WGM vs. GM - social inequality?

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Elubas

"From my point of view it's more of an injustice to females, but it works both ways, that's all I'm saying."

If women make it that way, sure. People can make things as much of an injustice as they want in their heads. But men can't do any sort of mind trick to get the same economic opportunities (when it comes to chess) that women can, and that could have a big impact on how he lives his whole life.

But yes, it goes both ways.

Elubas
thegreat_patzer wrote:

 we should have a rule that says if your Not strong enough to BEAT a WGM you can't endlessly talk about it.

Can't you tell the difference between talking about politics/society and actually giving chess analysis?

How is what you say different from saying that we can't say anything about a GM's play because we could never beat them OTB?

And it's you're, not your.

Elubas
stuzzicadenti wrote:
Teichmann70 wrote:
Scientists say the male brain is 200-300 gram heavier than female brain, may be that is the reason, however, some female chess players are very good at chess!

true but in proportion to the size of their bodies, women have larger brains compared to men.

So it's settled!

Men are stronger than women, and women are stronger than men! Equality! End of story!

Elubas

"Still, if getting women to play, to participate, is the primary or basic goal, then it seems to me a bit of segregation and funding diversion may be worth it."


Getting women to play is one goal, but not the only one. Hypothetically we could just legally force women to play in chess tournaments every week and get some 99% of females playing chess. We would achieve one goal, but this is still not what we would want.

Point is, you can't look at just the participation rate and forget about everything else in the world to decide what is a good thing to do. One goal, is to increase female participation. Another goal, which we have been going for for centuries, is to have a unified, unsegregated society.

u0110001101101000
Merovwig wrote:

Do you really think you can mention it as inequality?

I think this illustrates our two very different approaches. You ask me "do you think you can say that?" and not "do you think this is factual" or "do you think this is logical." You're asking how I feel about it, and how I imagine others feel about reading what I wrote. You bring up pride and jealousy. These feelings have nothing to do with the points I was making.

---

That said, yes, I think female only titles that are uniformly 200 points lower than the regular titles are patronizing. I would find it insulting. I've read articles by women in chess magazines that have said they don't like it either.

u0110001101101000
Elubas wrote:

"From my point of view it's more of an injustice to females, but it works both ways, that's all I'm saying."

If women make it that way, sure. People can make things as much of an injustice as they want in their heads. But men can't do any sort of mind trick to get the same economic opportunities (when it comes to chess) that women can, and that could have a big impact on how he lives his whole life.

But yes, it goes both ways.

Hmm.

I suppose in an ideal world, yeah, everyone everywhere could just ignore it when society looks down on them as long as it's not causing any physical, financial, etc harm. But (as I imagine it) when you set policy for a large group of people, it's a much messier business.

Elubas

"I suppose in an ideal world, yeah, everyone everywhere could just ignore it when society looks down on them as long as it's not causing any physical, financial, etc harm."

It's not that this is simply non-existent or something. But there's a few major problems with it. First off, that it's really not that hard to make the case for this regardless of your situation and make it look reasonable. I could write a long, dramatic story about how me not being tall or something has made me look down on myself my whole life and I demand some kind of compensation for that (after all, tall people tend to make more money than short people, if I wanted to dig into political statistics as people always do).

But really the much worse problem is that it's so easy to keep becoming more intense and claiming your life is worse and worse and worse (and demanding more and more compensation/leniency as a result) without having anything concrete to back it up. How can that be controlled? And it's telling that in most life situations, saying that you couldn't acheive a task you had to do because you were sad (didn't lose a loved one or anything, just stressed out or not confident or something) just wouldn't sway anyone. Because everyone has stress anyway and it's not economical, no matter who you work for, to count how many things "feel wrong" in your life instead of adjusting to the problem, which we all can do.

It's only when you're talking about something politically charged, only then, this kind of excuse is perfectly ok and can be a perfectly good basis for an argument. That's awfully suspicious. And it's a problem. Society is a problem too, sure, but there needs to be a controlled way of approaching this. Digging deeper, deeper, and deeper with excuses could make things go out of control.

u0110001101101000

Yeah, it's weird when comparing individuals to societies, psychology to sociology.

Lets start with the extreme... why outlaw murder? Sensible people don't go around killing others, and sometimes you should be able to kill people when it's necessary.

Ok, but that's not very controversial... but there are fringe cases... like gun control, abortion, gay marriage, these sorts of things. They're controversial because both sides have good points... really you could run a society either way.

Anyway, that's policy. Setting a standard for 100% of the people, when it's not necessary or liked by 100% of people.

For individuals it's different. Our one mind gives us control a society (with a million minds) can't have. So sure, when you look at how policy affects individuals it's easy to imagine absurd cases... like people winning court settlements because they were born short or something tongue.png ... but as long as lets say 51% of cases aren't absurd, it may be acceptable / good policy.

Elubas

"Lets start with the extreme... why outlaw murder? Sensible people don't go around killing others, and sometimes you should be able to kill people when it's necessary."

Haha, that's interesting. I'm not sure I've ever seen a sane argument against murder before :) Yeah, I guess there is something all policies have in common.

Maybe one of the reasons it's always hard to talk about policy is because it is so ironic how one mind can be so complex, yet when you are talking about many of these minds put together as a whole, then it seems trivial by comparison. Minds are smart, policy is dumb, yet that doesn't mean policy is bad. Anyway, you make some good points.

u0110001101101000

It used to be I only had one reply I wanted to see someone on the street give a news reporter (although they'd never air a sensible reply of course). This was: "I don't know enough about it to have a strong opinion."

Now I've added: "really, you could run a society either way." lol happy.png

u0110001101101000

Yeah, the one mind = smart vs a million minds = idiot is weird to me too.

Elubas

Haha, yes! Oh boy... yeah, that almost feels like another 1300 vs 2700 situation, sadly :)

DjonniDerevnja
batgirl wrote:
johnyoudell wrote:

But segregation is usually damaging rather than helpful so I think I would be glad to see the WGM title disappear.

I tend to agree with that... to a point. Since there is no real segregation (women and men do compete), the women's titles, which don't fool anyone (except on chess.com, it seems) as to their meaning, don't really hold anyone back and may even give added incentive to play. 

The real issue about women in competitive chess is involvement, not acheivement. With greater involvement, great acheivement will follow. 

So, while the titles carry a stigma, I'm not sure they hurt and may even help.   The same with women's tournaments, though I can see a better argument against them since they possibly divert limited funding from better players to weaker players and they do segregate players. 

Still, if getting women to play, to participate, is the primary or basic goal, then it seems to me a bit of segregation and funding diversion may be worth it.  On the topic of funding diversion, it may also be argued that sponsors seem to like women's chess and it's possible -stats would be interesting- that women's chess might even make more funding available, not less (but that's just a thought, not a fact by any means).

I think that WIM and WGM is fine titles to have, because it helps them get coaching-income, and maybe discount at tournaments. This keeps them more connnected to chess and chesscompetition, and helps us haveing more strong female chessplayers. Females are underrepresented in chess.

I have been using a WIM as coach, and she is very good at it, she also got herself a coachingjob at a school, and is coaching a lot of the most talented kids I know. Maybe WIM title is essantial for that she gets to do this work.