Men run much faster than women — to the point that being in the top five percent of young women would put you just outside the bottom five percent of young men — and men are much stronger than women, too.
Saying this is sexist, of course, and a sign that you shouldn’t be allowed to write female characters:
If you’ve ever had an issue with some of the women’s characters on AMC’s The Walking Dead — the root of the problem might be in the source material. Robert Kirkman, the creator of the comics, definitely has some… issues… with women.
Simon Abrams from the Village Voice reports Kirkman told him in an interview for The Comics Journal four years ago:
I don’t mean to sound sexist, but as far as women have come over the last 40 years, you don’t really see a lot of women hunters. They’re still in the minority in the military, and there’s not a lot of female construction workers. I hope that’s not taken the wrong way. I think women are as smart, resourceful, and capable in most things as any man could be … but they are generally physically weaker. That’s science.
First up, Kirkman, you totally do mean to sound sexist, so shut it with the crappy, disingenuous concern.
Since when do you need massive amounts of strength to hunt, even as they do on The Walking Dead? The average fit person would be good to go — especially if they’d all been living under the same circumstances for so long. Plus, if we want to speak “in general”, then women have more stamina than men — even swole bro trainers agree — and that’s probably more crucial than being ripped when it comes to hunting.
By the way, women do not have more stamina than men:
The average VO2max is about 33 milliliters of oxygen per kilogram of body mass per minute for sedentary young women and around 42 ml/kg/min for sedentary young men (Bouchard et al., Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise 30: 252-8, 1998). Elite female distance runners can sometimes reach VO2max readings of 70+ ml/kg/min (Pate et al., International Journal of Sports Medicine 8 (Suppl.): 91-5, 1987), whereas elite men can attain values in the 80s (Pollock, Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 301: 310-22, 1977).
I note that Jezebel doesn’t even attempt to refute Abrams. His claim is “You don’t really see a lot of women hunters.” Their claim is average fitness and above average stamina is sufficient for hunting. So what? You still don’t see many female hunters.
I find it interesting that it is now the default to assume that women would perform similarly to men in high-stress physical environments, to the point where fictional depictions of women are considered not merely sexist but unrealistic if those women characters are not terminators with tits.
(And it’s not just the strength of course, but the attitude that matters.)
In the course of writing my novel I’ve gotten to know some other authors, and read their books. Two in particular are relevant to this discussion. They’re both self-published, with one and two books respectively. Both military fiction set in the not-too-distant future. These guys aren’t beholden to vast lefty publishers. They can write what they want.
All three books are enjoyable, well-written, and have intelligent and clever extrapolations of current technology. All also have gender-integrated military arms in their stories. And I really can’t get around that. It constantly jars me out of the story because I am aware of the facts in the last two posts here, and my knowledge of how women and men act when they’re in close proximity, well, it leads me to think that it wouldn’t be good for morale overall.
I got into a discussion with a friend over the Bechdel test. The only way a lot of modern SF writers would ever pass this would be to have female marines discussing ordnance, which really makes them functionally male characters and kind of defeats the point.
Buckethead,
Pervasive authorial affirmative action and distortion of the histograms of reality is one of the biggest reasons, in my opinion, that most modern fiction sucks. What is particularly frustrating is seeing authors who know better doing it anyway. And, my God, doing it anyway when you’re self-published?
Laura Beck is a misogynist.
1. She thinks being physically weaker makes you an inferior human being.
2. She is aware women are physically weaker, because she isn’t a drooling idiot. (This belief may be subconscious.)
3. She thinks women are inferior human beings.
QED.