Monday, February 06, 2006

Size Matters

La Professora gets La Shafta.

She wonders if being big makes a difference.

I'm afraid it does.

Humans are apes.

Human men are not very bright apes.

I am 6'1", and I weigh 260. I can bench press about 230, and look kind of mad, even when I am happy. My chest is 48", and my waist is 38". I clearly come from slow, dull-witted northern European muck-slingers and beaters-with-clubs. Short legs, large torso, thick neck. Not pretty, but a silverback.

None of this means I am a bad ass. Michelle could easily kick my ass, with just a little martial arts training (which, for all I know, she already has. Note to self: be nice to Michelle).

An interesting overall question: should women be policemen? (you know what I mean).

Female police are MUCH more likely to be involved in fights or at least resistance from suspects. Large men don't have to fight.

And, this is SEPARATE from whether the woman is in fact able to defend herself effectively. She may be much more able to kick butt than some big, slow guy. The problem is that she HAS to, whereas the big guy just commands by size.

So, it seems to me that women are much better suited to being combat infantry or fighter pilots than they are to being regular street cops.

Of course, it is easy to think of counterarguments, and it is ultimately an empirical question. Flip side might be that male suspects have to try to act bad, and challenge a male cop, whereas a female cop is not so threatening and can take guys into custody without fighting. Overall, there is no "gender of the officer" difference in compliance, it appears. And females probably would not engage in testosterone-induced private punishments like this.

Still, I think men (yes, including me) are apes.

2 comments:

Michelle said...

But maybe being nice makes a difference, too. Today when I picked up my car, David was very nice to me and gave me a rebate slip for my synthetic oil change that he could have kept to himself.

Your post made me wonder not about policewomen, but women professors. How would students react if I were taller/bigger? I suspect that they would be more intimidated, but since that would be counter to their gender expectation for a woman, it would actually backfire for me. They would resent me for intimidating them. Instead, I can be demanding and small , and so students understand my high expectations without feeling threatened by me (which means I'm still behaving within their expectations for my gender). Of course, the insecure types, who are intimidated by a five foot woman because she expects them to think and just maybe is smarter then them, will be annoyed with me no matter what I do.

HispanicPundit said...

So, it seems to me that women are much better suited to being combat infantry or fighter pilots than they are to being regular street cops.

I don't think this is clearly evident, for example, what do you think about this guys objections?