However, I will be unfashionably blunt. It is possible that women's backwardness in chess, a historical fact, has mainly to do with patriarchy in general and the patriarchical culture of chess -- which is very real. I would not be surprised if this is the case. We don't know. It is also possible that for various reasons women are unlikely as group to excel in chess in in proportion to their membership in the human population. If that is true, and we don't know that it is, there may be a partly genetic component for the explanation of any such phenomenon, although we have at this point no knowledge of what that might be or whether it is so. If there is some such sex-linked limitation with regard to chess, there is no reason to think that reflects on women's intellectual capacitities as a whole, their claim to equal rights, or even their freedom to compete in chess tournaments and win them (as the Polgars have_) if they can. If any of that offends you, too damn bad. It's all true.
--- joanna <123hop at comcast.net> wrote:
> Justin writes:
>
> "Women's backwardness in chess may change, but it
> has been the
> history."
> --------------------------------
> compare with:
>
> "Blacks' backwardness in academia may change, but it
> has been the history."
>
>
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