The TRUTH about FEMALE WARRIORS - Reply to Andrew Klavan of the Daily Wire

[Music] greetings i'm chad and i want to talk a little bit about women in medieval combat and the idea of the heroic woman i'm prompted to talk about this from a recent video that andrew clavin of the daily wire made readdressing the topic because i've also addressed it in response to andrew before both with the idea of could women win in a sword fight and could women operate in a medieval battlefield i'll say once again right from the get-go i like hendry okay there's a lot of what he says that i agree with i'm a religious conservative person myself so of course we're gonna see eye-to-eye on many things i like what the daily wire is doing doesn't mean i agree with everything especially in areas where i think more nuance can be added to the discussion because i personally find it deeply intriguing it's a passionate subject of mine just medieval combat generally and looking at greater nuance is something i just enjoy so this is a response yet i'm gonna be speaking a bit more broadly and generally than addressing all the comments that andrew made in the recent video though i might address some specific ones here and there because andrea's recent video is actually is far more nuanced and he got to actually address the deeper issue that he was uh trying to refer to in the past videos but medieval enthusiasts like me get caught up on specifics and just just to let andrew know that for us enthusiasts there's a vast difference a huge difference was seen between saying a woman will never win in a sword fight without giving specific clarification on what type of sword fight if it's armored and the scenario because there are scenarios in which a woman would be far more disadvantaged in a sword fight like the scenario he brings up but he wasn't that specific in his first statement it was just sword fighting generally in most of the responses to andrew throughout the entire discussion and back and forth it has been about the unarmored duel that's what people have mostly been referring to uh to andrew because the his first statement that a woman would never win in a sword fight liked additional context that he added later on that it was a battle sword fight or was in a battle or it's an armored jewel that liked all of that it was just a standard sword fight and a standard sword fight is unarmored usually a personal duel between two people if you're away later on your own you just have a weapon on your person you're wearing clothes not armor but you have the weapon and in swordfighting generally women because weapons force multiplier are far more capable of winning those fights than people might assume but not more often than the men usually but we have seen women win hema tournaments for instance not as often as men win but they are capable of winning and so again it's the definitive statement thing if you simply said women would lose more often than they would win with a sword fight and i get annoyed that they're showing women always being able to win regardless of their training oftentimes and not trained most people would just be like yeah yeah we agree so a lot of the controversy gets blown out of proportion i can understand why though because i'm i also got onto that bandwagon as well where definitive statement is like it's it's not all the time now in his recent video andrew is far more nuanced than his other takes on this area which i really appreciate and i understand what he's been trying to say the whole time which is why i want to address the that as well the concept and idea of the heroic woman i understand why andrew is pushing at the position he is as far as he is to try and acknowledge a greater truth which i feel actually is happening in the world and it's the nature of the female hero and he talks about this in his video which i appreciate because again he's explaining it a bit better and i can definitely see that's what he was trying to acknowledge but again the statements were far too definitive because i want to give examples how you could portray a female action hero and perhaps a more realistic understanding and the nuance in different situations in which they might be able to level the playing field or be properly at a disadvantage and the more realistic female hero that's not necessarily an action hero because that is the big difference guys stereotypically like the action genre more than women and usually the heroes in those stories are men and they are depicted in an aspirational way to try and inspire us more often than not not always of course to try and we think we wouldn't be wonderful if we could become that heroic that's strong that's masculine and manly this is also why i feel the male action heroes should in a large measure not always but reflect noble heroism to inspire and help us become better part of the reality here is that there is a vein of truth a possibility that men and boys might have the potential to become like that so when people want to make a female hero a character that girls and women could look up to and see something to aspire towards depicting them in a way that might actually be possible for the average woman the average girl to achieve is important in certain areas for instance the character elizabeth in pride and prejudice is an incredible and wonderful heroic character and role model for both girls and women it is very attainable okay any woman and girl could become like elizabeth there is great moral character there is great strength she defends her family she defends her views very strongly these are very attainable things now contrast this with the male action hero yes with a lot of hard work the average man might be able to become as muscly and buff and and noble and heroic as a lot of the action heroes not going into the crazy fantasy side but there are elements that are still realistically attainable i think it's clear that andrew's main issue is when you depict a female action hero often times in film they depict their capacities vastly different to what is the reality most women will not be able to become that capable in combat against trained men and there are so many action movies with female action heroes where it's clear they don't have the size weight the leverage strength to throw punches that cause men are you know much bigger than to fall back like they were just hit by a truck and is more trying to promote the idea of feminine heroism and how they can be heroic with the natural inclinations traits they have and how men can be heroic with the natural inclinations physical traits that they have as well saying it's okay for women to act like women they can still be heroic in their womanly role and likewise goes with men i understand that and i think there is value in just simply celebrating traditional masculinity and traditional femininity and there does seem to be this thing more often in modern media specifically we're not talking about you know uh the 90s or even the early 2000s to an extent but in modern media there seems to be this kind of disdain with traditional femininity and you can't have a heroic female character who is traditionally feminine and they really push to try and make these female heroes act far more like men both in their personality and the way they present themselves but also how they deal with conflict and then making them unreasonably competent in combat in which what we're looking at that just wouldn't be the case based on their size and how they can handle themselves and i'm not talking about depictions that try to approach this realistically like brienne of tarth but look at the end of frozen specifically where ana goes up to the villain and punches him across the drawer and knocks him going flying the reality is this is the true reality if a girl of that size tried to punch a guy like that it would not have that outcome and if the that man didn't have patience or restraint and tried to hit back anna would have been in a very difficult and you know dangerous position and so encouraging girls that hey go up and hit a guy even when the guy's in the wrong it can put them in a very dangerous situation that is not a good thing to teach young girls and women generally because we need to understand this reality the average man is stronger than the average woman and when it comes to unarmed combat where there's no force multiplier things like anything like that women have a severe disadvantage especially if they have no training at all and even when they do have the training equal training because of strength advantage stuff like that in an unarmed context men vastly more most often to a very large degree will usually always dominate the woman in a combat situation like that this is why it is so important to teach men restraint the fact that men should never hit a woman is very important and it's not because women don't initiate violence as often to men as men do to women there's actually been studies done in this and our site warren farrell who is a he was a feminist spokesman okay and he has done a lot of study in this regard and he has found that statistically it's actually more likely for a woman to initiate violence with a man than it is for a man to initiate violence against a woman but when a man is violent against a woman injuries occur because of the vast strength difference you know bone density although so many reasons okay just anecdotally i found that as well throughout my school life girls were far more willing to initiate violence from me for far lower offenses than guys were i remember just teasing a girl playfully and she full hand slapped me across the cheek and a guy would never do that because a guy would know if he actually initiated violence against another guy that's the get-go that i would respond in kind but the girl knew that there is a social edict that is actually starting to be subverted and i think this is bad that men should not be violent against women for the very real truth that when they are devastating injuries can occur this is the traditional value of a man should never hit a woman women should never take advantage of that and be violent against men and then just expect that because of the social thing you can't touch me because they should honor and respect men's restraint in the way that they are treating women because they should i promote this men should not hit women except for the extreme extent of defending themselves and protecting their own life of course this is where the push for equal treatment actually is flawed because not everyone is equal men are not equivalent in their strength to women and the erroneous untruth that that is being promoted in the modern day is that women can be as successful at men in every single realm it's also untrue that men can be as successful as women in every you know realm but in the physical capacities okay it's important that both men and women are taught some very important things because if you really push equal treatment the problem that will arise is that men will start to treat women like they are men in physical altercations and greater injuries will occur against women because they do not come out well in those altercations we see signs online and other things of physical altercations happening where a woman has actually physically attacked a man and the man decides to fight back and it does not end well that should never happened ideally none of them should initiate violence against each other period but these are important things to be understood and this is what andrew is kind of talking about with the female action hero is that too often frozen is a perfect example here they're saying that women can be violent against men and then unrealistically succeed at it which could lead girls and women to actually get injured as a result if they're saying yeah be as violent against men as men are willing to be violent against themselves no you don't do that and so i agree with andrew's sentiment in that regard and that is why when he was watching the witcher he got thrown out of it but then if we apply it too broadly it can misrepresent the past and the reality of sword fighting and other things as well which is what caused the response from everyone i went out of my way to try and be respectful to andrea and always will like i said i like the guy he did receive a lot of disingenuous hate and criticism and things i'm just trying to promote the reality and truth and so when depicting the female action hero realistically there are some important things that we should try and understand in context and even though i'm not looking at andrew's recent video like word for word a lot of this is addressing the things he says when he says a woman fighting a guard if how trained the guard is because he kind of just takes it for granted that he expects the guard to be as skilled as the 200th ranked warrior fighter when you're fighting a guard when you're fighting a soldier you're fighting other soldiers right you're a knight fighting other knights they are going to be at least the 200 ranked male in the sport when reality if it's the average guardsman no that wouldn't be the case they wouldn't be the 200th because that's still one of the best ranked fighter male fighters in the world there are two more points that i'd like to specifically address in the video before we get into a more general discussion on the situations in which women were to be disadvantaged or the situations in which women would be able to compete far more evenly against men in combat i was not talking about a sports duel right obviously in in a sport with a referee and technique where technique matters for everything there's some level of skill and not skill where a woman could defeat anybody the reason why i want to address this point is the possible misunderstanding that people might assume that he my historically european martial arts then is a sport in which the physical disparities between men and women are more exaggerated like other sports when an actual fact hemor is a martial art that uses force multipliers swords and that very much does even the playing field even in the tournaments where there are rules and referees those tournaments are structured as much as possible to try and simulate a real-life duel and other things that would naturally advantage stronger opponents are allowed like grappling this is why heimer is a decently informative point of reference to try and find out how effective women would be in an actual sword fight and the fact that certain women have one mixed-gendered tournament shows that women would be how to beat men in certain sword fight situations depending on what those situations are which we'll talk a little bit about later when the williams sisters serena and venus played the 203rd ranked man now serena and venus are not just good tennis players right they are the best among the best uh female players who have ever played the game and no there's no question about that he beat that he didn't just beat them he devastated them it was six two six one i think and a racket by the way is also a force multiplier right it is absolutely true that there are many sports in which the physical disparities between men and women play a very significant role and in which women find it very difficult to compete on an equal level of men but a tennis racket is not the same type of force multiplier as a sword thanks to the design of many weapons you don't actually need a lot of strength or to exert a lot of energy to produce incapacitating or lethal force which is the essential level that is needed to succeed in combat whereas with a tennis racket the harder and faster you can hit that ball the more advantage you will gain in the contest you might think swinging a sword harder and faster than an opponent will give you an indomitable advantage but not nearly as much as people suppose and that disparity can be far more easily overcome thanks to skill than such a strength or speed disparity can be overcome in tennis and many other sports the additional strength that men usually have over women does not produce insurmountable speed and strength in sword fights that women are unable to overcome and thanks to the sword and many other weapons design women are able to very easily achieve the level of incapacitating and lethal force needed in combat but there are other types of combative situations in which these advantages can be mitigated and those disparities become more pronounced and so this leads me to the thoughts about the scenarios in which would it would change up the likelihood that a woman could win a combat situation versus not because in this recent video andrew gives a more specific situation than he had before as i mentioned and he refers to the movie the last jewel where it's an armored jewel okay they're both wearing medieval armor the helmets are a thing to comment on regards to that film but uh all right medieval armor and weapons that is a different situation and scenario than an unarmored one and yes it would change how likely it would be for a woman to win it's a lot of complexity but these are the things that honestly need to be acknowledged because people try and re-adjust the scenario in either way and then apply them too broadly and when i say both sides do this the people are trying to say women would never win in a fight they do come up with more specific situations in which it's very rare for a woman to win i was having a discussion with someone about women in warfare and the person i was discussing this with kept bringing up shield walls and then if you're pushing shield wall against shield wall women would have a really if it was a female army that have a distinct disadvantage yes but shield walls weren't used all the time there are many other applications in which like a side that has physically weaker soldiers could be employed effectively and so i feel it disingenuous when people narrow down the situation so much to validate something that they are then applying to broadly and then on the counter side to that because there are some women that are stronger than the average man they say that's untrue and then they overrepresent it and say women are just as capable as men in combat here is a point of evidence and they apply that too broadly so when we start with unarmored combat okay the average woman has very little chance to win a fight against the average man and that's looking at both untrained in this position and we need to acknowledge and just be honest about this i've been shocked at the strength disparity between myself and my wife when she's trying to lift a box when she was trying to dig a hole once or open jars even and she gets me to do the same task and how easy i found it it was for me to complete the task in comparison it was shocking okay the strength disparity between the average man the average average woman can be like i said shocking so much so that my wife is not experienced in combat and of course this scenario would never happen but if my wife actually wanted to try and injure me and i resisted very minimally just by holding out my hands she would be almost utterly incapable of knocking me out without lifting up like a force multiplier she lacks the strength even if i said hit me as hard as she could it would be extremely difficult for her to actually seriously injure me but that's important to acknowledge and understand a lot of women literally are incapable almost completely incapable of knocking out a man even when they're committed to do so but in reverse when a guy is committed to actually knock out someone who is vastly weaker and shorter than them their capacity and ability to do so is quite extreme that's how extreme this the average disparity reaches so if you're writing a story where the average untrained woman suddenly is in a a situation where she has to fight off a man or she might be a bad woman she's attacking a man or she's a heroic woman trying to fight off bad goons or whatever you need to add something in to justify their ability to win it otherwise it's just unrealistic okay uh was she extremely lucky did she get an advantage did she get a weapon okay because as soon as she gets a force multiplier and oftentimes that's what happens it because most people just understand this reality normally and when there's an altercation between a woman and a man they want to justify the woman winning she needs to pick up something like a rock or a rolling pin or something to give her the leverage to actually incapacitate that man if the woman is trained versus an untrained man well that's different okay um there's a big difference in being able to know how to manipulate weight and throw a punch still it doesn't even it out completely the fact that men on average are bigger their leverage their strength and just from rough housing in the past even an excessively trained woman will have difficulty defeating a man if they're really well trained if they're like a master martial artist versus an averagely trained man it's not as clear-cut as people think that the woman will always win especially in unarmed fighting in unarmed fighting size and strength actually can play a much larger role it is more likely for a woman to win but honestly if it's against the average man they will struggle if it's a generally weaker man than average there's a high chance you'll win that needs to be acknowledged and people will probably then bring up exceptions where situations where a trained martial art woman is able to beat an untrained man but that's actually the exceptions if you're to try and take every single altercation throughout all of human history where a trained woman fighter is fighting an average man of average strength and just normal capacity from his upbringing in terms of combat they will still struggle it's not easy it's not like you know action hero can knock out every man okay that's the reality and this is one of those areas where i think andrew from his most recent video is trying to push back against okay where the female action hero just because she's trained but it's clear that she is of average female athletic ability not great you know she's not the strongest woman in the world versus men of average strength even an average athletic woman will usually be far weaker than the average man still and there are so many action movies where the woman who's shorter they have much thinner arms they don't have weight in their category they're just knocking men off their feet it happens a lot and that is betraying an untruth that is unrealistic and depicting trained martial arts women being able to take on men so easily look i get it if action fills everything it's for fun but if it's done excessively and also in films in which this isn't supposed to be an action female and they just are able to like lay out men without any training things that is extremely unrealistic if it's a much stronger woman also this is like one of the strongest women in the world versus the average man in an unarmed fight yes a woman would have a much likely chance to win if it's the strongest woman in the world versus one of the strongest men in the world both being trained the man is going to win most of the time in reality all right so once again if you want to switch up and make it so this woman hero can win more often you need to give him a weapon or something so now we go to the next scenario which is the weapon combat jewel so say swords for instance if they're both untrained and as the average woman against the average man and they just pick up a weapon and pick up a sword each uh interestingly enough of course the men would win most of the time okay for the vast majority but i think the woman would have a higher chance of winning against the man a little bit more so than if they're both unarmored so instead of say maybe you know in unarmored the woman might only have a one percent chance of winning out of a hundred one out of a hundred throw in a weapon okay it might actually be five percent or even ten percent chance because if they're both untrained there's a high chance that the male will make a mistake and if the woman gets the lucky shot in she can end the fight right then because a weapon is a force multiplier and a small little hit with a sword can kill someone instantly if it lands in the right area or at least incapacitate them unarmored you don't get that even if the guy slips up and the woman gets a lucky hit in because the strength is disparity it's very hard for them to generate lethal or incapacitating force with a weapon they can do that and so that teaches the untrained still even a bit higher for a woman still massive advantage with the man looking at trained versus untrained this is one of the biggest ones right where if you have a a woman who is trained in swordsmanship ver and she has an average female strength versus the a man who has average strength who is untrained this is the big one this is where people have been trying to say hang on a man actually wouldn't win all the time because if you were trained and you know how to use this weapon in such a way to be able to easily incapacitate or kill someone and weapons are capable of doing that and the person is so untrained that you can just get that you know hit in you don't need a lot of force or strength to produce lethal force essentially as i'm trying to say here and so the actual reality here the trained woman versus the untrained man with weapons the woman would win more often than the man it's not 100 though i would say maybe 80 of the time uh because she could make mistakes and the men might get just that hit in um remember the man is untrained and so that means he doesn't really know how to close the distance as easily and nullify the weapon because that would be the tactical choice take away the thing that is evening the playing field take away the weapon and suddenly they can then a man could use their greater strength to dominate the woman in this physical altercation so yes skill has a major play part to play this is where weapons are a force multiplier and there's not many things nullifying the devastating capacity that the weapon gives which is lethal damage because they're not wearing armor but then if we go to the next combatants where they are both trained and both averagely athletic okay the man would win more often but not to a devastating degree it would be maybe 70 of the time it could be 80 because if the man is trained they're both equally trained the natural advantage he has in leveraging strength does give him an edge it isn't nearly as pronounced as unarmed okay weapons are force multipliers and this is where we see in hema where we see both trained combatants women are capable of winning human tournaments they've done it before but we can also see that they're not winning as often as men are if you change up the scenario and have both trained but now this is exceptionally strong woman versus an average strength man it would almost be 50 50 in that regard i think uh they're almost equivalent combatants height would play a bit of a difference so that's why like when i say they're exceptionally stronger i'm kind of thinking they're a bit taller than the average woman as well then if we take the one of the strongest men in the world versus one of the strongest women in the world both equally trained uh the men will win more often than not but not as much as you would think it's kind of the same thing as if they were both trained but had average strength because the disparity the difference would be about similar even though this woman is much stronger for the average woman if you compare her against like for like and one of the strongest men in the world the disparity percentage is actually pretty equivalent so this is an important one to consider because this is as i mentioned is the scenario that most often comes up when people think sword fighting unarmored weapons but then if we go to the next scenario and throw armor into the mix it changes the ballpark completely so i'll quickly try and go through the combatant scenarios average woman vs average man of course man is going to win most the time if they're wearing armors this is including weapons weapons and armor even though the armor can protect the woman a lot there is a type of physicality needed to be able to continue fighting while wearing the armor conditioning okay this is a very uh the armor can exhaust you it restricts breathing and stuff and the average man is going to be out and manage and handle the armor better than the average woman okay it's not super heavy but it is heavy and if you haven't if you're not even used to it a man is going to be able to support that weight easier so you know the armor is not going to protect the woman nearly as much uh and armor nullifies the weapon okay they are both untrained but it means the woman is not being able to incapacitate the man on those lucky hits nearly as much as if the armor wasn't there if the woman is trained and the man is untrained this also has the same effect the armor nullifies the weapon that the woman is using a lot of the time and that weapon is the thing that even the playing field a lot armor is meant to nullify weapons and so that takes away evening playing field in a big regard but if the woman is trained should be able to get around it and if the man is untrained so she might be able to adapt to it it might be closer to 50 50 but that's a big difference between the scenario in which they were in armor but where the woman actually has if she's trained and the guy is untrained the woman had the higher chance of winning more often armor i would almost say 50 50 on my own opinion if they're both trained wearing armor and this is actually the scenario that andrew was referring to in his video about the last duel because if they're both trained they both know how to try and work around the armor and this is where women would have a disadvantage because the strength difference because one of the ways you nullify the armor is in grappling and that strength leverage size weight has a big role to play and so then i would agree with andre in this very specific situation yeah it would be a very hard press for a woman to win do i think that the woman would be vaporized to the extent that he is saying if they're both trained no if the woman is untrained and they're wearing armor okay if a man was committed yeah like you could almost be that hypobolic and say the woman would be vaporized all the time they mean i like to add the nuance that luck plays a role and they could get their lucky hit in but yes most of the time the man is going to win but this is a very specific situation and so understanding it all in nuance if the woman was one of the strongest women in the world versus the average strength man but they're both trained makes it about 50 50 if they're both strongest man in the world strongest in the world trained wearing armor and weapons the man ruled most of the time and then we come to the battlefield and the battlefield i have a whole video on this and so i go into more nuance there i'll try and quickly go through the scenarios i need to stop there because the scenarios don't really apply people bring up you know would women be out of fight in a medieval battlefield more often there's a lot of nuance there because inferior armies that had distinct disadvantages they were the inferior side whether it was from the number of people in the army versus the equipment and weapons if they were less equipped they just had farming stuff and everything have still won if you just get the right tactics you can flank them right you caught them on that bottleneck or any number of things um they don't have the right armor or shields defense defender gets arrow fire and things like that and so even a uh a army like a side that has distinct disadvantages can absolutely dominate the opposing side just based on circumstance and tactics and other things and so even if you had a whole army made out of women if it's if you get lucky with the tactics and you're just smarter yeah absolutely women can win there are other complexities that makes women's role in the battlefield far less likely outside of just their physical capacity and it's actually more involved with pregnancy their monthly cycles the social dynamics between men and women like men and women associating in a high stress situation like warfare can be a recipe for disaster and all those things are the more significant factors to consider and i go into detail in the other video but it's not clear-cut just based on physicality that women would always lose you need to consider that there are disadvantages that do get acknowledged but that's its own video and i've already done it and there we go i tried to address as much as i could from andrew's video both the practical side of the combat but also his intent behind why he says what he says and look medieval period medieval combat is not his area of expertise okay and i'm not doing this to try and do a gotcha or anything i'm just sharing a more nuanced kind of perspective from someone who's passionate about this thing even though i understand where he's coming from and i hope we all can and that was the purpose behind this video so thank you for watching i do hope you have enjoyed and of course i hope to see you again so until that time [Music] you

Channel: Shadiversity

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Id: xwtE-BfjeSI

Length: 30min 58sec (1858 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 19 2022