It started in academia, but quickly spread to media, but the Larry Summers kerfuffle at Harvard comes to mind. In an academic context, Summers decides to be provocative and asks if biological differences could account for some gender gaps. He later gets run out of town.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Summers#Differences_b...
And speaking of Summers, it's hilarious how people will cite him while ignoring his underlying point about aptitude distribution. Almost 40% of kids who have a 700+ math SAT are girls. Using Summers' reasoning we should see a lot more women in programming and engineering.
[1] This is leaving aside findings subsequent to Summers' comments that over time the disparity between men and women in IQ scores is narrowing.
veritas indeed.
xx and xy simply puts different brain chemistry at work. it doesn't mean that the variation disqualifies anyone from anything. the issue is much, much more subtle (like fast twitch vs slow twich muscles in athletes).
oversimplyin it simply makes a mockery of understanding & analysis.
the fact that you use 'brute strength' as an obvious irrelevant characteristic seems to play into this ignorance. ('brute strentgh' doesn't even matter amongst most athletes in most endeavors, at best its a gating criteria, but again what about endurance vs speed vs hand-eye co-ordination vs tactial application of effort?).
...and there's loads of science if you are bored
Most reasonable people that I know, of either gender, understand that the average man is physically stronger than the average woman. That's a clear distinction. But, lots of other traits are not clear at all, even though they are implied without good evidence. And, in most or all cases there is enough overlap in ability (e.g. the strongest woman is much stronger than the weakest man)
As others mention, the issue of gender rights that I see is one of opportunity and access. The question that's raised is whether the culture imposes biases, implicit restrictions and even punishments when there should be none.