http://static.flickr.com/89/233317394_02a04d1ce6.jpg

http://www.flickr.com/photos/porschephile/3057146669/

There are many pictures where female cheerleaders at the bottom are
standing up. Mostly it’s two or three women at the bottom holding up one
or one and a half woman at the top.

Yes, I agree.  I claimed that in most pyramids in cheer, you find at least one of the conditions satisfied: (hands & knees, 1 level high or men on the bottom). 

When men are on the bottom, however, you find structures like this (4:5), this (3:3, since the guy in the back is spotting/stabilizing, not bearing weight) or this (I would say 3:5 with a bunch of other people stabilizing the knees; call it 5:5 to be conservative).  My only point is that the ratio of male cheerleaders required to female cheerleaders required reflects the differences, on average, between men and women.  When female cheerleaders make up the bottom level, you need more of them; the ratio is more like 2:1 or 3:1 than <=1:1 for male cheerleaders.

As for the arguments others have made (such as they are; ad hominem is not an argument), Erin presented a factual claim about how human pyramids in cheerleading tend to be composed.  I replied to this with reference to a large public image database of photographs of human pyramids in cheerleading.

KatKDLM thinks that there are additional reasons that women are under-represented, which I have no trouble believing.  My only point is that the null hypothesis, in which male and female cadets are represented in the monument climb just in proportion to their strength (with no other causal effects) predicts that women would be under-represented relative to their proportion of the cadet population.

Are you suggesting that college cheerleaders aren’t trained?  I’m not sure I understand what you mean there.

PS.  I think you mean “conflating”, but would you prefer I exchange “male” for men and “female” for women respectively? 

addressing it to someone else

who was replying to me about said issue, but whatever.    If you would like to save a bit of face at the expense of doing violence to common-sense Gricean implicature, it’s no skin off my nose.

I will assume by your silence on the more substantive point that you acknowledge your error in claiming that the populations of men and women are of equal anaerobic strength, pound for pound, and feel a bit sheepish about your comment re: “grasp[ing] the concept of a ratio.”

PS: If the posts are long, it’s because I am astonished to see how much resistance there is to acknowledging basic physiological differences between men and women (as groups), so I want to be precise in setting forth what I am and am not claiming.  Sorry I made careful claims on y’alls social science blog.

from the USNA admissions page 2015 class profile:
19% female
64%-white
11%- Hispanic
13% Asian
10% African American
6% – first in family to attend college
11% – First generation American
18% – Primary language at home other than english

What exactly could anon have done any differently?

Returning to gender issues for a moment, what are the drawbacks to mixed gendered dorms? Nobody is endangered in this situation, so claiming it make the students feels safer is pointless, because they aren’t.