In real life, the kind of women who are warriors are generally stronger than most men, including the kind of men who want to be warriors.. Gwendolyn Christie (of GOT fame) is 6'3" and can bench press you without breaking a sweat. Gina Carano (of UFC fame) can squat 530 pounds and deadlift 450 pounds.
Preventing someone from playing as a strong warrior woman based on incorrect assumptions about female physicality would erase women who actually exist.
> Gwendolyn Christie (of GOT fame) is 6'3" and can bench press you without breaking a sweat.
But she is still weaker than the strongest men. In the game she can put points into strength and be stronger than almost all men, but a person who plays a man and also dumps everything into strength will be even stronger.
In a fantasy world, how many standard deviations from average are the female warriors? It doesn't matter, it's a fantasy world where the data isn't real and you're playing the main character, she's allowed to be above average.
The parent I was replying to suggested that someone wanting to play a character modeled after her would somehow be erasing women. But denying people the right to play a character modeled after a real, live woman would erase the real, live woman who actually exists in the world we live in, and all the other women like her.
You are missing the point entirely,
Gwendoline Christie almost certainly can't bench that person (i'll humour the absurd "who can bench more" frat bro thing for the discussion). If Gwendoline Christie was male, she would be 3 standard deviations larger than the average. Her testosterone levels are "nerfed" due to being female.
Gina, and any female bodybuilder for that matter, are of course stronger than your average man, but they are again, "nerfed" by biology, if they had the testosterone production of a man due to being male, they would be considerably stronger, maintain better muscle mass relative to the hours they have put in bodybuilding.
In the in game implementation, a high strength female charcter would be an impressive rarity, demonstrating great strength, despite biological hinderances. This correctly acknowledges their uniqueness, and brings their other traits to the table (considerably higher in int or "smarter" than other strong characters)
The OP was suggesting that a role-playing fantasy game should not allow strong warrior women characters because that would somehow not allow women to fantasize about being the character because women are weaker at the very extremes of strength so a strong female character is really somehow just a man.
But as demonstrated, strong females actually exist in the real world, and the sex-based strength differences are irrelevant unless the GM deliberately creates a scenario in which those differences matter, which would mean a scenario requiring a character to bench more than 450 pounds, squat more than 600 pounds, or deadlift more than 700 pounds (all of which are under the women's world records).
The argument about protecting "female physicality" is just a MRA argument that was soundly rejected by D&D because it has no basis in the real world, and thus no basis in a fantasy world filled with dragons and magic.
I've said multiple times that strong females exist in the real world, and that players should be allowed to role play as such in D&D if they want. The D&D team, and the community as a whole agrees with that. It's only a small portion of the internet that seems to be upset with allowing this sort of freedom to role play.
Preventing someone from playing as a strong warrior woman based on incorrect assumptions about female physicality would erase women who actually exist.