Is the "Pete & Bobby Challenge" Unfair to Women?

WASHINGTON - EntSun -- The so-called "Pete & Bobby Challenge (https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/policy/healt...)," widely publicized with a video showing Secretary Pete Hegseth and Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr. exercising - challenges Americans to perform  50 pull-up and 100 push-ups within no more than ten minutes.

But many are wondering if it is fair to women, especially since the need for separate women's and men's categories in virtually all sports is widely accepted as necessary, and the military academies among other institutions have different standards of physical fitness based upon sex as well as age, notes public interest law professor John Banzhaf.

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For example, even VMI, which originally insisted that its military cadets had to meet the same fitness standards, has now recognized that this is unfair and unrealistic.  For example it now requires:
RUN - 2 miles in 15 minutes + 20 seconds for men, but 18 minutes + 06 seconds for women
PUSH-UPS - 49 in 2 minutes for men, but only 25 in 2 minutes for women

In other words, the difference in this one fitness standard criteria for comparing upper-body strength - which, unlike lifting barbells and other weights, provides a significant advantage for those who weigh less and takes advantage of the square-cube law (https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SquareCubeLaw) - is far greater between men and women of the same age than between men who are young and those who are less fit because they are older.

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As another example of the differences in upper body strength between male and female athletes, power lifter Avi Silverberg claimed to identify as a woman to gain entry into a lifting contest. He won a women's competition by easily breaking the female record by nearly 100 pounds; lifting an unheard of 35% more weight than the woman's record.

So it would seem reasonable for there to be different standards for this challenge for women.

We should recognize the unavoidable differences in physical abilities which dictate that men - even M2F transgender athletes - should in fairness not be permitted to compete against women, concludes Banzhaf.

http://banzhaf.net/ jbanzhaf3ATgmail.com @profbanzhaf