Well at my school it was pretty straightforward: after I beat all the boys, none would ever play with me again. Losing to other boys is ok, losing to a girl more than once? Might as well cut your dick off.
@lisas: That always happened to me in high school when I would play fighting video games. I beat an entire room of guys they all chalked it up to "luck" then didn't want to play anymore.
I could definitely see the same thing happening with chess.
Although, can someone confirm this with me? That article makes a claim that's is statistically inaccurate! It's certainly not true that a distribution populated by a larger number of people will always "have more outliers." If male and female chess performance is drawn from the same parent distribution, then as long as your sample size is large enough to meaningfully ask questions about performance several standard deviations from the mean, it shouldn't make a difference!
I think they meant it to state that there aren't enough female chess players to make meaningful statements about outliers, which may be true. But that "bell curve" argument sounds just wrong to me.
I think I might be in the minority with my reading of this article: it makes me really happy to read an article in Scientific American without the standard gender horseshit!! Jezebel has covered article after article where the scientists involved claim that women underperform because of their innate weaknesses in logic, spatial intelligence, etc (the WORST are the articles that chalk a loosely correlated variable up to evolution, "women don't cheat as much because of their sexuality is a product of being gatherers and child-raisers," for example). But this article is importantly NOT taking that step- they are making a conservative, impartial statement that there simply aren't as many women in chess- no judgment.
Allow me to submit to discussion the following generalization in response: all men who feel the need to prove their intellectual superiority over women are compensating for something else...
Sexist assholes of the world, I point and laugh at your crotches.
Chess for girls! I'm looking for the old SNL commercial but not finding it. You could brush the pony tail on a knight, and the rooks were secretly lipstick! Also, bubbles were involved. Oh, that made me laugh so hard. I loved chess when I was a little girl.
@SarahMC: I was never sure why that was a thing to be jealous of. I mean, it's not like you guys are able to do it on purpose. It isn't like a skill, or anything.
Though, I am sometimes jealous of the very tall (alternately: extremely suspicious of the very tall). Still, at least I recognize that jealousy as being stupid.
@braak: It's strange how even when ostensibly making a positive comment about women you manage to give it an insulting quality. "It isn't like a skill." No, but it is something we can do that you can't. :)
@PilgrimSoul: It wasn't really meant to be a positive thing. The capacity for bearing children seems to me like a relatively neutral thing, like being tall, or having red hair.
@PilgrimSoul: That it isn't a skill, I think, is what makes it all the more infuriating to some men. Skills can be learned. Biological reproduction? We don't even have to try to do that. To me, that was one of the most marvelous things about being pregnant. Somewhere in my brain, for my whole life, I have known how to grow more human beings inside my body. Without even thinking about it. It's quite amazing.
@braak: Try juggling final exams, a full-time job, and a stressful pregnancy at Christmastime without having your head explode. That's a motherfucking skill.
@braak: Certain physical traits are privileged over others; it doesn't matter whether the body's owner has any control over them. Are you suggesting that people are never envious of characteristics others didn't consciously develop?
@sarah.of.a.lesser.god (and the ovumlord of the rings): Yes, that is a skill, certainly. But if you sorted out the stressful pregnancy part, and replaced it with something that we could suggest was equally stressful but applied to both men adn women (i.e., I don't know, Hodgkin's Lymphoma, or something), the skill at coping would probably be equally distributed.
@SarahMC: No, I'm suggesting it's a stupid thing to be envious of. It'd be like being jealous of birds because they can fly. Sure, maybe you want to fly, but you don't blame the birds for being able to do it.
@braak: But if you sorted out the stressful pregnancy part, and replaced it with something that we could suggest was equally stressful but applied to both men adn women (i.e., I don't know, Hodgkin's Lymphoma, or something), the skill at coping would probably be equally distributed.
So, I was just poking fun at you before, but this is downright ludicrous. Pregnancy is the only health-related "stressful experience" in which other people treat your body as public fucking property, and moreover any misstep you make is in danger of making you a bad mom, so coping with a stressful pregnancy is a qualitatively different skill than coping with a terminal disease.
Jesus Christ. I understood what you were saying in the first place, but it seemed to me to be yet another example of men not understanding that their view of what "equal" is is necessarily conditioned by their male privilege.
@braak: But pregnancy (obviously) does not happen to men. Women have to navigate motherhood while simultaneously maintaining lives outside of their homes. That does take skill. Men do not have thosee same pressures.
@braak: Maybe you're not envious but I guarantee you SOME men are (subconciously). Maybe our bodies' ability to bring forth life makes some men feel irrelevant because all that's required of them is sperm and then they're done. Furthermore, they have no CONTROL over childbearing and perhaps some tidbits of patriarchy are attempts to gain control in various ways.
@braak: Also, I'd just like to say that men can get up and leave at any point without being roundly condemned by all of society for neglecting what is seen as some kind of biological mandate. Women are the ones perceived as turning their backs on what's considered parental instincts, whether by aborting, giving up for adoption, or simply working outside the home too much for some people's comfort levels.
@braak: And as for your comment above: I mean that women's capacity to become pregnant is the means by which the patriarchy (caterwaul count: 4) tells them their subservient position is a matter of nature (e.g. the "choice" to stay at home because women are nurturers; denying women promotion because they "are gonna get pregnant anyway"). So, no, for women being pregnant is not the same kind of "neutral" experience as being tall.
The definition of jealousy has the idea of resentment in it. I don't think every man has some subconscious resentment against women for being able to have children. But I think some do resent a woman being able to do something they can't.
There has to be some reason for what men have done to women over the years.
@Elaken: Thank you for introducing the word "resentment" into the discussion. Men's resentment of women's childbearing ability IS thought to be one reason men began oppressing women long, long ago.
@SarahMC: It's just sort of puzzling that you attemp to counter one obtuse statement regarding an alleged sexual characteristic with another. I'm not going to get into the fray about its merits or difficulty (have fun with that, braak) but what does the arduousness of pregnancy have anything to do with its attractiveness to men?
@BearDownCBears: I'm sorry but you just don't get it. You clearly don't even know what I'm talking about (did I say the arduousness of pregnancy had anything to do with its attractiveness to men?).
@SarahMC: Sorry to put words into your mouth; I got parts of your arguments mixed up with those in Maggie Simpson Sarah's comments. I was initially too belligerent, and I apologize. Look, I just wanted you to expand on your belief in womb envy, which I have never bought. But I blew that and now you're pissed, so never mind. Also, it's probably unreasonable of me to ask for a summary of an entire school of thought over an internet comment thread.
Joss Whedon says, about womb envy: "It's a very simple theory... but basically it just seemed to be a fundamental thing that women have something men don't, the obvious being an ability to bear children, and the resilience to hang in as parents. I don't understand why or how anyone ever pulled off the whole idea of "women are inferior." Men not only don't get what's important about what women are capable of, but in fact they fear it, and envy it, and want to throw stones at it, because it's the thing they can't have."
Stephen Ducat covers womb envy a bit in his book The Wimp Factor. Amanda Marcotte made the comment that "it seemed fairly clear that womb envy was a result of a process where a man grows to despise a woman and he can't possibly fathom how such a lowly creature can go through such an important event and he wants all the credit for himself. That's why I think the belief that "life begins at conception" is tied to misogyny-it's a way of denying that pregnancy even exists as a process and laying claim to the idea that men make babies through the strenous act of ejaculation, and that all the important parts are over when he's done."
I'm really annoyed at the constant use of chess as a yardstick of intelligence. I once made that observation, or something like it, to a male friend who seemed otherwise intelligent, and the best he could do was that smart people care about chess and math and science. If I had been then the woman I am today, he'd still be limping.
@TheFormerJuneBronson: Indeed. Look at how much computing power has been wasted teaching computers to play chess and beat humans, as if that has been the key to unlocking the mysteries of curing AIDS or cancer.
@TheFormerJuneBronson: I have the privilege of knowing some incredibly smart people, and most of them are wholly uninterested in chess. There are so very many different things at which people can excel, so many ways in which intelligence can manifest. For example, I find chess quite dull, but if the average chess master cared to play on my marine sciences turf, chances are good I'd kick his ass.
@TheFormerJuneBronson: All I can say as a member of Mensa I have never had any interest in chess, other than the fat that it seems obligatory for 'smart people.'
Than I realized that really, a lot of it in the higher levels is just about memorizing and what is the fun in that?
I don't think the computing power was 'wasted.' That comment makes me think of on SNL years ago when they talked about scientists working towards developing an onion that doesn't make you cry and they mockingly said how that is more important that curing cancer. Resources allocated towards one thing don't automatically take away from another. That computing power used did more than just teach computers to play chess, they learned things in the process.
@NakedGills: My basic premise is that intelligent people are curious people, and I don't really care what they're curious about. It makes me really angry when people--and for some reason, men in the field are some of the worst offenders--denigrate my chosen fields of English and history as only suitable for stupid girls, because if I were really intelligent, I'd be in math or a hard science. I'm willing to wager that I work just as hard and am more broadly read than they are. And even if I'm wrong about that, I don't care. I don't have anything to prove to such small-minded people.
@Elaken: Yeah, like winning spelling bees. DIdn't I learn from something like Spellbound that those kids don't even know what those words mean? How piteous. I'd admire them more if they knew what the words meant and could use them intelligently. Same could be said of geography bees. It isn't the collection of facts you've memorized; it's how you synthesize what you know into a cohesive and nuanced understanding of the world.
@TheFormerJuneBronson: But wait, don't we (English majors) just sit around reading Jane Austen to each other while sipping tea? We couldn't possibly be the clearest, most precise communicators academia produces!
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I could definitely see the same thing happening with chess.
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Well MK3 to be exact.
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I mean, the whole issue might be "no duh" to us but you have to recall that common sense just isn't all that common.
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I think they meant it to state that there aren't enough female chess players to make meaningful statements about outliers, which may be true. But that "bell curve" argument sounds just wrong to me.
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Sexist assholes of the world, I point and laugh at your crotches.
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Though, I am sometimes jealous of the very tall (alternately: extremely suspicious of the very tall). Still, at least I recognize that jealousy as being stupid.
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Also, it's not like women can have children on their own. There still needs to be a man involved at some point.
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(Daily caterwaul tally: 3.)
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@SarahMC: No, I'm suggesting it's a stupid thing to be envious of. It'd be like being jealous of birds because they can fly. Sure, maybe you want to fly, but you don't blame the birds for being able to do it.
12/29/08
So, I was just poking fun at you before, but this is downright ludicrous. Pregnancy is the only health-related "stressful experience" in which other people treat your body as public fucking property, and moreover any misstep you make is in danger of making you a bad mom, so coping with a stressful pregnancy is a qualitatively different skill than coping with a terminal disease.
Jesus Christ. I understood what you were saying in the first place, but it seemed to me to be yet another example of men not understanding that their view of what "equal" is is necessarily conditioned by their male privilege.
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@PilgrimSoul: [back at ya]
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The definition of jealousy has the idea of resentment in it. I don't think every man has some subconscious resentment against women for being able to have children. But I think some do resent a woman being able to do something they can't.
There has to be some reason for what men have done to women over the years.
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Men's resentment of women's childbearing ability IS thought to be one reason men began oppressing women long, long ago.
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Joss Whedon says, about womb envy: "It's a very simple theory... but basically it just seemed to be a fundamental thing that women have something men don't, the obvious being an ability to bear children, and the resilience to hang in as parents. I don't understand why or how anyone ever pulled off the whole idea of "women are inferior." Men not only don't get what's important about what women are capable of, but in fact they fear it, and envy it, and want to throw stones at it, because it's the thing they can't have."
Stephen Ducat covers womb envy a bit in his book The Wimp Factor. Amanda Marcotte made the comment that "it seemed fairly clear that womb envy was a result of a process where a man grows to despise a woman and he can't possibly fathom how such a lowly creature can go through such an important event and he wants all the credit for himself. That's why I think the belief that "life begins at conception" is tied to misogyny-it's a way of denying that pregnancy even exists as a process and laying claim to the idea that men make babies through the strenous act of ejaculation, and that all the important parts are over when he's done."
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Also I have a Muppets chess set, it rocks.
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honestly after the week i've had with my period, the lack of one would be one of the few reasons i'd want to come back as a man in my next lifetime.
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Having a king is mandatory even though he's pretty much worthless and really nothing more than a mere figure-head.
QUEEN:
Unlike the king, the queen is no figure-head. She's the most powerful chess piece you have on the chessboard.
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Than I realized that really, a lot of it in the higher levels is just about memorizing and what is the fun in that?
@NefariousNewt:
I don't think the computing power was 'wasted.' That comment makes me think of on SNL years ago when they talked about scientists working towards developing an onion that doesn't make you cry and they mockingly said how that is more important that curing cancer. Resources allocated towards one thing don't automatically take away from another. That computing power used did more than just teach computers to play chess, they learned things in the process.
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Those mens and their silly games.
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