Women, strength, fight, and reality.

Photo: French female paratrooper commandos.

This is a recurring topic of discussion and controversy that I want to settle once and for all. Yes, it is established that in the fictional and highly fantasized world of sexism and misogyny in Gor, women are too weak to fight and are no match for men. That is the paradigm, and while it is idiotic, it is a paradigm that we are forced to accept. The world of Gor has many idiotic paradigms, but they are paradigms, and you have to accept them if you play a character in that universe.

But speaking of idiots, it seems that a fairly large number of male players of Gor SL believe that this paradigm is based on sociocultural, ethnic, historical, and biological reality of our world. I could debunk this argument by citing the incredibly high number of female combatants throughout human history, from pre-antique times to… well, to the present day, whether recently in Syria with the Kurdish female combat units, or the elite Ukrainian reconnaissance units. But members of the male gender would respond that it’s not the same or that these are exceptional cases.

No, I’m going to tell you about my experience in the field as a combatant and that of combatants and military personnel in general on this subject. Because yes, I do have real military experience, and yes, I have also practiced martial arts at a high competitive level, and I have had a rather rare experience: I am transgender. So I spent the first 28 years of my life in a man’s body (I should say, in the living prison that was my man’s body), then, after two years of transition and hormone treatment—which is still ongoing—I discovered with fascination, wonder, but also my eternal scientific curiosity what it meant to go from a body dominated by a lot (a lot) of testosterone to a body that was almost devoid of it, replaced by estrogen and progesterone.

But let’s start with a factual example:

Why, whether in MMA or any other combat sport, do we not have men and women fight each other on an equal footing? Because, with equal fighting expertise, men are generally bigger, heavier, and stronger? Yes, definitely. Because women can’t win? No, not at all.

In a sporting contest between two high-level fighters, male and female, the goal is to avoid serious injury. However, in such a case, the man, with his generally superior mass compared to the woman, risks seriously injuring her, and the woman, faced with someone much heavier and stronger than herself, has no choice but to strike mercilessly at the most sensitive and fragile areas to compensate for the difference in power. So, in the end, both combatants are at serious risk of being seriously injured.

In a real combat situation, where both combatants are fighting for their lives, the fight would be bloody, with one clear rule: “the first to strike in the right place to neutralize the other wins.” This is no easy feat in combat if both opponents are equally matched. And you know what happens then? Neither of them will come out of the fight unscathed, far from it. The injuries will include fractures, severe trauma, and hemorrhaging, and the loser will undoubtedly end up strangled or with a dislocated or broken limb in order to end the fight. And that’s if they don’t die. But in any case, it’s not like in the movies: both will really need to go to the hospital.

How do I know this? Well, it’s no secret, it’s a known fact in all combat sports circles, and it’s even experienced in martial arts clubs, in equal combat exchanges. It turns out that women who are new to martial arts, aware of their relative weakness, especially in terms of weight and size, focus primarily on technical improvement and progress very, very quickly… Meanwhile, men take a while to understand that without expertise and mastery, their strength is not much of an advantage, and they start working to catch up. Within a few years, the technical gap between a woman and a man who started out together quickly closes, and in the end, the man regains his relative superiority. Ultimately, in terms of combat sports or hand-to-hand combat, men are still stronger, and if they are trained, they are formidable opponents for women (if they are inexperienced rednecks, on the other hand, they are still easy to defeat).

Of course, physical strength and technique are not the only factors; there is also the capacity for violence and a tendency toward a certain self-censorship. The hardest hurdle for a woman, on average, is not learning how to fight, but daring to do so. Most sociocultural models, whether in the West, the East, or the African world, insist that women must be gentle, kind, pacifist—in short, harmless. Women have internalized this; it is their culture. It is therefore a mental constraint that is not necessarily easy for all women to overcome. But once they have overcome it, women progress more quickly and effectively because they are aware that their muscular capacity will never be enough.

This is a proven fact in military training programs! No, there are almost never any special accommodations for women in military training; that’s an urban legend. If you want to become a paratrooper commando in the army, the instructor doesn’t care if you’re a woman. Women, who undergo EXACTLY THE SAME TRAINING AS MEN, perform equally well, if not better, from the very first days, and this gap will last for several weeks of training, at which point the men realize that, damn it, they really have to work hard, and they catch up, then widen the gap in turn.

As my drill sergeant used to say (I was a rifleman-commando in the French Air Force): “Women are smaller, less strong, and seem more fragile, but they can take more and they hang on longer than guys. And that forces guys to get off their asses!” So now you know that in the French army, there is no difference in treatment between men and women, and there are female paratrooper commandos (an elite unit) and female rifle commandos (which is just a specialized unit). France also deployed female commando riflemen during Operation Serval in Mali, and female paratrooper commandos among its troops in Syria during Operation Chammal. And believe me, it wasn’t to cook meals or run the field hospital.

As my old chin’a and aikido master, who officiated at my kung fu club and also gave self-defense classes to women, used to say: “Hit like a girl!” This is not meant to be derogatory in any way, it just reminds us that men and women, due to the marked sexual dimorphism of our species, cannot fight in the same way. A man can generally rely on his size, muscle mass, and weight. If he is strong enough and has even a little combat training, once he grabs a woman, she’s in trouble! A woman, on the other hand, has to rely on her speed, flexibility, and precision. Every blow she lands must hurt, stun, destabilize, and, if possible, be decisive. Because when facing a strong man, if she takes a punch to the face, it’s a safe bet that it’s over for her. But if she is trained, the rule is the same for the man!

Once again, fighting is not like in the movies: no one stays on their feet after being shot (unless it’s a .22 LR caliber bullet fired from more than six meters away). No one can take an uppercut to the jaw or a slap to the ear without flinching. And there is no human being capable of enduring a kick in the balls—or a kick in the breasts—without writhing in pain and losing their breath. Adrenaline works wonders, but it can’t do anything for a brain shaken in its skull or a sense of balance completely disrupted by an impact to the inner ear. It’s not a question of pain, but of physical laws and biological limits. And they are very rarely exceeded—yes, it happens, but it’s the occasional exception. If you take a hundred kicks to the groin to toughen yourself up, you’ll just develop a necrotizing hematoma of the scrotum, urinary problems, and you can forget about reproducing.

Human beings, regardless of gender, are fragile, and I have no more trouble breaking the fingers of a 6’3“ giant than those of a 5’1” woman—in fact, I might have more trouble with the woman, because she’s likely to be very fast and agile, giving me less opportunity to grab her hand. And I’m not just giving this example off the top of my head. In street fighting, and my life has been quite eventful, I’ve done a lot of it, my favorite neutralization technique is to break my opponent’s middle and ring fingers. I’m very good at it.

Basically, the rule is clear: men are generally stronger, taller, and heavier than women, and that’s their big advantage. At the same level, women are at a disadvantage in this respect and must compensate with greater determination, precision, and aggressiveness. The endurance of both is comparable, again at equal levels, but the bigger, heavier, and stronger you are, the better you can take a beating. Conclusion? A female fighter is always more ruthless and deadly than a male fighter because, in order to win, she has to strike as cruelly and quickly as possible so that the fight doesn’t last long, which would be to the advantage of her male opponent.

And with bladed weapons? That’s a subject I’m familiar with too. I’m a first dan black belt in kung fu (okay, we don’t really call it dan, but that’s so you understand), and a sword master… among other things. A one-handed sword, from the Roman gladius to the Chinese sword, including the katana and the Viking sword, is a piece of metal weighing between 800 grams and 1.4 kilograms. There are modern replicas of these weapons that weigh a little more, but they are replicas for collectors, not functional weapons. A functional sword therefore weighs less than a large bottle of soda. It is also very well designed, perfectly balanced, and therefore very easy to handle. Learning to swing a sword is child’s play. Slicing through a watermelon is even easier. And during our public demonstrations at the Nuit des Arts Martiaux (Martial Arts Night) in France, it took only 10 minutes to show children, both boys and girls, how to cleanly slice through a bundle of bamboo sticks as if it were butter. They had a lot of fun.

One of the three or four largest (functional) swords in the world is in Switzerland, not far from my home, in a museum. It is a zweihänder (a two-handed sword), designed in 1510 for a giant of almost two meters named Grutte Pier. It weighs a staggering 6.6 kg, but measures over 2.30 meters! Most two-handed swords from the same period, used in lansquenet units, did not exceed 3.5 kg. And we’re talking about two-handed swords made to break lances and bend plate armor, not rapiers or one-handed swords. So, if you didn’t know that melee weapons are never heavy, not even maces and axes, which are of similar weight, now you do.

Anyone can lift, hold, swing, and wield a sword as long as they have arms. With a little practice, anyone can swing a sword and strike at thin air or a tree trunk for two or three minutes. A woman can hold a sword and not get tired. But holding a sword, wielding it, and swinging it around does not mean knowing how to use it in combat, to attack or defend oneself. That’s the difference. To wield a sword correctly in combat requires at least several months of intensive training. To become a professional in its use takes a few years, and to become an expert is a career. Yes, my title of sword master is overused: it’s an honorary martial arts title for demonstrating my skills with this weapon (as well as with double butterfly knives and the spear) after several years of training, in front of a jury, in competition, and being judged worthy of the title. I think I’m about at the level of a semi-professional in real combat. In terms of demonstrations… well, I won a prize in the European championships. But sport is not war, right?

And that’s what makes all the difference. I’ve had to defend myself in street fights against attackers armed with knives. The worst was once when I was alone against three, two of whom were armed. Within a second, I knew they didn’t know how to hold or use their knives. Dodging their attacks and disarming them was easy for me (I still ended up with a torn jacket and a minor cut), and I sent all three of them to the hospital (and if you’re wondering, yes, of course I was scared!). That’s the difference between high-level training with real combat experience and three rednecks who rely on the metal of their blades to scare people and get what they want.

If you take up a weapon to fight, your chances against a trained opponent are inevitably slim. Even if you can wound them, you are likely to lose and it will end badly for you. A woman, like any individual, if she does not know how to fight, cannot invent herself as a fighter by taking up a sword, even if she has no trouble wielding and handling it.

And finally, is the strength of an adult woman worthless against a thirteen-year-old male teenager? In Gor, according to Norman, this is a fact. I don’t know what his teenagers eat, but many armies would like the recipe for their soldiers. Because a thirteen-year-old teenager, unless he has had early military training with intense physical exercise, has no developed musculature, and there is every chance that an adult woman who does a little physical work—if you’ve worked on a farm, or simply in a back room of a store lifting loads with your arms, you understand what I mean—is more than strong enough to stop him, or even, if she has the audacity and a minimum of experience, to knock him down and neutralize him.

So, since I’m talking about a quote from the novels here, let’s put things in context: a 13-year-old male teenager with martial arts training or a life of athletic exercise is stronger than a high-caste city woman whose work is mainly intellectual and who does no physical activity other than walking. Yes, in that case, it works, I totally agree. And even then… if she doesn’t know how to fight. Because my nephew, who is almost 13, does twelve hours of sports a week and is sometimes restless and aggressive, the last time he tried to challenge me by physically threatening me, he ended up on his knees, his arm twisted behind his back, held by just two fingers that I held firmly. And I haven’t done any physical activity for years… Yes, he learned his lesson.

But on Gor, everything is primarily sociocultural—not genetic. Sorry, Norman, but evolutionary psychology has been debunked as pseudoscience for over 30 years. A gorean woman must not fight, she must not generally touch weapons or train with them. The bow and a few other weapons, such as the dagger and the stake, for hunting, are tolerated. But a woman, while she may benefit from sports training with weapons, will almost never have access to martial arts training. And the vast majority of women would not even consider it. The idea that a woman is weaker than a man and cannot fight, and should not try to learn to fight, is ingrained in Gorian culture and completely internalized by women. Women are weak, men are strong; women are submissive, men are dominant. Between taboos, social restrictions, sociocultural pressure, and even laws, there has been enough, for dozens of generations, to ensure that the women of Gor, with few exceptions, cannot even consider learning to fight, let alone compete with men.

And there are exceptions in the novels; Norman thought of them and included them. And they are exceptions, because sociocultural pressure is never universal, and it never affects everyone, and never in the same way.

As for women’s physical ability to fight, in the real world, and not in Norman’s fiction? Never cross paths with a female fighter, ever. Because, aware of her weaknesses, she has amplified her strengths and assets, the first of which is that she will have no misguided arrogance, no mercy, no hesitation, and few scruples when it comes to surviving and defeating you.