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this post was submitted on 06 Sep 2024
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Not all men. You think you can compete against any woman out there and win? Also, do you think every sport is about strength?
A lot has been written about why chess has separate tournaments for men and women despite physical strength not being a consideration for the game. Presumably, similar logic holds true for other non-physical-strength based games. I'd recommend you to look it up yourself, but the TL;DR (with some potential inaccuracies since it's been some time since I read it all) is as follows.
Historically women weren't even allowed to participate in chess tournaments because men considered them to be inferior and incapable of thinking as well as a man could. It was considered "ungentlemanly" to defeat a woman who "obviously" couldn't keep up with men. This led to a cycle of women not even learning the game because why bother, eh?
Now the thing about games like chess is that you can definitely learn it at any age and master it. BUT - doing so at a very young age tends to give people a huge edge over someone who started later (all else being equal - memory, effort etc etc). So, the same person starting at age 4 who'd probably be level 9000 Goku by the time they are 23 might never get to that level if they only start at age 35.
So, when women were allowed to participate in chess tournaments, there were very few of them who had started at the right age and could hold their own. This led to a need for a women's tournament to grow the sport.
How does that grow the sport? A little girl watching a woman on tv after winning a tournament might get inspired to pick it up. The girl might be able to point at the other women and tell her parents that she deserves to play chess too and that it's not just for boys.
These gendered leagues also give a "safe space" for women to participate in communities where people of different genders interacting is frowned upon. Etc etc etc.
Please do fact check me by looking up things on your own though -- it has been years since I went down this rabbit hole.
Thank you for the response!
I definitely agree that role models are important and that starting early is the key in chess. I can't remember the names, but it was tested by a researcher on his own daughters: he trained them in chess very early on they all became grand masters. In fact, the list of known chess grandmasters has 42 women on it.
Women are mentally capable of playing chess at the highest level if given the opportunity to do so.
So yes, giving them a space to compete against each other can serve as a "safe" space, it doesn't mean that it should be the only place they compete, nor that they are incapable of holding their own against other genders.
The question isn't either "should all sports force no segratation", but "should all sports let everybody compete together".
A lot of sports don't have a men's tournament per se. It's "women only" and "everyone allowed". So women can almost always go participate in a "men's" cricket match or whatever but they're at such a severe disadvantage physically that they can't get too far.
The only way to statistically (dis)prove all this is to repeat [this] (https://www.tennisnow.com/Blogs/NET-POSTS/November-2017-(1)/The-Man-Who-Beat-Venus-and-Serena-Back-to-Back.aspx) with a large enough sample set.
I recommend to make yourself familiar with the concept of some things being true even if you don't agree to them.
There are even things that still remain after nobody believes in them anymore (that is one definition of 'reality').
Even in "sports" like chess, darts and pool virtually every single world class player is a male. It's not just about strenght.
I'd really love sources on that since I don't follow those sports. Are they mixed?
But in chess, there are a definitely female grand masters (whatever that means). Pool had the famous "black widow" player. Who even plays darts? I only know of one fat Brit who has dominated against other men. No idea if women even play.
You can look up the leaderboards of any of the mentioned sports. It's not that there's not any women in there but it's still virtually all male.
Then there are plenty of examples of top level female athletes losing to males nobody has never even heard of.
Venus and Serena Williams lost to 203rd ranked male tennis player
FC Dallas under-15 boys squad beat the U.S. Women's National Team in a scrimmage