Gender Question/Poll

[Nachtrafe]

Originally posted by IAmThumper: I really dislike the negative langauge: women lack, weak etc. I'm not saying women are weak. I'm not saying women lack. I'm saying men are stronger and possess certain genes more suited to build bigger stronger muscles. Saying men are strong is not the same as saying women are weak. It's not the same thing. I use positive terms to describe men and it gets turned around and is used in the negative implying I'm being negative towards women which is simply not true. The use of langauge here is just another example of how society has been brain-washed into thinking anything pro-men is anti-women.

[img]graemlins/thumbsup.gif[/img] Just wanted to comment on this one point. Excellently put IAT!

[Nachtrafe]

Originally posted by Luvian: By the way, back in the medieval time, people were a lot shorter, we only became as tall as we are today recently, so reach could not have been a huge factor back then.

Actually, this is a common misconception. People were NOT shorter in the Middle Ages. Take a look at the next 1000 suits of period plate mail, or weapons, or paintings, or clothing, and you will find that people 500 years ago were roughly the same height as people now. Yes, the average peasant was smaller than the average city dweller of today, but that was a factor of nutrition and health, not something intrinsic.

Anyway...you're right. This part is WAY off topic, so I'll shut up about it. [img]smile.gif[/img]

LOL@Thoran's comment about being 'realistic with humans' in a fantasy game. I have to go with Luvian on this one. If you're going to 'believe' in magic, dieties, elves, and orcs, and not believe in brawny, axe weilding amazons...well, that is rather amusing. But, since this is *FANTASY*, and has nothing to do with reality, then why not have women with 1or more) strength. Just dont think that it's the same as real life. [img]smile.gif[/img]

[Attalus]

Henry VIII was over 6' tall, as were several of the Danish and Saxon kings.

[Nachtrafe]

Originally posted by Azimaith: Er, am I hijacking this topic or something? I'm more comfortable playing men because I get less weirdos asking me to cyber. Its true and its rather disturbing as well. I've played females in arcanum nwn, icewind dale (in fact they my party had half half, 3 females, a front line fighter, a cleric and a sorceress, and three males, a paladin, a rogue, and a wizard.) baldurs gate series, erm I stay away from playing women on MMORPG's now because of the afformentioned freaks who ask you if you want to cyber out of no where, I want to give them a telekinetic kick in the balls. Personally I don't think they should be treated as sex objects but thats what happens when 600 hormonely charged teenage boys raised on eminem and snoop dog run around reffering to any female as a ho or My bitch. Sad state of affairs, stupid pop culture.

[img]graemlins/1drinkspit.gif[/img] Dammit! Now I have to explain to the nice library people why there's black cherry soda all over their nice monitor! [img]graemlins/laugh2.gif[/img] [img]graemlins/biglaugh.gif[/img] HAHAHAHAHA!!! Too funny Azimaith! [img]smile.gif[/img] I SOOOOOOOOOOO know what you mean re: the cybering thing. I got to deal with it on PBeM games, and chat boards. It was even worse when I used the nick Raven. You would not believe some of the messed up, perverted crap I used to get sent!

[Nachtrafe]

Originally posted by Attalus: Henry VIII was over 6' tall, as were several of the Danish and Saxon kings.

Yep. Gustavus Adolphus, King of Sweden during the Thirty Years War was about 6'6" and built like a bull. Of course, once again, you're talking about people with good food/health all their lives. [img]smile.gif[/img]

[Gabrielles blades]

id just like to point out that the language you did use is by its nature saying women are weak.
the word stronger, it means x is more strong than y, which in the context used means you are putting down women.
If you wanted (which i dont think you do) to say entirely positive things about men, you could say things like men are strong; as this doesnt by its nature say they are better than another.

As for the genetics arguement, i dont believe its very proveable considering how little we know about genetics. For example, someone mentioned that supposedly men are better with spatial orientation type problems, well a psychological course i took a few years back mentioned that girls who played the same games as boys did became as good as said boys at that orientation. So it is fairly difficult to determine just what is genetic and what is environmental in my opinion.

As for the whos better at super body building; youll probably note that the men are in an entirely different weight class, you wouldnt expect a man who weighs 180 lbs to be able to do the same things that a man who wieghs 300 lbs to be able to do the same things now would you? so why expect a woman to be able to? If you were going to run an experiment to determine whom has the most potential, a man or a woman when it comes to body building you would first have to set certain rules. For example, before they begin the man and woman must weigh the same, have same height/width, have the same body fat percent, have the same mentality, do the same exercises the same amounts of time etc etc. Now it would be more difficult to do such an experiment the earlier in the childs life you start it. it would be best probably to choose people who are past the growing phase so that you wouldnt have to redo the experiment because of differences in height/width etc.

As for being hit on...yes ive been hit on when ive been roleplaying as a woman, it doesnt happen very often. usualy its flirting, being hit on is rare. When it does happen i generally put them in their place.

[Thoran]

Originally posted by Gabrielles blades: id just like to point out that the language you did use is by its nature saying women are weak. the word stronger, it means x is more strong than y, which in the context used means you are putting down women. If you wanted (which i dont think you do) to say entirely positive things about men, you could say things like men are strong; as this doesnt by its nature say they are better than another. As for the genetics arguement, i dont believe its very proveable considering how little we know about genetics. For example, someone mentioned that supposedly men are better with spatial orientation type problems, well a psychological course i took a few years back mentioned that girls who played the same games as boys did became as good as said boys at that orientation. So it is fairly difficult to determine just what is genetic and what is environmental in my opinion. As for the whos better at super body building; youll probably note that the men are in an entirely different weight class, you wouldnt expect a man who weighs 180 lbs to be able to do the same things that a man who wieghs 300 lbs to be able to do the same things now would you? so why expect a woman to be able to? If you were going to run an experiment to determine whom has the most potential, a man or a woman when it comes to body building you would first have to set certain rules. For example, before they begin the man and woman must weigh the same, have same height/width, have the same body fat percent, have the same mentality, do the same exercises the same amounts of time etc etc. Now it would be more difficult to do such an experiment the earlier in the childs life you start it. it would be best probably to choose people who are past the growing phase so that you wouldnt have to redo the experiment because of differences in height/width etc. As for being hit on...yes ive been hit on when ive been roleplaying as a woman, it doesnt happen very often. usualy its flirting, being hit on is rare. When it does happen i generally put them in their place.

Here's the conundrum... it's very difficult to make an argument without doing direct comparisons. My position is that I choose (for whatever strange reason) male characters for human fighters. This may be strange in a fantasy game but it's my choice. Now I'm told this is sexist because that's the same as saying women can't be fighters. So now the game is afoot. [img]smile.gif[/img]

Without comparing the relative physical characteristics of males and females It's impossible to argue anything, and comparisons inevitably come up with things one or the other is better at. I was going to drop the subject altoghter because I don't want to be negative towards the accomplishmenst of women, such as the girl who could snatch 300lbs (an impressive feat)... I would place her around 14 str (given that 18 is the maximum attainable strength for a human), this is an amazing high value (I'd place the average modern human under 10). It's no diminishment of her accomplishment to say there are guys out there who can snatch close to 500lbs, but I suppose the very nature of comparison means it's inevitably interpreted that way.

I agree genetics is a tricky business, and causal relationships are difficult to quantify when the effect is non-obvious (like spatial imaging and multitasking). BUT, physical performance is fairly easy to quantify and has been measured ad-nauseum... I don't beleive it's illogical to draw conclusions when the body of evidence is huge.

Finally, if you control for height and mass, you remove the genetic advantage that men have in growth... which could be useful or not, depending on what you're measuring. If you're looking strictly at muscle growth it could be valuable, but I believe such work has been done and is the basis behind the concept that men gain mass faster and have a higher peak potential.

Anyway... this is good stuff and I'd like to add more, but sadly I've got to run... hopefully the thread will still be running tuesday when I get back!

[Talthyr Malkaviel]

Originally posted by Gabrielles blades: id just like to point out that the language you did use is by its nature saying women are weak.

No, you're actually quite wrong.

An example, I could use a different comparative to "stronger" let us say "rarer."

Platinum is rarer than Gold. Just because I am saying Platinum is more rare than gold, this is certainly not inherently saying Gold is not rare.
Nor is it saying that platinum is rare- we know it is, but all I am trying to stress here is that a comparative word with an "-er" suffix like stronger, faster, fitter in no way labels either thing "x" or "y" as strong, weak, fast slow, fit unfit, merely more so than another.

That is the whole point of comparatives, to make a comparison.

All in all, IAmThumper is quite right.

[ 08-28-2003, 11:19 AM: Message edited by: Talthyr Malkaviel ]

[Bozos of Bones]

Haven't logged on a few days so I'm a little out of flux. I tried to get back in touch by reading the last two pages I missed but.... STOP WRITING BLOODY ESSAYS IN YOUR POSTS!!!!!!!!!
That would be all.

[IAmThumper]

Oh my.... Oh my goodness!!! I thought I was writing long posts.

There has been so much said I can't keep who said what straight anymore. LOL. I'll try to be concise. LOL

First I applaud anyone who fights silly illogical stereotypes. I don't think people try to fight stereotypes towards men enough though.

I don't know who wrote this (Can't keep it straight, heck I can't even find it) "that most abuse is done by men towards women". The fact is that violence in the home is done about equally by both men and women and in reality it's actually slightly more women doing the abusing then men. Most deaths are actually women killing men and family members. 54% of lesbian couples report having been abused by their (lesbian) partners and only 14% of gays report the same. People only hear about violence against women and violence against men is often unreported so it's easy to understand why you would think so.

I think there is a stupid stereotype that men are abusers which it only starting to be confronted.

I do get what Luvian is saying. You aren't fighting the fact that the female limit of physical strength is less then the male limit but that people set the limit too low for women. I don't believe most people do this (or at least it's a bit exagerated) and I'll try to explain...

Luvian, you said "It's not my fault if most people underestimate women and overestimate men." Oh man I can't tell you how much this sounds like feminist brain-washing to me! Sure there are truly sexist dinosaurs out there but I think people get this opinion mainly from feminist groups that propagate it for their own gain. As long as this is "true" then feminist groups have an excuse to help women and knock down men so they propagate the idea. The same kind of thing is happening with the propagation of men as abusers (imo).

The simply fact is as long as these opinions exist (unchallenged) men and women will never be equal.

I don't see any evidence that anyone is underestimating women here only being realistic and looking at the facts and their observations. I hope you are not continuing this argument simply for this belief.

That girl is amazing. I would actually go so far as saying she has 17 or 18 strength (If anyone wanted to they could look it up in the rules!). But I think that in the real world women wouldn't get into the 1100) range which the AD&D game restricts to the truly exceptional.

Blades. I think Thoran did a good job of defending my/our position.

Thoran. Don't goooo.
Ooooh I feel soooo exposed. (looks for a place to hide)

ARG!! It turned into an essay!!!