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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pawsplay" data-source="post: 4169054" data-attributes="member: 15538">Try this fact: no one in this entire thread has argued what you are arguing against. No one has argued that men do not have, on average, more muscular power. The questions are twofold:1. Are the differences consistent enough to align with what D&D calls Strength?2. Is the difference significant enough to warrant a modifier?While there is some dissent, I think we can safely say No, and No. Yes, men outperform women in almost every athletic event. They are also out-participate women, and by a factor. Let's think of a women-dominated event like, oh, say gymnastics. Guess who dominates there? Women are oriented to the event because it plays to their strengths (flexibility and small size in this case) and the effect is magnified by more women competing. But arguing this is a basis for a +2 Dex would be farcical. Yet that's exactly what's being argued from rowing contests and baseball. In the real world, small differences can make huge statistical differences, but in D&D, stats are assigned based on very general conditions with lots of variables. Women, in general, are less supported as athletes; are more likely to be interested in weight loss than muscle gain; have less leisure time during their child-rearing years; are not as valued as athletes in terms of prestige and pay; have a much shorter history of athletic competition in Western history. So the pool of women athletes is just much, much smaller. A small town has trouble fielding a football team against a large city, that does not mean people from small towns are inferior athletes. There is a word for a girl who participates in sports: tomboy. There is no such word for a boy. Instead, we have words like sissy or 98 pound weakling or couch potato for boys who do not conform to the norm. So saying that any given woman does not have the potential for Strength and athletics is just taking our culture's sexism and then ascribing its effects to the nature of women. You might as well argue that women are inferior novelists, because look at their output in the 19th and 20th centuries, and so much for your Wisdom bonus.</blockquote>

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