Aronian: Women Cannot Play Chess

        #87 is worth a read and probably sums up the position of women's chess rather nicely. Now I shall await the surge of feminist wrath.

Judit Polgar is virtually the only strong female player.  It is true that women can't play chess lol.  It's like saying women can fight as well as men, it's not gonna happen.

From the link:
http://susanpolgar.blogspot.ca/2008/11/aronian-women-cannot-play-chess.html

Mr Aronian, since the beginnings of the game men have dominated chess. Why is that?

Women cannot play chess.

But that is no explanation. Wasn’t it your sister who taught you chess?

That is true, but women are generally much too emotional for chess. If they want to play really well they have to change their character and suppress their natural instincts. They have to take on male qualities. After all chess is a rough and hard game.

What he meant is women would have to take on male qualities that would make her a man rather than a woman. For example: People frequently categorize rapists & other extreme criminals as "Animals", because they have done things that would make them more of an animal rather than man.

Hard to believe he actually said that. But he has been proven wrong by mountains of empirical evidence, much of it in the form of GMs who happen to be women. He probably should stick to playing chess and stay away from gender analysis

If people could just simply read my previous comment or his explanation, I would be really happy.

He might reply that currently the highest ranked woman in chess is Judit Polgar on position 69 of all active players.

So obviously he's not been proven wrong. Probably he actually is wrong, but I can't see any proof of it. It's just politically totally incorrect to say that. But evidence doesn't care for political correctness.

in my opinion there are maybe 10 (maybe) women who have the real GM title. Most WGM's are barely IM strength. Hou Yifan is a GM, so is Judit Polgar, a few others, but precious few! Seriously though in junior events there are two sections. The girls section and the open. That right there proves something, that the people who are setting the rules for such events do not hold the average girl to be as strong in level as the average boy (something most women i have talked to about it find strange). I think the reason why is because men and women are different, and somehow men have a better natural ability to play chess. There are strong female players, but never stronger then male, (by age). 

Totally agree that men and women are different, that it is politically incorrect to hint that men could be better than women at anything (though it's perfectly ok to say women are better than men). All that and more is true; the sexism I see is directed at men now, not at women.

But his statement was "women cannot play chess"; REALLY?? Maybe the best male players are better than the best female players but that's different from saying women cannot play. By that logic, they also can't play tennis, basketball, etc etc. I think there are inherent differences, but how is "cannot play" defined?? By his definition none of us can play except the top GMs. That's a bit narrow for my taste. 

Judith Polgar became a GM at a youger age than Kasparov, Karpov, Kramnik, Ivantchuk or Anand. In fact she was the first to broke Fischer's record.

Judith Polgar can play chess. She's not the world's best, but she can crush anyone that I know. Anyone in the top 500 world's best players can play chess, in my opinion. 

"spat upon??" now that's hy per bo le

        The fact that women and other sections of the population were "exposed" to the game historically later than white males has nothing whatever to do with it. Were Kasparov and Fischer prodigeously good at chess because unrelated and unconnected white males had been playing longer in the past than women or "native Indians"? Of course not. They were great players because of their individual talent and hard work. Their forebears were only relevant in that they could be learned from - and could be learned from by women and others as well. The claim above is irrational.

The same phenomenon occurs in video games. Studies have shown that boys are less likely to play games with a female protagonist because they feel they can't relate. Many game publishers believe that releasing games with female protagonists is too risky due to this.

I'm not going to say that science and hard work are never involved but the social issues are there. And yeah exposure obviously plays a role in things like this as nowadays picking up a board at 12 means that you probably won't be a grandmaster. The same occurs in interests like being a concert pianist and others. 

Yeah, to really good players, most of us don't really play, and e.g. a FM is "just good enough to be a coach for children."  Stuff like that.

And in any case it's at least partially true that we don't play the same game, it just happens to have the same rules (as the saying goes)

It's interesting to observe this in entertainment in general.  The main characters of any story, particularly the protagonist, must display roughly the same mental age as the target audience regardless of that actual character.  E.g. in a cartoon an adult character will still behave in childish ways, or in an adult story a child character will take on adult thoughts and behaviors.

Otherwise the audience can't relate and loses interest.

(Of course some thoughts and behavior are almost universally understood / entertaining)

okay, so it might be more precise to say "only the top-10" or "only the top 100" GMs can play chess. so almost everyone, male and female is excluded. But I don't agree that only this small a number "can play." 

It's still seen more or less everywhere...

I look at the news and the man is in a suit, and looks professional, while the women is in a short skirt thing, hair made up, makeup, etc.  To me it does not look professional.  To me it communicates that the man is serious and thoughtful while the woman is something to enjoy looking at.