Nigel Short: 'Girls just don't have the brains to play chess'


This girl has a brain for chess at least:
http://www.aftenposten.no/100Sport/sjakk/Lykke-Merlot-6-vekker-oppsikt---Hun-er-bedre-enn-det-Magnus-Carlsen-var-534035_1.snd
Beating GM Agdestein when you are 6 years old is very good even if it was in a simultan.
The article also says she knew 5 tie knots when she was 3, At 39 I still struggle with any tie knot ;-)
And her name is nothing less than Lykke-Merlot Aurora April Bowitz Helliesen.

On the contrary. The fact that there are women-only titles is proof that the chess community wants to encourage women to play chess through affirmative action.

On the contrary. The fact that there are women-only titles is proof that the chess community wants to encourage women to play chess through affirmative action.


At the historical moment when religious beliefs ruled the day, people used religious traditions, biblical text, canon law, etc. to 'prove' that G-D had ordained a particular place for women, and it was home, family, children, and entertaining guests. With Darwinism and the idea that humans are just a species of animal, a new kind of essentialism took over: Biology.
Although it's no longer in vogue to say "women are inferior because of Eden", it's totally acceptable to say "Women and men are made of different chemicals which make women inferior at chess." There are some compelling arguments made in actual science that attempt to 'prove' an essential, biological, insurmountable difference between the sexes, but there are at least equally compelling arguments to say that sexual dimorphism is less important to gender than social environment. Laslo Polgar believed the latter, and he set out to prove his theory by moulding his daughters into chess prodigies....not bad, Laslo, not bad.
Anyway, a lot of people on chess.com and anywhere else use the Darwin argument in place of the religion argument when what they really mean is "Chess is boy stuff....cooking is girl stuff....boy good at chess, girl make food."
We had a 2000+ post thread on this subject when Nigel first opened his gab.....nothing was gained, but a lot of cool discussion happened in the margins.
Just wait until some GMs from poorer countries figure out that transgendering into a womans body will allow them to win tons of womens section prizes in chess.
It's only a matter of time until it starts happening.
As for the "affirmative action" part, could someone explain to me why they would need that ?
Do women grow up in less priviledged families than their own brothers ? Are they feeling "repressed by the history of slavery" more than their own brothers ? Is there even ANY reason at all to think women would be disadvantaged over their own brothers from the same family ?
This "affirmative action" argument smells like BS to me.
Or are you saying women ARE indeed inferior in chess and therefore should be treated as handicapped players and given their own special needs section ? Because that's not what the official agenda of equality in brain power says, you know...

You can't possibly say anything about a group of people being different than another in any way because all groups are lies and all people are singular and unique. The generalisation can't be true because there is always an exception. Also maybe in the future when things are more fair women will win at chess more than men. Who knows?