Woman world championships and titles - aren't they an insult ?

Even as far as trolling goes that one is pretty weak :-)

It's not even trolling. I'm arguing against the position that women can not compete based on ordinary merit. I am astonished that Snowyqueen thinks otherwise. By taking the position that women need segregated chess like title 9 sports she is taking the position that women are not capable of competing on an even level. Absolutley absurd!!!

It seems like he is trying to imply that women can do things just as well as men, and that female titles send some message otherwise. One may disagree on whether the latter is the case, but in any case saying that women can perform as well as men (besides in professional sports that emphasize physical strength) is certainly not an anti-woman thing to say.

I could be wrong here, but don't studies bear out that women tend to perform worse than men in the type of spacial reasoning that is useful in various types of math and games like chess? I think there have even been studies that have shown that the areas of the brain responsible for such reasoning are slower to develop in women than men. I'm not trying to bring up some sort of debate over a "superior" sex. I'm just saying clearly there ARE physioligical differences between the sexes.

All of this addresses things on the average. There are definitely plenty of women who would outperform plenty of men at various physical feats as well as in spacial reasoning, but on the average there are distinct male advantages in those areas. I don't think it's demeaning or sexist to acknowledge that and have leagues specifically for women.

In the development of our species, clearly there were male and female roles that allowed us to survive and thrive along our evolutionary path. The fact that in modern society many of those traits are not useful any more doesn't mean they don't exist. Men tended to be hunters and defenders of the group. Physical development was key, as was the mental development to quickly perform spacial reference reasoning (quickly planning a hunt, fighting off predators, etc).

Women have their own set of traits in which they will on the averages outperform men. I also thinks it's more of an issue of natural starting position. Training can help anyone beat the averages, whether it's physical ability, a specific mental discipline, or even IQ score (studies have born that out as well). We see that today with women atheletes that far exceed what I think the ability of male athletes was a few decades ago. On average people tend to do things that come easily to them, so you see a lower proportion of women doing the things that men are traditionally "better" at. 

It's always the same guys that feel insulted because there are women's events, but just look at for example Russia. The 87 highest rated players are men. It's all fine and well to keep repeating how insulting it is that there are women's events if it makes anyone feel better though.

this is rediculous.

feminism and political correctness is a cancer disguised as a blessing.

That just makes me wonder how many women are in the total. I'd bet it's maybe 1/100th or so. And of those women probably half are into chess because they like "nerdy or brainy" type guys rather than actually caring about chess. When I did role playing games this was the case and I suspect it is the same in chess too. Women as a percentage of players are every bit the equal of males. I think there was a study that analyzed it statistically and bore this out.

& Weasley studies show given equal numbers of male/females there are consistently more male outliers. Don't dare mention anything to this outlier woman though as she will beat up on you.

>:)

I was once at a fide tourney and I was trying to come third and withmy last game I was really comfortable that I would . I was around 2030 rating and my opponent was a 20-30 year old who had a rating of 1700... I resigned after 30 moves... I was only 14 but I guess I lost because I played insecure moves because I underestimated her. Women can play chess... Soon I reckonone will become the no.1

Don't judge that women are bad at chess

As far as I know, only 2 women ever made into the top 100 players, so yes, definitely they have a disadvantage in playing chess.

Think by this side: Every GM had a mother, and without her, he wouldn't have become a great person, so behind every great man, there is his mother, balancing the importance of men and women. So women brain is not worse than men, it's just specialized in a different area (mainly taking care of children which every human was at a time).

If there was a championship of motherhood, men would certainly need their own titles far below women in rating.

And if we haven't averaged the the rating of all the men and woman together I am sure it would be different.. I am placing my odds there is more men 1200 than women

Fashion was not quite the reason I came to my conclusion.

Do you go to a women only school or job? Do you eat female-only food?
Only watch female oriented TV shows?

Do you judge every person as a mere representation of a gender instead of an individual person? 

If you were rational, you would have zero argument for the segregation of women in a mind sport which does not even require physical exertion.

There is no such thing as "men's chess". Why should there be a separate league for women?

You can't encourage people to join up a game by pitting them against only certain opponents. This indirectly implies to the players they can't be as good as men, which people like the Polgar sisters have consistently shown wrong. They even refuse to compete in such leagues.

If women want to compete in the same tournaments as men they should have that right, if they want to compete in female only tournaments they should also have that right, whether or not you believe in male privilege or whatever. 

Maybe you are all looking at this from the wrong side. Could it be that women are better at this than men and that is why they compete separately?

They don't compete separately. There is no "male chess". There are tournaments for both genders, and tournaments for only women. The reason you don't see women in world championship, is because there is no female player strong enough to be there. But in lower rating tourneys, there are both the genders.

I'm not saying there should or shouldn't be female titles and tourneys, I personally don't bother about them at all because I care about how strong the game is, not who is playing.

They should rwite by example : MGM standing for Male Grand Master

I am not concerned with the women's titles.  I can take them for what they are.  However, allowing rating points to be gained in segregated tournaments that can be used to get a GM or IM title is where there is a claim of equality (women's tournaments used to gain gender neutral titles) and that is what cannot be taken seriously.  We do not need to get rid of women's tournaments, women's titles, national titles.  We just need to keep them seperate.  If a woman wants to get the IM or GM title, she should earn it where everyone does, not thru gaining points/norms at women only events or even worse, but winning a women only tournament.  The claim of equality comes from awarding FIDE ratings at segregated events while at the same time saying the events are not equal by exersizing the need to exclude men.  If they are equal, no need for segregation.  If they are not, be consistent. 

I'm confused. It appears Snowyqueen is arguing fervently that women are equally capable as men at mental tasks. Then... why is Snowyqueen so angry at OP? Logically, wouldn't that agree with the OP? Having seperate women's titles implies that women need their own seperate titles.

If women are equally as capable as men (or perhaps more capable, as Snowyqueen has lightly asserted at times), shouldn't a woman attain the GM title in the exact same way a man would? Why would a woman be a "grandmaster" at 2400 (or whatever the rating is, I'm not sure) and a man be "grandmaster" at 2500? Bogus. The Woman Grandmaster title is lower than the Grandmaster title. Seriously, what does that say?

To me it says this. Two chess players go to McDonalds, and the male chess player says to the woman chess player, "I'm gonna get the Big Mac, but you can get the kid's meal. You're so special aren't you, eating burgers and stuff, but not the same burgers that big kids eat. But, you're just as much a big kid as the rest of us! Seriously!"

Let's say feminism didn't affect men at all (maybe it does, I don't know much about it, but bear with me in this hypothetical) and it only affected women. In that case, your apparent statement that people should only care about what affects them would seemingly suggest that male feminists are jerks because they are passionate about something that only affects women (yet in this case it seems like males are being really supportive). That's why I thought that statement was so silly!

"I also think a position of male privledge is a remarkably poor one on which to comment on the efficacy of women's titles."

You should judge an idea for its merit (or lack thereof) in itself, not who it came from. If someone says "2+2=4," does them being right or wrong have anything to do with whether they are a man or woman? Of course not -- whether that sentence comes from a man or a woman, they're right. People have different motivations for saying something, sure -- I'm just saying who they are doesn't affect whether they are right or wrong (although, granted, on issues such as this thread there is a lot of subjectivity).