My 12 year old son is stronger than me

[LargeSquareRock]

I’m what is referred to as a strapping woman, 6 ft 1, 88kg. Reasonably fit.

My 12 year old son is 42kg, 5 ft 2, reasonably fit.

We play a game where we face each other, lock hands and push. He’s beaten me and pushed me back almost every time for the last 3 months, unless I use rat cunning.

Ive been currently reading about the men beating up women in the Olympic boxing. Current TRA line on X is

1. They are women
2. Even if they aren’t women, it’s the same weight class so it’s fair
3. Women and men are physically equal and it’s only because of socialisation that women can be beaten by men.

Well, I repeat, my 12 year old son, nearly half my weight, can beat me in a strength competition. That’s anecdotal, but anyone with half a brain knows that this is the case across the board.

As I said in my post above, arm wrestling is so dependent on technique over brute strength. Brian Shaw (four times World's Strongest Man, massive man at almost 7ft and a legend in the strength world) cannot come in and just win against arm wrestlers. He's done a lot of videos on starting to learn the skills and would probably be brilliant if he decided to turn his hand to the sport but not anytime soon.

Basically, you might be able to keep your arm wrestling dominance over your son by improving your own technique and hope he never bothers to actually learn how to arm wrestle properly, so he can remain amazed by his mother's physical strength.😁Just don't challenge him to an actual physical fight where he doesn't hold back then you're in problems.

Same here, DS2 is 16, much slimmer than me. I am no competition.

This whole thing is nothing less than misogyny- male persons take something from women. And unfortunately some women go along with it.

Fortunately some sports have put in place sensible restrictions - at long last. The rest need a dose of common sense.

Same here. It really shocked me when DS got to about 13. We've always had play fights, but he could suddenly beat me easily. He is still a good few stone lighter than me, and I'm pretty strong, but if he wanted to hurt me I'd have no chance.

Do you not think that perhaps the bigger men you were arm wrestling were doing the same to avoid hurting you?

Yes, that very well could be. But I do know men weren't lifting less weight than me in the gym for my sake.

My 12 year old cis daughter is a judoka and can kick my butt

Just so you know, this is a feminist forum. Allocating a regressive gender stereotype like 'cis' to a 12 year old girl isn't going to go down well.

I don't think you need to say cis daughter. Unless stated otherwise, a daughter is female.

This is the problem really. No one has said that every woman is weaker than every man, of course not. However, most men are stronger than most women. This means that most teenage boys will become stronger than most adult women surprisingly young, and reasonably average men will be able to compete with or even out compete very above average or elite women.

I can lift more than a couple of guys in the gym. Maybe less than 5%. The really strong women might be able to outlift 10 or even 15% of the guys there. That still leaves an awful lot of guys out lifting women. Doesn’t mean that the really strong women aren’t fucking impressive, and training super hard.

My grandson is 13, same height as me etc...we mess about play fighting etc...i can over power him ..everytime 🤣..he said why are you so strong grandma i dont get it..i said years of having to do everything on my own ✊..i am pretty strong though. When he really gets well into teenage years im sure he will over power me but he has to learn, theres also strong women out there...physically and mentally

Just had this with my son, we’ve arm wrestled loads over the years and i’ve never let him win. I’ve always beaten him. Recently he’s developed a lot and can now easily beat me, even with his bad arm vs my good arm - something previously he could barley get close to. It’s not even close and he’s not been going to the gym. I, on the other hand, have been lifting quite a lot and have deceptively strong arms for my frame.

It really did bring home to him how much stronger men are physically.

The argument that some women can beat some men sometimes at some things is just like the 'my TW friend is lovely so why are you being mean stopping her from sharing a changing room with me'.
It's about POPULATION LEVEL differences. Men are, at population level, bigger, stronger, faster, with a different pelvis shape, more fast twitch muscle, greater bone density, slower breathing and heart rate.
These are facts. We therefore need rules and categories that take account of those facts.

It's about POPULATION LEVEL differences

This.

There are some women who are stronger than some men.

But there are no women who are stronger than all men, whereas there are a lot of men who are stronger than all women.

Look at the records for any strength or speed sport. The men's records are way ahead of the women's ones. In many cases the men's junior and veteran records are ahead of those for women at their peak, and the men's British records are ahead of women's world records. You can sometimes find a man's record that lags a bit by combining categories - the men's British junior 200m is 1/10 of a second slower than the overall women's world record.

One trained 12 year old.judoka beating her probably untrained father (who is likely to be past prime age) does not disprove the differential.

Congratulations everyone, brilliant work. Perhaps you could now apply your brainpower to whether bears shit in the woods.

I was under the impression that it’s not just muscle density/composition that is the factor but also hinging and joints. By having the shoulders wider apart, the circumference of men’s arms are greater and can therefore exert more force due to leverage (also the point that muscles attach to forearms and upper arms). This is the same as with their hips- having narrower hips (a disadvantage for childbirth) allows for greater bursts of strength because the force from your legs is directed directly up the skeletal system, as opposed to forces being spread out. It also allows for a more even stride to provide greater long distance running; one of the reasons that humans are apex predators- a horse or deer or other animal can run much faster, but tires quickly, and generally has poor methods of losing heat. Human bodies exude heat and in consequence are able to sustain long distance pursuit more easily.

The whole point being that biology has, to some extent, dictated on average that men are able to exert more force even with comparative muscle mass. The advantage lies that way- for whatever reason evolutionists can speculate about- but it still lies that way.

It is true that strength training will increase a woman's strength, but it increases a man's strength by a significantly greater amount.
Strength training vastly increases the gap between men and women when it comes to physical prowess.

Don't feel bad, as my 13 year old son can and does win in wrestling and strength contests against my 34 year old boyfriend. And my son is smaller and shorter yet has lean muscle from sports like wrestling. They're really aggressive and have testosterone spiking too, so this makes up for their small size and age.

Trust me there are more than one example of a 12-14 year old trained in martial arts, wrestling etc who can defeat a male or female adult. They are also stronger than the average, mostly lean muscle among other advantages such as energy, speed, and testosterone spike.

This. Mine is now 15 and 6 foot 3 but has been much stronger than me for years. He tries to rugby tackle me all the time and I have to shout IM NOT YOUR MATE YOU NINNY

Martina Navratilova did a great documentary on BBC 1 - I think it's the one called The Trans Women Athlete Dispute (no longer on iPlayer and not on YouTube) where she talked about the way girls and boys develop. It's absolutely everything - the skeleton, the muscles, the stride, the reach... It's absolutely crazy for anyone to suggest there's a level playing ground when men play sport with women.

"My 12 year old cis daughter is a judoka and can kick my butt"

Didn't Jigoro Kano specifically develop judo (from jujitsu) to make technique more important and brute strength and speed less so- removing the punching , kicking and striking? IIRC his ideal was that a small man should be able to defeat a large man...but there are weight classes and separate sex classes in judo. Teddy Riner would hammer anyone in a lower weight class, and I would think if the sexes were amalgamated, no women, in any weight category, would get to the Olympics ever again, let alone win.

Equestrian sport, motorsport and maybe ultra long distance running are the only sports I can think of where women could really compete with men.

I think you may have missed the point of the thread. And that my post you quote should be read as part 2 of the one immediately above it.

How many 12 year old girls could beat an adult man of similar skill and training?

And how many 12 year old boys could beat an adult woman of similar skill and training?

How many 25 year old women could beat a man of the same age, skill and training level?

How many 25 year old men could beat a woman of the same age, skill and training level?

My DC are all coming into mid-teens. I started noticing recently how small all the other mums I know are.....nope, all their teenage sons have shot up and now tower over their normal-adult-woman-sized mums.

In actual fact, I've noticed that taller women have taller sons so even they seem smaller.

If it's any hope or help, I'm sadly nearly wider than higher and 17yo girls tower over me too so girls are getting bigger too 😀 loo

I don't like the sound of those games. What is it supposed to teach?