Chess is Unfair to Women
By Bruce Walker (07/06/07)
Chess is unfair to women. That, at least, is the only conclusion anyone can reach after perusing the latest rankings of the top one hundred chess players in the world. This is my fourth article on the topic that I typically call "Womenism and Chess Fairness." Back in January 2003, it appeared I noted that there was only one woman in the top one hundred chess players in the world, Judith Polgar.
It is absolutely undeniable that Judith is a fantastic chess player and she has admirably declined to play in the “women’s only” section of the international chess world. At one time, Polgar was among the top ten chess players in the world, much higher than any woman has ever reached in chess rankings.
But as I noted in my last three articles, Judith has either stayed at the same level or dropped (which does not necessarily mean that she has lost games, but rather than other more active players have won games which moved them ahead of her.) The July 2007 chess rankings show that Judith, who had been the 13th ranked player in the world in April, had dropped to the 19th best player in the world.
Why has this happened? Men and women are different types of creatures. Womenists - those who pretend to carry the banner of equality of the sexes, but who actually are nothing more than a sordid special interest group that always advocates the case of women over men – have demanded, as a political matter, that men and women are equal in every way (except in those ways in which women are better than men.)
The very best woman chess player in the world is not competing against men who have had more advantages than her: quite the opposite. Judith’s parents are both outstanding chess players, her sister is an outstanding chess player, her father quit his job and pulled Judith out of school so that she could study chess fulltime. Judith Polgar had more advantages, more special help, better environmental conditions to be a great chess player than any of the ninety-nine men she competes against. Moreover, Judith has grown up in a generation that insists at every level of society that men are not better than women in any area of intellectual achievement.
Reality is very different. On average, men score higher on intelligence tests than women. This applies not only to mathematical and spatial reasoning, but also to language skills. The most gifted humans in history have almost always been men, even when they were men who rose from the most desperate conditions. Women, even when they grew up in privileged conditions (like Polgar) have almost never risen to the top in most intellectual fields.
Does this mean that women should be treated as if they were less intelligent creatures than men? Of course not! Equality of opportunity is something that all of the ninety-nine men in the top one hundred chess players would hardily endorse. Nearly all of these men came from poor countries in which equality of opportunity in the chess world has allowed these men to achieve.
What it does mean is this: it is high time to stop pretending that having a cartoon picture of reality, in which women must be portrayed as often as men in cerebral roles, is some sort of satisfaction of social injustice. The barriers to women rising to greatness have, almost always, been a consequence of the relative superiority of those handful of men who are great.
Judith Polgar shows this most strikingly, because chess is a game of pure intellect. There are no “social pressures” that can affect a game of chess. There are no ghettos in chess, and many of the greatest chess players have been Jewish. Chess is as level a playing field as it is possible to create. Yet the second best female chess player in the world is so far below Polgar or thousands of male chess players that Judith herself appears more like a fluke, the exception that proves the rule.
It is high time to begin to treat men fairly, which means to remove the ghettos of men which Womenism has constructed. Men have succeeded on merit, competing against other men and competing against the challenges of the mind and the world. Men have not succeeded on the backs of women. We must believe that or we must stop believing in reason.
Women and men are both, inherently good and flawed, strong and weak, wise and foolish. But women are not failing to live up to the expectations of Womenists because of men, and chess is not unfair to women.
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