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Thursday, July 23, 2009

Article Perpetuates Myth About Women Chessplayers

I just came across this Chessbase article that perpetuates the myth that difference in relative skill levels in playing chess between females and males is due to females having smaller brains and also that their brains are differently-organized so that the "skills" needed to play chess are lacking. BALONEY! (That is a polite way of saying BULLSHIT!) The truth is this: women have been culturally brain-washed into thinking that they are inferior to males when it comes to playing chess. A controlled blind study using the internet and gender-neutral names for players has demonstrated that there is no difference in results of female and male players with similar ratings when playing against others - as long as the female players did not know the sex of their opponent. Check it out. Chess-playing ability has nothing to do with so-called "spatial ability" or relative brain size (females have smaller brains only because they are generally physically smaller than males, and relative brain size has nothing to do with intelligence or other cognitive abilities). Duh - this is exactly the same kind of argument that was used in the 19th century by white males to legitimize the enslavement of black Africans. That argument was bogus then and the argument about females being inferior chessplayers now is equally bogus, it's just a different form of enslavement. A study that would be mildly interesting in a purely academic sense is why male chessplayers are so anal when it comes to female chessplayers. But the younger generation of chess femmes who are working their way up the ELO ranks today would probably just laugh if approached about such a topic.

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