GCSW by Alan

Initiative to organize muscular strong women by Alan Solomon

1 story - published with kind permission of the author

The case for a GLOBAL COMMUNITY OF STRONG WOMEN

(By Alan Solomon)

Historically, physical strength has always been associated with masculinity. A strong male was someone who people naturally admired and treated with respect. Not so for a strong female. A strong, athletic girl was called “a tom-BOY,” who was expected to eventually give up her “mannish ways” and learn to be more “ladylike.” And many strong, muscular women have, to this very day, been insultingly called “she-males” by men who secretly wished they themselves were as strong and muscular as the women they are denigrating. Only in the last three or four decades, through the influence of women like Lisa Lyons, Gladys Portuguese, Rachel McLish, Cory Everson and Bev Francis, has there been a growing realization that physical strength and muscularity can be just as feminine as it was previously considered to be exclusively masculine. Today a woman can be openly strong AND “ladylike;” and a strong teenage girl no longer has to “allow” herself to be beaten at armwrestling by her teenage boyfriend, (unless she knows that his fragile male ego will be utterly demolished, along with his patently weaker right arm).

Attitudes are slowly changing. In ever-increasing numbers, women (especially in America and Europe) are working out, becoming stronger than the average man, even reaching levels of strength that surpass those of many of the world’s strongest men of the past. Today almost every serious female bodybuilder or weightlifter is as strong as, or stronger than Eugene Sandow or Steve Reeves. Virtually every feat of strength performed by strongmen of the late 19th and early 20th centuries has been matched by strongwomen of the present.

So physical strength is no longer exclusively masculine. It has its equal, feminine counterpart. But there is a difference. The male psyche has invariably associated strength with brute force, dominance and aggression – with fighting rather than sharing – making war rather than peace, resulting in the global mess we are in today. It is my belief that the physical empowerment of the female psyche will bring about a never-before-realized balance in the social order, coupling strength with gentleness, power with compassion, giving superior muscularity the necessary superiority of mind and the wisdom required to make the world a better place for all of us.

It is to this end that I propose the establishment of an organization I call the GLOBAL COMMUNITY OF STRONG WOMEN.

Linked by the internet, strong women from all over the world will be able to communicate, sharing experience and ideas. Locally they will form neighborhood groups providing support for those who need help or protection from abuse, as well as strength training and motivation for girls still at school. Instead of being embarrassed by their size and muscularity, tall, strong, athletic, teenage girls will learn to take pride in their physical superiority. They will become positive role models for their female peers, and show their male counterparts that one can be really strong without having to be a chauvinistic ‘jock’ as well.

Around this nucleus of ideas, the GCSW can grow and develop into a world-changing force for good.