Well, there are some who can. Why stop them if they have that ability? Why not encourage them, under the right conditions?

There is a massive difference between encouraging talented girls and telling girls they can be as strong as men.

OK, let’s assume you are correct in that there is a difference. Now, what is the harm in telling girls that they can be as strong as men?

1. direct harm - a girl might get into a fight with a man and get hurt because she believed a falsehood

2. indirect harm - the girls told falsehoods begin to distrust institutions who hold themselves out to be unconditional truthsayers, thereby dissolving social bonds and encouraging unneeded division and rancor

Thank you for responding.

First of all, anyone can get into a fight and lose. And more often than not, technique is what helps people prevail in fights, not strength. Any decent martial arts training will teach you that.

If you’re talking about professional boxing, sure, it would be stupid to claim that a well-trained woman could, on average, beat an equally-well-trained man in a boxing match.

But I don’t think that’s the claim here. The claim is that women can be as strong as men, and that isn’t totally false. Maybe not the strongest men, but certainly a lot of them, and especially if they train well.

As for the claim of indirect harm, I think people in general need to be better-educated to engage in critical thinking. Treating words from authority figures with a grain of salt is at the heart of post-secondary education, and yet, it leads to better civil discourse, not worse.

Also, there seems to be a thin veil of sexism in your claim, as though women aren’t capable of thinking for themselves and therefore can’t ascertain the nuance in a general statement like “women can be stronger than men.” It’s meant to be a motivational statement, not a rigorous scientific claim.

>And more often than not, technique is what helps people prevail in fights, not strength.

Find me a credible source that claims this. After all, we certainly don't group wrestlers into weight categories because of differences in technique?

>The claim is that women can be as strong as men, and that isn’t totally false. Maybe not the strongest men, but certainly a lot of them, and especially if they train well.

That claim is simply false. The most extreme female athletes come close to achieving parity with an average untrained man. There are almost none of these - certainly not "a lot of them". The vast majority of women are much weaker than even the weakest men.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17186303/ "Less expected was the gender related distribution of hand-grip strength: 90% of females produced less force than 95% of males. Though female athletes were significantly stronger (444 N) than their untrained female counterparts, this value corresponded to only the 25th percentile of the male subjects."

"The results of female national elite athletes even indicate that the strength level attainable by extremely high training will rarely surpass the 50th percentile of untrained or not specifically trained men."

>Also, there seems to be a thin veil of sexism in your claim,

I appreciate your candor.

> as though women aren’t capable of thinking for themselves

The problem is that everyone (men and women) thinks of themselves as the special snowflake who can "beat the odds". I think that the message to women "You are very likely weaker than the weakest men you know" avoids much more harm (case 1 direct harm) than the "good" generated by: "it's extremely unlikely but with good genetics and training it's a possibility that some extreme athlete women could become nearly as strong as a below-average man".

What's the harm in saying anything that isn't true? What difference does it make if people believe the truth?

This is too vague to be useful, and also answers a question with a question. I’m not sure why you felt compelled to respond this way.

It's not really vague, it's a very clear question. And my response is phrased as a question because it depends on your personal morality. No one can answer for you. Plus, I was very curious to hear other people's position on the importance of truth (or lack thereof), and I find that I am compelled to engage in whatever way I feel at the time of commenting.

I personally am not sure how important I think the truth is as a moral good. I feel that as time has gone on, I've seen the dissolution on a societal level, and I now value truth more than I once did.