Quote Originally Posted by PhoenixPhyre View Post
In essence, D&D has already left realism far in the dust. So adding it back in for female vs male carrying capacity just doesn't give anything useful in my opinion. Or any of the other concessions to "realism" I hear. It doesn't fit the genre or aesthetic. And that's what's important.
D&D leaves realism in the dust at high levels, which is an important caveat. One of the key aspects of heroic fantasy in general and the whole zero-to-hero thing in particular is that most of the world is quite realistic most of the time, including heroes when they're starting out, with the major protagonists and antagonists, legendary monsters, etc. being increasingly unrealistic the further they fall from the baseline.

Where a more pure swords-and-sorcery game like Burning Wheel or Riddle of Steel expects characters to start as basically normal people and never really leave those bounds aside from perhaps a few concessions to cinematic tropes, and a more pure high-fantasy game like Ars Magic or Exalted lets characters tell the laws of physics to sit down and shut up right out of the gate, D&D lies in a middle ground where keeping things verisimilar at 1st level where one might struggle in a fight against a band of goblins is important but limiting things based on verisimilitude at 20th level where one might have already killed a demon prince or two (or even at 10th level where one has likely already taken on physically-impossible monsters and survived) is actively undesirable.

So while the specific case of gendered carrying capacity isn't a good thing (for reasons statistical to practical to narrative), the general drive for verisimilitude in the appropriate level range most certainly is.