FM vs WGM

When I'm not taking time to study mating patterns or reviewing Chess matches of masters past, I am usually reading about our wonderful sport. 

Today one reading sparked my curiosity enough to pose a question to the audience of our esteemed forums. 

It appears that the FM and WGM title is bestowed on one once reaching the FIDE rating 2300. The exact same number for both titles.

I am not sure how many women are in the audience today, but the question I pose is: Would you rather be referred to as an FM or a WGM? Please provide an explanation in the comments below. 

Thank you. Please note that the Chess.com forums encourage intellectual, and kind discussion.  

Therefore, any slander towards woman will be reported to Erik by me personally. 

I'm not a woman, but I think it's really condescending to award women the WFM, WIM and WGM titles, especially given that the ratings for the W-titles are much lower. If I was a woman, I would definitely prefer to be called FM over WGM - we are all playing the same game, and being called WGM just makes you feel not being taken seriously.

Imo, women's titles should be removed, not in an immediate decision, but more gradually over time.

How that would work, I have no idea. Let the FIDE people do their job.

Is it fair to take away Woman's titles though? Didn't it take a while to fight for them and introduce them to the sport? Are we not going backwards by removing these titles? 

I am never one to show my emotions over an Internet discussion, but I must respond to this. 

I am frankly disappointed with some of the insults I have received on some of my threads. I have been called a "troll" on numerous occasions. I am still not positively clear on the exact definition of the word, but from my understanding it's meant to be cruel and hurtful. 

I have but two goals when writing these threads. One, to be an ambassador of our wonderful sport and two, encourage chess discussion. 

The WGM title is much harder to attain. To gain the FM title, all a player needs to do is reach 2300 ELO. To gain the WGM title, a woman must not only reach 2300 ELO, but also earn three separate 2400+ performance norms.

That said, I do agree with those who feel that women's titles should be eliminated. There's an innate condescension in them, in the fact that they require lower ratings to achieve than the non-gendered titles.

I see. Thank you very much for the clarification. But wouldn't the woman title elimination cause problems of its own? For one, the elimination of woman's titles might actually deter ladies from participating in the game. In all other sports the woman's and men's games are separated. Why should it be any different in Chess? 

I consider chess titles more a form of professional credentials, rather than sports titles.

For example: we don't establish lower-qualifications for attaining credentials like "Woman Ph.D" or "Woman Attorney"—to do so would be insulting to women, as they're perfectly capable of earning their Ph.D's or passing the bar exam without having lesser "female-only requirements".

So why do such a thing in chess?

I do think that women-only tournaments are still a good idea. Just like in sports, you can have gender-separated events.

But player titles should be universal and genderless, IMO. This way anyone can earn them, male or female, via the same requirements as everyone else.

All of this seems to assume that women's minds are the same as men's minds but I do not think that assumption is true. 

Here is the problem. What does WGM stand for, for example? "Woman Grandmaster", right? Well, what do we call then a woman who has the GM title? "Woman Grandmaster". Wait a minute...

Then we get into even more ugly situation when we expand the horizon and consider transsexual people. A person transitioning FtM, for example, first earns the WGM title, then in their passport it's stated that they are a man - does he lose the WGM title then? The grandmaster titles are given permanently, so, I guess, no. And if you've ever talked to transsexual people, you know how big of an issue having a wrong gender title is for them.

The system is just a huge mess, and the fact that it still exists is just another indication of how poor FIDE is at keeping up with time. There is nothing wrong with trying to encourage women to play competitive chess more, but, rather than using an ugly system of women titles, it would be much better to just award women prizes for winning female-only tournaments, while for titles still using the general system.

That's what I've been preaching for years.

Either some people don't understand titles themselves or they don't understand the development of women's chess.   Either way, the lack of thought  in many of responses to this type of topic are usually balanced out by the surplus of presumptuousness. 

Thanks for joining the discussion Batgirl, and developing the conversation further. 

But I have to ask, if you played at that level would you refer to yourself as an FM or WGM? 

Well, since a WGM title is harder to achieve -more requirements- than an FM title (see: https://www.fide.com/fide/handbook.html?id=174&view=article ), I'd rather have the WGM (by earning a WGM, an FM title would be in the bag).

ratings are mathematical--no tricks possible it seems.

One can control the pool of players to a degree, which some women players acquiesce to when they play in women only events, but even then I can't say if ratings are kept down because of this.