Oh, to skip back a few posts, it's my experience that the physical threat from men is socially constructed to an extreme degree. We talked about it on the female violence Beyonce thread a bit. Short story version: yes the average man is stronger than the average woman. But explosive muscular strength is not the deciding factor in a fight (I'm a fighter); how you organise your body is; and the sort of damage that can overpower someone is well within the physical capacity of most women -think of how you effortlessly breeze through doors on a daily basis. Those things are fucking heavy and solid, but you barely even notice them- noses are way softer than doors! And your legs, god bless your legs: if you can go from sitting to standing from a seat low enough to have your legs at 90 degrees or less at the knees, you could easily fracture a skull, a rib, break a knee with a well placed kick. Anyway.
Women are socialised to use and experience their bodies in very different ways than men, so don't experience themselves as powerful; most people do not respond to them as powerful either. Men expect themselves easily to be able to overpower most women. But to my mind and in my experience as a fighter and as someone who teaches others to fight, the 'ineffectualness' of female bodily styles is to do with organisation rather than actual capacity. I'm sure you must've seen that meme at some point about how an adult elephant in a circus won't try to escape if it's attached to a rope which in fact it could easily break - it's learned helplessness. (Once I've liberated womankind from its socialised helplessness, I'm going to go and start a revolution for the elephants, I fucking love elephants, sorry to digress).
I trained for years and years as the only woman in my group, the guys were way bigger than me and just as well trained. One guy's fist was as big as my head, he was fucking scary, but his nose was made of cartilage and he had a floating rib, he had an unprotected throat, he had a thin bit of bone at his temple. All the men were only made of flesh, just like me. Female flesh isn't a special kind of susceptible, isn't especially prone to bleeding or yielding or giving. Male bones are made of the same stuff. And I have given birth, I have physical resources he can only dream of. Once you are past the conditioned need to protect, defend, cower and go on the attack, he is in as much danger as you. And in my experience, men have a massive ego problem to deal with facing a woman, lots of men are terrified of losing to a woman. Which makes them irrational, tight: vulnerable.
Sure men are bigger but the degree of difference isn't meaningful. Physical power is a narrative we need to unpick, it's not straightforwardly biologically given that I am susceptible and at threat. Most adult women have had a lifetime of conditioning to softness, to defense, to deference. Most adult men have had a lifetime of thinking themselves powerful, of doing big, explosive movements, of using themselves powerfully. THis is the main cause of that inequity.
Sorry, that wasn't really such a short story.