MariaAug 17, 2023
Another Angry Woman
Curious as to what the justification is for having gendered chess categories in the first place, because literally the only thing I can think of ultimately amounts to they believe women are innately stupid.
Aug 17, 2023 at 12:03pmWeb
Show threadAnother Angry WomanAug 17, 2023

If it really is, as some people claim, to encourage women to play in a toxic environment, that reflects *even worse* on chess, when they could actually... just ban misogynists from competing.

If chess is a brain game, misogyny surely counts as a red card foul.

Show threadCheryl MorganAug 17, 2023
@stavvers exactly. But apparently Freeze Peach trumps every argument.
Show threadMike LandersAug 17, 2023
@stavvers Anna Cramling has a YouTube channel where she very entertainingly beats male players (including hustlers) in around three minutes while matching them trash talk for trash talk.
Show threadNic DafisAug 17, 2023
@stavvers *less* toxic?
Show threadWayne MyersAug 17, 2023
@stavvers Absolutely. My sister and I played a lot of chess as kids, and there were always a lot more boys than girls in junior clubs and tournaments, with the number of girls decreasing with age. Organisers (always male) claimed to be mystified by it: gendered prizes/teams was all they could think of. We were both fairly strong players agewise, but I won very little while my sister picked up a lot of 'Best Girl' prizes in tournaments and played board 2 for the British Junior Girls Team. (1/2)
Show threadWayne MyersAug 17, 2023

@stavvers As I recall, getting to play for the British team was definitely encouraging for her, but she was a lot less into the Best Girl prizes. Especially as she often lost out on Best Girl b/c her friend, the board 1 on the British Girls team was always that bit stronger a player.

Anyway, none of us play much chess any more.

Show threadAdlangxAug 17, 2023
@stavvers They really shot themselves in the face on this.
Show threadAliAug 17, 2023
@stavvers Women's category uses bigger boards so they can move the pieces with their breasts.
Show threadRachel GreenhamAug 17, 2023
@stavvers from what else i've seen in the last day or so, it seems that [decoded] the chess tournament scene was so toxically misogynistic that trying to compete in it as a woman was practically impossible, and making a whole separate tournament for women was, to them, easier and preferable to fixing it.
Show threadAnother Angry WomanAug 17, 2023
@StrangeNoises yeah, it seems to me like simply banning misogynists from competing would have been the easier fix there
Show threadRachel GreenhamAug 17, 2023
@stavvers i'm sure there was also a flavour of "but they might win!" in there too, an outcome not to be risked. But that's just a subset of the other thing really.
Show threadNicolaAug 17, 2023
@stavvers @StrangeNoises "But then the tournaments would be almost empty"
Show threadBen from CDSAug 17, 2023

@stavvers Apparently my mental autocorrect is on one today because I read this three times and was entirely baffled at the concept of gendered cheese.

Sadly the world is so dumb right now it still felt plausible, although nobody in their right mind would buy man cheese.

Show threadacmAug 17, 2023
@glenatron oh help! 🤣
Show threadjuanejotAug 17, 2023
@glenatron @stavvers My brain in turn went to this, which may be as justified and plausible as anything real-world or potentially so, discussed so far.
https://youtu.be/Gq2_BKd2RYI
1983 - Monchhichis cartoon opening

YouTube
Show threadChris DudleyAug 18, 2023
@glenatron @stavvers Cheese is more properly categorized by holiness rather than gender.
Show threadBen from CDSAug 18, 2023
@ccdudley85 @stavvers Much like popes.
Show threadChris DudleyAug 18, 2023
@glenatron @stavvers They do have Swiss guards and that is where the holiest cheese comes from.
Show threadCoding Cottagecore BogwitchAug 17, 2023
@stavvers I give you this extract from the Wiki page of former UK chess no. 1 Nigel Short
Show threadAnother Angry WomanAug 17, 2023
@forestpines I fucking knew it
Show threadAliAug 17, 2023
@stavvers @forestpines "*repeated* defeat by Judit Polgar" is just [chef's kiss]
Show threadAutistiCriticAug 17, 2023
@forestpines @stavvers I hope she’s intelligent in other ways and dumps his ass pronto! What a fucking norbit! 😆
Show threadJos Aug 17, 2023
@forestpines @stavvers I’ve always wondered about that. No conceivable reason for keeping those gender-separate that doesn’t amount to entrenched misogyny, as far as I can see.
Show threadChristopher PhinAug 17, 2023
@forestpines @stavvers Turns out it IS quite easy to demonstrate there is a fairly substantial gap between at least one man and one woman…
Show threademberquill Aug 17, 2023
@forestpines @stavvers Can't believe this man had the absolute audacity to say women were inferior at chess after repeatedly losing against a woman.
Show threadGrayGooGlitch Aug 17, 2023
@stavvers
Pretty sure I remember reading a while back that gendered sports categories were made entirely because men couldn't handle being beaten by women (I think the first one was marksmanship). It's an impossible situation, either we're excluded from the """real""" league so they can feel superior or if men are intentionally excluded they get pissy about it like it's their right to have access to women's spaces.
Show threadGrayGooGlitch Aug 17, 2023
@stavvers
I've spent the better part of a week doing moderation work for a women's only charity game speedrunning event and it's been a non-stop display of fragile men who's dicks fell off over seeing talented women and trans inclusion.
Show threadErik HaugenAug 17, 2023

@GrayGooGirl @stavvers I'm sure that was someone's motivation at one point or another, but certainly isn't the main thing going on. In any case, not having women's sports would mean inequity in things like college scholarships. There's real money involved. (I guess one solution to that would be to not have athletic scholarships, but what about pro sports?)

"excluded from the """real""" league" Women's sports is very much real. (And a lot of "men's" sports orgs don't actually ban women (MLB is an exception).)

I think most men understand that there are plenty of women who can absolutely crush them at any given sport. :)

Show threadKarl WilhelmAug 17, 2023
@stavvers The old men's rationale for this is obvious: "If we let the women play, then one day they will play just as well as we do, maybe even better."
The risk of losing power is considerable.
Show threadAmi AngelwingsAug 17, 2023
@stavvers given that they banned trans men too, we're about to get a wave of TERF talking points about how testosterone makes you smart and if you get it at any point in your life you just become too much of a genius for any cis woman to handle -_-
Show threadAmadi LovelaceAug 17, 2023
@ami_angelwings @stavvers they didn’t ban trans men and didn’t say they’d need a multi year process of determining if they could play, they just said that they would be stripped of all of the titles that they earned if they competed in the women’s division. Apparently acquiring the title of “women’s grandmaster” requires less achievement than acquiring the title of “grandmaster” in the general/men’s division, so they go back to square one.
Show threadshimst3r is now on famichikiAug 17, 2023
@ami_angelwings @stavvers it's "Bobby Fisher vs. non-cis-male chess players" all over again, isn't it. ._.
Show threadBadger on MastodonAug 17, 2023
@stavvers as I understand, all major chess competitions are open, and the competitions for women that do exist are to help grow the game and foster a more welcoming environment
Show threadCheryl MorganAug 17, 2023
@stavvers apparently segregating women into their own category is easier than stopping male players being misogynistic pricks.
Show threadRaven667Aug 17, 2023
@CherylMorgan @stavvers I know this is meant to be sarcastic, because it would be better for everyone to get rid of the assholes, but it is also truly, demonstrably, repeatedly easier to enforce segregation than fix the underlying attitude problems.
Show threadBruno RohéeAug 18, 2023
@CherylMorgan @stavvers Women are free to enter the open tournaments (and some do), they have the option to compete in a women only competition. I see a lot of condemnation of the situation but didn't see a single female chess player asked why lots of them prefer the women only competitions.
Show threadinternetsdairyAug 17, 2023
@stavvers Wait till they hear the relative powers of the king and queen pieces
Show threadNickAug 17, 2023
@internetsdairy @stavvers This is the problem, when a male chess player transitions to a female chess player, they can suddenly move unlimited distances.
Show threadjust adrienneAug 17, 2023
@Nickiquote @internetsdairy @stavvers SNRK
Show threadNickAug 17, 2023
@stavvers if the argument is, as it seems to be, that male chess players are creepy as fuck, then the solution is to enforce the rules and ban those players. It’s not like you’d accept violent players at a tournament.
Show threadacmAug 17, 2023
@Nickiquote need enough to keep the game alive? 😬
Show threadFurbyAug 17, 2023
@stavvers There's arguably an affirmative action argument to have a women's competition to get more women involved in the game, but if outreach is the only reason why have such a fuss about trans participants?
Show thread𝕱𝕴𝕾𝕳𝕭𝕰𝕯Aug 17, 2023

@furby @stavvers having ever had balls makes you smarter somehow. It came to me in a dream.

(Need to emphasize that this is a joke because people are really fucking stupid online and there may be someone who genuinely has this viewpoint)

Show threadElfbiterAug 17, 2023
@stavvers Years ago in the Olympic games skeet shooting did not have gender-specific categories. Then Chinese female won. In the next contest women and men had to compete in different categories. So _woman could not beat men_ again
Show threadArtemisAug 17, 2023

@elfbiter
This is pretty much the history for *all* this stuff. Women start competing with the men at something, and suddenly they have to be relegated to their own special category.

Men DO NOT want to contemplate losing to a woman.

@stavvers

Show threadBujoldAug 17, 2023
@artemis @elfbiter @stavvers See also Nathan's Hot Dog Eating Competition, which split into gendered competitions in 2011 after the dudes kept getting their asses kicked by a tiny Korean woman
Show threadparentheticalAug 17, 2023
@stavvers one rationale is that, since women are so underrepresented among people who compete in chess, the weight of numbers means that that the top players of open events will likely still be overwhelmingly men. womens events and titles are reserved so that they don't have that effect.
Show threadeklemAug 17, 2023
@stavvers toxic chess environment makes less women thrive and do well? That is, if women's level is actually lower.
Show threadeklemAug 17, 2023
@stavvers and I guess there is some chess news I haven't read which makes me not understand the context.
Show threadAnother Angry WomanAug 17, 2023
@eklem they decided to ban trans women from women's chess, a category which should not exist in the first place
Show threadeklemAug 18, 2023
@stavvers ah, ok. Screw them. That's just a shittier take on an already shitty situation they have already created.
Show threadkechpajaAug 17, 2023
@stavvers My (very limited) understanding is that it's largely a holdover from an era when mainstream chess was mostly (explicitly) restricted to men, and creating women's competitions was the only way to allow women to compete on a regular basis. But yes, there's no good reason to gender chess in 2023.
Show threadyour_huckleberryAug 17, 2023
@stavvers they didn't want to address the rampant sexism, so they swept the problem under the rug by creating a separate "safe space".
Show threadBotahamecAug 17, 2023
@stavvers They say it's to give women more recognition. I don't think that happens in practice.
Show threadChristopher WalkerAug 17, 2023
@stavvers I was wondering that as well. The Queen’s Gambit led me to believe that there weren’t separate divisions.
Show threadPeter DownAug 17, 2023
@stavvers Or the men are afraid of losing to women.
Show threadLee Fife - old accountAug 17, 2023
@stavvers and they're really scared that the women are smarter ...
Show threadskipchrisAug 17, 2023

@stavvers to clarify — the categories aren’t “men” and “women”, it’s “open” and “women”.

Your point about not tolerating misogyny is spot-on, but I don’t think women–only competition is much more controversial than things like women-only business networking, women-only gyms etc: a chance to do something you enjoy without having to put up with the general fuckery of men.