No Way to Treat the Ladies

http://www.chessblog.com/2011/01/open-letter-to-fide-about-wwcc-2010.html

Thanks for posting this. Sad.

Well, money makes the world go round. And FIDE is a business, same as NFL or NBA or FIFA. So you can't expect anything fair, reasonable or appropriate.

unless you're a male chess player.

Addressing the organisational aspects, it sounds like it was disgustingly cynically organised. Heads should roll, people should be named and shamed. If they're going to basically fleece and blackmail the people who want and deserve to play, then they shouldn't be organising it at all.

However, that unfortunately brings me to the flipside, because on the subject of a women's world chess championship I have to take an unpopular non-PC stance. Let's see how that open letter began:

"""

We are chess professionals and would like to see the women’s chess world championship as the ultimate chess event which should be organized at the highest level.

"""

Utterly impossible. Physically impossible. Logically impossible. Semantically impossible. Nothing which excludes half of the population can be the ultimate event. The ultimate events are the ones that the Polgars have participated in, the ones with both genders. There, I said it. Sorry if it offends anyone, but if it does, I think it's your problem.

I also think that sexism in the FIDE should be rooted out as it should be in any organisation. By the looks of it, at least some people who fly the FIDE flag are in desperate need of culling. However, I don't believe that the existence of a special event for the ladies does _anything_ to remove sexism, in fact, quite the *opposite*. It's playing into their hands - it's patronising, for pity's sake, don't people see that?

So, if you can't guess, I simply don't think there should be a separate women's event. As my girlfriend says, "you don't need upper body strength in order to castle".

Phil, I certainly see the problem of which you write.

I also think there is a benefit to holding special tournaments for populations that are easily definable, generally have a lower interest in chess than FIDE would like, and preferably do not generally include players at the very top level.

Whether women's chess has matured tot eh point that a separate championship does more harm than good is an interesting question. I think the answer before the Polgars was clearly not; it did more good than harm. Now, if I had to guess, I'd still say it does more good than harm, but I'm far from sure.

Why have a separate female chess championship in the first place???

chess is purely mental. it's not lifting weights or punching anyone!

isn't this a raw admission that women cannot compete with man on a metal level???

suppose for a second they had separate championships for black players. would that not be not only racists but an admission that blacks cannot compete with whites? luckly there isn't the case, but think of the consequences.

i could be wrong but in cards games like poker it's open to all genders.

so what's to stop chess from having its champ'ship open to ALL.

it just makes no sense to have chess for women only. it's discriminatory in the first place because if women want to they can and must be allowed to compete in the man's.

can you imagine if a woman wants to compete in the man's champ'ship and be told she cannot because it's for men only. all HELL would break lose.

i agree with dvd that the women's championship is there simply to promote the idea that women *can* play. the polgars had the same effect. players like this become role models, inspirations to younger female players.

i read that in europe before the 20th century women were discouraged from playing chess and encouraged to play checkers. (maybe because the men of that time would have found losing to a woman too traumatic? how unladylike...) that's evidence of a deep-seated sexist bias in the culture, which i don't think anyone would find surprising at this point. it takes time to overturn attitudes like that.

i agree with lugino that in a world without sexist attitudes, women would make up %50 of the participants in a championship. it would make sense then to stop holding the "women's championship" as soon as the main championship approaches 50-50 gender participation, because a special championship will obviously no longer be needed.

[warning, satire!]

Well since 18xx they are allowed to have a soul, and since 1920 they are even allowed to vote (in some countries), so we might consider allowing them to play chess...

[warning, satire!]

Ok ok. They can play chess. And they might enjoy it. But only woman vs. woman.

They should not be allowed to beat a MAN!

Should we ban national championships because they contain an implicit condescending assumption that the people from that nation could not compete internationally?

Should we create chess tournaments for blonde people? Or taller than 1,85 m? Or tournaments for who can correctly write "Wednesday"?

Only if those groups start identifying with each other to a degree that they themselves would be interested in who among them is the best.

You say that "nothing which excludes half of the population can be the ultimate event" yet the chess universe is one of the most sexist, male-dominated communities that I can think of. In the top echelon of the chess world, about 1% of players are women. At the time of this post there are no women in the top fifty. It may not be written into the rules but it is undeniable that the dominant chess culture discourages female participation. Without some incentives (such as the guaranteed press coverage and titles that come with women's-only tournaments) to speed things along, I fear it would be a looong time before there is enough female representation to legitimately speak of a world championship. Even if women are "allowed", chess, like NASCAR, would be a guy's sport.

Besides, except for World Championships, tournaments are not about deciding who is The Best. They are always about who is best within a certain category: we have tournaments for juniors, for the blind, for correspondence players, for players under 1400, 1600, 1800, for people who belong to this or that club, for high school students, for college students, for prisoners, for seniors. And this is a good thing! Only one person can say that they are World Champion (well, ignoring the whole Kasparov/Kramnik/Karpov debacle in the '00s); it would be very discouraging if that were the only title one could compete for, but it is a great thing to win the u1600 Junior Regional Championships! Are the organizers being agist and patronizing by not forcing everyone to play in the open section? And for the one tournament that does decide the World Champion, women can and do participate.

+1 for Dustin's points.

Dvd Avins wrote "Should we ban national championships because they contain an implicit condescending assumption that the people from that nation could not compete internationally?"

Dvd, you made me rethink my position, thanks for the pointer. Looks like it is not as black and white as I thought it is.

Maybe the only issue is that if someone would invite to a male-only championship, he would be chided as sexist, which is then equally untrue. If we try to treat the sexes equally, male-only events should be as ok as female-only events (even though this is an academic point for chess).

I think in any event, having a separate championship for a group that would have more than, say 30%, of the players in an overall championship is usually silly. I could see where a Soviet Chess Championship in the 1950s-1980s might be an exception to that, but even there, I'm not sure. So a male-only chess championship in the current day would be odd, and one would rightly wonder what combination of motives would make such a thing come to pass.

I'm so mad about this I left seven correspondence chess sites today!!