Mostly I think the political debate over whether or not there are real differences between biological males and females is a silly academic exercise with few real-world consequences. And generally I stay out of it. It impacts my life not at all and I’m not in the business of spending emotional capital on things that have no effect on the temperature of the water in my pool. But every now and then an argument pops up that has the potential to get people killed, and I feel a moral responsibility to comment on it.
Over the weekend a Liberal reporter in San Francisco wrote a series of tweets lamenting the rise in crime in San Fran and warning that if things don’t change, the city could collapse. In the thread, which has since gone viral, she had the temerity to suggest that there may be physical differences between men and women when she tweeted that “Men are worried for their wives.”
Well Twitter, as you can imagine, did not like that at all. A large number of respondents took offense, replying with comments like how dare someone suggest that women need men to take care of them… etc. etc.
You don’t have to be a TERF (whatever that is) to understand the fact that, in general, men are more physically able to deal with violent assailants than women are, especially when those assailants are men, which they almost always are. It’s a simple fact of biology. And I don’t care if it offends your Progressive sensibilities, because if people persist in demanding that we tell women they are just as able to phsyically resist violent, possibly drug addicted, likely mentally ill aggressors as men are… and we encourage them to ignore the increasing levels of violence in our urban centers because “I am woman hear me roar”, then we are going to get people killed.
This debate is closely related to that other tired Feminist argument that young women should be able to dress however they want and get as blackout drunk as they desire without having to worry about getting sexually assaulted or raped, and that to argue otherwise is to engage in victim blaming. On the one hand, I agree… young women should be able to drink, dress and behave however they want. But on the other hand we live in a dangerous world full of predators looking for easy targets, and a blackout drunk woman walking home alone late at night in four-inch heels and a tight dress that restricts her movements presents just such a target.
It’s the difference between an academic argument made in a safe faculty lounge on a college campus at high noon, and the harsh reality of life on an urban city street at two o’clock in the morning. And we aren’t doing anyone any favors by trying to convince them that people should behave as if that difference does not exist.