I thought Sascha was really interesting, and you could tell that she knew what she was talking about. However her response to something David said bothered me. David said something along the lines of: Most feminist don't actually believe women can do everything men can do because they're biologically/physically inferior (our bodies are not as big). Sascha agreed with him, but my understanding is that many feminists challenge the idea that women are biologically inferior to men and are physically limited to what they can do.
I remember this topic being discussed in a women & gender intro course I took. The text argued that perhaps the reason women cannot perform physically the way men do is because they aren't encouraged to be as physical, to play sports and lift weights, to challenge their body's limits, the way men are. Men are taught to be physical and active from an early age, while girls are taught to be soft (not too muscular or "masculine looking") and delicate. They looked at the records for track runners (I think), and it showed that over decades, women continued to break records that showed substantial improvement year after year, where as men sort of plateaued in what they could achieve physically, with only slight improvement over time. So basically, as time went on and it became more acceptable for women to participate in the same kind of physical activities as men, their physical capabilities continued to increase substantially. It's possible the only reason women's bodies aren't as big or strong as men is because women have been conditioned through culture for hundreds of years not to be this way, and biology has nothing to do with it.
I'm saying this all from memory, but I think I got the gist of it down. I couldn't tell if Sascha was trying to correct this by explaining gender essentialism. I was just confused when she readily agreed with David because it had not been my experience that most feminist accepted biological inferiority.
