"Chess Requires Masculine Qualities"

more than one person have been wrong before ...Earth is flat ...nazis ...etc.

Yeah that's probably right. But males are on the extremes, the smartest people in the world are males, but so are the dumbest. 

Music allusion time! In local music competitions, its always the asians who win, no joke. The white people don't stand a chance. But when it gets to the really hight level music soloists, they are pretty much all white. Except for yoyoma. 

RIP MJ, out of sight out of mind

Seems to me that she is saying that to be a good chess player you have to be a sad introverted male loner.

Seems fair to me, I know a lot of guys like that

@Anthony: Of course in the back of my head I know all that, but it just bothers me that people can't discuss certain things without taking it so personally. It's not possible to discuss the issue without making a few generalizations that aren't true for everyone. It's only because the difference is so incredible that this topic interests me; this isn't like 60-40, this is more like 80-20 or 90-10, based clearly on one thing: gender! It's just madness.

"Elubas, I apologize if I came off rude."

Well, guess what, you did. You know it's rather ironic that you seem to think I'm the rude one, yet you're the one who is making an extremely quick conclusion about me by putting an absolutely extreme twist on anything I said; in effect it's an irrational personal attack, and you actually offered literally no new ideas to the debate. Compare to what I did. I was merely making observations, not making harsh statements like "women are weak and pathetic" (ironically, you're the only one that did), and I'm very sorry if you interpret it that way. I really don't want to come off as rude here myself either, yet what you instantly concluded and the way you reacted to that conclusion almost seems to indicate you want some kind of flame war or something.

"Motivation? Masculine trait? Seriously? HOW on earth is that masculin? Women don't want things? OK, so they lack analytical thinking and calculation, they're DUMB, yeah, ok, but are they SO dumb to the degree that they have stopped wanting, striving for things?"

Well, I guess I can't say what she's saying, but I'll tell you what I, the guy who happens to be intrigued (not even necessarily in agreement) by the lady devil, am saying. Ok, motivation is not inherently masculine in most senses, but in the chess sense, you need a freakin ton of it. A TON of it. It can take hundreds upon hundreds of losses to get absolutely anywhere with it, and most people, man or woman, give up, well, extremely quickly in absolute boredom. There is no telling when (or if) you will be rewarded for your work; it's not like most things. It's an EXTREMELY hard process. Think about it: taking years to improve your rating by a few hundred points, only to find out it'll be exponentially more difficult to the same again. AND AGAIN. And all you get is some pride I guess? Just trying to give you a better idea of just how extreme your motivation has to be, and honestly, it probably takes more motivation to, after failing constantly, still persist in getting better at... a pointless game than many other professions, especially because they tend to have more meaning. Think about this. And, well, I guess she considers it "masculine", correct or not, as you see more men persisting not only for improvement in this game, but having that patience to grind someone for 50 moves. Are there women that do that? Absolutely, she's one of plenty.

So my point is that you can have plenty of motivation, but still not enough for chess. Women have plenty of motivation for whatever they may do, but few (and very few men too, but fewer women is my guess) have so much that they want to get better at chess. (Here's a little trap: if you say that this is not true, then you may be sexist; as that would be saying they have as much motivation, but aren't good enough to actually make use of it! Otherwise there should be, approximtely, as many female chess champions.) Irina even said it helped her (A woman!! OMG!) develop those traits better, so she recognizes that striving to improve the traits is the key, which a lot of professions don't exactly emphasize.

She's being objective because she doesn't care whether she's a woman or man, she speaks whatever she actually thinks, no matter how much you may disagree. What, you think she's biased for men?

Your logical fallacy here is that you assume if someone says someone has more of something, you assume that means someone else doesn't have any of that something. Did she say women have no motivation to do things? Did she say women have no calculation skills? No, but you're saying it like she did. There's a difference between associating certain things with certain people and saying only one given group of people can have a certain trait and so on.

It's like saying because men on average have more strength that women therefore can't lift anything. Again, I doubt anybody is saying or meaning that.

And again she's saying what she thinks, she's not declaring anything. Instead of mercilessly insulting anyone who disagrees with you, it wouldn't kill to respectfully explain your disagreement. Name professions that are popular for women and show how they're at least as motivated, anything, but emotional outbursts never get anywhere, and that's mostly what you're doing.

"Drive? The female sex lacks drive???"

Just one example. She did not say that. She said she associated that more as a masculine trait, but she did not say it lacks drive. I'm sorry but I refuse to further debate you if all you're going to do is keep taking a quote, and twisting it to sound as disgusting as you want it to, and then saying how evil it is. That's what you keep doing for each quote.

"I mean, again, I can't really find much to say here. She simply puts together a few postive traits and calls them masculine. I mean, why?"

Well, I tried to answer this question the best I could, if you actually want to discuss this. Keep in mind it's just my opinion but taken from an unbiased mindset.

 "I agree. I've noticed that people often refer to other people as "Objective" when what they say merely supports their own bias."

Or... maybe they actually think it's objective, not an impossibility.

I doubt that many of us have a strong enough background in biology and psychology to meaningfully discuss fundamental gender differences - anthropology is a bit of a red herring here, seeing as cultural, linguistic and archaeology anthro can only support cultural gender differention, not biological, and bio-anthro on the topic really should be categorized with the biologists.

Psychology is also pretty weak tea for gender argument, being deeply intertwined with culture.   

What it boils down to is that most fundamental gender differences are physical and obvious,  and it is very difficult to determine to what degree, if any, behaviour differences are due to fundamental gender differences.   

The confounding factor is culture - we're only now beginning to be able to unwind the simplest questions about how behaviour and biology interact, such as how nurturing instincts are triggered,  and culture is a huge factor that needs to considered.

The problem with this debate is that all cultures have varying degrees of gender bias --  invariably there are behaviours, emotions, and personality traits attributed to gender,  assumptions made about what it means to be male or female that are so deeply ingrained in our basic understanding of "how things are"  that is difficult to even recognize we are making such assumptions.

Hence the whole fields of womens studies, and gender studies, and the annoyingly repetitive nature of arguments about feminism and things like chess and maths.

Personally, I don't give a rats ass about most of it - if someone wants to underestimate me because I'm female,  I'm more then happy to let them.

Gender doesn't matter nearly as much as everyone thinks it does.    Really,  when the pressing issues around something have been so thoroughly worked through that the question "Are women or men better at it?" becomes significant, then there's really nothing important left to figure out.

"Gender doesn't matter nearly as much as everyone thinks it does."

In this case it certainly does. The fact that the different percentages of men and women playing chess are so astronomically different makes me think it's the most mysterious issue in chess even today. Everyone has their theory, but no one really knows.

everyone knows men and women are different. Irina's comments are her opinion, her point of view. it is cliche that she referred to the qualities needed to be a competitive chess player as *masculine*... we see from where we are. i do not believe being one gender or another hinders you from doing anything you want to do... if you are passionate about a thing and truly desire to do it. the obstacles are different for each individual... regardless of gender. that's reality.

The gender imbalance in chess is interesting, sure - but it isn't important, and I don't think it's particularly mysterious either.   Like most gender imbalances, it's a function of culture and the nature of narrowing populations, and as women make inroads in the chess scene the imbalance will decrease, just as it has decreased in fields like business and medicine, and things like college attendance.

I do suspect it's an area where the gender imbalance will persist longer, and level more slowly because 1) chess isn't that important a field - there are no significant benefits lost to women as a whole by low female participation rates, and 2) global demographics skew the base population of potential 'really good international chess players' towards the male -- many countries with less gender equitable cultures then western nations are feeding strong chess players into the international chess scene.

I agree with the post as a whole, except for point 2). Almost all of the strong female chess players whom we have seen until now have come from those allegedly "less gender equitable cultures than western nations."

I only know very, very, very few like that. I guess that makes me a sad introverted male loner

Krush is right to some extent. In today's societies, very few women are masculine enough to play chess successfully. This is not because women biologically and neurologically lack the killer instinct, aggressiveness, assertiveness, competitiveness, etc. Nor do men biologically and neurologically lack the love and nurture that are dominantly in the spectrum of womens' traits. 

I think it is because of society. http://www.slate.com/id/2234066/ Women who are aggressive and get what they want are called bitches. Men who are aggressive and get what they want are revered. Girls are taught at a young age that they shouldn't be aggressive. 

With all that said, I believe with all my heart that if women were to be aware of this fact and rebel against society's standards and unleash the hidden aggressiveness / competitiveness inside of them, there would be many many higher-rated chess women. 

Peace.

 "With all that said, I believe with all my heart that if women were to be aware of this fact and rebel against society's standards and unleash the hidden aggressiveness / competitiveness inside of them, there would be many many higher-rated chess women. "

I respectfully disagree. That'd be like the equivalent of telling some 5 year old boy at a birthday party whose only desired activity is to play chess with the other kids, and as he keeps beating them having many people tell him"'it's just a stupid game" and then expecting him to just agree and do what they want. He'd more likely cry because what he wants to do is scorned by everyone, but he certainly wouldn't want to change unless he gets bored of it on his own.

Of course I agree to your general point about society affecting men and women, I just doubt that it could really account for such a huge disparity between the quantity of male and female chess players. Few people, I would imagine, would particularly get encouraged to want to get real good at chess; I think this is something the person chooses on their own based on their characteristics.

But of course, the Polgar sisters would be an exception. It does show that if you are encouraged enough it helps, but like I said to me there shouldn't be any reason why the normal situation should be anything other than neutral: no huge encouragement or discouragement. And if someone likes what they do they probably won't just quit: we have freedom now, no risk of us chess players being put in the gas chambers.

I'm going to guess that the countries, cultures, and communities with greater importance on education will produce the best chess players, male and female.  The more that women discover chess will lead to more talented players being discovered, men are not the only gender to produce prodigies.

 I was wanting to write something like this in response to that other post, but was too lazy.

I would have written this, but I was too lazy

I probably would have painted this, but I was too lazy.

I was just about to build this, but then I got lazy.

Hello.

I'm suffering from gender confusion.

Who was the photographer too lazy to photoshop out the tree, I wonder?