Respecting the Strength of Her Brothers
A father's duty to teach his daughter about the reality of male strength.
If you have been blessed with sons and daughters, you will have noticed the differences between them. Boys and girls are different. Those differences are glorious.
Even so, until they reach a certain age, they are still just kids. They will play a lot of the same games. Sometimes, they’ll even wrestle. Girls wrestle differently than boys (girls can tend to make it more elaborate than it needs to be, for example, with more rules and character play), but they will join in on the roughhousing.
For a sister who is older than her brothers, this presents a potential danger. She will be stronger than them. She will be bigger than them.
For a while, at least.
Eventually, the tables will turn. Her brothers, if they are not effeminate, will be able to keep her at bay with minimal effort. This can lead to resentment or bullying if you have not properly prepared everyone.
Prepare your daughters to respect the strength of your sons. She should treat their potential strength as if it were actual strength.
She should be delighted to pretend to be a damsel in distress and be “rescued” from another brother, or from you. She should not gloat over besting them in an athletic feat. She should treat them with the respect due to someone stronger than her.
Her brothers, likewise, have reciprocal obligations toward her that they can start practicing, but that is another topic. Everyone already believes men have certain obligations toward women, even in our broken culture. In fact, obligations toward women are the only things they believe men have.
The Reality of a Man’s Strength
Too many women grow up not realizing the inherent strength a man can possess. They presume too much about the patience of other men. They are rude. They mouth off. Sometimes they physically assault them.
This is dangerous.
Modern women lack an understanding of the strength discrepancy between men and women, despite it once being common knowledge. Even weaker men.
This study found that the hand-grip strength of highly elite female athletes in sports requiring such strength, such as judo and handball, was only comparable to that of average, untrained males.
Substantial and persistent gender differences remain, despite the women spending years training for that type of strength. Only 10% of women had grip strength exceeding 95% of men.
Another study analyzed muscle thickness to see if men and women with similar muscle size could reliably compete against one another. Even here, there was an advantage for men.
Even when muscle thickness was virtually identical, 76%-88% of the strength assessments were greater in males than females with pair-matched muscle thickness, regardless of contraction types.
In powerlifting, males in the lightest weight division largely outperformed females in heavier weight divisions. Even the smallest competitive males often exceed the strength of larger females.
When muscles are the same size, males consistently demonstrate superior strength output, suggesting fundamental differences in muscle quality, neural activation, or fiber composition between sexes.
It would be funny if so many people weren’t deluded.
Men and women were created differently and for different purposes. To suggest otherwise is foolishness and blind faith.
The Dregs of Patience and Christendom
Despite the obvious strength disparities, many women grow up to be blithe and careless. They come across a fearsome dog, and because they see it bound by collar and chain, they assume the chain is attached to something sturdy at the other end. They assume.
And so they feel safe taunting, and sometimes kicking, the dog.
These women count on all men they come across to abide by certain obligations and cultural norms, while they themselves abandon any pretense of reciprocal virtue and respect.
While our culture still runs on the momentum of Christendom, they remain safe, knowing that no man would dare break any of these cultural norms. Not overtly, anyway.
But the one-sided peace won’t last forever. Even the dregs of chivalry will soon be drained dry. And when it happens, it will happen fast and hard. The dog was never chained, to begin with.
Don’t put your daughters in a position where they are naive about the strength of men and the respect that strength deserves. God gave her a father and brothers so she could learn this lesson in a safe environment.
Don’t fail to teach her this lesson.