Why is there Women's Chess?

Wargame4life · 2015-03-30T14:49:09+00:00

its indefensible if you believe men are women are equal, some female chess players are actually openly critical of a "woman's only chess league" and said it completely undermines and insults women (it does)

Chess is and entirely results driven field with no avenue for discrimination. it doesn't require equipment or sponsorship or anyform of access that can be controlled.

there is no excuse, its teh purest form of equal competition.

And men have dominated it considerably forever.

the real reason is that men and women are not equal men occupy both extremes of the Gaussian distribution and so you would expect to see "the worlds best chess players" heavily dominated by men.

redditorriot · 2015-03-30T15:40:30+00:00

I demand 50%+ representation of women in the top 100 ranked chess players to end the toxic masculinity of standard opening gambits from the institutional oppression of the patriarchy.

BadThingsAreBrewing · 2015-03-30T14:49:12+00:00

/r/chess has discussed this here

Someone in that discussion linked this analysis, written by Women's World Chess Champion Alexandra Kosteniuk.

Kashou_ · 2015-03-30T14:20:58+00:00

Because some women or "allies" feel something like this:

In a competitive environment where the majority are men, women are going to not bother trying to compete because "being the odd one out" is too much of a burden. It's the same reasoning behind women's classes in tech or women's video game tournaments.

They think that since the fields are male dominated, women won't apply just because of that, and having female only events will encourage women to compete.

However the real players will join gender neutral competitions, because being the best in the women's division when there is a gender neutral division is a fucking joke, and the good or serious aspiring players feel that way themselves.

Basically it's the same deal as always. People who are trying to be nice but in the end are just idiots who coddle women and treat them like fragile inferior beings.

DRMMR76 · 2015-03-30T14:23:28+00:00

Because everything needs to be a celebration of feminine triumph.

TheDespicableMe · 2015-03-30T14:22:29+00:00

I read an article some time ago that tried to explore this. The author made, basically, two arguments (if I am not wrong he only analyzed Chess clubs in Germany and Austria, so it is kinda hard to extrapolate the results: First, there are much more boys playing chess than girls. Therefore, just by the sheer force of numbers, even if the number of potential chess geniuses are the same for men and women, you have a field overwhelmingly male represented; second, it is a well-known statistical fact that men's intelligence (at least as measured by "intelligence tests") standard deviation is significantly higher. So, in the upper percentiles of the IQ distribution, males are much more represented.

InBaggingArea · 2015-03-30T15:16:43+00:00

Because women lack the strength to compete with a man's faster wrist-action.

ExpendableOne · 2015-03-30T16:29:48+00:00

It's kind of the same thinking behind women's only leagues in other nerdy fields that a lot of women aren't really interested in(like, pro gaming). They'll have women's only leagues, that exclude men, despite the fact that women aren't in any way blocked from regular leagues or disadvantaged, specifically because they want to give special treatment to women and provide them alternative opportunities because they are women.

It's an "equality of outcome" type dilemma where, because there are so few women entering or interested in those disciplines/fields, that they end up also being under-represented at the top as well. Because people expect to see more women being equally represented in those disciplines, special leagues are created to focus specifically on women and provide better opportunities/exposure for women that wouldn't really be available to men at their level. The same logic could honestly be used to justify things like "white-only basketball leagues", "black-only hockey leagues" or a "jewish football league". Honestly, it's idiotic and sexist(especially against men).

rg57 · 2015-03-31T16:35:39+00:00

that's why we have man's and women's divisions

False. We have segregated sport because women have claimed that their inability to achieve in regular sport ought to be remedied by creating entirely new sports that look like the original sport, but may only be played by people who are thoroughly examined and convince judges that they are women (or close enough, for trans people). Because the culture cares more about women than men, we've reacted by actually doing it. When it's men segregated by race, we rightly refuse to do it, even when one race clearly outshines the others in certain sports.

The same phenomenon leads to a female Thor comic book character. They simply lack the will and creativity to invent new sports, which women (or more generally, slower people with less strength) might be the best at. And they refuse to play in the lower divisions of the regular sport, because that would highlight the real reason they are losing.

Segregation IS discrimination. You don't even have to look at chess to get to that conclusion.

guimi2 · 2015-03-30T13:58:02+00:00

Women need their own spaces where they can exclude men

http://www.themarysue.com/garena-lol-all-women-restrictions/

gahaith · 2015-03-30T14:16:51+00:00

For some reason, historically, the top male players have been better than the top female players in chess. Female players actually have a totally different scale on the ELO rating system in order to keep games and tournaments more competitive. I'm sure if the discrepancy evened out they would integrate the genders.

sedatedinsomniac · 2015-03-31T00:43:31+00:00

Simple answer: because women aren't, statistically, as good at chess as men are. They formed their own sport so they could participate and still win instead of consistently losing to the point of discouragement.

samsburner1966 · 2015-03-30T16:07:26+00:00

But why is there such a division in chess, when the game is purely based on logical thinking?

Can you really not work this one out....

DavidByron2 · 2015-03-30T17:28:52+00:00

Men are smarter than women too. At least they are among those who play chess. If you forced everyone on the planet to play chess I guess women would do as well as men on average but that's not what happens. it's a game played by people at the top end of intelligence and that means men dominate. There area a lot more male geniuses than female geniuses. It averages out because there's a lot more really dumb or mentally handicapped men too. But because those men are invisible (men at the bottom) only the smart men are seen and so you often have a lot of men at the top of pretty much any field.

51-area · 2015-03-30T14:21:53+00:00

Not only chess they also have a maths olympiad for females only:

No men: WHY?

https://plus.maths.org/content/european-girls-mathematical-olympiad-talent-search

http://www.maa.org/news/china-girls-math-olympiad-0

MRSPArchiver · 2015-03-30T13:54:00+00:00

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Kestyr · 2015-03-30T15:10:25+00:00

Bobby Fischer was right for the most part. It's incredibly politically incorrect to say it but there's no competition. I think there's been one female grandmaster that's been able to have rank among the male players. In addition to that almost all of the female chess masters have a former Soviet or Asian socialist background with exception to an Indian one if my memory is correct. Those that are in the west are almost always of Slavic, Hungarian, or Georgian heritage and immigrated.

That's a curiosity in itself

WhiteMarauder · 2015-03-30T15:20:31+00:00

This has been explained to me before. From what I have gathered from it it is because the female grand masters of chess are not anywhere near the competitive level of male grand masters. So the women get their own league so they can live as professional chess masters, and be actually payed for their gaming.

I don't know if you can call that a truly wise decision though. In the global rankings, I don't think a woman actually ranks until like rank 50 or something. But don't quote me on this because my knowledge on the subject is limited.

What I DO know is that there is a lot of misinformation that gets spread around.

I don't entirely have a problem with this, however. Because of one major reason. There aren't too many women that actually are interested in Chess. Having a separate league where women have peers that are of the same gender may actually encourage them to join.

Eventually, the end result SHOULD be that the Open World Championship would have a mixture of men and women in it.

el_chief · 2015-03-30T19:43:40+00:00

Men have more testosterone, which is correlated with higher risk tolerance, which is correlated with winning more games AND losing more games.

So women will play more carefully and men will play more wildly. You would expect then more women women near the middle of the pack, and more men at the top AND bottom of the pack.

If you only look at the top of the pack (like chess championship rankings), there would be more (maybe even all) men there, so women cry discrimination, and start their own "league".

xNOM · 2015-03-30T20:10:07+00:00

Same thing with bridge, apparently.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Bridge_Championships

2015-03-31T02:09:04+00:00

This is news to me.

wilyame · 2015-03-31T02:51:47+00:00

Men and women have different wired brains. (Disclaimer I am not a scientist, so im just going off observations. )
Girls and women are doing much better in schools, but boys and men are doing much better on Science and math tests. By far Men have been the generals for all of human history.

Men are just better wired for things, and strategy is one of them. I play starcraft, and watch it, and there are no competitive women. Scarlett is great, and awesome, but biologically no women have ever done good. Sure, maybe men are just doing it alot, but if women were better, then the few who did play would be competitive, thereby leading to more and more women playing. That isnt what happened.

tl;dr: men and women are good at different things. Men are better at strategy type things. (i think)

spriggig · 2015-03-30T14:03:43+00:00

Well, it certainly has nothing to do with an innate poor capacity for logic.

/s

xNOM · 2015-03-30T14:09:58+00:00

Probably for the same reason there's women's tennis?

iMADEthis2post · 2015-03-30T21:22:19+00:00

They had to be separated because of all the rape crisis.

AloysiusC · 2015-03-30T21:04:24+00:00

Them chess pieces must be damn heavy ;)

Why is there Women's Chess?

Comments

rekt

Title	Why is there Women's Chess?
Author	melniav0
Upvotes	52
Comments	102
Date	March 30, 2015 1:53 PM UTC (11 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/MensRights
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/MensRights/comments/30t11v/why_is_there_womens_chess/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/MensRights/why-is-there-womens-chess.984467 https://theredarchive.com/post/984467