In a sense, this is kind of like explaining why squirrels run from dogs or why tall people make better basketball players, but our society has gotten so disconnected from common sense that we now have to take Orwell’s advice:
I’ve been doing martial arts on and off for decades and yes, there is a huge difference between how men and women perform. In a fight between a man and a woman, a man’s physical advantages are so great that the woman needs to be orders of magnitude more skilled to have even a small chance to be competitive.
Link to the video above is here (Sorry - a weird Substack issue forced me to do it this way)
As a side note, that’s one of the reasons I genuinely despise those one-off self-defense courses for women. Some instructor shows up, teaches a woman a handful of complicated maneuvers almost no one would use in a real fight, has her training partner move exactly the right way to make them work, and leaves her with the false idea that she can defend herself from a male attacker. This sort of laughably unrealistic, “You go-girl!” nonsense is dangerous to teach to women.
If you’re a woman and you want to defend yourself from a man in a fight, there is a way to do it effectively and it’s not a self-defense course.
Getting back to the topic at hand, a biological man, by virtue of being a biological man, has enormous physical advantages over a woman in most athletic endeavors. That’s why we have women’s sports and not just “sports.” If we just had “sports,” there would be few women playing them at any level and almost none at the highest levels. If you find this confusing for some reason, go watch some games at your local high school and try to genuinely evaluate the speed, power, and athleticism of boy’s and girl’s teams. If you’re not blind, the difference will become quickly and obviously apparent.
This is why, for example, a few years back, an under-15 boys squad from Dallas beat the women’s national team in soccer. It’s also why British rapper Zuby was able to do this:
Admittedly, Zuby is a very strong guy. Percentage-wise, there are few men that can deadlift 525 pounds. However, it’s worth noting that there are NO women in Britain who can deadlift 525 pounds and the men’s deadlifting record is 1105 pounds. In other words, there are levels to the game and physically, men simply have a lot more levels to work with than women. Incidentally, this isn’t a one-time thing.
For example, look at these numbers from the winners of the 2018 CrossFit Games. Both the men and women did the same work-outs, so we are able to directly compare the best-of-the-best of each gender in the event:
The results of the overall winner of the CrossFit total on the men’s side for Royce Dunne are below:
BACK SQUAT – 470 lbs.
STRICT PRESS – 220 lbs.
DEADLIFT – 565 lbs.
OVERALL TOTAL – 1255 lbs.
The results of the overall winner of the CrossFit total on the women’s side for Tia-Clair Toomey are below:
BACK SQUAT – 330 lbs.
STRICT PRESS – 130 lbs.
DEADLIFT – 415 lbs.
OVERALL TOTAL – 875 lbs.
Toomey’s BACK SQUAT of 330 lbs. was exactly 70% of Dunne’s 470.
Toomey’s STRICT PRESS of 130 lbs. was exactly 59% of Dunne’s 220.
Toomey’s DEADLIFT of 415 lbs. was exactly 73% of Dunne’s 565.
Toomey’s OVERALL TOTAL of 875 lbs. was exactly 70% of Dunne’s 1255.
This is not a shock. Male athletes tend to carry more muscle and less fat than female athletes. So, even if they’re the same weight, there’s often a big difference in how it’s distributed. Men tend to have longer and larger bones and stronger ligaments. They also have a higher VO2max. There are some very limited areas, like balance and ultra-endurance, where women are more comparable to male athletes, but unless you are talking about gymnastics or 100-mile runs, those advantages aren’t going to be very helpful.
Given all of this, how could it possibly make sense to allow biological men to compete against women? Of course, it doesn’t. However, the laughable claim that has been made is that all these advantages go away if biological males have their level of testosterone suppressed down to the highest levels of female athletes for at least 6 months.
In other words, the idea here is that if you took someone like Lebron James or Bob Sapp and suppressed their testosterone for 6 months, they’d have no physical advantages over female players in their sports:
Who could possibly believe that? Granted, testosterone is an important hormone for men, but it’s nowhere close to the end-all and be-all when it comes to athletic performance. Just consider this:
One study of professional male triathletes found no relationship between testosterone levels and performance. Another, looking at professional cyclists, found the same lack of correlation. Yet another, comparing cyclists, weightlifters, and controls to each other on a cycling test, found a negative correlation between testosterone levels and performance. A study of teenage weightlifters found no relationship between boys’ testosterone levels and their performance, and a negative correlation among the girls—meaning they performed better when their testosterone was lower.
... One analysis found that 25 percent of elite male athletes have testosterone levels below what the International Association of Athletics Federations consider the lower limit for men. What’s more, it wasn’t the athletes in less strength- or speed-oriented sports. Some of the events with the most men below the limit were powerlifting, rowing, track and field, ice hockey, and rowing. Basketball players and alpine skiers had some of the highest levels. That all seems to imply, at least to some researchers, that high testosterone isn’t a universal performance booster.
If you were trying to build the perfect stud athlete and you had to choose between high or low testosterone, you would definitely choose “high,” but it clearly isn’t going to be the decisive factor in his success. So, forcing a biological man to lower his testosterone levels to compete with women is a non-sequitur. It simply isn’t the end-all and be-all of athletic performance.
Just consider the reverse. Does anyone believe that giving a WNBA player or female UFC fighter massive doses of testosterone would allow them to effectively compete with men? Of course, not. That’s idiotic, but we treat the reverse, which is equally as silly as if it’s a real thing.
Now, we could have a big debate about what causes people to be trans, whether our society should be encouraging it and whether it’s ethical for doctors and psychologists to go along with it, but if we’re talking about whether biological men should be able to compete against women in sports, there really shouldn’t be any debate at all. The answer is obviously, indisputably “no.”
Take “famous” trans athletes like Laurel Hubbard or Lia Thomas:
What in the world is wrong with saying, “You want to change your name and say that you’re female now? Fine. Do you love weightlifting and swimming? Terrific. Keep doing it. However, you can’t compete against biological women because it’s just not fair.” That seems like simple, common sense.
Are we unwilling to do that because it would shatter the woke illusion that your gender is and always has been whatever you decide that it is today? Everyone knows that’s a lie and just because a bunch of angry weirdos with personal pronouns are going to stomp their feet and gnash their teeth if we admit the truth isn’t a reason to go along with it.
It’s fundamentally unfair to women to have them lose scholarships, team spots, and even medals in women’s sports because they have to compete against biological men. This is so obviously and egregiously wrong, that we should draw a line in the sand over it. Let liberals fight to screw over women if they can even figure out what they are, but the rest of us should stand tall for female athletes.
Thank you for this article! It’s not just Sports women are also being pushed out of, we are also pushed out of roles generally reserved for women, scholarly opportunities, bathroom/locker rooms, rape shelters and even awards like ‘women of the year’ awards which are now frequently going to biological men.
We are all free to present as we wish but to suggest that changing your name, pronouns, or even taking hormones or surgery changes the molecular structure of your body is delusional.
Women historically have been a marginalized group and we are now sadly being furthermore marginalized by trans rights activists! We are being erased in law and in society. How can women have rights and protections when we can’t even be named or defined! We all know what women (and men) are!
Enough is enough! Time for the adults to get back in charge!
RE the video of the woman in the self-defense class beating up two men: If she displayed some great martial arts skill, maybe I would have believed it was real. But she is just flailing wildly. The two men make no effort to hit her or knock her down or ... anything. They were obviously told to just walk up to her and let her hit them and after a minute or two to fall down. Do you see anyone rushing up to check if they badly hurt? No. I'm sure when the act was over they just got up and walked away. If I saw this as a fight scene in a movie I'd be laughing at the lame choreography.
And before some woman says, "I could beat YOU up" ... Are there women in the world who could beat me up? Probably. I'm an overweight old man with health problems. But against even an average healthy young man, very few women would have much chance in a fight.