Besides the inability to produce sperm, is there anything women cannot do, let alone do as well if not better than men?
In comparison to other pockets of information my brain contains, I’m ashamed to say that my working knowledge of women’s history pales. Recently I started listening to the podcast Stuff Mom Never Told You (rss / blog). It is exciting to me to hear the stuff my mom never told me about female power! Case in point, Jackie Mitchell.
What women can you name whose power (e.g. acts of bravery, physical accomplishments, intellectual prowess) matches or even surpasses a man’s ability?
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159 Answers
Women produce males who think they are better, braver etc than women!!
How wrong they are
Yeah, you’re going to get a lot of fluff here about physical strength and lifting heavy things. Women are just as capable as men at anything.
whine. (I forgot what the sarcasm symbol is)
It’s all about the individual, not the gender.
win best actor…work in a mens room as an attendent
Oh my god, don’t even get me started.
“I will not start man-bashing no matter what the provocation.
I will not start man-bashing no matter what the provocation.
I will not start man-bashing no matter what the provocation.
I will not start man-bashing no matter what the provocation.”
Whew. There. I’m fine.
The vast majority of woman cannot become police officers. why? upper body strength. men possess much more upper body strength, that a woman. this is not true in all cases, but in the majority. i ran background investigations on police applicants for three years. in that time, most of the women failed the physical agility tests, simply because they could not drag a 100 pound dummy for 100 yards.
Other than this situation, women are just about equals to men.
@Trillian Identifying reality, patriarchy, gender roles for what they are is not about man-bashing. All of these things affect all genders and are just as harmful to men, in some cases.
One example of a strong, brave women is Florence Nightingale. She is a pioneer of nursing. She put the ball in motion to make nursing what it is today. She did a lot of things in her time that were very uncommon of women to do. With her compassion and caring for the soldiers during the Crimean war, she did something no man at the time would have done.
Bud: Now, you gotta learn something – there are just certain things a girl cain’t do.
Sissy: Name one.
Marshall: I can name serval, pissin’ on the side of a wall, gettn laid while your pants are still on…
Sissy: Why would you want to?
Re: @Simone_De_Beauvoir‘s “Yeah, you’re going to get a lot of fluff here about physical strength and lifting heavy things. Women are just as capable as men at anything.”
Fluff, yes, most likely. I’m just grooving on the podcast and wondering why I never knew this stuff considering that I’ve studied multicultural education, sexuality, social sciences, and history.
I can draw designs on the ground when I pee…
Women are just plain hotter than men and I won’t even contest that one! A woman just looks better in an over-sized mens dress shirt! A woman looks way better than any man jumping on a trampoline! What car doesn’t look faster and sleeker with a woman behind the wheel and don’t get me started on a woman with her finger on the trigger of any firearm! WOOF! ;)
@Cruiser Nailed it. Even if I get crap for it.
kill spiders, reach something on the top shelf, put the toilet seat down!
@Simone_De_Beauvoir I dunno….. I’m pretty sure most men can outdo most women in a bullshit talking competition!
Ah, thank god for spiders. What is the sarcasm symbol?
@Cruiser – so, maybe only women should go to war. Maybe then, there’d be no casualties because male enemies would drop to their knees before women pull the trigger?
@Cruiser maybe lucillelucillelucille will bring back her other avatar just for you!
@Cruiser – I know how to load, accurately fire, dismantle, clean, and reassemble an M-16 rifle. Does this make me hot?
Pssh, don’t kill the spiders. Pick them up with a jar/paper and put them outside.
I’m not afraid of a silly, little bug.
<—-not sporting an attached twig and berries..
Hey this is the perfect question for jaded bitter women to engage with their endless male bashing !!! “AND” you know who you are !!!!
Ladies seek counseling !! Many communities offer it for free or on a sliding scale !
Don’t let past experiences destroy your lives !!
Honestly, I can’t think of anything.
@jjmah attached twig and berries?
We can both catch & survive the most deadly disease known to….. well, anyone. Man-Flu!!!!
@Pretty_Lilly – I don’t bash men, I eat them! (well… I used to until committing to a same-sex relationship).
@jjmah I got nothing. Someone help me out!
@prolificus Not so sure there! With all the gear our solider’s wear it is near impossible to tell a man or woman soldier apart so I would argue that one a moot point. But any woman that can load, accurately fire, dismantle, clean, and reassemble an M-16 rifle is uber hot and dangerous!
@stratman37 I think this would be an appropriate time for lucillelucillelucille to “man up” with her carbine! lol! ;)
By design. Men hunt, women nurture.
Both are respectful, responsible and admirable responsibilities.
Can you interchange those “responsibilities?” Sure, for the most part. You can do what you want.
A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.
@prolificus….... the whole M16 thing….. yeh, pretty much smoking…...!
@ChazMaz Yeh….. but you wouldnt want to give someone half a dozen crap-weeds!
@ChazMaz – By design? Who’s the designer? And, can’t the opposite take place naturally, even if responsibilities aren’t interchanged? I mean, can’t a man naturally be nurturing, even if he doesn’t swap responsibilities with a woman?
That didn’t take long Lucille! ;)
“Yeh….. but you wouldnt want to give someone half a dozen crap-weeds!”
If those “crap weeds” were just another word for rose. Still a rose.
I study sex differences in the brain. I am worried this will be an unpopular answer, but I can tell you with a good amount of certainty that there are specific tasks that men tend to do better on, and specific tasks that women tend to do better on.
By that I mean that as a group, men tend to perform better on some tasks and women on others. That does not tell you anything about how a given individual will perform on those tasks. I am really only talking about a statistical difference in the mean performance of each group.
The biggest differences have been observed in tasks that ask people to orient objects in space (mental rotation tasks). Men tend to outperform women on these tasks in the laboratory. Whether you believe that translates to differences in performance in the rest of life is up to you to judge.
Although you didn’t ask for it, for balance, I would also like to point out that there are domains in which women tend to outperform men. Here, the most robust effect has been seen in tests of verbal skills. Some scientists believe this verbal advantage underlies other skills that women tend to be better at—for instance, women also tend to have better memories for autobiographical events.
You can read an excellent review of the literature studying sex differences in the brain here, or I am happy to email a pdf to anyone who can’t access the article.
@Cruiser -I’m a quick-draw.I even had time to put some music in there.Now,DANCE! LOL
“By design? Who’s the designer?”
Penis, Vagina.
“and, can’t the opposite take place naturally,”
It does, there is/has been room for interchangeability.
Without out splitting hairs. Calling a spade a spade. Fundamentally, it is what it is.
Nothing wrong with that. As long as you respect the differences.
Physical strength is still an issue in some situations.Although there are strong women, on average, women are not as strong as men.
When I worked with the Navy a sailor told me that he wasn’t crazy about women aboard ship for this reason: when they were assigned very physical chores, lifting and moving heavy things, for example, the women assigned to the job could lift less and thus their work took longer unless they were assisted by one of the males, who carried some extra. His feeling was that he would want women on board when they could carry their weight.
A similar issue was that of active battle engagement. Although women must fight if in the same situation and may be quite effective; men in the same battle may be distracted by trying to protect the women.
All that being said, in most life situations, at least most life situations people strive to be in, brute strength or combat abilities are not an issue. Brains, social skills and talent are. In these arenas women and men are equal.
Physically, women do tend to have less strength than men. This is why we see fewer female fire fighters. I believe that women should be given the chance to do anything that they are physically capable of doing if that is what they want. I don’t believe in “lowering the bar’ just so they can play too, but pretty much anything that a man can do is equally there for a woman. I just finished a class called Through Women’s Eyes and there was lots of stuff about women from the earliest colonization of the states to the present day. It was more interesting than I had anticipated and I actually brought some things away from the class.
Some studies I read in another class indicated that men and women really do have differences in their approach to hings, like negotiation. Men were shown to have a more win/lose approach while women were shown to look more to win/win and relationship building. In the business world, it has been further shown that the “female” approach make for better business in the long run and is responsible for better run corporations, especially with the global economy.
Who considers this a bad or offensive thing?
Margaret Mead
Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies
In brief, her comparative study revealed a full range of contrasting gender roles:
* “Among the Arapesh, both men and women were peaceful in temperament and neither men nor women made war.
* “Among the Mundugumor, the opposite was true: both men and women were warlike in temperament.
* “And the Tchambuli were different from both. The men ‘primped’ and spent their time decorating themselves while the women worked and were the practical ones — the opposite of how it seemed in early 20th century America.”
@Trillian @nikipedia This isn’t so much a question of whether differences exist because they do and there is proof of that – this is more about whether there is anything women can’t do as well as a man and there isn’t even if there are patterns otherwise because as you @nikipedia point out, any single individual can do anything – I think if we start to raise our kids differently and expose all children to the same things and expectations, your granddaughter the scientist @nikipedia will see different findings in her research on sex differences.
@nikipedia Your answer talks about something I feel ignorant about. Can you help me better understand how such testing is designed? I have always been curious how the categories for groups are established. Specifically, are such tests set up to see how men and women do something comparatively or are a group of people brought in, tested on something, and then categories of difference applied?
@Simone_De_Beauvoir: I think if you want to have the nature/nurture argument that deserves its own thread. Suffice it to say, I respectfully disagree. :)
@liminal: The basic setup is something like this: (1) Scientists form a hypothesis, e.g., men perform better on tests of spatial relationships. (2) Scientists design a test of spatial relationships. (3) These researchers find groups of men and women who are equivalent on every variable they can think of (age, health, IQ, etc.) (4) Men and women take the spatial relationships test. (5) Scientists use a statistical test to compare the scores of all the men to all the women to see if there is a significant difference.
@nikipedia We’ve been down that road a couple of times. Let’s just leave it.
Why don’t men and women compete in the Olympics together?
There are men events and women events?
@ChazMaz – Because, in the past, when women compete against men, and win, the men are sore losers. Consequently, the women get fired.
I thought this would come up: Men can fart and be proud.
@prolificus . . . because the records show that men’s performances outbeat the women’s. . . and men wouldn’t want to feel bad beating them down, so better not to compete against the women.
@stratman37 Funny! good ones!
In my house: All of Stratmans lists AND change light bulbs and the toilet paper roll, ask directions, throw trash into wastebasket, instantly find remote and keys and wallet and phone.
I’d just like to put in one vote for stopping the idiotic stereotype jokes. Personally, I don’t find them funny in the slightest.
Get a hard-on. How could everyone have missed this?
Observe a little silence.
Amazon women -Classical and Greek mythology.
Let’s not forget Attack Of The 50 Foot Woman. I bet she can do pretty much what a man can do.
@CyanoticWasp – And produce sperm.
Dunk a basketball.
Grow a beard.
@CyanoticWasp – Um… evidently you’ve not encountered an engorged clitoris. Can we say “hard on”?
@prolificus – “some evidence”
And basically, they were just bad ass women.
I know a few of those. Does not change a thing.
@Captain_Fantasy: working in a psychiatric intensive care unit for a couple of years, which is a place where the majority of the patients are not taking care of themselves hygienically by the time they came to us… I can safely and confidently say that I have seen women with beards that were better than some guys I know are capable of growing.
I did not point this out to be snarky. I’m dead serious.
“she normally does make her a warrior?”
It makes her a woman. That being a highly respected and honorable thing.
@prolificus… records? The point was that of Olympic events, so naturally, the records refer to Olympic and World records for such events.
@ChazMaz – Historical examples of women warriors.
@njnyjobs – Okay. But, not all events are of equal measurement. For example, some of the tracks and times for women’s events are shorter than the men’s events. So, what concrete evidence is there that proves men are better than women when it comes to events that have equal measurement?
@prolificus…Here’s your proof of equal distance events for men and women: Olympic Records in Athletics
There is, however, one thing that often comes to mind when a perfectly capable man is out classed by a woman in a work envirinment… and that is cun+ power….
Already did. Olympics.
Sure we can tweak everything down to an acceptable norm for everyone.
I do not believe that was the intent of the question.
@Captain_Fantasy You may as well add sing baritone and grill a steak to that list.
What do I call a girl that can grill a steak as well as I can?
Marriage material.
Anyway…. on to being serious.
Right now, men generally have more physical strength than women but really, barring that, there aren’t many differences in abilities.
Out biology makes us different.
For example in basketball the physical structure of a woman’s knee makes a woman more susceptible to acl and mcl injuries.
I think most of the perceived inequities between men and women these days are falsehoods perpetuated by powerful men.
There’s no reason women should be paid less than men for doing the same jobs for example.
@njnyjobs – Thank you for the link. I found only two events in which a woman out-performed a man:
100 metre hurdles 12.91 Xiang, Liu (male)
100 metre hurdles 12.37 Hayes, Joanna (female)
Discus throw 69.89 m Alekna, Virgilijus (male)
Discus throw 72.30 m Hellmann, Martina (female)
In all the other events, the men have better records. I blame it on the steroids! :)
Cannot help being anything but gorgeous adorable & lovable.Well the majority anyway.
@prolificus the two events you list are not even at par. The hurdles are actually 110 meters fro the men and 100 meters for the women. On the discus throw, Men use a 2 kg disc, while women throw 1kg disc.
…and you have to blame it on things (in this case, steroid use) when the facts don’t agree with your opinon.
See, these discussions always collapse down to sports/olympics…always
@Simone_De_Beauvoir – Didn’t the men begin and end with sports/olympics argument? I mentioned other possible evidence, not involving sports. Maybe we can exclude the men in this discussion?
How about that you identify us as MEN as an example.
@njnyjobs – Then, I think women and men should compete at the same time, in the same sport, with the same rules and equipment.
BTW, because I love playing with excel, I’m busy trying to figure out a formula to determine the difference as a percentage between scores. So far, it seems like men are 10–13% better than women.
@prolificus – I’m a student at Duke and I was able to access and download the article on Amazon women. I’m not exactly sure about the regulations governing this, but I just thought I’d let you know in case you wanted a copy badly.
Sports are a valid point for this
discussion because there are differences in physical abilities between men and women.
Physical traits are not a valid measure of someone’s character however.
In a question asking if there’s a difference between men and women in any way, sports is going to be brought up because it’s a valid example.
Just in case @Adirondackwannabe didn’t get it.
A Heff with twin Bunnies at his knees.
Two Professor Plums with a candlestick in the basement.
That should make sense.
@prolificus I’d bet that I’ve encountered more engorged clitorises than you have. Perhaps you have never encountered an actual by-God hard-on.
@jjmah “Two Professor Plums with a candlestick in the basement.”
hehe
@CyanoticWasp – encountered in more ways than one. Not a big fan of who it’s attached to, though. I’m sure since you’re much older than I, you’ve probably met more genitalia.
@nikipedia Were those studies done on adult brains that had already been through k-12? If so, I would say those studies only measured how differently educated men and women can be.
@jjmah I still got nothing for a response. The best I could do was A guy with two women stuck to his ass. Someone put a bad image in my brain and it will not leave. (If anyone is confused refer to the centipede question)
Two boba balls and a sipping straw?
An Edith and two meatheads?
….is there anything women cannot do…..
Peeing out a camp fire?
@boffin: she could if it was a small fire, or you know, if she was in a tree. lol
I haven’t seen remember birthdays and other important dates or social security numbers for children.
A Peter with two Pauls. The Mary’s been removed.
I’ll stop.
@jjmah A weiner with two schnitzels. I’ll stop too.
@Simone_De_Beauvoir ok, let’s move away from the hard facts of sports records.
I would say, and I hope you agree, that Jeopardy is a fair playing field for everyone – men, women and children, who come from all walks of life across the country.
Consider the fact that there are more men than women listed in the rosters, and men have arguably out-earned women 4 to 1.
$50K plus Hall of Fame
Tournament of Champions
A Bananarama and a set of Thompson Twins?
Mine’s more like a Sinead O’Connor.
Now, I’m really done. Back to work. Sorry, folks. Carry on.
@prolificus “Maybe we can exclude the men in this discussion?”
I guess women can be just as sexist as men too.
Congratulations.
If women purport to be able to do anything (if not practically everything) men can do, then why do men have to do a lot of things for the women that certainly they can do for themselves? . . . in automotive- getting the car wash and waxed/serviced/repaired . . . in home maintenance/repairs. . . in pest elimination . . . among others.
@njnyjobs Men are raised to pursue such things as money and Jeopardy more than women and all those other industries you list – that’s just because of socialization, nothing inherent. Women are raised to not have these industries as their concern, duh.
@tinyfaery: Again, we could open up the nature/nurture discussion in another thread, but I would prefer not to derail here. To answer your question though, the female verbal fluency advantage has been observed in children as young as 3. The mental rotation data are less clear. Some studies have shown no effect emerging until puberty, but a modified version of the mental rotation task intended to be used with children has shown a male advantage in children as young as 4.5 years. I can send you the review I mentioned if you wanna see for yourself.
@Factotum – I was just offering a possible solution to @Simone_De_Beauvoir‘s concern about sports, etc. I’m not advocating barring men from this or any discussion. Honest! I love men. Kisses on all your tralala’s!!!
@prolificus I misinterpreted you and I apologize. My tralala apologizes even more abjectly and begs your forgiveness with a profuseness that is somehow kind of suspect.
Women cannot get male pattern baldness or prostate problems.
I’m going to get flak for this, but I don’t believe a woman can be as good a father as a man. Equally, I don’t believe a man can ever be as good a mother as a woman. I am a full supporter of gay rights and same-sex marriage, but I don’t believe that either a man or woman can ever perfectly fill the opposite gender role.
As a man I do not know what I would do without a woman around.
Making life worth living. Giving me strength when I am weak and how useless I would be without. You ladies are truly the CoolWhip of life, everything is better with you on it.
Well. So far, women haven’t proven their ability to push the other gender into submission for a few thousand consecutive years.
@prolificus you’ve led me to a response that you should have predicted:
Men don’t need instruction (let alone written instruction or even photos and drawings) or specialized equipment other than what we were born with to pee standing up. With our clothes on. (I’ve heard that some women can do this, but I’m not ready to accept that assertion without investigation.)
@CyanoticWasp – Obviously, you’ve never potty trained a boy!!! Besides, I only used the link for those who needed to know it’s possible. I’ve pee’d quite a few times standing up, without the need for instructions, specialized equipment, or clean-up materials.
@Sarcasm you may be just partially correct. . . . I know men get on their knees in submission to women who showed them their C-power . . . . of course the domination is always shortlived.
(Btw…. y’all are being greedy with the lurve for my question, considering there are over 120 responses!)
@xxii – read my profile, you’ll figure out why.
Women can do anything men can do, except we can do it in heels :)
According to the girlfriend, “I’m strong like plow”, have strong German legs and also have a strong upper body. I can lift, push and carry heavy things just fine.
I’m also learning how to fix my car and am able to use a power tool rather well, thanks.
I do just fine. And, I don’t need a smelly boy ;-) to help me out.
;-)
@prolificus – Did it help you affirm your gender identity? I’m genuinely curious.
@xxii – It was something I did because it felt natural to me, not in order to affirm my gender identity.
@prolificus – Is it important to you to be equal to the average man in terms of skill and ability? Again, genuinely curious.
@xxii – nope, not at all important. Philosophically and spiritually speaking, I believe there is no difference between man or woman. I believe we are all one and the same. My skills and abilities belong to me as a person, not as a gender.
The gals can never wear the most awesome Banana Hammock! Eat your heart out ladies!! lol!
@Cruiser sure we could. If we were sporting a detachable apparatus.
I prefer mine to be a bedazzled pickle sling.
@Cruiser – I’ll send ya pics sometime of me, my boy shorts, and my packy! (Well, I won’t send pics.)
Edit- jjmah beat me to the snark! Humph! But, I still own above mentioned items. :-P
@jjmah Figures you take the one macho male apparel we have and go Bedazzle it! Is nothing scared with you women?? ;))
How about taking a punch to the tits?
@prolificus of the 120-odd responses, nearly half of them are yours…
I’m going to punch you right in the ovaries!
@prolificus maybe you should take a hint from this post’s lurve-to-response stat.
“If women purport to be able to do anything (if not practically everything) men can do, then why do men have to do a lot of things for the women that certainly they can do for themselves? . . . in automotive- getting the car wash and waxed/serviced/repaired . . . in home maintenance/repairs. . . in pest elimination . . . among others.”
@njnyjobs Meet a woman whose spouse is deployed for a year, you will see a woman that can handle all of those things on her own. Just because men primarily take care of those things, it doesn’t mean a woman is incapable of it. Men most of the time choose to do those things because of the gender roles they were raised with.
Women and men are very similar, but men certainly poses more physical strength and cardio because of the way they are built and their larger lungs
Aside from feats of strength and the ability to urinate standing up with some degree of aim, the physical differences between women and men are of little consequence. While certain kinds of brain tasks come easier to men and others come easier to women, both men and women can learn to do these tasks reasonably well.
Since men are typically socialized differently than women are, the two sexes may be better suited to socializing children of the same sex to adapt to life as members of that sex in society.
Not that two females can successfully raise a male child or two males can’t raise a female child but some experiences in childhood and adolescence are more easily learned from a member of the same sex because the adult has experienced these issues from that sex’s perspective. For example, experiences of puberty are best explained by adults of the same sex because of the adult own personal experience.
I consider women and men to be of equal worth and value but I don’t believe there are no differences between men and women. There’s no sexism in such a view.
Lets face it. Sexism, having understandable motivation, is insecurity.
We can never get a fair price at the auto repair store. Mechanics see a woman walk in and they instantly see sucker of the week. They see a guy and they are a little more careful because they aren’t sure how large of a bill of goods they can sell a guy.
listening to the radio this morning, a popular morning show in the NY metro area stated that it’s a “proven fact” that men barbecue better than women. And it was a woman saying it. I switched stations after that.
@poofandmook…another decision based on F the facts that disagree with my opinion! ...who needs this shit! . . Im outta here! ???
I don’t care who barbecue’s, as long as I get to eat. ;-)
Experiment #97849857
Attempted to raise (separate) groups of male and female infants in a vacuum.
Results: Implosion and death rate of 100%.
Experiment #97849858
Attempted to raise (separate) groups of male and female infants in a cultural vacuum.
Results: 7% of males stabbed to death with dolls. Those who survived invented beer and succumbed to fatal dehydration within three months.
12% females formed superior matriarchal society organized around mutual benefit, 35% formed religious cult involving footwear. Remaining 53% bitched about not having boyfriends.
There has to be room somewhere for over use of cologne.
@ChazMaz you got that right! put me down for three please!
Billie Jean King beat Bobby Riggs in a famous tennis match—but she was younger, another factor.
Yes, in addition to producing sperm, nearly everything else! Lol!
Going to the restroom to urinate quickly without having to stand in long lines!
Going to the mall and buying only the things you need quickly and efficiently, and not wasting your time and hard-earned money!
Most sports and activities/jobs that require muscular strength.
Directness and brevity in conversation.
Goal-mindedness.
Guarding the family and home and making things safe and secure for his wife and children.
Urinate from a speeding car.
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