Did you know that females are actually stronger and more resilient than males?

Question

I just learned that X chromosomes are stronger and more resilient than Y chromosomes. Which explains why women are more resilient to genetic and chromosomal abnormalities.
Depression and anxiety affect females more, while neurodevelopmental disorders, including autism spectrum disorders, early onset schizophrenia, and attention deficit hyperactivity, affect more males. Males are also more sensitive to prenatal insults, such as gestational stress, maternal infection and drug exposure.

The more you know

Did you know that females are actually stronger and more resilient than males?

OpenClose · Accepted Answer

Yep! This is true. Though I'm not sure I would extend them much past genetics. Calling it "Stronger and more resilient", for instance. I would use this information more for general analysis than for value judgments. But yeah what you mentioned is real.

Let's start with the Y chromosome. It isn't so much that the X chromosome is "more resilient". But by having 2 X chromosomes, women have genetic redundancy against abnormalities. We are built such that most genetic abnormalities are recessive and have to evolve towards dominance over time with success. It's why black skin and hair are super dominant, while newer mutations like light eyes and red hair are recessive. The genes have to "prove their validity" over time to gain dominance. So if you have 2 genes, it is very likely the other gene isn't abnormal and will thus take over. With an X and a Y, there is no such redundancy, so men are more prone to things like autism, colorblindness, and other sex-chromosome related disorders.

But why is it shrinking? My understanding is that it is shrinking *because it can*. Most secondary male characteristics form in the presence of testosterone. So technically all the Y chromosome needs to do is set up genitals to produce more testosterone, while the rest of the male characteristics could be stored on the X chromosome and wait for epigenetic activation. Also, humans have been evolving away from gender dimorphism as it hasn't been as necessary to us as a collectivist species. So there is generally less for the Y chromosome to do, and so we have been able to do just fine with many of these genes removed. That is, it didn't affect our reproductive success like it would for other genes. So it's not so much that it is actively being destroyed, but that it is allowed to shrink.

If the X chromosome IS more resilient, it might be because if the Y chromosome is shrinking, it might have smaller telomeres as well.

As far as gestational issues, there's a reason men are more prone to issues. And why women get especially sick when having boys. While pregnant, women's immune systems drop. This is due to the fact that having a different genetic code inside of you tends to sound the alarm on the immune system. So her immune system needs to drop to avoid rejecting the baby like a mismatched organ transplant.
Y chromosome traits stand out especially strongly, because by only having X chromosomes, there's no Y chromosome to build a comparison against. So her immune system will attack male babies more.

And in fact, she even slowly develops an immunity. The more babies a woman has, the more likely they are to be girls. The immune system gets better at attacking and disabling Y-fertilized eggs, or reducing certain Y-associated attributes. Similarly, lesbians are more likely to be born early, while gay boys are more likely to be born later. The effect is somewhat small and has a lot of overlap, but it's still statistically significant. And I actually have a fantasy story in the works that takes this effect into account.

And then even during and after gestation, to be a boy is to essentially be trans. Since girls don't have to transition, their brains are generally further along in development than boys', who have to undergo a rigorous transition process. I'll have to find the article about this (and it may have since been disproven) but there was an article I saw that showed boys were born with a 25% smaller corpus callosum that was also in a more fragile state and more prone to damage from psychological trauma. They noted the irony that we tend to coddle girls more than boys, and give more emotional attention to girls than boys, with the assumption that boys are tougher. The irony being that boys are especially vulnerable to emotional trauma in early childhood. A lot of the traits we associate with being "macho" may actually be associated with early childhood trauma. Things like emotional detachment and isolationism, which lead to very real emotional problems later like the epidemic of male loneliness and high suicide rates in men.

There's also the idea that "women mature faster than men". Women like to play with this in ways that aren't especially accurate. Things like "this means girls are smarter than boys" or "girls are more mature all-around" or "because women have to mature faster because of misogyny".

But basically, women reach their reproductive prime earlier due to greater risk of birth-related deaths later in life. Pregnancy for humans is one of the most taxing in the animal kingdom. Due to the lack of gender transition, a girl's brain finishes the development process somewhat earlier. But also, men are generally larger and have more to grow, so they finish growing later in life than women do. This isn't an assessment of intelligence or emotional maturity, nor is it borne of misogyny. The effect is the same in regressive theocratic regions of the world as it is in progressive and more egalitarian parts of the world. Were this true, we would expect girls around the Arabian peninsula to mature faster than girls in Norway.

For another interesting fact, did you know men's skin actually ages more slowly than women's? Our skin appears thicker and tougher because of extra collagen, which also makes lines more present. But this same effect also means we also likely don't go through as many skin-cell regeneration cycles that lead to aging. Similarly, the extra collagen keeps our skin firmer longer, and the thicker skin protects against sun damage to lower layers.

ohsheeT · Accepted Answer

You are so right in many ways when I was in fourth grade I knew this I knew that women were going to take over the world

Lots if guys are held back in many ways in school for a few years

Because this one thing all guys go through while girls are excelling and going to the top of their class

Boys are getting held back
Our teachers would make us stand and she picked you to answer questions whether you knew the answer to it or not you had to stand to give you answer

I watch many boys and including myself might know the answer but we couldn't stand to answer it so we had to just sit there and be done where the girls would just jump right up answer that question and get that good answer myself and all the other boys wouldn't even raise their hand even if we knew the question because this is when boys start getting their hard-ons LOL and no boys going to stand up with a hard on in front of the class no matter how hard you tried to control it it just didn't seem to work and I knew one day in class this is when girls are going to take over the world because I you for a fact that no matter what I was doing in life I was going to have to sit down and cover myself up I think girls are smarter in so many different ways I think they're this dressed thing guys that's emotional than guys so they're going to live longer look at the pain that they go through childbearing when they have that time of month I mean their IQs are probably even higher I can see where you are 100% right

I mean if you really pay attention to even the questions and answers on here between girls and guys and if you pay attention to the drama the guys start on here I mean it goes even deeper than that girls are just well more rounded they handle things a lot better they're not as rude unless they're push to be but yeah I still think women will take over the world one of these days LOL

Dazed0N0Confused · Accepted Answer

I knew this, this is why females can give birth & be single mothers when the "sperm donor" runs away.

dustybiker · Accepted Answer

Unfortunately that is where each individuals genetics mix in. In addition.

Flunkerdunk · Answer

I'll buy resilient, but not "stronger" (unless we have different meanings of the word).

I think if you were to compare males to females, you could boil it down to something as simple as a foot race.

Males are the 100 yard dash sprinters and do better at it than females.

Females are the 1000 mile endurance joggers and do better than males.

Get 20 of the strongest women across the world and 20 of the strongest men across the world and line them up on a football field. Who is pushing who over?

Get 20 of the greatest long distance running women and 20 of the greatest long distance men in a 500+ mile marathon and see who out runs who.

Ain't nothing wrong with that, mind you. One body is fuel efficient (fat burning/storage) and one is "all in" to fight to the death and burn all reserves to have any edge against an attacker.

So, stronger? Naaaah, not generally speaking.

However, resilient? Yes, very much so. I've had women lap me just after 5 miles when I was younger. Huge blow to the ego, too.

HighValue · Answer

The ADHD is based on the number or prescriptions for males, which is drastically overprescribed because many that don't have ADHD get diagnosed with it due to poor parenting. Kids that I have encountered while working in schools, when they don't have their medicine behave badly with other people, but somehow when they are with me that actually enforces discipline, they are capable of behaving perfectly fine just like everyone else. What it actually is, is that many women (mothers and women teachers) are not very capable at disciplining children. They often repeatedly give empty threats and don't follow through, plus they are inconsistent with the severity of discipline for a given offense.

If depression affected women more, they should have more suicides than men, but statistically that is not the case either.

D_Bone_Steak · Answer

Yet it's mostly females that have to find obscure things to shove down other people's throats to prove they're so superior... it's like some sort of gender Neapolitan complex. The males that do it are usually someone the average female has no sexual interest in which is sad because they usually do it to be a female gender sycophant in some sort of desperate attempt to get laid... while I scratch my balls and smell my fingers and get laid almost all too easily. I don't care... not my problem.

Anonymous · Answer

It makes sense because in nature, males are the disposable sex, and that's because females get pregnant.

Whether we're talking about a small group/pack/tribe/herd etc. of animals/humans, or about an entire species, females are more important than males when it comes to replacing the population. Too few females can mean too few children for the groups/species to survive. Meanwhile, one man can impregnate multiple females. Losing females is more damaging to the long-term survival of the group/species than losing males is.

MCheetah · Answer

"If X chromosomes are stronger and more resilient," then why do women much more often break down emotionally, usually blame everything on men, and rarely take accountability for their negative actions and choices? Or does the brain not count as a muscle and part of the body, too? 🤔

Twalli · Answer

It's not that X chromosones are stronger, they're just bigger. Men are far more likely to be colorblind or have hemophilia because they're linked to the X chromosome. So we could say that women cause most genetic problems because their X chromosomes pass it on. It's kind of funny in my family, because I am the first person colorblind. That means that all the women on my mom's mother's side passed on the colorblind gene only to a female child and that female child only passed it on to their female children until me.

Deed211 · Answer

I honestly wished females are stronger and more resistant than men's.

But in reality, men are built to be stronger.

I thought, at some point, women will gain some strength with themselves, but after seeing this post. The disappointment is real out here. 😔

FriendlyDrugDealer · Answer

I think it varies based on the scenario. Females can be stronger than males in certain things and sometimes males can be stronger than females in certain things. There’s no absolute strongest sex/ gender unless we define the exact circumstances of the situation.

Strength and endurance can be defined in multiple different ways.

TroyDT · Answer

Yup. I actually answered a question about ADS earlier today where I touched upon that. The Y has only about 10% of the genes of an X, so if the ladies have an errant gene in one X the other likely has a good corresponding one that compensates. For us guys, there is a 90% chance that if the X has a bad gene we are stuck.

loveslongnails · Answer

This may or may not pan out for humans, since the studies you're referring to were done on mice. That said, the presence of sex specificity in trophoblast function suggests underlying sex-specific epigenetic programs in placental trophoblasts, which might promote the disparity in developmental vulnerabilities between sexes. :-D

Makeushiver · Answer

That is no news. Women are nowhere neare as big of babies as guys are. If you get the flu we treat it as a mild head cold. If we get a mild head cold it's the most daunting corage with which men survicre the brutality of pathogens. Pai. What makes a woman complain in degree of pain makes men suicidal and left in wonder how the universe could conspire to focus its evil upon (__________(name of guy). I could go on but it would be reiterating the same theme

byrdman89 · Answer

Yes - women out perform or out score men in all kinds of surprising ways :) what's wild is that women are continuing to get smarter and stronger while men are kind of going in the other direction - you can see it happening - I think it's fascinating and amazing - no complaints from me -

Staximus · Answer

I don't think depression effects women more than men, 4x as many men kill themselves. That's one more way women are stronger. Plus women are far less likely to do stupid, dangerous, or fucked up shit like commit crimes, rapes, murders, etc. It has something to do with survival instincts.

Guardian45 · Answer

Yes, its a fact, names are the genetically & evolutionarily WEAKER sex! Male babies are frailer and die more. Thats why more male babies are born than female babies. Odds are against males throughout ages. Females live longer, get less sick, die less frequently from gun violence and suicide than males.

Sixgunsound · Answer

I did you have an actual point, or is this a fishing expedition?

TheUniqueOne96 · Answer

Lol, do you ever post questions that aren't used as an excuse to take some kind of dig at men?

Adam1978 · Answer

It's because you have two of the same not because they are stronger. If you got two cars it takes longer before they both fail then if you got one.

KrakenAttackin · Answer

Right, which is why women do all the dangerous, difficult, and complex jobs in the world 😏😏😏

blissinanarchy1 · Answer

Which is pretty amazing considering that contrary to old science, X and Y are not found to be dictating of sex. There are men out there with xy, xx, xyx, xyyyyy, etc, also women.

This has nothing to do with transgenders.

MrCommodore · Answer

Yet they can't open jar lids by themselves, can't take out the trash bin or leave the toilet seat up.😂🎣

abc3643 · Answer

LOL Yep, strong woman.

ShadezMcgee · Answer

So what was the purpose of this post exactly? Genuinely curious.

TallAnon · Answer

"Strong" is an odd word to use here. Did I know that men and women were different? Yes.

Anonymous · Answer

Yes. Given the way reproduction works (a woman can have at most a dozen or so kids, a man can have thousands) it makes sense that nature would tilt in such a way that there should always be more females in the population than males.

KittyBox · Answer

I didn't even understand what you just said, but okay.

exitseven · Answer

I did know that. They are the only ones that can give birth (no matter what democrats say) so they gotta be tough.

HippieVeganJewslim · Answer

Stronger, no. More resilient, I ain’t at all surprised. That makes sense, as I’m schizoaffective and have ASD.

Rockstarrrrr · Answer

Well, a lot of women have some serious mental strength and such high pain tolerance... It's pretty impressive

OddBeMe · Answer

I always wonder if society takes off its expectations what women could do with equal opportunity in strength training.

Hardworkingguy · Answer

Yes, in theory most women can bear physical pain better than men to endure having a baby

Anonymous · Answer

Do you believe most things you read on the internet or did you make this up?

pizzalovershouse · Answer

All I know is est healthy an excise an it helps keep body an mind good

krin_m · Answer

Thanks for sharing. I knew some of it, but good to read it so succinctly. Some things may be a bit questionable but overall, I agree.

Anonymous · Answer

It's understandable, That's because you Women don't go through as many Emotional hardships as us Men do.

Carsongrettler · Answer

Females also have stronger muscles than males nowadays as well women are much much stronger females are the stronger sex 💪🏼

Agape93 · Answer

Makes sense.  Cue male outrage

Anonymous · Answer

I think what you said is about right. I don't know the actual data but I can agree as far as personal experience goes.

Jouth · Answer

lol I think you might be sexist

TheFlak38 · Answer

GAG always likes to promote pseudoscience

Anonymous · Answer

Yeah, I knew that.

CubaPirate · Answer

Is it all connected to child birth?

PatriceONeal · Answer

Hahahahahahah. Good one

nawtee_me · Answer

Knowing is half the battle….

MiamiMadness · Answer

I believe it

_Just_A_girl_ · Answer

Hmmm

SayCheez03 · Answer

If you say so

EaterPeter · Answer

Absolutely

Chthou95 · Answer

Congratulations

Did you know that females are actually stronger and more resilient than males?

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