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thakabalpuphorsefishguy wrote:Not one of those women could beat an equally skilled man in the same devision as themselves. The man will have much greater muscle density, quicker reflexes and stronger bones. If this hurts your feelings, suck it up and go take an anatomy class, followed by grade school biology. If it still hurts your feelings after that, go join a hippy feminist commune, because you just arent cut out for reality.

I and my Master's degree in Biomedical Engineering must beg to differ.

The physical differences between men and women are infintessimally small. Our bodies physically respond to the stresses we put on them, that's why our muscles gain strength by repeatedly moving heavy weights. The main physical difference between a man and woman is where the center of gravity is on the body - a woman's center of gravity is lower than a man's, relative to their body size. Oh, and women tend to be shorter. Structurally, the reproductive organs differ, as well as the pelvic girdle.

If you'd like, you can borrow some of my textbooks on Anatomy & Physiology, or perhaps one of the ones I've got floating around on Kinesiology. You might find them enlightening, to say the least.

I will tell you this, though - there are differences between most men and women. The potential differences are what I listed, whereas the actual differences are put down to what stresses we put on our bodies during the bout of rapid growth we all experience known as "puberty". Our bodies morph and shift over time based on the stresses we put on them - that's why you can look at a dancer and say "he or she is a dancer" or a runner and say "he or she is a runner". Puberty is when our bodies are programmed to shift rapidly, and that means that what we do during puberty (for the most part) defines what our bodies adapt to handle - dancers have muscular legs with strong bones and high upper body strength along with a high concentration of red, or "slow twitch" muscle fibers compared to the "fast twitch" muscles (showing endurance). Runners tend to be lean due to a higher proportion of fast vs slow muscle fibers - fast fibers are leaner than slow, which gives the runner a lean, lanky look. As far as bone remodeling is concerned, look to sports that force people into "unnatural" positions, such as the middle-ages English Longbowmen, who were so massively broad in the upper body (due to stresses causing bone remodeling to handle the draw of a 150 pound draw longbow), or even today with weightlifters and barrel chests with broad shoulders, or horseback riders with wide hips and bowed legs.

To make a long story short: what a person does during puberty is the main influence on how their bodies grow, which is the sole explanation for your "men and women are different!" frothing rant. Since most women don't spend their formative years doing "masculine" activities, they're not as equipped as adults to handle doing those masculine activities. That's the reason for the difference, not any sort of biological or anatomical "genetic differences".

Chesh wrote:I and my Master's degree in Biomedical Engineering must beg to differ.

I've got one of those!

In fact, I am currently back at university getting my second Masters degree in Biomedical Engineering (my first was a Master of Engineering, this one is a Master of Science ).

SilverMK2 wrote:

Chesh wrote:I and my Master's degree in Biomedical Engineering must beg to differ.

I've got one of those!

In fact, I am currently back at university getting my second Masters degree in Biomedical Engineering (my first was a Master of Engineering, this one is a Master of Science ).

Nice! I got my bachelor's in it (was planning on going to med school to begin with, but changed my mind), then decided to go for my Master's purely because they were offering a graduate level cadaver lab.

I changed my mind on med school because I decided what specialty I wanted to go into right after taking my MCAT (I got a 37 on it, ), and it doesn't require an MD - I'm going to eventually go for my MSN in Nurse Anesthetist. Same pay as an anesthesiologist, less bother with malpractice insurance and kvetchy patients. Same total time invested, though, which does suck. C'est la vie! I'm already qualified as a flight paramedic, now once I graduate in May (and pass my NCLEX) I'll be upgraded to flight RN.

Chesh wrote:
The physical differences between men and women are infintessimally small. Our bodies physically respond to the stresses we put on them, that's why our muscles gain strength by repeatedly moving heavy weights. The main physical difference between a man and woman is where the center of gravity is on the body - a woman's center of gravity is lower than a man's, relative to their body size. Oh, and women tend to be shorter. Structurally, the reproductive organs differ, as well as the pelvic girdle.

Infinitessimally as in 10% average sexual dimorphism; same as chimpanzees. Many animals have some form of sexual dimorphism, often favoring the females, and in some cases, for instance some species of spiders and notably the Angler fish, by orders of magnitude.

Your muscles do not gain strength by repeatedly moving heavy weights, the immediate response to that is that your muscle becomes damaged, your body responds to the pressure by allocating more resources to the process of building stronger muscles. There is not an immediate causal effect between lifting things and getting stronger. If you keep running a treadmill you will collapse if you do not get proper nutrition and rest.

And in spite of that effect on muscle growth, you cannot seriously deny as a "biomedical engineer" that hormones have an effect on muscle growth. Ever heard of steroids?

You also cannot ignore the fact that the upper bound for powerlifters is absolutely in favor of men, by a considerable margin, as well as the average strength of men compared to women, suggesting that gender does in fact play a significant role in muscle development, as well as hormone therapy, as the observable effects of steroids would demonstrate.

Chesh wrote:Nice! I got my bachelor's in it (was planning on going to med school to begin with, but changed my mind), then decided to go for my Master's purely because they were offering a graduate level cadaver lab.

I changed my mind on med school because I decided what specialty I wanted to go into right after taking my MCAT (I got a 37 on it, ), and it doesn't require an MD - I'm going to eventually go for my MSN in Nurse Anesthetist. Same pay as an anesthesiologist, less bother with malpractice insurance and kvetchy patients. Same total time invested, though, which does suck. C'est la vie! I'm already qualified as a flight paramedic, now once I graduate in May (and pass my NCLEX) I'll be upgraded to flight RN.

Cool beans - best of luck getting in to what you want to do

There are some old female metal models, and some produced by other companies, but I have no idea why there are no imperial female models outside of the SoB.

I guess since the women in the Guard are uncommon, since, in 40k, women are for breeding or nunning. And it''s probably easier to produce 10 of the same guardsman torso than making different ones.

Otherwise, aren't races like the Eldar, Dark Eldar, Daemons, etc. have decent amounts of female cannon fodder fighting along side their male cannon fodder counterparts?

SilverMK2 wrote:
There are certain physiological differences between men and women, but the difference between average people of different sexes is essentially meaningless in modern society.

the differences between men and women are quite pronounced, actually. its more than simply one of different hormones/organs.

the entire brain chemistry for one, and "internal wiring" for lack of a better term are completely different between men and women. For example, mens brains are hardwired into recognising movement and location before other things. Womens brains are more desiigned to recognise colours, shapes and designs. In ways, its a throwback to when we lived in caves and lived as hunter gatherers. For example, you'd see the ferrarri zooming by at breakneck speed. what registers primarily in your brain is its speed. a woman (generally) seeing the same scene will register the red ferrari that happens to be moving really fast. mens brains also tend to be more "logical" and "problem solving" in their wiring, while womens brains tend to be more geared towards those emotional consequences. Another interesting difference is how in touch you are with your emotions. With men, that part of our brain is almost an afterthought, whereas in women, its one of the first parts of the brain to be developed in the womb. as a result, while we have a single twisty turny country lane that connects us to our emotions, women have an 8 lane superhighway. So no, its not simply a case of "he was raised not to show emotion. he'sbeing a man. he has to show his tough side". in a lot of ways, we're simply not wired for it to the same extent as women. Its a subject i find to be fascinating. you should look it up if you're interested.

And no, i dont say that in any kind of a bad way. women can be strong and tough. i used to do kickboxing back in the old country, and some of the others who did it were girls. and they were pretty damned good. maybe, in terms of genes and evolution, it came slightly less naturally, but its not like they were incapable of the training - as i said they were pretty damned good at what they were doing.

Men and women think differently, act differently, and through our evolution are designed to work together. both bring different things to the table. its not about 1 sex being superior.

TedNugent wrote:Infinitessimally as in 10% average sexual dimorphism; same as chimpanzees. Many animals have some form of sexual dimorphism, often favoring the females, and in some cases, for instance some species of spiders and notably the Angler fish, by orders of magnitude.

Wikipedia entry on Anglerfish wrote:This extreme sexual dimorphism ensures that, when the female is ready to spawn, she has a mate immediately available.

Explained by the reproductive process in anglerfish, and I already noted the average size difference between men and women.

Your muscles do not gain strength by repeatedly moving heavy weights, the immediate response to that is that your muscle becomes damaged, your body responds to the pressure by allocating more resources to the process of building stronger muscles. There is not an immediate causal effect between lifting things and getting stronger. If you keep running a treadmill you will collapse if you do not get proper nutrition and rest.

No, there isn't a direct causal link between it, but it logically follows. Also, I simplified the process for the sake of not being absolutely and utterly boring (also it would've gone rather beyond the scope of the conversation). If you'd like, I can write you a paper on muscle hypertrophy, or simply just copy/paste one of the ones I've already written. Oh - and by "allocating more resources to the process of building stronger muscles" please PM me exactly how you think hypertrophy works. I'm curious as to where you got that interpretation.

And in spite of that effect on muscle growth, you cannot seriously deny as a "biomedical engineer" that hormones have an effect on muscle growth. Ever heard of steroids?

I don't get what you're saying here. Are you saying that women don't have the same hormones as men do?

You also cannot ignore the fact that the upper bound for powerlifters is absolutely in favor of men, by a considerable margin, as well as the average strength of men compared to women, suggesting that gender does in fact play a significant role in muscle development, as well as hormone therapy, as the observable effects of steroids would demonstrate.

What were the male powerlifters doing when their bodies were in a formative state, compared to what the females were doing? Nothing you've said in this post contradicts anything in my post at all - so I'm not entirely sure what you're trying to get at here?

Here's a hypothetical for you.

Bob and Jane are fraternal twins, and perform the same exact activities at the same exact times during their physical development. Who will be the better powerlifter?

If you answered "Bob", you're wrong. They will both be almost identical in capability as far as physical exertion is concerned. Genetics does play a factor, but not insofar as which twin has a spare X chromosome - physical capability is not a sex-linked genetic trait.

Society plays a far greater role than people attribute to gender dimorphism - let's consider the stereotype, where the male plays baseball and the female plays, for the sake of argument, soccer. Given that they both play for the same amount of time in their respective sports, and at the same level of intensity, the female will show a marked trend toward endurance and lower body strength, and the male will show the opposite, upper body strength and a marked trend toward bursts of speed. In this case, the female would likely be able to outperform the male on exercises such as the leg press, and the male will be faster, but for short periods of time, and probably able to outperform the female on an upper body exercise, let's say the bench press. If both the male and the female continue to play baseball and soccer until their bodies are physically matured, those tendencies will be "set", and even once they give up the sport, the physical changes will remain - the female will always be able to out-distance the male and her lower body will be markedly stronger than the male, while the male will always be able to outsprint the female, and his upper body will be stronger than hers.

Is what I'm saying making more sense now?

Wow.. this thread has taken a turn into being both fascinating and educational! Nice!

My thoughts on feminism can be summed up in one sentence:

"Feminism is the idea that we can make both sexes equal by focusing solely on the issues of one of them." - TheAmazingAtheist

I know at least three females who would play 40k if Sisters of Battle were in any fashion affordable. Only one of them cares in the least about their level of playability. GW is doing a serious disservice to themselves by not keeping Sisters current. Honestly they should be aiming to keep them up to date every edition. :head shake:

TheSinheizer wrote:"Feminism is the idea that we can make both sexes equal by focusing solely on the issues of one of them." - TheAmazingAtheist

HAHA! I love that quote, and am SO going to steal it.

*yoink*

Chesh wrote:

thakabalpuphorsefishguy wrote:Not one of those women could beat an equally skilled man in the same devision as themselves. The man will have much greater muscle density, quicker reflexes and stronger bones. If this hurts your feelings, suck it up and go take an anatomy class, followed by grade school biology. If it still hurts your feelings after that, go join a hippy feminist commune, because you just arent cut out for reality.

I and my Master's degree in Biomedical Engineering must beg to differ.

The physical differences between men and women are infintessimally small. Our bodies physically respond to the stresses we put on them, that's why our muscles gain strength by repeatedly moving heavy weights. The main physical difference between a man and woman is where the center of gravity is on the body - a woman's center of gravity is lower than a man's, relative to their body size. Oh, and women tend to be shorter. Structurally, the reproductive organs differ, as well as the pelvic girdle.

If you'd like, you can borrow some of my textbooks on Anatomy & Physiology, or perhaps one of the ones I've got floating around on Kinesiology. You might find them enlightening, to say the least.

I will tell you this, though - there are differences between most men and women. The potential differences are what I listed, whereas the actual differences are put down to what stresses we put on our bodies during the bout of rapid growth we all experience known as "puberty". Our bodies morph and shift over time based on the stresses we put on them - that's why you can look at a dancer and say "he or she is a dancer" or a runner and say "he or she is a runner". Puberty is when our bodies are programmed to shift rapidly, and that means that what we do during puberty (for the most part) defines what our bodies adapt to handle - dancers have muscular legs with strong bones and high upper body strength along with a high concentration of red, or "slow twitch" muscle fibers compared to the "fast twitch" muscles (showing endurance). Runners tend to be lean due to a higher proportion of fast vs slow muscle fibers - fast fibers are leaner than slow, which gives the runner a lean, lanky look. As far as bone remodeling is concerned, look to sports that force people into "unnatural" positions, such as the middle-ages English Longbowmen, who were so massively broad in the upper body (due to stresses causing bone remodeling to handle the draw of a 150 pound draw longbow), or even today with weightlifters and barrel chests with broad shoulders, or horseback riders with wide hips and bowed legs.

To make a long story short: what a person does during puberty is the main influence on how their bodies grow, which is the sole explanation for your "men and women are different!" frothing rant. Since most women don't spend their formative years doing "masculine" activities, they're not as equipped as adults to handle doing those masculine activities. That's the reason for the difference, not any sort of biological or anatomical "genetic differences".

The above poster is actually correct, and at no point does your rant contradict what he's saying. It's shocking that you have a Master's in Biomedical Engineering yet still don't understand the dramatic differences that hormones can make on a body. It has little or nothing to do with what people do during puberty. Like it or not, testosterone puts more muscle on men, for less effort. It just does. I'm sorry.

The difference between men and women can be illustrated on the battlefield. A man can lift his wounded comrade up on his shoulders and get him to safety, where a woman, having done all the same exercises for the same amount of time, over the same period of months, as well as had the same combat training, still cannot lift the wounded man over her shoulders in the same situation. It's not good or bad, it's not right or wrong, just or unjust, sexist or fair. It's simply the way it is.

Women produce testosterone as well. Not as much naturally as men do, granted, but it can be raised - by doing (surprisingly enough) the same thing that men do to release testosterone.

Exercise strenuously and regularly - sorry, pilates don't count
Eat higher protein diets
Have a healthy sex life
Take a multivitamin containing B-complex vitamins, vitamin C and zinc
Ginseng supplements (one of the most common ingredients in "energy shots")
Eat a lot of Omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids (fish, flaxseed oil, and a bunch of other sources)
etc, etc.

I know very well the effect that hormones have on the body, as well as what glands produce them (for reference: adrenal glands and gonads - testes in men and ovaries in women) and what their specific purpose is in the body.

I currently work on an air ambulance crew with a 56 year old woman who can put a 220 pound man in a fireman's carry, and I also drove Abrams tanks in the Army, where I saw female tank mechanics lift and carry more than the men in my tank crew could or would lift and carry, including 2-person lifting 550 pound side skirt armor plates. Your anecdotal evidence doesn't match up with mine, so I'm sorry but I'm going to go with the science here.

Our body types are determined mainly by what we do during our physical formative years. This is where the perceived "disadvantage" comes from for women, and it continues throughout their lives due to social conditioning.

To put it more simply: hormones are produced by glands in our bodies and released when our bodies require them. Men and women both have the same exact hormones floating around in our bodies - women have testosterone, and men have estrogen - only the ratio differs, and that's not set in stone.

Edit to add: I'm done with this tangent. I just realized how utterly ridiculous it's gotten with the basic claim that "Women can't be as strong as men because they don't have testosterone" having been made. That one kinda knocked me for a loop for a minute, actually.

Chesh wrote:Women produce testosterone as well. Not as much naturally as men do, granted, but it can be raised - by doing (surprisingly enough) the same thing that men do to release testosterone.

Exercise strenuously and regularly - sorry, pilates don't count
Eat higher protein diets
Have a healthy sex life
Take a multivitamin containing B-complex vitamins, vitamin C and zinc
Ginseng supplements (one of the most common ingredients in "energy shots")
Eat a lot of Omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids (fish, flaxseed oil, and a bunch of other sources)
etc, etc.

Have Testicles.

Please, oh please oh PLEASE, tell me you're joking?

Is it me, or are we going off topic here?

Yes, its possable for women to induce extra testosterone production, however it is just not natural for the female body to do that. Men will also have a much higher potential for muscle mass and testosterone production so if a women can induce testosterone production, so can a guy. So the "women can just force their bodies to make more testosterone" is bunk because guys can do it too.

It is essentially stimulating the female body to do something it is not adapted to do. Just how a contortionist conditions his/her body to be abnormally flexable, it is simply not the natural state of the human body to bend so extremely but it can be forced to do it.

By a regiment of specilized diet and excercise a women can build up higher testosterone levels, however a man doing the same things will have more muscle mass and be stronger.

This is assuming both the man and women are both average specimens, in peak health, and of similer age.


There is no argument that a women can have more muscle then a man, however this would be comparing a below average man with an above average women. Not a proper comparason.

We would have to do a study of say 30 men and 30 women, all similer ages and with similer states of physical fitness and health. No diseases or abnormal conditions. The men and women would also all have to be close to average height and build for their sex.

We then put them all on identical diets and exercise routines. We would have to do this for at least a year, probably 5 just to be safe.

I'm no expert in this subject but I am pretty darn confidant that the men would definitly be stronger overall then the women.

Chesh wrote:Please, oh please oh PLEASE, tell me you're joking?

Yes of course. Well, mostly. Since they ARE responsible for testosterone producting...

Shadowbrand wrote:Space Marines can't have secks.

noise marines seem to find a way

Shadowbrand wrote:Space Marines can't have secks.

Incorrect. Marines are never stated to be unable to have intercourse.

Certaintly they would be infertile and their libido will be nonexistant(Space Wolves and Slannesh not withstanding)


So a Marine is fully capable of having sex, there just won't be any kiddos as a result and it would take some reversal of the indoctrination to allow them to have a sex drive.

Wow this topic went all over the place... bio Engineering, Space Marines having no sex drive etc.....


There are no "chicks" in this game simply because most "chicks" dont see the black T-shirt wearing, Long haired, oily skinned Nerd as a hot Date.

And with that said.... the real secret is to get them when they are young and naive. Then once your both comfortable with each other you open the door to the basement that has been locked for the last 3 years and show her your Collection of $15 000 of plastic toy soldiers... She has to much invested to dump you because your infatuated with plastic men. Which in the long run is healtheir that being infatuated with plastic women =]

@Kitsune and her hubby: There is Hope for this game yet. My FLGS is owned by a woman who plays, and there are 2 other serious female players who participate in our monthly league games.

I find all this talk about muscular differences (or not) between the gender very fascinating, but it got me wondering.
In the world of professional athletics, where the genders go through the exact same practice routines based around their discipline, why do men then always perform better if there are not any differences the genders in between?
Men run faster, throw further and jump higher than women and I cannot believe this is "merely" due to differences in upbringing during puberty.
Especially during the cold war, where East and West waged their war in all conceivable areas and you had these very young athletes whose lives consisted only of training and steroids from a very young age and still there was a noticeable difference in performance between the sexes.

That being said I wouldn’t mind if more women joined the hobby. Here in Japan I still haven’t seen women play but I have met several who paint figures. They appear to be treated in equal terms as anyone else in the stores it seems. Here it seems the average age of the players might be a little bit higher than elsewhere in the world. Alas I fear few of them are married.

I would actually like to see some more female figures in the game, though more realistically sculptured instead of something from out of the teenage boys’ wet dreams. I actually rejoiced over the female lieutenant in the Space Marine computer game. More of that please!

And please excuse my English, it isn’t my first language.

Chesh wrote:

TedNugent wrote:Infinitessimally as in 10% average sexual dimorphism; same as chimpanzees. Many animals have some form of sexual dimorphism, often favoring the females, and in some cases, for instance some species of spiders and notably the Angler fish, by orders of magnitude.

Wikipedia entry on Anglerfish wrote:This extreme sexual dimorphism ensures that, when the female is ready to spawn, she has a mate immediately available.

Explained by the reproductive process in anglerfish, and I already noted the average size difference between men and women.

Your muscles do not gain strength by repeatedly moving heavy weights, the immediate response to that is that your muscle becomes damaged, your body responds to the pressure by allocating more resources to the process of building stronger muscles. There is not an immediate causal effect between lifting things and getting stronger. If you keep running a treadmill you will collapse if you do not get proper nutrition and rest.

No, there isn't a direct causal link between it, but it logically follows. Also, I simplified the process for the sake of not being absolutely and utterly boring (also it would've gone rather beyond the scope of the conversation). If you'd like, I can write you a paper on muscle hypertrophy, or simply just copy/paste one of the ones I've already written. Oh - and by "allocating more resources to the process of building stronger muscles" please PM me exactly how you think hypertrophy works. I'm curious as to where you got that interpretation.

And in spite of that effect on muscle growth, you cannot seriously deny as a "biomedical engineer" that hormones have an effect on muscle growth. Ever heard of steroids?

I don't get what you're saying here. Are you saying that women don't have the same hormones as men do?

You also cannot ignore the fact that the upper bound for powerlifters is absolutely in favor of men, by a considerable margin, as well as the average strength of men compared to women, suggesting that gender does in fact play a significant role in muscle development, as well as hormone therapy, as the observable effects of steroids would demonstrate.

What were the male powerlifters doing when their bodies were in a formative state, compared to what the females were doing? Nothing you've said in this post contradicts anything in my post at all - so I'm not entirely sure what you're trying to get at here?

Here's a hypothetical for you.

Bob and Jane are fraternal twins, and perform the same exact activities at the same exact times during their physical development. Who will be the better powerlifter?

If you answered "Bob", you're wrong. They will both be almost identical in capability as far as physical exertion is concerned. Genetics does play a factor, but not insofar as which twin has a spare X chromosome - physical capability is not a sex-linked genetic trait.

Society plays a far greater role than people attribute to gender dimorphism ....

Is what I'm saying making more sense now?

Kind of, except that it doesn't explain why male powerlifters still have higher weight totals than female powerlifters. (And also lift more per pound)

I think gamers are too serious about their hobbies to really be successful with women. Not only in the 'this game is my life' sense, but in the 'everything i do for fun i obsess over' way. Lets face it, you can play call of duty without a whole lot of effort. But playing warhammer is a very time consuming hobby, and only people seriously dedicated will put that time in. This kind of mentality generally translates into other aspects of life, and can result in a few things. Having stupid high standards, and your stereotypical poor social skills/hygiene sometimes occur, but I dont think those are worth discussing.

Being overbearing and clingy is probably the biggest issue to dating that I have seen. As well as a general lack of confidence. I dont want to say that the biggest thing nerds can do to be good around women is to not be nerds, because thats not true. Women love nerds. Its to not only be nerds. Girls dont mind a guy who plays games and has a hobby, but if thats all he does, it becomes a problem.

my 2 cents

Chesh wrote:

thakabalpuphorsefishguy wrote:Not one of those women could beat an equally skilled man in the same devision as themselves. The man will have much greater muscle density, quicker reflexes and stronger bones. If this hurts your feelings, suck it up and go take an anatomy class, followed by grade school biology. If it still hurts your feelings after that, go join a hippy feminist commune, because you just arent cut out for reality.

I and my Master's degree in Biomedical Engineering must beg to differ.

The physical differences between men and women are infintessimally small. Our bodies physically respond to the stresses we put on them, that's why our muscles gain strength by repeatedly moving heavy weights. The main physical difference between a man and woman is where the center of gravity is on the body - a woman's center of gravity is lower than a man's, relative to their body size. Oh, and women tend to be shorter. Structurally, the reproductive organs differ, as well as the pelvic girdle.

If you'd like, you can borrow some of my textbooks on Anatomy & Physiology, or perhaps one of the ones I've got floating around on Kinesiology. You might find them enlightening, to say the least.

I will tell you this, though - there are differences between most men and women. The potential differences are what I listed, whereas the actual differences are put down to what stresses we put on our bodies during the bout of rapid growth we all experience known as "puberty". Our bodies morph and shift over time based on the stresses we put on them - that's why you can look at a dancer and say "he or she is a dancer" or a runner and say "he or she is a runner". Puberty is when our bodies are programmed to shift rapidly, and that means that what we do during puberty (for the most part) defines what our bodies adapt to handle - dancers have muscular legs with strong bones and high upper body strength along with a high concentration of red, or "slow twitch" muscle fibers compared to the "fast twitch" muscles (showing endurance). Runners tend to be lean due to a higher proportion of fast vs slow muscle fibers - fast fibers are leaner than slow, which gives the runner a lean, lanky look. As far as bone remodeling is concerned, look to sports that force people into "unnatural" positions, such as the middle-ages English Longbowmen, who were so massively broad in the upper body (due to stresses causing bone remodeling to handle the draw of a 150 pound draw longbow), or even today with weightlifters and barrel chests with broad shoulders, or horseback riders with wide hips and bowed legs.

To make a long story short: what a person does during puberty is the main influence on how their bodies grow, which is the sole explanation for your "men and women are different!" frothing rant. Since most women don't spend their formative years doing "masculine" activities, they're not as equipped as adults to handle doing those masculine activities. That's the reason for the difference, not any sort of biological or anatomical "genetic differences".

Let me get this straight, you are saying that therer are no noticable difference between men and women when it comes to physical apperence, muscle strength ect and that the only thing that really matters what kind of training ect they did during puberty? Where did you attend uni if I might ask? Can you please explain why every world record in every sport where muscles are involved are held by a man? Is it because women are lazy and dont excersise as much during puberty? If so, why are they lazier?

tedurur wrote:

Chesh wrote:

thakabalpuphorsefishguy wrote:Not one of those women could beat an equally skilled man in the same devision as themselves. The man will have much greater muscle density, quicker reflexes and stronger bones. If this hurts your feelings, suck it up and go take an anatomy class, followed by grade school biology. If it still hurts your feelings after that, go join a hippy feminist commune, because you just arent cut out for reality.

I and my Master's degree in Biomedical Engineering must beg to differ.

The physical differences between men and women are infintessimally small. Our bodies physically respond to the stresses we put on them, that's why our muscles gain strength by repeatedly moving heavy weights. The main physical difference between a man and woman is where the center of gravity is on the body - a woman's center of gravity is lower than a man's, relative to their body size. Oh, and women tend to be shorter. Structurally, the reproductive organs differ, as well as the pelvic girdle.

If you'd like, you can borrow some of my textbooks on Anatomy & Physiology, or perhaps one of the ones I've got floating around on Kinesiology. You might find them enlightening, to say the least.

I will tell you this, though - there are differences between most men and women. The potential differences are what I listed, whereas the actual differences are put down to what stresses we put on our bodies during the bout of rapid growth we all experience known as "puberty". Our bodies morph and shift over time based on the stresses we put on them - that's why you can look at a dancer and say "he or she is a dancer" or a runner and say "he or she is a runner". Puberty is when our bodies are programmed to shift rapidly, and that means that what we do during puberty (for the most part) defines what our bodies adapt to handle - dancers have muscular legs with strong bones and high upper body strength along with a high concentration of red, or "slow twitch" muscle fibers compared to the "fast twitch" muscles (showing endurance). Runners tend to be lean due to a higher proportion of fast vs slow muscle fibers - fast fibers are leaner than slow, which gives the runner a lean, lanky look. As far as bone remodeling is concerned, look to sports that force people into "unnatural" positions, such as the middle-ages English Longbowmen, who were so massively broad in the upper body (due to stresses causing bone remodeling to handle the draw of a 150 pound draw longbow), or even today with weightlifters and barrel chests with broad shoulders, or horseback riders with wide hips and bowed legs.

To make a long story short: what a person does during puberty is the main influence on how their bodies grow, which is the sole explanation for your "men and women are different!" frothing rant. Since most women don't spend their formative years doing "masculine" activities, they're not as equipped as adults to handle doing those masculine activities. That's the reason for the difference, not any sort of biological or anatomical "genetic differences".

Let me get this straight, you are saying that therer are no noticable difference between men and women when it comes to physical apperence, muscle strength ect and that the only thing that really matters what kind of training ect they did during puberty? Where did you attend uni if I might ask? Can you please explain why every world record in every sport where muscles are involved are held by a man? Is it because women are lazy and dont excersise as much during puberty? If so, why are they lazier?

Well, if he's right then it's likely because women have traditionally not done weightlifting during puberty, or most other forms of physical training. Even now it's considered unusual.

Deadshot wrote:GW Belfast have 2 female employees. Both skilled gamers, painter and modellers, hobbyists in general.

They do any of the tourneys at all?

I think so.

I can't hold it in any longer...

It excites me (in more ways than one), when my boyfriend talks 40k with me.
And I have a huge fantasy of getting frisky on top of a GWS table... (in the name of the Emperor!)

*runs*




- Your myth-busting heretic.

/ Females who love 40k, and it's lovely fellow gamers.
I know I complained a little earlier, but really, for the most part, this hobby is crammed full of incredibly sweet, incredibly intelligent, wonderful people.