I know men are stronger than women and have much more muscle, but I was hoping someone could break down for me why and how this happens as normally up until puberty we are the same.
Also when women have a handicap or are separated from men in competitions, I hear a lot of complaining about equality and how it’s “easier” for women, who just lack technique, not muscle. I always thought these national competitions/olympic sports were separated for a reason backed up by science. Would love to hear how it works and how they decide handicaps or percentages in male vs female sports.
In: Biology
In puberty the male gonads start pumping out testosterone. This testosterone has a profound effect on the male physique: deeper voice, more facial hair, more body hair, and above all more muscle mass.
To my knowledege its the difference in testosterone and estrogen levels. Both men and women have them. But guys have more testosterone, wheras women have more estrogen. One example can be seen in anabolic steroids (banned in sports) alls it is, is synthetic testosterone. Hence why mens balls shrink while on it. Hope this helps some
>as normally up until puberty we are the same
Yep. Puberty starts all kinds of changes. You’ll notice after puberty sets in girls hips are wider and boys shoulders are wider. Girls have to push babies out through the hips so they have to be wider. Boys don’t so their hips stay narrow in a better shape for running or lifting.
Boys develop lots more muscle and grow taller while girls tend to have more subdermal fat. I’ve seen the extra fat for girls explained both in that it once again helps with pregnancy and also that it mimics the fat layer babies have which humans respond to with an instinctual need to protect (though that could obviously be the cause not the result of that adaptation)
As a sexually dimorphic species pretty much all of the differences come down to women being better at having children and men being better at combat/manual labor/hunting.
All of this is because these traits developed because the opposite gender valued them. Women wanted bigger stronger men better at combat/hunting as their mates, so bigger stronger men got to reproduce more and have bigger stronger kids. Men wanted women who were good at having their kids.
The side effect is that women have breasts all the time. In a lot of other primates (or even other mammals) breast tissue only develops when in heat or reproducing. Human women have breasts all the time because it made human men think they were better at having babies.
Human men also have crazy huge penises compared to our primate relatives. Who knows how long ago women started selecting for large penis (or how useful it was at ensuring pregnancy) but that gorilla that could rip a human apart and towers over you? Tiny dick compared to a human.
But the main takeaway is that men who were stronger reproduced more. The driving factor behind that is increased testosterone levels. Testosterone is linked to muscle growth along with stronger bones and tendons. Testosterone is also linked to increased aggression, spatial awareness and reaction speed.
TLDR: *Why* men are stronger being that being stronger was selected for in breeding. *how* men are stronger is largely thanks to the hormone testosterone that men produce in crazy amounts once puberty hits.
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