And letting folks choose their “gender” only muddles the issue. If the 30th place runner (a male) in the 2024 Boston Marathon had decided he was female on that particular Patriot’s Day he would have won the women’s medal by 2 minutes. If the US high school miler did that he’d have a World record that might not be broken for a long time if ever, as women have still not broken the 4 minute mile.
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iirc the women’s sprint world records (100, 200, 400m, dash & hurdles) are well below the NY State Highschool Boy’s records
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NY state Mile record for males was set in 1973 at 4:02, still 5 seconds faster than the world record. Shorter distances I expect to be seriously dominated by males as that is a combination fast twitch muscles and anaerobic effort. Basically, it’s what evolution designed us for we like dogs are pack hunters wearing larger game down in spurts by members of the pack.
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Originally I looked for MASS records but it seems that isn’t kept or run in modern track and field in Massachusetts, longest is the 400m. So I went to national records.
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The last time — the very last time I was able to hold my own physically, when tussling with my brother and his friends (brother is 18 months younger than me) was at the age of 13, or so. And, yes, a very fit mixed martial arts female athlete would likely be able to beat the stuffing out of an non-athletic male of the same weight and general build – but sexual dimorphism among our species is a thing that can’t be argued with. As a general rule, men are bigger, and more well-muscled than women. It is just not fair expecting men and women to compete against each other, unless it is something that doesn’t depend on body strength and stamina, like marksmanship.
I will never be made to agree that biological males ought to compete as female, and against females. It is not fair, and will never be fair, and nothing can make me say otherwise.
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I could hold my own against my brother because I’m 10 years younger. He didn’t want to HURT me. And I had no holds barred. I bit, scratched and took advantage.
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I’m the oldest of 6. The oldest of my 4 brothers is 3 years younger than I.
Imagine my shock the day that dweeby 8th grade twerp with stereotypical masking taped glasses grabbed me with his twig-like arms and actually held me so I couldn’t move and warned me never to try to tickle him again.
It was a horrible realization I was top dog at home no longer, and never would be again as there were 3 other dweebs behind him.
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Yeah . . . as a female martial artist, I definitely DON’T want to ever fight a man seriously. The longer I do this, the less I want to fight men, because men are just so much sturdier – and I’m saying this as an unusually strong woman. But unless I am surpassingly excellent at technique and exceedingly vicious, there’s no way I am winning a brawl against a man, even matched for size.
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Exactly this – my daughter, when she was a Marine, and at the peak of her physical fitness, was matched in some kind of physical combat exercise with a guy of her exact height and weight — she said it was all that she could do to hold her own with him. So – absolutely no to any kind of direct contest involving strength, mass and endurance. A post pubertal-male will always have that advantage over a female. It’s not bloody fair, and nothing will bring me to say that it is.
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My own view of the athletic question:
I’m in an athletic family, but I’m the one Gregor Mendel skipped. Still, when two of my sisters persuaded forty-something me to enter a 5-K race, I set about it seriously … and then did more races, more seriously, and kept going. Despite maybe one or two genes getting past Mendel’s gatekeeping, I was working on semi-obsessive training sitting atop modest athletic talent. I put up some nice finishes in local races, even won cash prizes a couple of times, but I was not a notable runner even as an amateur.
If you randomly selected a single race from my 5-K career, running mid-forties to early fifties, and challenged me to guess where I finished in that race, there’s one answer that would give me the best chance of being right. That answer is: immediately in front of the fastest female in the field. Not fastest forty-plus woman, but the fastest female. (I don’t say ‘woman’ because it wasn’t always an adult.) Odds were, I was beating all of them, even those twenty and thirty years younger.
This isn’t to say they weren’t good runners, because darn, they pushed me. My fastest two race times came from long battles with females: one who was right on my heels the last mile of the race (when we shook hands post-race, she was standing, and I was flat on my back), and the other I slowly reeled in for two long miles before I spotted the finish line and turned on the afterburners. An element of male ego was probably pushing me to beat them, but then, they had their own egos pushing them to outlast me.
My point is, I experienced first-hand, multiple times, the gap between male and female athletes. Their youth and their athletic gifts were not enough to compete against a middle-aged guy who was just as stubborn about training as they were. (Or maybe a bit more.) Facts do not care about ideology … and the finish line is a fact.
There. I’ve told the truth. The Devil will have to deal with it.
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I ran a half 5K (2.5K) at work, and a short chubby fifth grade boy beat me.
It was good for him, but kinda embarrassing for me.
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There are worse embarrassments. In one of my earliest 5-Ks, I suffer the indignity of being passed late by a man dressed as a banana.
A year later, in another state, I was seated almost next to him at a Weird Al Yankovic concert. At least it was the same suit. The world is a funny place.
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My husband used to run marathons, and there was usually a guy there dressed in a pink fairy outfit, complete with wand. But he was fast!
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In Denver?
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I ran a half 5K (2.5K) at work, and a short chubby fifth grade boy beat me.
It was good for him, but kinda embarrassing for me.
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That said, I pretty much knew he would beat me, ahead of time, and I would have had similar feelings about boys a little younger. There just comes a time when they are no longer little squirts.
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I used to powerlift. I trained for a long time and eventually got my benchpress up to a lifetime best of 286 pounds.
That’s WARM-UP WEIGHT for the guys in my weight division. (All natural, no steroids.)
I also noted that the guys–ordinary, on-the-street guys, not fellow gym rats–whom I told about powerlifting were often VERY threatened by the mere CONCEPT. Some insisted on arm-wrestling. (Really, dude?)
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That “threatened by the mere concept” bit seems typical. The people who actually put in the work (fellow gym rats) will look at the results you achieved, know how much work it takes to do that, and grant respect, knowing that it in no way diminishes their own achievement. Yes, even if you can bench more than they can (such as me. I’m a lot stronger than I used to be before I started lifting, but I can count on one hand the number of times I saw another guy in the gym and he was lifting lighter weight than I was. I don’t care, though: I see some gal benching 286 when I am struggling to break past 100? That doesn’t make a lick of difference to my own goal, which is to get myself stronger than I was a month ago, three months ago, six months ago, a year ago.)
But the guys who don’t put in the work? That’s where you’ll find ego and bluster. Usually because they know, somewhere, that they could be doing better if they were putting in the work. That’s my best guess, anyway: I’m not the best judge of human psychology so I could easily be missing something.
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Serena Williams was asked what would happen if she played Andy Murray. She said she’d lose 6-0, 6-0 in about five minutes.
Serena is a great player, probably the best women’s tennis player since Martina Navratilova, but she’s also smart and a realist. I have a lot of respect for her.
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I once saw an article written about a survey question asked to various men: “Could you, playing a standard-length tennis match against Serena Williams, score one single point?” Some non-zero percentage of guys answered yes, and the article was dismissing that as sexism. To me, though, that question is entirely equivalent to “Can you play a match of tennis at any reasonable level?” Because while a complete novice like myself would probably not be able to return even a nice, easy serve… someone reasonably competent at tennis would force Serena Williams to actually exert some amount of effort in order to beat them. And when you are playing tennis, even at a high level, you will occasionally make mistakes.
The discussion on the article, too, was mostly saying “Um, anyone who thinks that’s sexism knows nothing about tennis.” There were a few holdouts, who didn’t know anything about tennis but didn’t want to admit that, who were saying “But the skill difference! There’s no way!” But everyone who knew anything about tennis was pointing out that one single point — not a game, just one point — can turn on just a single mistake by the opponent, and even the best pros don’t play absolutely perfect games if they’re pushing themselves.
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In a similar vein I once fenced at a local club in Boston. One evening a young lady came in and wanted to fence, but the Foil fencers weren’t there yet so she was standing around looking bored. I was at one of the 2 Epee strips and she walked up and asked if I would fence. I said yes and being one of the club armorers I helped her get one of the club cables (epee is different cabling) and club epees. She had luckily not put on her lame for foil scoring as an Epee would do nasty things to that and they are rather expensive ($150-300 in those days, hers was tailored to her this should have been a clue she was serious). It was early in the evening so no one wanted the Epee lane so we fenced three bouts. She beat me 5-0 5-2 and 5-1, and ALL my points were doubles (in epee there is a 25 ms window where if both score it counts as a touch the electronics deals with this) and all three bouts were less than 2 minutes total. Come to find out she was a 1988 US Olympic foil alternate (this being about 1990) . I did get some excellent coaching and got to get my ass kicked by a Olympic fencer (she did go in 1992). Here skill dominated, though honestly she was probably way fitter than I will ever be and none of the 3 fencing weapons are physically limited by strength as reaction time (and training) matters far more.
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Even with many real weapons, strength matters far less than skill, so that a trained woman can handily beat an untrained but stronger man in a sword duel. Reach can matter a LOT, but let’s assume two combatants of roughly similar height and arm length for this discussion.
Battles, though, bring endurance into play, and the inherent male advantage in strength also has a matching advantage in endurance. (I’m reminded of the essay written 15-20 years ago by a female Marine — a really good one, from all reports — talking about how some of the multi-day marches brought her to the limit of her endurance while the men in her unit were still going strong, and how she would have been a liability if they had had to face actual combat. And this was someone who was serious about being a Marine, was not slacking in the least, was in excellent physical shape, and all that.)
Armor can also make a huge difference, whether wearing armor (strength obviously matters) or trying to defeat the other person’s armor (which can call for either skill or brute strength depending on the weapon you’re using and the armor you’re trying to defeat).
So there are some types of swordfights where a woman can fight on a pretty equal basis (assuming similar sizes, similar reach, etc), such as rapier duels vs. opponents wearing normal clothing. But other types of fights, such as against an opponent in heavy armor where warhammers rather than swords are the best weapon, would still put her at a disadvantage vs. a male opponent of similar size and reach. (Real warhammers were quite light, nothing like the warhammers you see in video games… but they are still a massively strength-based weapon, unlike swords where it doesn’t take all that much strength to stab through an unarmored body.)
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Of course, “similar size” is not at all guaranteed; average height for women is several inches below average height for men. So for a woman to be of similar size to most opponents she would face in a swordfight, she’d need to be significantly taller than average for her sex. Not freakishly tall, just in the top 15% or so. (Number pulled out of my hat, very rough guesstimate, rather than looked up, so I welcome corrections if someone has them).
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See why Gwendolyn Christie keeps getting cast in female military roles. She’s 6’3″, significantly taller than male average.
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In Epee reach matters a lot as the arm is the most common target. The young lady was about 5’5″ and of athletic build (another clue I was fighting out of my weight class :-) ). So height here was similar. Thing is of all her touches only 1 was an arm hit everything else was legal foil torso hits. She was fighting foil, with honestly maneuvers that just absolutely hornswoggled me.
Modern fencing has SOME endurance (You try holding 750g extended for five minutes with awkward footwork) but speed, skill, and muscle tone dominate. Corps a corps is forbidden it’ll get you a warning at first and penalty on repeated actions with forfeit/expulsion possible. HEMA (Historic European Martial Arts) might be a slightly better proxy for actual combat.
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Didn’t the guy who ranked about 200 for men in tennis beat both Serena and Venus back to back? I remember reading an anecdote about that.
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I think I read some of that (or related) somewhere. I think she also noted that the men play a very different tennis with faster volleys and harder serves. It would be interesting to see someone like Arthur Ashe or even early Jimmy Connors up against the modern folks. I think part of the difference in style is that the modern racquets let the modern pros play with WAY more force than the pros from my youth. And Murray would probably be busting wood racquets left right and center. Part of why I stuck to Soccer and running, the whole difference is fundamentally the limits of the person’s ability.
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Good points — Bjorn Borg would be another example a la Ashe or Connors.
On the other hand, there were a few outliers like Roscoe Tanner — his serve was clocked at 153mph back in 1978. :-) My possibly flawed impression is that Ilie Nastase was a pretty big hitter too.
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Somehow I had forgotten Borg (how, beats me). I think he starts to span the start of aluminum rackets, so comparison is hard. I am just old enough to remember having a rach that you used to tie down your racket lest it look like a spoon from the strings cupping it. Aluminum was lighter than wood and the carbon fiber stuff is like swinging air it is so light. And both will take punishment at which a wood racquet would shake in terror.
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Yep — Borg spanned the start of aluminum, but he was one of the last great wooden-racket guys. I think he even stuck with wood during his abortive comeback. I barely played tennis and was never any good at it, but I remember the trapezoidal frame for storing one’s racket so it wouldn’t warp.
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Values are the thing you have to follow or you will not be able to respect yourself.
If you value truth, if you lie, you won’t be able to respect yourself.
There are those who value being part of the Group more than they value truth. If the Group speaks truth, they will dutifully repeat it. If the Group speaks lies, they will dutifully repeat it.
So the only way to live in what is true is to speak the truth enough that those who follow see the Group speaking truth, and dutifully repeat it. Just don’t expect them to do more than follow the Group. Because that is what they value, and only they can chose that.
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C4C
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Forgot to click the box.
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Click the box, Drak.
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/What is the cost of lies? It’s not that we’ll mistake them for the truth. The real danger is that if we had enough lies, then we no longer recognize the truth at all …
/When the truth offends, we lie and lie until we can no longer remember it is even they’re, but it is, still there. Every lie we tell incurs a debt to the truth. Sooner or later, that debt is paid …
/To be a scientist is to be naive. We are so focused on our search for the truth we fail to consider how few actually want us to find it. But it is always there whether we see it or not, whether we want to or not. The truth doesn’t care about our needs or wants; it doesn’t care about our governments, our ideologies, our religions. It will lie on wait for all time. And this, at last, is the gift of Chernobyl. Where one I would fear the cost of truth, now I only ask: what is the cost of lies?”
— Valery Legasov, *Chernobyl*
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Yes – most of the reason we’re in the position we’re in now is from many being cowed from speaking the truth. When that started changing, they tried censoring, which was effective until they lost control of the platforms and the New News Media. And I’ll credit Trump’s ability to make what was once considered unspeakable part of the dialog (that was the first thing I noticed about his 2016 candidacy, back when I was a Cruz supporter.) We’re gradually getting to the point where we can freely laugh at insanity again – and we should.
Thanx for the post, Sarah!
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What feminists who whine about the “glass ceiling” don’t get is that to get to that fancy corner office you have to subordinate all other parts of your life to the job. It’s like becoming a high-rated chess player (Fischer, Spassky, that general level—I don’t know who’s the current big star in the chess world) or an Olympic athlete. Olympic athletes’ lives are absolutely dominated by their sports—I’m told a lot of them lose their virginities in the Olympic Village, because it’s the first time they’ve had time enough and attractive partners. And big-shot corporate executives’ wives may have a lot of money, but they generally pay for it with loneliness. If Junior has a sports competition or Sissy has a piano recital, but Dad has to be in at the office on that night, Mom has to go to it alone because Dad won’t be available.
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That’s one reason why male airline pilots and top-tier corporate pilots outnumber women. The demands of the first years in the field mean that you have to sacrifice a lot of stability and family time for the business. G-d bless spouses who can move with you and who understand airline schedules, because they tend to be rare. And then pregnancy, for women who want to have children? There are physical challenges as well as losing currency and having to catch up on a lot of things when she comes back to work. It’s possible, but not easy.
I admire the women who do it, and their families, but it’s not for everyone. Aerobatic flying at the “get paid to do it” level? Even more so, ditto air racing (Red Bull™ or Reno-type, not cross-country type.) Crop spraying? Good luck finding a woman. The strength and endurance needed, and concerns about chemical exposure, put a lot of women pilots off of the idea. Fire bombing is similar, weeding out the physically incapable, be they male, female, or “only they know.”
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There is a real, significant cost of maleness. Women in every age group tend to outnumber men. And men on the average die sooner than women do. You can be creative in playing the hand you’re dealt, but you’re still limited to what the cards are.
It’s like Kenny Rogers said in, The Gambler.
You’ve got to know when to hold ’em
Know when to fold ’em
Know when to walk away
And know when to run
You never count your money
When you’re sittin’ at the table
There’ll be time enough for countin’
When the dealin’s done
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Also note it’s considered embarrassing-or worse- to be beaten/killed by a woman. I despised the way the latest Dune movie handled Chani, who was anything other than a “Fremen nationalist.” Ans thr missed a scene in the novel where Paul,is called because Chani has killed a would be Challenger. Her reply is she did it because when word gets out he was killed my Maud’dib’s woman, there would be fewer challengers willing to risk it.
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More than a decade ago I asked my daughter’s boyfriend why guys always picked girl characters and he told me he did it because guys were nice to girl characters and more inclined to give them game swag, etc. Just in case they were really a girl in real life.
Seemed logical to me at the time.
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Oilfield roughneck, petroleum exploration geologist, lumberjack, off-shore rig worker, bull rider, high-iron welder, diesel mechanic … These are places you won’t find a lot of XX people. The physical demands are just too high, or the locations are too dangerous for women. Or rather, the companies don’t want to risk women in those cultural environments. Working on big diesel engines requires a lot of muscle. Hard, dirty, high paying? Probably not that many women.
Which the willfully blind overlook, when they say that “Women can do just as well as men in __________,” or “Women should be paid the same as men for ___________.” Sorry, activist, but reality doesn’t care about your gender theory. Size matters, especially upper body strength. Stamina helps.
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In a story I’m writing some dingbat reporter will ask Main Characters why all the steam turbine/generator workers in their power plant are men.
“Why don’t you hire any women?”
“None applied.”
Should employers be penalized for ‘not hiring enough women’ if there ARE almost no women in that field? Should women be forced into jobs they don’t want ‘for Equity!’?
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I ended up a log scaler because when they offered hubby a job they asked which area he wanted to work out of “central” or “northern”. He said “central”. Asked why. “Because new bride will work seasonal for Sweet Home district. “She’s a forester? 21 or oder?” At the time, one of the requirements, plus had to be 21 or older. “Yes. Graduates end of this term.” …. “Will she apply?”
Obviously “yes”. Turns out the company was also in a bit of a spot. Apparently someone, female had called the main office looking into actually working as a scaler. While processing side had all women, no women scalers. Late ’70s and the caller got told we don’t have women scalers (didn’t, yet) … Oops.
Would I have stayed with it, if I hadn’t gotten riffed (along with 100 others) thanks to the owl and mountain? IDK Definitely would have taken time out to raise our son to school start or longer. As it was it was another 15 years before the company started new hire again, all the while continuing to downsize (through retirements) the field employees. I was well into the new career.
Hindsight? Do not regret getting my forestry degree. Probably should have gotten it as a minor. What for a major back then Fall ’74? I have no idea. Definitely not Veterinary Medicine, neither the money needed (no tri-state school for another 20 -ish years), nor would have made the grades (required better grades than pre-med or pre-law) needed. Computers, back then? Do not make me laugh. Seriously. I despised the first computer class I took in ’76. OTOH without the path I did take I never would have gotten into computers and programming later on (much later).
When it came to field work, be it in the woods, or on a truck ramp, never was physically equal to the guys. Field work? I’m 5’4″ and weighed 130#s. Sure I could pickup bags that only weighted 20# – 30# less than me. Surrrrrrrre (believe that? I know of ocean front property for sale in Colorado …) Guarantied the shortest male (taller than me) could out pace me in the woods. Scaling? I was using the ladders not jumping from top of loads to ramps. I was using the steps no jumping from ramp to the ground (guys paid for that later because horrible for joints, but still …) I just never let this stop me.
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Just observations. Sometimes it comes to a point in which you have to stick to the truth and/or the right thing to do. In the short term, there will be a cost. But in the long term, it is much better for your health and self-respect. We’ve gone through such an event. Those who capitulate to falsehood do not do as well, internally–they know they fell short on that point. Most often, you may need to cut ties with the offending group– a test of conscience tends to be a watershed event.
On the bright side, if you do face such a challenge, just a few people willing to stand up to pressure, to tell the truth, will give others courage. So even if you need to leave a social group, you should take heart that you have helped other people, even if they can’t say anything directly at the time.
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Exactly what a fellow mask-rebel at the grocery store told us, when everyone but a small minority was still wearing the stupid things indoors. It was important to be seen not conforming – to give heart to the faltering.
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Not only can standing up for the truth give courage to the faltering, you don’t know but, maybe, just maybe, it will worl to your favor later on.
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It may work to your favor and it may also worl.
Depending upon how WordPress and autocucumber feel at the moment.
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Because the left can’t win with facts, they lie, it really is that simple.
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The left has decided that Equality mean Equal Outcomes, regardless of the work invested. If there is not equal outcomes it must mean some form if ‘Ism’ is present.
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I have some friends who ‘hate capitalism’. The problem is, I think that what they hate isn’t so much capitalism as it is the extremely toxic and exploitative work environment in which my friend’s husband found himself for the last seven years.
Like, yeah dude, if I’d been earning less than 20 grand per year while working 70 hour work weeks in social services, I’d hate that too. But you decided not to switch jobs, so that’s kinda on you. No one forced you to stay there except through social pressure. You are not a serf in 19th century Russia, you are not a slave, you could have switched jobs at any point, because this is ostensibly a free society.
The thing is, I think what most people mean when they say they ‘hate capitalism’ is that they hate corporatism, in which the people in charge of corporations treat people like interchangeable widgets to be exploited for labor and then discarded. And really, who WOULD like that, except for the people running the machine? Capitalism is not the same thing.
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I once had what I think was a productive discussion with a couple of teens on a bus, where I started out by explaining that if your life has value (which we’d already agreed on), then money was the most efficient way of conveying value. Someone pays you for your time, and it’s more efficient than barter. If there isn’t a value marker put to your time of some kind, people won’t consider it to be valuable to them, and will act accordingly.
It had been pretty obvious that nobody had ever defined capitalism to them, and once they had that, I explained about corporatism and cronyism, and how they were parasitical to the system. And freeloaders of any type were an issue—using the example of group projects.
I can only hope that I gave them enough to think on that they started to consider rather than react, but this was also in Eugene, so who knows.
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–
Yes, well. Some of us in Eugene area have a clue. So? Who knows?
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“You work to make money, right? How much of that money should be taken from you, by force, and given to people that don’t work? Especially when you have no control over how much they take?”
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Hi Sarah
O/T and FYI
More Sefton Delmer and things Germanic
Have you tracked down “Trail Sinister” and Black Boomerang”?
Our library system has found both for me so the pieces relevant to that mention are
“Trail Sinister” Chapter 38 “The New German Menace” re post WW2 ambitions of future empire (3 – A4 pages)
And
“Black Boomerang” Chapter 22 (no title) where, when and how the extreme legal provisions from pre-WW2 Germany were carried over to the post-WW2 constitution (about 20 – A4 pages)
Cheers
Ian
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Blink, blink, blink, blink? And this is relevant for…?
This is not within my realm of interests, even at a stretch.
This post honestly reads like you’re leaving a coded message for someone else.
Are you?
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Back in February, he made a book recommendation here:
Good Boys And Girls Get Stars – According To Hoyt
and you asked for a reminder.
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Oh. Brain not worky. And February was… really bad for thyroid.
Good. Glad it’s not a coded message.
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I’m not spending that much, though.
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Tanks Taciturn.
I got the books as a library loan.
And will copy the relevant chapters for my reference
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“Thanks” – wonky keyboard problem
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I wonder if i can get them interlibrary….
Sorry, I really have no brain just now. And it was very odd to see your reference with no explanation. :D
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ALSO HOW MANY IANS are there around here? (half joking.)
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I got them via library loan in “deplorable Austraia” so I’d think you should be able to.
Re names – Sefton Delmer was the reference. And it was his take on some draconian legislation from pre-WW2 Germany that migrated to the post-WW2 constitution – and probably showing up now in the anti-AFD moves etc. These are in Chapters 21 and 22 of “Black Boomerang”. There are “dreams of empire” in “New German Menace” in “Trail Sinister” which still get mention too.
I am scanning them – “New German Menace” 4 mb, Chapter 21 about 15 mb, Chapter 22 about 35 mb so potentially emailable.
I’d encourage you to read the books for his take on Germany and Europe of the time from his perspective as a news correspondent fluent in German and with connections.
Re “another ian” – way back in BC I was “Ian” on a blog and another one appeared. The biggest roll call I’ve been in was four at a party once, so chance has it that there might be another that adds to your blog.
And –
https://joannenova.com.au/2025/03/wednesday-99/#comment-2839170
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I think we have three Ians. before you returned. So I’m somewhat worried about the Ian proliferation. That’s all. (Even if it’s one of my favorite names.)
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Wow, the guy you quoted at the beginning blog is an interesting rabbit hole. It makes me intensely curious about the differences between male autists and female autists. If the social sciences ever stop being Marxist garbage, I hope someone looks into it.
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There’s hope, most doctors now admit that girls can be ADHD now.
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FYI my grand daughter was diagnosed as ADHD when she was 5ish back in 2012ish. This was in Maryland. And she is still recognized as dis-abled here in Florida even though she has pretty much overcome most of those diagnosed problems. So it’s been a recognized issue by some states for a while now.
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It’s not so much a matter of states, as individual doctors– it can take a really long time for stuff to age out of the system, and continuing education doesn’t seem to do a blessed thing for it.
I’ve heard of folks getting the “autism is caused by the mother not being warm enough” thing even in recent years, and that aged out before I was born!
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I know a doctor who told me there’s no such thing as ADHD. To be fair to her, she was probably reacting to how it’s WAY overdiagnosed, especially in boys who are fidgeting and not paying attention in school (usually because school patterns are aimed at “sit down and be quiet” learners, which include far more girls than boys on average). But to jump from there to “ADHD isn’t real” shows that she didn’t do enough research before drawing her conclusion. I don’t know how many other people have jumped to the same “ADHD isn’t real” conclusion from seeing it way overdiagnosed; I see that a lot in Instapundit comments whenever the subject of ADHD comes up, but I wasn’t expecting to hear that from a doctor. (And this particular doctor is usually good about not drawing conclusions until she’s seen studies; she’s said to me before that you need about seven studies on something before you usually have enough good data to be safe drawing conclusions, because often some of those studies will have quality issues of one kind or another).
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Funny thing is that I have the specimens you’re looking for, right now, living in my house: autistic teens, one per sex, own offspring. Alike enough to be clearly siblings and different enough to be taken for separate species sometimes. And the autism comes through a bit differently in each.
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Off topic.
I will not be posting Thursday – Monday, March 31. We are taking off. Getting out of town. While I will have my phone, replying, if coverage is available, is usually a problem.
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Safe travels!
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Have a great time! And don’t get caught.
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Be careful. Hugs.
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I guess he wasn’t much of a gardener or DIYer. Like him I never paid attention to sports. But buying gardening supplies, it becomes very obvious that a lady will need a man, and it can basically be any man, the average physical strength is so different, to lift the 100 lb bags. DIY as long as it’s coed also makes it very obvious. In fact it annoys me that power tools are designed around male gripping strength. Pickel jars anyone.
As a teenager I did have the difference explicitly spelled out to me in a self-defense class in martial arts. Which summarized to try to kill your opponent on the first strike if you fail it will still hurt a lot, run away and scream for help.
I also had a friend who wanted to arm wrestle me constantly after we crossed the puberty line, which I found extremely annoying, I ended up having to tell him explicitly that I knew he was always going to win, which made the game boring, so could we play magic again where I at least had a chance of winning.
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