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CM.
Men's/Women's chess--why?
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Sophiexxx hat geschrieben:
In my chessclub both girls and guys play with each other and i honestly do not mind to play against guys. At lower level chess i think it is not a problem to let both genders play against each other. I do play with the board, i do not have to look at him and he also not to look at me. At higher level chess i think it is fair to have "Womens chess" so we get the chance to win a title too. Because unfortunately there are to much very good men at chess for us to rival with them. After all i think so it is good to have a womens and mens chess :)
The problem is, that only about 10% of all chess players are girls/ women.
So at most of the clubs, were i played, there were only 1 or 2 girls and i rarely met strong females at the board. So i played very unwary and arrogant against females...till i got crushed by a really strong woman in a big tournament.
After that i decided to take female players for serious 
I think chess is perfect for girls, since you can decide for your own, if you play tournaments or team matches against other females or you can play tournaments/ team matches, were both genders participate.
Happy Easter to everyone!
leiph18 wrote:
CAL06Chess wrote:
Sorry for that long intro before I got back on point - most people hear "fundamentalist Christian" and just assume they are incapable of scientific understanding or reasoning - the idea that someone would identify as a person of faith while wholeheartedly embracing scientific study (while not just blindly accepting its current answers) is something that stuns a lot of people. I was concerned if I didn't clarify that I very much support scientific inquiry, this thread would quickly turn into name-calling.
Maybe it's not that people are surprised you're not a cave man, but that you seem to misunderstand what a fundamentalist means.
If anything, ever, be it logic, observation, anything, disagrees with the literal interpretation of the Bible, then it is automatically wrong and the Bible is automatically right.
Minor correction - you said "literal interpretation". There are many parts of the Bible that are not literal. There may be extremists who hold in cognitive dissonance that all scripture is literal, but even they still accept that some parts (parables, proverbs, psalms, etc.) are poetic or metaphorical in nature. CAL06Chess's definition of fundamentalist is correct - but the label has been appropriated by a specific (ironically non-fundamentalist) group in America, which most likely led to the confusion.
MEANWHILE, BACK ON TOPIC
The egalitarian in me wants to say "disband all women-specific chamionships/titles! Women are capable of being just as strong of players as men!" And technically this is true. But practically, women trail men at the highest levels by a significant gap. You can conflate statistics and anecdotes all you want (something that has happened a lot in this thread), but the fact remains, there are no women players as strong as Carlsen, or Caruana, or Gelfand. Zero. None. Whether this is due to statistics or very slight genetic/physical differences I don't have the education to judge one way or another.
In my opinion, this is something that should be addressed at a lower level. Young girls are often turned off of chess, for a variety of reasons. Introducing more girls to the wonderful sport of the mind would go a long way toward the egalitarian dream. This is a change that needs to happen in the education system, but also culturally.
Then the problem becomes: cultural change takes a long time. So what do we do until then? Which is worse: women being given easier titles and tourneys, and being condescended to, or those same women being thrown into a world where they will never win? I'm not talking about Chess.com Member vs. Her Brother, where a woman beat a man. I'm talking about Pogonia vs. Nakamura, where Nakamura wipes the floor with Pogonia EVERY TIME. I want to say the latter is preferable, out of a desire for equality, but if that pushes women away from chess then we're garunteed to never have a woman comparable to Carlsen.
Sorry for that long intro before I got back on point - most people hear "fundamentalist Christian" and just assume they are incapable of scientific understanding or reasoning - the idea that someone would identify as a person of faith while wholeheartedly embracing scientific study (while not just blindly accepting its current answers) is something that stuns a lot of people. I was concerned if I didn't clarify that I very much support scientific inquiry, this thread would quickly turn into name-calling.
Maybe it's not that people are surprised you're not a cave man, but that you seem to misunderstand what a fundamentalist means.
If anything, ever, be it logic, observation, anything, disagrees with the literal interpretation of the Bible, then it is automatically wrong and the Bible is automatically right.