Games like Chess should not have male and female division

I'm sure you have been told the reasons many times before. And maybe you didn't like the reasons, or you didn't like who was giving you the reasons. So maybe if someone else gives you the exact same reasons it might make more sense to you.

Speaking from experience one of the main reasons there are seperate divisions is because of the number of participants. I play chess with my friends but I never play in tournaments anymore. It's been well over 20 years since I played in a tournament. It's incredibly boring, the people there are usually people I would never associate with otherwise, and it doesent help me with any of my life goals. How is spending all day playing chess in a hotel ballroom going to increase my chances of spending the weekend at the lake with my family? Both  of my kids play chess, but not competitively and I do not encourage them to play competitively. Chess is for fun. It's a game. It's for Friday night game night. It's for talking while you are playing and throwing marshmellows at each other while playing. None of those things happen at tournaments so there is no reason for me to play in tournaments. 

So the reasons for women to not play in tournaments keeps growing which means the number of women playing in tournaments is still very small. And with a small category of participants it makes sense to have a different category for those people.  I play golf, but not competitively. There are tournament divisions based on age even though many older golfers are better than most younger golfers. The reason is there are fewer older competitive golfers than younger competitive golfers. So they get their own category, even though they may choose to play either category. From what I understand, chess competition is that way too. It's hard to complain about something that's working the way it should.

That brings us back to my original question, why isn't there a separate division for black people? Clearly there are fewer black chess players, the only black GM I can name off the bat is Maurice Ashley. 

So according to your logic, we need to have a separate tournament division for people of African origin. But wait, that's racist. So if dividing people based on their race is deemed racist, why is dividing the competition based on sex not deemed sexist?

Honestly?

Simple because it's more socially acceptable to imply women are dumber than men than it is to imply a race's superiority over another race.

I thought it was simply as the idea was encourage more women to play. Like imagine turning up to a tournament and seeing all men there. No (or few) women. Even if it was an open tournament this would be the reality.


So let's imagine we have a mixed tournament of... Every GM at the minute. (Yes I know this would be practically difficult but it's a hypothetical example.)

As there would be OVER TWO THOUSAND MEN and only THIRTY FIVE or so women, what was meant to be an open tournament will soon... Not be.

We also have to remember that over 90 of the top 100 chess players in the world are men. (As men play more. That's really the only reason. More men playing= more male masters. More females playing=more female matches.). If we want women to be able to make a living off chess like men do, and they were to compete in an open tournament, it wouldn't be ideal for these competing women.

Let's say there are prizes for the top 1000 players. Between about 10 and 20 women will get prize money and exposure and stuff, and so only 10-20 women will be able to live off of chess. (Keep in mind this is a hypothetical example, but not far-fetched. I know between hundreds of thousands small time beneath 2000 women players will make money from chess through columns and tutoring and books and stuff but my point stands.)

Let's say we have, instead, a women's tournament between the 35GMs and maybe 165 other top female players.

In the previous example we had 2000 competitors- half got prizes. Let's say we do the same here and 100 women get money prizes. 100 women can now live off chess and inspire future female generations.


I don't know if I made myself clear here, sorry if there is confusion over what I'm talking about. I'm not great with words.

(PS. In case this is somehow taken the wrong way I believe there is no reason why women can't be just as good or better at chess then men, apart from the simple fact less women play)

Guys, women and men's brains are different. They have different hormones, etc. Is it possible that some male hormone makes them better at chess?  I don't think it is sexist to consider this as there are no super-GM females. The average male rating is higher than the average female rating

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You want to know what I think?  Maybe if men didn't behave like complete idiots around women, there'd be no need to herd them off in a different room so they can play without dealing with them.  You want to blame someone for this, blame the men that act like buffoons around women.  And if you don't think that isn't blisteringly common, your head is in the sand.

 

http://streathambrixtonchess.blogspot.com/2013/11/dear-magnus-girl-who-stopped-playing.html

She's twisting Carlsen's words. She's not dumb, so she's doing it on purpose.

All the other complaints are fine.

 

In the interview Carlsen said when he's talking to a girl he wants to talk about anything but chess.

Makes sense right? If you're a full time biologist, studying the cutting edge in your field, you don't want to make small talk about a bug collection someone did as a kid. In fact you don't want to talk about biology at all. You do that all day at work, a date is supposed to be fun.

 

It had nothing to do with their gender being unsuited for chess discussion.

Sure, it's a reasonable question.

On intelligence tests there's no difference, so why would there be in chess? Some people try to say men are marginally better at visual spacial tasks... but only beginners think chess strength is about how far you can see. GMs don't calculate very deep unless a single position requires it. For everything else they use their immense chess knowledge.

 

As for average rating, actually the graphs are nearly identical for ages like 20-40 IIRC (I know the graphs were identical but I don't quite remember the age range. It was young adults to middleage-ish). It's just there are a few extreme outliers for men (like the world's top 10), but since they're 1 in 100000 it doesn't show up. In any case to get extreme outliers you merely need a lot of participation. J.Polgar was a super GM, and in the world top 10. That's without even many female participants.

So it's also fair to ask whether women are actually better suited for chess. Their brains have more white matter (men have more grey as I recall). White matter is good for association lots of things, and high level chess is not about sequential calculation as much as aggregating immense chess knowledge.

 

In any case, even if one gender is better suited, fine, but by 200 rating points? I don't believe it. That's a big gap. So the W titles shouldn't all be 200 points below. In fact I say get rid of them completely.

You’ve got to hand it to these trolls, they never quit.

 

The part you are discussing is basically completely irrelevant to the point of the letter.

I totally agree with her point.

The title and her maligning Carlsen for something she took out of context I find questionable.

 

Actually I wouldn't believe the other parts, because they sound so awful... too bad I've actually heard this stuff said (not to me) 🤢🤮 

I heard one guy say about his female opponent that he "liked to look at her breathe" (after he mentioned she was wearing a low cut top) and so he "beat her as slow as possible"

Super disgusting.

 

Attraction is fine, I get it, but why talk like that? Like she's not even a person. Yuck.

Why do all these discussions turn into more men-bashing? Seriously, contrary to what the media is telling you, not all men are slobs

This is an important point. It shouldn't turn into man bashing.

Less than 1 out of 10 guys are doing this, obviously. It's not a man problem.

But that one jackass makes it a problem for women, so I sympathize.

Sorry, I just don't see how this is relevant. There are disgusting men and there are disgusting women, but that doesn't relate to this discussion

This.

 

It relates to this discussion because the disgusting behavior of men is largely driving women away from chess.  No one is saying "all men" and no one is saying "no women."  The men behaving this way are the ones that have caused the problem.  It's directly relevant to the discussion.  In fact, it's the entire cause of the issue.

Yeah... that's the reason why more women don't play chess...

At least for me, the main argument for female exclusive titles and tournaments is the business side. If FIDE sees the female population as an untapped resource, then how do they attract more entry fees? Also more players = more sponsors (at least in the long run).

 

A counter argument to this is there's nothing unattractive about regular tournaments, and if girls and women don't play in them, then why would they play in a woman's / girl's only event? If they don't play they must not like chess.

 

So the counter to that is "I'm a girl and some guy propositioned me during the game and I was very uncomfortable"