Feminists blame sexism in chess for gender differences in performance

Isaiah4verse1 · 2015-04-20T16:00:07+00:00

You know what's sexist about chess? The queen can move anywhere by any amount of spaces but the king can only move one space at a time.

Stationarity · 2015-04-20T17:39:13+00:00

I've played chess for 25 years...there is no 'patriarchy' when you sit down to the board. There is nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. It's brutally fair and transparent. You either got it or you don't. Whining about it won't make you better, honey.

Vioret · 2015-04-20T18:11:36+00:00

http://i.imgur.com/2wjojce.jpg

RPSigmaStigma · 2015-04-20T16:40:41+00:00

Women are not men with a vagina and boobs. Nigel uses facts, the feminists use ad hominem attacks. How ridiculous that they can use canned and smug retorts which add nothing of value to the conversation other than reinforcing hegemonic intolerance of reality.

uktexan · 2015-04-20T15:59:23+00:00

I'm a chess player and this is honestly a bullshit charge. Judit Polgar, the only woman ever to compete with the best men, thought that being a woman gave her an advantage. I also think anyone making this claim has never been to a chess tournament. Everyone is dead silent and looking down at the chess board focusing. Feminists will call sexism about anything. The see any difference of outcome as evidence against equality of opportunity.

garlicextract · 2015-04-20T17:21:27+00:00

She said: “Chess definitely has a problem with sexism, I have faced it all my career. I’ve been asked if I want to play in the junior section; I’ve even had men refuse to believe I’m there to play.”

The beautiful thing about skill games and sports is you "leave it all on the field". It doesn't matter what shit someone talks prior to the game. If you are good then you will win.

Period.

ROTHSCHILD_GOON_1913 · 2015-04-20T20:01:17+00:00

i am a chess master and i can tell you that feminism has been slowly creeping into the chess world for a while now. women's chess and girl's chess is pushed heavily by the major national federations and the international chess governing body (FIDE). it is very easy for them to find sponsorships for these female-only events because it's an easy way for big boy sponsors to play the PR game and look like they're supporting an intellectual, progressive cause.

every now and again, someone pretty high up in the chess world (like nigel) will make comments like this stating that men are simply better than women at chess, due to men and women being fundamentally different. and every single time, the chess media will blow up and a roman legion of white knight beta psuedo-intellectuals will post their "scientific proof" that male and female brains are exactly the same, and that the only reason why there is such a massive discrepancy in male and female chess skill and popularity is because girls are scared of mean nerds who objectify them. every single time. and chess players, being largely beta nerds, believe all this shit at face value.

what's funny is that all chess-playing women are in on the joke and openly so. the US chess championships were held over the past couple weeks in st. louis, and they had a couple of hilarious interviews with the female participants. one girl, when asked why there were so many mistakes being made in the female section as opposed to male, said that "this is women's chess. we always make so many mistakes because we play with our emotions". another one made the comment "this is why women's chess is so great: it will never be solved by a computer, because people watch women's chess because women are playing, not because of the level of play" (i'm paraphrasing here).

GayLubeOil · 2015-04-20T17:55:49+00:00

Chess is one of the fairest games in existence. If feminists cry sexism at this than its a slam dunk that they are full of bullshit. I mean long term they are just discrediting themselves. But I mean they suck at chess so its no wonder they can't see the end game.

Meskal · 2015-04-20T17:53:37+00:00

Judit Polgár was the most talented out of 3 daughters of László Polgár who was considered a pioneer theorist in child-rearing, who believes "geniuses are made, not born". Before he had any children, he wrote a book entitled Bring Up Genius!, and he later raised his daughters according to the precepts outlined therein. Polgár’s experiment with his daughters has been called “one of the most amazing experiments…in the history of human education.”[1] He has been “portrayed by his detractors as a Dr. Frankenstein” and viewed by his admirers as “a Houdini,” noted Peter Maas in the Washington Post in 1992.

The experiment began in 1970 “with a simple premise: that any child has the innate capacity to become a genius in any chosen field, as long as education starts before their third birthday and they begin to specialise at six.”[7] Polgár “battled Hungarian authorities for permission” to home-school the girls.[4][5] “We didn’t go to school, which was very unusual at the time,” Judit recalled in 2008. “People would say, ‘The parents are destroying them, they have to work all day, they have no childhood’. I became defensive, and not very sociable.”

The family lived “in a modest apartment in the heart of Budapest” in which the “narrow living room” was “cluttered with chess books” and one wall was “lined with sketches of chess scenes from centuries ago.”[2] One account described it as “a shrine to unremitting chess practice. Thousands of chess books were stuffed onto shelves. Trophies and boards cluttered the living room. A file card system took up an entire wall. It included records of previous games for endless analytical pleasure and even an index of potential competitors' tournament histories.”

WhenIntegralsAttack · 2015-04-20T18:57:54+00:00

On a somewhat related note, from my experience being a math TA, I think there's something interesting to note. My good students are split pretty evenly between men and women. But the students who actually enjoy math are heavily slanted towards men. I've only had one female student who I would have recommended pursuing a career in math because of her interest.

Women just don't like chess and math. They're both super nerdy and really unpopular. It takes both a highly logical mind and a disregard of social standing to pursue either. Women care far more about social acceptance than men do.

trpiece · 2015-04-20T17:15:18+00:00

[permanently deleted]

MoneyStatusLooks · 2015-04-20T18:46:30+00:00

Men are more logical. Women have more emotional intelligence.

Holy shit, stop the press. Feminists can suck a dick.

The same applies to other highly logical fields: Poker, day trading/finance etc

AugmentedFury · 2015-04-20T18:30:40+00:00

It's obvious that feminists feel inferior to men. That's why everything to them is an issue.

Madflow512 · 2015-04-20T19:29:00+00:00

I played national level chess for three years before I stopped playing, I can 100% confirm this article. Given that the ratio of men to women in chess is very unequal, I don't find it surprising that there are not many women in the higher levels, there are barely any in any level that's not specifically a woman's only division. However, many woman I played against played much differently than any man I was up against. 90% of the time, the woman would see the short term plan but fail in the long run. At such a high level, you must be making plans that are many moves in the future, as well as taking into account any and every possible move, something the woman players seemed to struggle with more than men. Some of the games I had against women, especially at the lower levels, they almost expected you to cut them a break every now and again, but especially accept their draw offers. One of my female opponents once started crying because I would not accept her draw offer, and why would I if I'm going to win? Not saying that women cannot be good at chess, I repeatedly switched between board one and two with a woman on my team, and we were about equal in terms of skill, but as far as the other woman players, I couldn't help but notice a difference in the style of play.

Zeparic · 2015-04-20T18:29:41+00:00

Maybe Emotional Intelligence is not the appropriate term for it but women are undeniably more inclined to subscribe to beliefs which resonate with their emotions rather than any tangible reason behind it. Think about the supposed "6th sense" or "women's intuition" which women are often said to posses, or how they're more likely to be superstitious than men. These are manifestation of women's ability(or inability) to operate, not with logic, but with emotions.

When I first swallowed the pill I thought that women were superior to men where games of cunning were concerned. That women were the true "covert operators." But I realize now that isn't true. From an early age women are more inclined by their biology to play a game of social warfare, so naturally they develop these skills earlier. They learn when to hide their true selves and put on facades, how to manipulate to get what they want, playing the role of a sweet girl and a vicious bitch at the appropriate time. All indispensable skills for any human living in a large group.

When men learn how to play this little game, they're the true monsters.

Upvote_To_The_Left · 2015-04-20T17:50:15+00:00

I've been aware of this for years, i've played a few amateur chess tournaments, and it was predominantly a guy thing. even moreso than video games. I never attributed it to sexism, I just figured it was a cultural thing that more easily imprinted itself on men.

I would love to see more women play chess. But that would mean more women need to take an interest in chess, and that doesn't seem to be happening.

blaming it on sexism is the easiest cop-out ever. fuck that.

RPSigmaStigma · 2015-04-20T17:47:55+00:00

Sandman on YouTube has a good video about female mind games, and he talks about how women prefer social games with more subtle and flexible rules. A good video overall, I think he explains this difference pretty well.

fortwaltonbleach · 2015-04-20T20:13:46+00:00

that's some serious bullshit. i've spent many years in the chess community and we would be more than accommodating to women. we even had a couple of female presidents of the USCF. nonetheless, the chess scene is the biggest sausage party i can think of.

2015-04-21T08:02:34+00:00

You know something, when a Grand Master says something about him life long profession he is expert at, and have proved it against many many opponents, I would fucking LISTEN to that guy. Whether I think it's right or wrong, I would try to understand what he is about, since my logic would probably never amount to his on that matter.

Redpillc0re · 2015-04-21T15:06:29+00:00

Remember women are children. When a kid bangs its head on a chair, the mom would pretend to slap the chair as punishment, because the kid needs someone to take the blame. Same here, the facts are not even disputable. Women don't mind inequality, but they need a scapegoat to take the blame for it.

Audunis · 2015-04-20T23:05:21+00:00

Many many many Grandmasters are Jewish. So clearly it is anti-goyism!

DoctorsHateHim · 2015-04-20T19:34:31+00:00

I find it revealing that the only times radfems acknowledge there is a difference between men and women is when it suits their purpose of painting women as external victims.

Of course, that's the same tact used by every social justice movement du'jour.

But in regards to this story, it's as simple as simple can be. Chess is performance based and women are allowed to compete on the same "field". If they were good enough, there'd be a female world champion. But there's not. So...

ghostbrainalpha · 2015-04-20T23:39:37+00:00

Funny that even inside a game of Chess the Queen has all the advantages, but in the end the player who still has a King wins.

triangularmeerkat · 2015-04-20T23:47:44+00:00

Are there significantly more male than female chess players? Because I feel like that statistic is ignored when they talk about how there are no champions in the US/British big chess tournaments.

Stinkfished · 2015-04-21T00:07:24+00:00

Lol those twitter comments, good luck getting ahead against a literal chess master.

AkaviriDragon · 2015-04-21T00:48:18+00:00

"Women are not achieving enough. Should I become the achiever I would like to see? No. No need. Its easier to complain about it and expect men to deal with the problem. Let them accomodate for me. I need only ask."

aazav · 2015-04-21T01:56:27+00:00

Of course it's not their own fault.

CanadianMastermind · 2015-04-21T02:35:48+00:00

This difference is extremely easy to notice when it comes to the game of chess where only one woman has ever qualified for the world championships and none have ever won the tournament.

There are indeed differences between men and women, but this kind of rationale is not how you'd pinpoint them. Using the same logic, a person in the 80s could have argued that black people are naturally bad at tennis given how few of them had achieved anything in the sport up until that point. Participation in an activity is highly dependent on other variables--wealth, class, culture, etc. Tennis is an expensive sport (compared to, say, basketball) and that itself been the bigger factor in who ends up playing it.

jaimewarlock · 2015-04-21T04:14:13+00:00

The differences between men and women are even more pronounced in the game of Starcraft.

beerthroway · 2015-04-20T20:49:46+00:00

Another example of feminism taking the exception as the rule. He said that on average, women don't do as well as men in chess. This is a quantifiable fact. The same thing has happened in a million other competitions/leagues/skills.

Feminists will then find the one woman who can beat the one man at the top and say "See! All women are better than all men at x!" Like the one at the top has anything to do with the majority. They are trying to make the exception the rule.

2015-04-21T01:22:07+00:00

Women are always so quick to jump on anecdotal evidence. 'You lost to a woman once! Therefore your argument is invalid'. Uhh... yeah... A single happenstance does not make a trend... Honestly, in numerous debates I've had with different women over the years, they never seem to grasp the law of averages. It's a key aspect of logical probablism and reasoning. The last debate I was a part of involved a woman who claimed that women can better empathize with the problems of men. She was a therapist... and lost her shit and called me a 'mansplainer' when I poked holes in her argument. Went straight to ad hominem attacks as I chuckled in her face from behind my wall of logic.

Cyralea · 2015-04-20T16:52:08+00:00

I'm not saying that men aren't better at Chess but 100% the biggest reason for this discrepancy is that far more men play chess than women do..

ChrisBenRoy · 2015-04-20T17:35:20+00:00

I honestly read the title and thought this was about the abilities of the King vs Queen pieces themselves. Is that a bad sign at how bad the whole feminism thing has gotten that something that ridiculous is actually a believable scenario?

RatherPlayChess · 2015-04-20T21:39:32+00:00

It's only sexist because to them the brain is a mysterious black box. In reality, there is a vast difference between the brain matter of men and women and how it is used.

Without considering the function of the forms, in sheer terms of content and volume, from WebMD

Disparities in how certain brain substances are distributed may be more revealing. Notably, male brains contain about 6.5 times more gray matter -- sometimes called 'thinking matter" -- than women. Female brains have more than 9.5 times as much white matter, the stuff that connects various parts of the brain, than male brains. That's not all. "The frontal area of the cortex and the temporal area of the cortex are more precisely organized in women, and are bigger in volume,"

Nicholas_ · 2015-04-20T22:53:35+00:00

Saw that today and shook my head.

I've made it my goal now that anything I see on tv or online which includes the word feminism I'll instantly disregard and turn off.

downvotegenie · 2015-04-20T18:43:16+00:00

It's strange that feminists advocate women being equal to men in every positive way, but cannot view women in those same negative ways. Chess was developed by men. Odds are good it involves modes of thinking more interesting and inherent to men.

johnchapel · 2015-04-20T19:08:06+00:00

3d Wave Feminists don't believe in instinctual evolution. Furthermore, they tend to quite literally not hear arguments involving them.

Convincing 3rd wavers of an inherent male drive towards concepts involved in chess is not Step 1. Turning them on to social dynamics is.

recon_johnny · 2015-04-20T19:23:20+00:00

Chess is about as real as it gets. Why hasn't there been any decent response to the question of lack of women in chess.

Nigel says he has no problem in saying his wife is better in some areas, but....apparently it's because of a lot of sexist jokes and overbearing sex-based (in this case, male) superiority that drive out all the women.

Wonder if they ever heard of tumblr.

Rougepellet · 2015-04-21T01:18:41+00:00

How would sexism get into chess? You either win, lose or draw. Its very easy to tell which of those three you accomplished. These feminists never rest XD

kixxaxxas · 2015-04-21T01:41:41+00:00

Math will be next. 2+2=4 is sexist. No doll, if you think its 3 your just retarded.

TriangleChoke86 · 2015-04-21T03:21:43+00:00

As a reasonably active competitor in chess tournaments here in Canada I can make some observations about women in chess here.

1) There are a lot more men than women, especially adults. You VERY rarely see women over 30 in a chess tournament big or small. In youth chess you see a lot more girls, I'd say maybe 15-20% ballpark.

2) Women are treated exceedingly well at tournaments for exactly the reasons you'd think (a substantial number of chess players are weirdos who've never so much as brushed up against a woman), especially the large ones (large tournaments, not large women, although they're treated well too).

3) There does seem to be a cap on the strength women are able to attain. Even the very talented young girls seem to get stuck around the master level, and then generally leave chess sometime in their early 20s.

I think the big difference is that girls don't stick with chess, even the very talented junior girls don't stick around once they're out of college. Mind you a lot of talented junior boys don't have anything to do with chess once they enter the work world either, but amongst women the dropoff is close to 100%. This has nothing to do with the culture of chess itself, which is admittedly a little weird, but not in the slightest bit hostile towards women.

DoesNotMatterAnymore · 2015-04-21T06:46:43+00:00

“Judith Polgar, the former women’s world champion, beat Nigel Short eight classical games to three in total with five draws,” she said.

hahaha you should know that, Judit has 2 other sisters, all of them were taught to play chess since a really young age, by they DAD.

FallenHighSchoolJock · 2015-04-21T06:51:36+00:00

I wouldn't call it sexism because I don't think that men are actively excluding women from Chess but to be fair, when a sport becomes dominated by mostly men it makes it kind of intimidating for women to join it. Like how it's intimidating for men to become nurses. That said, women seem to dislike games in general unless they are extremely mindless ones like Candy Crush or Farmville. Has there ever been any research as to why this is?

Finzi · 2015-04-21T07:39:01+00:00

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Paddy32 · 2015-04-21T08:13:05+00:00

Did you know that once they opened the world qualifiers for all genders. Only 1 woman made it through the qualifiers. They then had to make a separate tournament only for woman because people would be upset if they saw no women in all gender tournaments.

Bippotybop · 2015-04-21T09:19:06+00:00

I'm no chess master but pretty much every ex gf that I've played with loses to me.

Nespos · 2015-04-21T10:14:14+00:00

The foremost deception advanced by feminism is that being equal of value necessitates being identical in nature.

Women are then defensive when made aware of these differences. They are so hypersensitive to any male-female distinction that the context no longer matters--even when it's a board game.

A cat born without fur will blame its being cold on the weather--until it comes across a mirror. Feminism has taken away the mirrors and told women "Don't stay inside, the weather can be changed."

Involution88 · 2015-04-21T10:28:12+00:00

The Polgar sisters did well.

Women are not trained to play chess in a way which makes sense to them. Fixing it is not men's problem. So we have comprehensive schools which fuck boys over for life by criminalising masculinity. We have boys schools which produce awesome men. We have girls schools which produce useless whiny bitches.

Feminism is retarded. They can't fix bullshit problems at girls schools so they fuck up comprehensive schools.

2015-04-21T11:39:08+00:00

Those tweets from Chess Club Live are provocing and damaging for Nigel's reputation. Because they interpreted "women are bad" instead of the real point. I'm sure there is a legal way to ask an apology Nigel deserves to get.

2015-04-21T15:08:49+00:00

https://youtu.be/0uohO8Kli_Q

Debate on the so called sexism on chess. And here is the thing I can understand gender division on activities that for the most part use a person's physical attributes like strength and speed. But for things like chess or even card games which use a person's mind gender divison is bullshit. When I heard that a Hearthstone tourney not only had an open division but also women's division it blew me away. Games that require only your mind and isn't team based don't need a gender division and anyone who thinks it does is bullshitting themselves.

kevlarut · 2015-04-21T16:45:09+00:00

Computers are better at chess than humans because humans have low self esteem.

SexistFlyingPig · 2015-04-21T20:09:30+00:00

"Sabrina Chevannes, a British women’s international master, told the Telegraph that an entrenched culture of sexist jokes and overbearing male superiority had led to a huge dropout rate among female players."

I played chess when I was younger. One phrase I heard on a regular basis: "Would you like to resign?"

It's a game of 1 on 1. You try to be superior to EVERYONE, not just the girls (or the boys).

I also find it funny that they bring up Judit Polgar. This woman has been atop the women's world chess rankings from when Jordan ruled the NBA, through David Robinson, Shaq, and now Lebron James. She has ruled women's chess since before Lebron was born. They compare one result she achieved against Nigel Short, who is an average English GM. This is apex reasoning at its finest: compare the absolute best in the world among women to an average professional male.

johnnight · 2015-04-22T00:45:32+00:00

He is wrong. But the feminists and outrage pros are even more wrong.

None of them understand statistical distributions.

newspaper_nerd · 2015-04-20T16:13:21+00:00

Back then chess clubs were basically men clubs. The internet has leveled the playing field for chess players, you see a greater diversity of players now. There's a crop of new strong female players from China and other countries, we'll see in the next 10 to 20 years if they play at the same level as men. For now, none in the top 50.

2015-04-20T19:09:29+00:00

Of course. Whenever there is a gender gap, and one side refuses to acknowledge gender differences, then the only thing they can turn to is conspiracy type social settings.

PM_ME_HOT_GINGERS · 2015-04-21T02:44:09+00:00

[deleted]

What is this?

unsure_RP_initiate · 2015-04-20T20:42:18+00:00

As a chess player, this is pretty funny.

I don't believe in much of the men-women mental differences that the more uneducated RPers seem to me to believe without evidence. But it cannot be denied that men have a higher IQ variance than women.

Title	Feminists blame sexism in chess for gender differences in performance
Author	PowerLevelOver420
Upvotes	582
Comments	267
Date	April 20, 2015 3:50 PM UTC (11 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/TheRedPill
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/TheRedPill/comments/338t8l/feminists_blame_sexism_in_chess_for_gender/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/TheRedPill/feminists-blame-sexism-in-chess-for-gender.31630 https://theredarchive.com/post/31630

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