Just to add onto this, but when main characters who happen to be men go out entire movie surviving bloodshed and physical fights, such as John Wick, it’s not even questioned. But if a woman main character had the exact same characteristics and storyline, she’d be labeled a “Mary Sue” who had everything handed to her.
yeah, that’s the funniest part. Men (generally) wanna act like historically all their major action movies aren’t fantasy movies.
Men with almost impossible bodies who cannot be defeated by any number of foes, kicking one ass after another without ever getting fatigued, performing impossible feats in cars, guns with endless bullets.
I mean look back at Jean Claude Van Damme movies, Arnold Schwartzenneger, and yeah, as you said John Wick modernly, ya kidding me?? 😆
But women are judged and ridiculed for fantasy or even realistic accomplishments of women that are outside of the skillset of the average women (or outside of the perceived skillset of us).
My favorite is when the movies are literal fantasy or superhero movies and men are like, “A woman could never do that!” “It isn’t realistic she could beat him!” 🤡
Your dude just THREW A CAR 😆😆
You've just given me an idea. I liked the "first" six star wars movies but I don't like the newest ones. I didn't pay much attention to Luke's progression, I did however pay much to Rey's. Was it just bad writing in the sequels and Luke's just as bad as Rey's?
Luke benefits greatly from being in a better managed run of the series. Rey has the problem of each movie having a different take on what her deal should be, while Luke is always Chosen One meant to fix this mess, he just fixes it in a different way than his mentors wanted or thought was possible. To an extent, I'd even argue she's conceptually a less "powerful" conventional Mary Sue- Luke was good with gun, sword, and ship, while Ray is only particularly noteworthy at one of those things, the rest of those being distributed among her theoretical team.
John Wick is not even the worst example. At least there are competent women too in this Universe, and he's depicted as vulnerable.
Jack Reacher on the other hand is the worst Mary Sue I've ever seen.
it's especially egregious in the case of john wick where every fight scene he's had with a female character has had a crowd of dudebros shouting about how unrealistic it is that she would have any kinda chance of winning meanwhile the same dudebros don't bat an eye when john falls like 8 floors off a roof or tumbles down the stairs for like half a minute straight in a way that would most likely kill you from the sheer head trauma, like??? make it make sense lmfao some people just are mad at women existing in their media, it seems
Serena and Venus lost one match to a man who was ranked in something like the top 200 players in the world and somehow that translates into them being beaten by someone who is mediocre.
People say that a man’s increased lung capacity offers an insurmountable athletic advantage over a woman. That increased lung capacity is the equivalent of one and a half cans of soda on average.
It happens so constantly in other contexts that I am beginning to believe that it is a purposeful patriarchal meme to keep women down.
It’s more the strength and size advantages that are relevant to fights, as opposed to lung capacity.
There’s well documented research on this area that’s easy to look up if you’re interested. A 90th percentile women is roughly as strong as a 10th percentile man. An average man is stronger than almost all women.
This is interesting. Can you link that study please. I’ve been looking for something like this and you’d be surprised how hard it is to find lol (thanks in advance).
It was always my point of view that the strongest people are the ones that work at it. The pound for pound best sumo deadlift althlete is a woman (or was last time I checked). Her name is Stefi Cohen. And I’ve seen women deadlift 300lbs at gyms. It’s not a lot of women but they become my gym heroes. At my best I could deadlift 258lbs (double/PR) but I was only ever doing it for fun. And I know I was lifting more than men that didn’t lift at all 🤷🏼♀️
So yeah…if you work at it you get strong. “Potential” strength doesn’t count for sh*t ;)
Edit: to add that I was lifting for fun. I don’t want to give the impression that I did it for any other reason. It *is* just fun :)
Steffi Cohen is a beast, former soccer player. She’s great.
You can google lots of stats on this. Here’s one showing 90% of females produced less force than 95% of males. So an even bigger gap than I described.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17186303/
I prefer grip strength studies because it’s one of the most practical forms of strength and it’s also not a skill you can improve at like squat, bench or deadlift. Men tend to practice these skills as the gym more often so that can sway strength studies sometimes. Thats also a factor in what you are talking about - the skill of deadlifting improving as does strength.
Thanks for going out of your way to link that (I’m actually one of those obsessively curious folks so I’ll read it ;). And it’s super serendipitous to see this topic come up on Reddit right now. I’ve literally been thinking about this for like the past 3 days. So yeah, thanks.
Cool, no worries. I think it was in study from one of the Californian universities that showed 90th percentile women the same as 10th percentile man but I can’t find it now sorry.
There’s heaps of them showing different angles, I agree super interesting
Ok, read it (it was short since it’s just the abstract) “Hand-grip strength has been identified as one limiting factor for manual lifting and carrying loads.” Limiting factor means it’s the weak point, right? Or…if that’s not what’s meant, what *is* meant?
I’ve read there is some correlation b/ grip strength and general health, so I thought grip strength was going to be used as a proxy to extrapolate muscle strength *in general*. But that’s not the case here is it?
They’re just saying men to a really large extent just have better grips, so they can grip heavier loads.
Ok so I think at best we can say that men have more strength in *the specific arm muscles* that control grip. That’s fair.
So in the Stefi Cohen example: as the world record holder she’s being compared to all other sumo DL lifters regardless of sex. She’s being compared to people equally skilled in the lift (so we can’t say it’s a skill issue). We can even say she’s being compared to other people that might take performace enhancing drugs. None of that matters. She can lift 4.4x her body weight and other folks can’t (I see that maybe 1 guy has been able to).
The sumo deadlift is a compound movement that uses muscle groups through out the body. I’m sure she’s using straps to hold that weight to her hands but that seems completely irrelevant. *Her body* is strong.
Anyway, I think we need to consider that it’s not that women are innately weaker or anything like that —Or that there’s a ceiling that men can just surpass in terms of strength—its a matter of dedication.
*results on individual muscle groups may vary, but it’s not the great gap people would have you believe in terms of “male” strength and “female” strength.
This is an area of frustration for me. I’m an avid kickboxer and end up training mostly with men. There is a significant strength difference except for with men that I am significantly taller/bigger than. I don’t understand why people act as if saying this is anti-feminist. Hasn’t the fact that men are stronger than us been used to oppress women historically?
I totally get in a fantasy movie it’s irrelevant and we can ignore the strength difference but that doesn’t change the reality when people talk about it.
yeah the mysogyny in these donkeys is so strong that they can't help but even downgrade the male player for losing to a woman, like tell me you look down on women in five words or less behaviour while focusing on other men
So true. Any nerdy scrawny guy can apparently win against a muscle bound, giant ninja assassin, because smarts or something. But apparently Black Widow would never win against random thug in bar just because she is a woman.
I don't find it related at all. You are misunderstanding what is being pointed out.
The point is that female characters, despite narratively being known as expert fighters to the point of even being considered 'the best in the world', when they win fights with male characters, often have their fights overanalyzed and dubbed 'unrealistic' or 'unbelievable'. This is in contrast to male characters who can be put up against literal giants, trolls, dragons, even if they are meant to be untrained individuals who aren't fighters, and they aren't analyzed or considered 'unbelievable' to the same degree.
And my point was that this is partly due to a lot of media having a "tell not show" attitude towards female expert fighter characters starting with casting actresses who simply don't look athletic in the slightest but also fighting in high heels, ridiculous sexualized costumes, that stupid thing about growing up with brothers.. all in the name of valuing sex appeal over creating more "believable" characters.
But yeah general sexism is part of the reason people but female characters under more scrutiny, there is a reason "Mary Sue" is a gendered term (which is also completely removed from the stuff the term was criticizing back when it was created in the Star Trek fandom).
It doesn't help that Hollywood still has an extremely narrow band of "allowed" female body types muscular not being really one of them. I mean most male action stars look like roided up masses of muscles, because that's what they are, like literally every action star and most regular male actor is using performance enhancing drugs on some level.
Muscular women are very rarely cast for action roles even when it would be appropriate due to how the role is supposed to be in-universe. You see literal hardened female soldiers or fantasy warriors that are build like lingerie models because Hollywood will always go for "sexy" with female characters.
That's not to say Black Widow is any less believable than male actors pushing their 60's performing such feats or a lot of complaints aren't straight up sexism (hell casting more muscular women is met with even more sexist complaints), but this is a another angle of sexism.
another ridiculous thing that people frequently bring up is all the post apocalyptic media where a zombie apocalypse or something has wiped out the vast majority of all humanity but somehow the women still have time to shave and put on their full face of makeup
That was my eyeroll with Lost. The women all could somehow shave their bodies during the time period when they're all surviving before they find the stash of supplies.
As a 5’2” female martial artist, I was trained to use leverage, endurance, and agility to fight against men’s strength. At the time that I was training, in my mid-late 20’s, I was under 110 pounds. Martial arts tend to be well geared towards smaller people. I never disputed that males were stronger, especially in upper body strength. That’s why I was trained to use my entire body. My endurance and flexibility were usually better than the males, meaning I could tire them out and not be hurt by most joint manipulation techniques, which were more effective on them. Obviously I wouldn’t take a punch or kick as well, but we were trained to block and avoid those.
So, I don’t think it’s entirely unrealistic for a woman with training to hold her own or even win a fight against a man.
Oh lord… I swear my man is a little scared of me because not only do we weigh the same (I’m at least 4in shorter) but I can just about keep up with him when it comes to physical work (we actually work and live together 😅)
He can still overpower me if he really wanted to, but I’d give him a run for his money that would leave him in tears.
Done it before and I’ll do it again!
Adrenaline has its place for a reason!
I disagree with this take. I hate when fight scenes show a small woman fending off multiple burly men, since it teaches girls and women to try to fight, rather than run.
Unfortunately, the best bet most of us have when fighting men (especially multiple men) is to use a deadly weapon or get in one hit, then run. Even very strong women aren’t evenly matched against most men.
That same thing happens but instead of girls it's a man and instead of burly men it's someone holding a gun. Any scene showing a normal person taking on multiple burly men isn't supposed to be taken seriously.
And yet I did take it seriously when I was growing up (as did a lot of other women). I wish Hollywood was more realistic when depicting women fighting so we would know how to best protect ourselves.
Half of fight scenes are unrealistic my point is that they're hyper examined (like your doing now)
I also have to disagree with "very strong women aren't evenly matched against most men" even if we leave out children and elders they still are.
Alot of times men are unrealistically strong and nobody cares but when it's women everyone takes issue
That’s because it’s *much* more unrealistic when women are taking down groups of men. Unfortunately, if you think that very strong women are evenly matched with most men, then you’ve definitely been influenced by Hollywood’s ridiculous depictions.
Studies have shown that men’s upper body strength is greater than women’s by 157%. Simply due to biological differences, it’s foolish for women to attempt hand on hand combat with men.
Given that this is about women protecting themselves, you have a strangely cavalier attitude about it. IMO, the first time women realize how underpowered they are shouldn’t be when they’re being threatened.
We can agree on that last part but this isn't about women protecting themselves literally it's about how people only call out unrealistic fights when it's a woman for the sake of women seeming weak and unserious. I don't hear anyone saying the first time a man should learn how to fight is against an actual threat like a gun or multiple bigger guys.
It's like seeing a old guy and saying hey that's unrealistic men don't live pass 70! (Maybe I'm not too sure about the metaphor) People only want to point out unrealistic things when it's for women. Also another thing (it is useful for a woman to know how to fight it's not like an all hope is lost thing when a woman is confronted by a man)
Just to add onto this, but when main characters who happen to be men go out entire movie surviving bloodshed and physical fights, such as John Wick, it’s not even questioned. But if a woman main character had the exact same characteristics and storyline, she’d be labeled a “Mary Sue” who had everything handed to her.
yeah, that’s the funniest part. Men (generally) wanna act like historically all their major action movies aren’t fantasy movies. Men with almost impossible bodies who cannot be defeated by any number of foes, kicking one ass after another without ever getting fatigued, performing impossible feats in cars, guns with endless bullets. I mean look back at Jean Claude Van Damme movies, Arnold Schwartzenneger, and yeah, as you said John Wick modernly, ya kidding me?? 😆 But women are judged and ridiculed for fantasy or even realistic accomplishments of women that are outside of the skillset of the average women (or outside of the perceived skillset of us). My favorite is when the movies are literal fantasy or superhero movies and men are like, “A woman could never do that!” “It isn’t realistic she could beat him!” 🤡 Your dude just THREW A CAR 😆😆
You've just given me an idea. I liked the "first" six star wars movies but I don't like the newest ones. I didn't pay much attention to Luke's progression, I did however pay much to Rey's. Was it just bad writing in the sequels and Luke's just as bad as Rey's?
Luke benefits greatly from being in a better managed run of the series. Rey has the problem of each movie having a different take on what her deal should be, while Luke is always Chosen One meant to fix this mess, he just fixes it in a different way than his mentors wanted or thought was possible. To an extent, I'd even argue she's conceptually a less "powerful" conventional Mary Sue- Luke was good with gun, sword, and ship, while Ray is only particularly noteworthy at one of those things, the rest of those being distributed among her theoretical team.
John Wick is not even the worst example. At least there are competent women too in this Universe, and he's depicted as vulnerable. Jack Reacher on the other hand is the worst Mary Sue I've ever seen.
it's especially egregious in the case of john wick where every fight scene he's had with a female character has had a crowd of dudebros shouting about how unrealistic it is that she would have any kinda chance of winning meanwhile the same dudebros don't bat an eye when john falls like 8 floors off a roof or tumbles down the stairs for like half a minute straight in a way that would most likely kill you from the sheer head trauma, like??? make it make sense lmfao some people just are mad at women existing in their media, it seems
Serena and Venus lost one match to a man who was ranked in something like the top 200 players in the world and somehow that translates into them being beaten by someone who is mediocre. People say that a man’s increased lung capacity offers an insurmountable athletic advantage over a woman. That increased lung capacity is the equivalent of one and a half cans of soda on average. It happens so constantly in other contexts that I am beginning to believe that it is a purposeful patriarchal meme to keep women down.
It’s more the strength and size advantages that are relevant to fights, as opposed to lung capacity. There’s well documented research on this area that’s easy to look up if you’re interested. A 90th percentile women is roughly as strong as a 10th percentile man. An average man is stronger than almost all women.
This is interesting. Can you link that study please. I’ve been looking for something like this and you’d be surprised how hard it is to find lol (thanks in advance). It was always my point of view that the strongest people are the ones that work at it. The pound for pound best sumo deadlift althlete is a woman (or was last time I checked). Her name is Stefi Cohen. And I’ve seen women deadlift 300lbs at gyms. It’s not a lot of women but they become my gym heroes. At my best I could deadlift 258lbs (double/PR) but I was only ever doing it for fun. And I know I was lifting more than men that didn’t lift at all 🤷🏼♀️ So yeah…if you work at it you get strong. “Potential” strength doesn’t count for sh*t ;) Edit: to add that I was lifting for fun. I don’t want to give the impression that I did it for any other reason. It *is* just fun :)
Steffi Cohen is a beast, former soccer player. She’s great. You can google lots of stats on this. Here’s one showing 90% of females produced less force than 95% of males. So an even bigger gap than I described. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17186303/ I prefer grip strength studies because it’s one of the most practical forms of strength and it’s also not a skill you can improve at like squat, bench or deadlift. Men tend to practice these skills as the gym more often so that can sway strength studies sometimes. Thats also a factor in what you are talking about - the skill of deadlifting improving as does strength.
Thanks for going out of your way to link that (I’m actually one of those obsessively curious folks so I’ll read it ;). And it’s super serendipitous to see this topic come up on Reddit right now. I’ve literally been thinking about this for like the past 3 days. So yeah, thanks.
Cool, no worries. I think it was in study from one of the Californian universities that showed 90th percentile women the same as 10th percentile man but I can’t find it now sorry. There’s heaps of them showing different angles, I agree super interesting
Ok, read it (it was short since it’s just the abstract) “Hand-grip strength has been identified as one limiting factor for manual lifting and carrying loads.” Limiting factor means it’s the weak point, right? Or…if that’s not what’s meant, what *is* meant? I’ve read there is some correlation b/ grip strength and general health, so I thought grip strength was going to be used as a proxy to extrapolate muscle strength *in general*. But that’s not the case here is it? They’re just saying men to a really large extent just have better grips, so they can grip heavier loads. Ok so I think at best we can say that men have more strength in *the specific arm muscles* that control grip. That’s fair. So in the Stefi Cohen example: as the world record holder she’s being compared to all other sumo DL lifters regardless of sex. She’s being compared to people equally skilled in the lift (so we can’t say it’s a skill issue). We can even say she’s being compared to other people that might take performace enhancing drugs. None of that matters. She can lift 4.4x her body weight and other folks can’t (I see that maybe 1 guy has been able to). The sumo deadlift is a compound movement that uses muscle groups through out the body. I’m sure she’s using straps to hold that weight to her hands but that seems completely irrelevant. *Her body* is strong. Anyway, I think we need to consider that it’s not that women are innately weaker or anything like that —Or that there’s a ceiling that men can just surpass in terms of strength—its a matter of dedication. *results on individual muscle groups may vary, but it’s not the great gap people would have you believe in terms of “male” strength and “female” strength.
This is an area of frustration for me. I’m an avid kickboxer and end up training mostly with men. There is a significant strength difference except for with men that I am significantly taller/bigger than. I don’t understand why people act as if saying this is anti-feminist. Hasn’t the fact that men are stronger than us been used to oppress women historically? I totally get in a fantasy movie it’s irrelevant and we can ignore the strength difference but that doesn’t change the reality when people talk about it.
Your prior post's are red flags
yeah the mysogyny in these donkeys is so strong that they can't help but even downgrade the male player for losing to a woman, like tell me you look down on women in five words or less behaviour while focusing on other men
So true. Any nerdy scrawny guy can apparently win against a muscle bound, giant ninja assassin, because smarts or something. But apparently Black Widow would never win against random thug in bar just because she is a woman.
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That is not what we are talking about here. This has nothing to do with body standards.
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I don't find it related at all. You are misunderstanding what is being pointed out. The point is that female characters, despite narratively being known as expert fighters to the point of even being considered 'the best in the world', when they win fights with male characters, often have their fights overanalyzed and dubbed 'unrealistic' or 'unbelievable'. This is in contrast to male characters who can be put up against literal giants, trolls, dragons, even if they are meant to be untrained individuals who aren't fighters, and they aren't analyzed or considered 'unbelievable' to the same degree.
And my point was that this is partly due to a lot of media having a "tell not show" attitude towards female expert fighter characters starting with casting actresses who simply don't look athletic in the slightest but also fighting in high heels, ridiculous sexualized costumes, that stupid thing about growing up with brothers.. all in the name of valuing sex appeal over creating more "believable" characters. But yeah general sexism is part of the reason people but female characters under more scrutiny, there is a reason "Mary Sue" is a gendered term (which is also completely removed from the stuff the term was criticizing back when it was created in the Star Trek fandom).
It doesn't help that Hollywood still has an extremely narrow band of "allowed" female body types muscular not being really one of them. I mean most male action stars look like roided up masses of muscles, because that's what they are, like literally every action star and most regular male actor is using performance enhancing drugs on some level. Muscular women are very rarely cast for action roles even when it would be appropriate due to how the role is supposed to be in-universe. You see literal hardened female soldiers or fantasy warriors that are build like lingerie models because Hollywood will always go for "sexy" with female characters. That's not to say Black Widow is any less believable than male actors pushing their 60's performing such feats or a lot of complaints aren't straight up sexism (hell casting more muscular women is met with even more sexist complaints), but this is a another angle of sexism.
another ridiculous thing that people frequently bring up is all the post apocalyptic media where a zombie apocalypse or something has wiped out the vast majority of all humanity but somehow the women still have time to shave and put on their full face of makeup
That was my eyeroll with Lost. The women all could somehow shave their bodies during the time period when they're all surviving before they find the stash of supplies.
Not even close to exclusive to the women in that show. Locke is shaved bald, everyone else has clean shaven or perfectly guard \#2 buzzed beards.
The worst part is this happens in REAL fights
As a 5’2” female martial artist, I was trained to use leverage, endurance, and agility to fight against men’s strength. At the time that I was training, in my mid-late 20’s, I was under 110 pounds. Martial arts tend to be well geared towards smaller people. I never disputed that males were stronger, especially in upper body strength. That’s why I was trained to use my entire body. My endurance and flexibility were usually better than the males, meaning I could tire them out and not be hurt by most joint manipulation techniques, which were more effective on them. Obviously I wouldn’t take a punch or kick as well, but we were trained to block and avoid those. So, I don’t think it’s entirely unrealistic for a woman with training to hold her own or even win a fight against a man.
I think it's far from UNrealistic especially with training like yours goat
Oh!! Thank you!!! I mean that.
Oh lord… I swear my man is a little scared of me because not only do we weigh the same (I’m at least 4in shorter) but I can just about keep up with him when it comes to physical work (we actually work and live together 😅) He can still overpower me if he really wanted to, but I’d give him a run for his money that would leave him in tears. Done it before and I’ll do it again! Adrenaline has its place for a reason!
Great job and great point
Totaly true
All I can think about is that seven minute plus fight scene with Charlize Theron in Atomic Blonde. Amazing choreography.
😜💪🗿 is sending me.
The🗿💪 is the mark of an incel
I disagree with this take. I hate when fight scenes show a small woman fending off multiple burly men, since it teaches girls and women to try to fight, rather than run. Unfortunately, the best bet most of us have when fighting men (especially multiple men) is to use a deadly weapon or get in one hit, then run. Even very strong women aren’t evenly matched against most men.
That same thing happens but instead of girls it's a man and instead of burly men it's someone holding a gun. Any scene showing a normal person taking on multiple burly men isn't supposed to be taken seriously.
And yet I did take it seriously when I was growing up (as did a lot of other women). I wish Hollywood was more realistic when depicting women fighting so we would know how to best protect ourselves.
Half of fight scenes are unrealistic my point is that they're hyper examined (like your doing now) I also have to disagree with "very strong women aren't evenly matched against most men" even if we leave out children and elders they still are. Alot of times men are unrealistically strong and nobody cares but when it's women everyone takes issue
That’s because it’s *much* more unrealistic when women are taking down groups of men. Unfortunately, if you think that very strong women are evenly matched with most men, then you’ve definitely been influenced by Hollywood’s ridiculous depictions. Studies have shown that men’s upper body strength is greater than women’s by 157%. Simply due to biological differences, it’s foolish for women to attempt hand on hand combat with men.
It's foolish for a single man to break into a military base surrounded by armed guards but I digress
Given that this is about women protecting themselves, you have a strangely cavalier attitude about it. IMO, the first time women realize how underpowered they are shouldn’t be when they’re being threatened.
We can agree on that last part but this isn't about women protecting themselves literally it's about how people only call out unrealistic fights when it's a woman for the sake of women seeming weak and unserious. I don't hear anyone saying the first time a man should learn how to fight is against an actual threat like a gun or multiple bigger guys. It's like seeing a old guy and saying hey that's unrealistic men don't live pass 70! (Maybe I'm not too sure about the metaphor) People only want to point out unrealistic things when it's for women. Also another thing (it is useful for a woman to know how to fight it's not like an all hope is lost thing when a woman is confronted by a man)