# Proposal: GE humans such that woman and men are the same size/strength. Any downside? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [October 29, 2014, 3:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/proposal-ge-humans-such-that-woman-and-men-are-the-same-size-strength-any-downside/702909 "2014-10-29T15:19:10Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 7\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![WhyNot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/c77e96/32.png) [@WhyNot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WhyNot)\ **Post date:** [October 30, 2014, 5:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/proposal-ge-humans-such-that-woman-and-men-are-the-same-size-strength-any-downside/702909/61 "2014-10-30T17:00:01Z")
> [@iiandyiiii](#): > > Thank you for posting. Do you think, aside from size, differences in physical strength have anything to do with the fear, or the subject in general? No. I’m just as wary, if not moreso, of women who behave in an erratic or aggressive fashion. Not of rape, specifically, but of being injured. I think this idea that women are scared of rape because of physical size/strength difference has taken off because it’s a fear men have of each other. They understand that fear when women talk about the fear of rape. But I don’t actually think it’s the primary source of women’s fear. It’s just the one best understood by men. ---
**Author:** ![iiandyiiii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/iiandyiiii/32/7924_2.png) [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)\ **Post date:** [October 30, 2014, 5:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/proposal-ge-humans-such-that-woman-and-men-are-the-same-size-strength-any-downside/702909/62 "2014-10-30T17:01:13Z")
> [@WhyNot](#): > > No. I’m just as wary, if not moreso, of women who behave in an erratic or aggressive fashion. Not of rape, specifically, but of being injured. > > I think this idea that women are scared of rape because of physical size/strength difference has taken off because it’s a fear men have of each other. They understand that fear when women talk about the fear of rape. But I don’t actually think it’s the primary source of women’s fear. It’s just the one best understood by men. Okay, thank you for sharing. ---
**Author:** ![Boyo\_Jim](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/87869e/32.png) [@Boyo\_Jim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Boyo_Jim)\ **Post date:** [October 30, 2014, 5:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/proposal-ge-humans-such-that-woman-and-men-are-the-same-size-strength-any-downside/702909/63 "2014-10-30T17:31:33Z")
> [@iiandyiiii](#): > > I think rape would be substantially reduced if the victim was as physically strong as the attacker, on average. I dunno, maybe you need more aggression to respond with force to an attack, even if you’re the defender. ---
**Author:** ![iiandyiiii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/iiandyiiii/32/7924_2.png) [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)\ **Post date:** [October 30, 2014, 5:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/proposal-ge-humans-such-that-woman-and-men-are-the-same-size-strength-any-downside/702909/64 "2014-10-30T17:39:35Z")
> [@Boyo\_Jim](#): > > I dunno, maybe you need more aggression to respond with force to an attack, even if you’re the defender. Perhaps. **WhyNot** tells me I’m wrong, and that’s almost good enough for me! ---
**Author:** ![gnoitall](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/bb73d2/32.png) [@gnoitall](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gnoitall)\ **Post date:** [October 30, 2014, 6:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/proposal-ge-humans-such-that-woman-and-men-are-the-same-size-strength-any-downside/702909/65 "2014-10-30T18:14:53Z")
> [@Velocity](#): > > Something flew right over the head here. If she had been magically genetically engineered to be taller, this may not have happened. :dubious: ---
**Author:** ![Shodan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9f8e36/32.png) [@Shodan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shodan)\ **Post date:** [October 30, 2014, 6:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/proposal-ge-humans-such-that-woman-and-men-are-the-same-size-strength-any-downside/702909/66 "2014-10-30T18:20:59Z")
> [@RivkahChaya](#): > > I think the point was simply that the idea that if the rapist and victim are more evenly matched, we’d see less rape, simply isn’t true as evidenced by the high rate of male-male rape in prison. I don’t know about that, but rapists often “interview” their victims in various ways before attacking, and those who communicate less aggression/self-confidence are likelier to be attacked. Rapists are not generally looking for a fight; they want a victim. Since the OP seems to be assuming women are of equal size but still unequal aggression, rape would not be reduced by as much as male-on-male rape is reduced by size or aggreesion levels. With the complication that smaller, younger, weaker inmates tend to be the ones attacked, along with gay inmates. > [@](#): > > Also, it isn’t my understanding that rape victims tend to be smaller women on average, or rapists tend to be big men, on average. The average age of a rapist is 31, while the average victim is less than 30, and half of those are under 18 ([cite](http://www.mincava.umn.edu/documents/sexoff/sexoff.html).) So the victims do tend to be smaller than their fully grown attackers. > [@](#): > > I did however, read a study that women who fight back tend not to get raped, as opposed to women who offer no resistance-- when I was a teenager, the common wisdom was that women shouldn’t fight, because it was better to get raped and live, then be killed fighting back; this study (IIRC, by the Kinsey institute sometime in the late 1980s), demonstrated that this was wrong, and it was wrong even if the rapist has a weapon. Yup. I taught the same in my women’s self-defense classes. If you fight back, you have a good chance of not being raped (most rape attempts are unsuccessful) but if you don’t resist, you have only sheer luck to rely on. > [@](#): > > FWIW, another study I read (back in college, so I don’t have an online cite) said that very few women in the US have the upper body strength they potentially could have, while the same is not true for men. Girls are discouraged from playing sports, and from lifting and carrying things that would develop upper body strength; a lot of older women who break a hip don’t have the upper body strength for the rehab, and end up permanently disabled. On the flip side, when women take strength training, that includes weight lifting and other upper body muscle-building, they make progress very quickly-- much more quickly than men, because the first several months are basically remediation. That may well be true, but it is kind of besides the point - currently women do not have the potential for strength whether they train or not, and the disparity is especially marked in upper-body strength. And criminals are often very strong - if he ever spent time in prison, he probably did some of it in the weight room. The OP is suggesting that this would all change, and women would have the same potential strength as men. Without similar levels of aggression, women would still be raped more than men (also because men want to have sex with women a lot more than they want sex with other men, even if it is rape-sex). [QUOTE=iiandyiii] I’m interested in societal and cultural implications. So just accept that, for the purposes of the hypothetical, women are roughly as large and strong and men, while otherwise having the same characteristics and capabilities as before. [/QUOTE] If the genie granted me that kind of a wish, I wouldn’t waste it making women bigger. But nonetheless - Slut shaming would increase, to the level that men are now shamed if they are the subjects of domestic violence. “You are just as big as he is, why didn’t you do something about it?” Regards, Shodan ---
**Author:** ![Boyo\_Jim](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/87869e/32.png) [@Boyo\_Jim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Boyo_Jim)\ **Post date:** [October 30, 2014, 6:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/proposal-ge-humans-such-that-woman-and-men-are-the-same-size-strength-any-downside/702909/67 "2014-10-30T18:30:54Z")
> [@Shodan](#): > > …So the victims do tend to be smaller than their fully grown attackers. > … Perhaps the solutions is to engineer females achieve their full adult size by, say, age 6. 😛 [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/proposal-ge-humans-such-that-woman-and-men-are-the-same-size-strength-any-downside/702909.md?page=3)