Authors in Womenism and Feminism
Angela Davis
Toni Morrison
Alice Walker
Womenism And Chess Fairness - Redux
By Bruce Walker (10/14/04)
Almost two years ago, on January 6, 2003, I wrote an article “Womenism and Chess
Fairness.” In this article, I noted that Womenism, the fascist equivalent of what used
to be honorable Feminism, is nothing more than a totalitarian ideology which
mandates that women, in every way, must be superior to men.
This is, of course, monstrously false. Men are physically stronger than women and
much more aggressive. This means women have political rights only when men
concede their ability to conquer women through physical coercion. This men have
done throughout most of human history, whether women had nominal political
equality with me - although men seldom have had nominal political equality with
other men in human history - or whether women have had the combination of both
protection and of restriction which the accepted social differences between men and
women throughout history have required.
The differences between men and women, as almost any serious person
understands today, is the reason for the social differences in the treatment of men
and women throughout most of human history. Relentless and remorseless jihads to
"level the playing field" - when an uneven playing field was never the problem - have
resulted in a steep ramp for men to climb and an easy coast for women.
In some situations, notably family law and criminal law, the injustice is comparable
in its ghastliness to HaShoah and to the Gulag. Millions of lives are systematically
destroyed to placate an irrational and insane hatred of men. The victims are not just
the middle aged, but include the very young and the very old. Some of the victims
are female as well, but that should not diminish the fact that overwhelmingly the
victims are male.
In other situations, like the infamously awful female place kicker at the University of
Colorado, foisted onto an unwilling coach and team above much more qualified
young men who earned the right to be fourth string place kicker, the situation is
more farcical than grim.
In still other situations, like the rankings of players in chess, the proof of male
superiority in certain areas is decisive and Womenists look like the spoiled little girls
that they are. That was the subject of my January 2003 article. When one looks at
the chess rankings there are several categories, like the top 100 players, the top
100 women players, and the top 100 youth players.
Different variations of competition chess, including correspondence chess and fast
chess may also be ranked. One category is conspicuous by its absence: there is no
category for men. Why? Until recently, virtually all of the best chess players on the
planet were male. Whatever category one examined, women or girls were so far
down the list that the 100th best male player was vastly better than the best female
player.
Until recently, that had been true as long as chess has been ranked and
tournaments had been held. But it appeared, until recently, that might change.
Judith Polgar, to her credit (and I mean that sincerely) eschewed the easy path of
competing only against other women and, instead, competed in the open category.
Judith Polgar is a very, very good chess player. She rose up the rankings until Polgar
was the eighth best chess player in the world (and the only woman among the top
100 players.) Was this evidence that women did poorly in chess because of "social
conditioning" or "peer pressure" or "environmental factors"?
That was a pathetically weak argument at any time. Chess is pure intellect. There is
no element of chance. Moreover, chess - and this is true today and was easily true
ten years ago - is an intellectual activity in which the best male mind in the world
can best the greatest computer or combinations of computers that can be
constructed. The thirty moves in chess involves a number of possibilities much,
much greater than all of the computers on the planet together can digest.
Polgar will never be the best chess player in the world. In October 2004, she slipped
from eighth to ninth best player in the world. Younger, better male players will soon
overtake even that ranking. Indeed, Judith Polgar will not only never be the best
chess player in the world, but she will probably never even be the best chess player
in her native Hungary.
Was this because, somehow, fate dealt her a bad hand? No, exactly the opposite
was the case. Her parents were both very good chess players as is her sister. Her
father quit his job, pulled Judith out of school, and worked full time to improve her
chess game. She came from a nation in which chess is almost an obsession. If any
woman could have become the best chess player in the world, it was Judith Polgar.
Compare the carefully orchestrated, decades long effort to show that a woman can
become the best chess player in the world with other people who were the best
chess player in the world. Capablanca, the Cuban wonder, dominated the chess
world for decades. He played simultaneous games. He saw moves in an instant that
grandmaster level players could not see in a week.
Capablanca learned chess by watching it played. He had a career utterly removed
from the chess world; he had a wife and a family; he was a "party animal" much of
the time. He was also, arguably, the most naturally gifted chess player in history. He
did not come from a nation immersed in chess. His father did not weld his life and
the life of his son to winning tournaments. Capablanca simply did what came
naturally to him.
Sometime (soon we should hope) the last raving Womenist will stop raving and let
normal people go back to living in a normal society - a society in which men do some
things better and more naturally than women and in which women do some things
better and more naturally than men.
"Chess fairness" was always patently absurd: the favored and the despised both had
their great heroes in chess precisely because social leveling does not and cannot
work in the pure logic of chess. It is segregated not because men have been "unfair"
to women; it is segregated because in some critical ways, men are much better than
women.