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I don't know why but people still have a push back against the women fighting men in fiction thing. Because it's not realistic some say. Because men are biologically stronger than women. Despite people being ok with smaller men fighting bigger men in fiction forever.

Action Heroes like John Wick and The Fast and The Furious characters. Are pretty much superhumans. But yet people still limit female characters to real-world human standards. But never give an opinion on men not following the same rules.

Smaller men can fight bigger men in movies. And one man can fight 100 men in movies. So far I haven't seen anybody complain about that.

In my world the fighters are superhuman. There are no weight limits or gender limits. Fighters who win fights are determined by who is more skilled, powerful, or who has better technique.

So the Female fighters can go toe to toe with the Male Fighters and win in my world. The same way the small guys can go toe to toe with the big guys and win in my world too.

So is it still a big issue to make women fight men in a superhuman combat sport?

Btw by Superhuman, I don't mean X Men or My Hero Academia. By Superhuman I mean Batman or Captain America.

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    $\begingroup$ Whether it is a big issue or not seems like a function of the cultural perceptions of your world. In other words you get to make be as big or little a deal as you want it to be. $\endgroup$
    – sphennings
    Jun 19, 2021 at 3:01
  • $\begingroup$ In action movies, women fight men quite often, and they win quite often too. Problem is that audience of these movies are regular people who have regular perceptions about men fighting women. Which means that one big limitation is that a male hero can not physically fight women, even if they are villainous. For male villains and antiheroes there is generally no such limitation. $\endgroup$
    – Alexander
    Jun 19, 2021 at 3:23
  • $\begingroup$ This seems much more like a question for Writers.SE. $\endgroup$
    – Cort Ammon
    Jun 19, 2021 at 4:13
  • $\begingroup$ Seriously, considering your question record and the way that you've written this one - indicating that you seemed to have learned nothing about what's on-topic here, please re-read the help center requirements for on-topic questions. There is a severe limit which is built into the software of the site, if you carry-on as you are, you will definitely receive a question ban. $\endgroup$
    – Escaped dental patient.
    Jun 19, 2021 at 4:13
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    $\begingroup$ I VTC. The question is in this society highly opinionated. I would say yes they can, as superhumans have wildly different powers, negating any 'unfair' power difference from between men and women. But I'm sure we can find a large group of people who want segregation, for many of their own reasons. $\endgroup$
    – Trioxidane
    Jun 19, 2021 at 5:30

2 Answers 2

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In the real world, on average women are smaller, weaker, and they have a different distribution of their muscle power. Average people don't compete in top championships, but there is a desire to see interesting fights of roughly evenly matched contenders.

  • You could introduce weight classes similar to boxing to let some women fight some men. The problem is that in your setting, weight does not correlate with strength.
  • You could have classic, gender-segregated tournaments (and world rankings) and also integrated tournaments. Statistically speaking, one would expect fewer women at the top ranks of the integrated tournaments, but who knows how super they are.
  • Then there are the cultural issues mentioned by sphennings and Alexander in the comments. They apply both in universe and regarding your target audience.
    • In universe, some male heroes might be unwilling to hit a woman, even in sports. You could argue that that is their problem, and that they don't have to compete if they don't want to.
    • Out of universe, you might consider if you want to reinforce the existing cultural bias against men hitting women, or weaken it. Your story might not become the next big Hollywood movie, but you are doing your little piece to shape cultural expectations.
      Regarding the latter, you might show in your story (show, don't tell is always better) that male and female supers are in a league of their own, and that the cultural norms still apply outside that league.
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You can

Current segregation is based on that women and men are different in physical abilities. This is certainly correct in the top area of combat sports. You see the same with weight classes. The idea is to try to level the playing field, making sure the fighting is 'fair' and neither has a significant advantage over the other. With weight classes you can see this is already done with arbitrary classes. We could draw them up differently with more or less classes.

Your fighters have less problems with this. Women and men fighters are equally able. There is no need for segregation for fairness.

People might've problems ethically or morally, but that is down to the person. As you can have fair fights, segregation isn't needed.

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