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What makes sexism more tolerable than racism?
So I was watching a video the other day about being a woman in NYC. And something this women said stuck out to me, and this something I notice In liberal/Progressive circles when it comes to Men specifically:
There is often deep talk in many feminist circles, and society, generally, about how scary it is to be a women, and how fearful women are of Men. Im not here to argue that this fear is unjustified - I understand it fully, but here is what I think is a bigger problem with this: It is, by definition, prejudice. Thats honestly not the problem I have with it, the problem is a perceived double standard between prejudices.
Im sure everyone here is aware of the not so secret that Men as a group commit more violent crime than women - Mass Shootings, Rape, ect. As a response people are more fearful and more cautious of men as a whole. And for the most part, it seems that we consider this prejudice justifiable. No one would really refer to this as "Sexism"
Yet, with race & religion (and fascinatingly enough, this young women herself, despite being very liberal, is prejudice against her own race) we would reject this very reasoning. For example, according to the Global Terrorism Index, at least 75% of global terrorism comes from Islamic Groups. Yet, if some one says that they fear Muslims, or don't think they should be able to migrate into the country, many of these liberal types would revere this as a form of "racism", after all, not all Muslims are terrorist. Same for Black Men, they have a disproportionate amount of criminality, yet if you said what this young lady said as police officer, and that you profile Black Men more often because they are more likely to do it, you'd be cooked alive.
The obvious intuitive response someone could give here is that, Men & Women are obviously different in a way that people of different races and religions are not (unless you are a race realist). We know biologically that males are more aggressive, so them engaging in more criminality and being the scarier sex overall should be no surprise, thus, this prejudice isn't wrong. But the issue here is that this is obviously not a very progressive explanation, as these progressives typically believe that differences between the sexes are due to the social construct of gender, and that society is largely responsible for this difference. But this merely mirrors the same beliefs about differences we see between races and religious groups, no? If all these differences were indeed, socially constructed, and a product of patriarchy - white supremacy, etc, Than why wouldnt it follow that this prejudice is wrong too? Is it not sexist to believe that someone is inherently more likely to kill and rape you due to a immutable and arbitrary characteristic, like gender, in the same way believing that black people are Muslims are more likely to kill and rape others because of their faith & skin color, and treat individuals within these groups accordingly based on that? Its not something inherent about men (or muslims, black people) that make them more likely to be violent, society is to blame!
So the question here is this: Why is prejudice based on sex tolerable, but prejudice based on race & religion, not?
One aspect of this is that it's plausible that men are fundamentally more violent and prone to criminal behaviour than women, outside of extraordinarily unusual cultural circumstances. Whereas it seems more likely that Islam is not fundamentally violent insofar as it can over time evolve to be less violent than other religions. It's a cultural superstructure of a type that can change radically over the centuries – we see this with religions across history in a way we don't really with gender differences.
This distinction can be hotly debated of course but one of the thoughts at play is that suspending prejudice helps allow what can improve to improve, whereas if there's not much chance of improvement, there is less motivation to suspend prejudice.
I think this is it: nobody today, even the most self-described feminist really believes in a blank slate between the sexes in areas like physical strength and capacity for violence and criminality. There was a moment where a few feminists argued against, say, Title IX sex-separated sports leagues, but realistically the consensus is that they are necessary if we want women to play sports. It's more controversial to observe differences in non-physical realms, spanning a gamut from women's chess leagues (in my observation, uncontroversial), noticing gender attendance at the local train museum (probably no complaints), and STEM jobs (controversial: see Damore).
Racial differences seem drastically smaller in most categories than sex differences, so it's easier to argue for a blank-slate null hypothesis. Even then, in areas where differences are particularly obvious, you probably won't get too much grief: "Black people have darker skin" probably has a few objectors, but likely isn't getting tarred as racism.
Oh boy, you haven't seen the controversy?
My sense of the story is basically this. The big question hanging over the game is, "Why do we not see more women at the very top tier of chess?" Interestingly, my sense has been that almost everyone involved in this conversation is actually perfectly fine in saying that physical sports are different (this does not hold for the general population, but it seems to hold within the community of folks who are involved in the conversation about top-level chess), but obviously, the question still lingers for what is mostly understood as an almost entirely cognitive game. "Sure, it makes sense that you're going to have differences in powerlifting, but what is the nature of the underlying cause of the observed difference in chess?"
Of course, folks consider the possible counter-examples, like Judit Polgar, who peaked at #8 in the world, and there is usually some debate as to whether she stands for the proposition that it is generally possible to have a higher proportion of women at the very top or whether she is just an outlier among outliers, the Bobby Fisher of women's chess, but that even the Bobby Fisher of women's chess couldn't reach the very top of the men. There is obviously no clear answer here, but it is a question that is absolutely discussed every time the controversy appears.
The immediate domain of the actual controversy is the question, "Should there be women-only events/sections?" On the one hand, if there aren't women-only events/sections, then folks worry that women will be mostly shut out of top-tier competitions (not due to active discrimination, but because their rating levels simply won't qualify them for many qualification criteria for open sections of closed events.
Aside, because I just said "open sections of closed events", and that sounds weird. Often times, the word "open" is used in two senses. In the first sense, it is that the tournament is generally open to all participants. This would be like "the US Open", where anyone, regardless of chess level or achievement, can just decide to sign up and play. This is contrasted to "closed" or "invitational" tournaments, which generally have a set of qualification criteria or are perhaps even more directly just a set of hand-picked competitors that are invited to play. The second sense is that many tournaments, whether "open" or "closed" will often have a women's section. However, like many other sports, they won't have a "men's" section; they'll have "women's" and "open", so that a female competitor can choose to play the open section if she'd like (and for cases with qualification criteria, if she qualifies), but is also able to choose to play the women's section.
If an event has a women's section, there's usually a side question about whether the prize funds in the women's section is as high as for the open, but that's usually a side question for the main question. Generally, one of the arguments for having a women's section is that if an event doesn't have a women's section, then with the current ratings of the populations of men/women at the highest level, most women would not likely be able to compete for a significant amount of prize money... or they'll be shut out entirely from closed/invitational tournaments because they're less likely to meet the qualification criteria. With less chance of winning substantial prize money, it would be more difficult for them to continue making a career out of chess, and the thought goes that not having women's only sections, with separate prize pools, will cause more women to leave competitive chess, which would either make the disparity worse or at least sort of lock in the disparity.
On the other hand, there's a competing theory concerning the reason why there aren't more women at the highest levels. The theory goes like this. In order to improve at chess, even all the way to the top level, you must have a lot of experience playing against top-tier competition. It is by having these experiences, seeing how they best attack your weaknesses, and learning from it, that you improve your own game. If you don't keep going at it against the best, you're less likely to figure out how you can be better. On this view, having women-only events/sessions might seem like a good idea in that it makes it more likely that they'll be able to partake in a prize pool, but you run the risk of 'quarantining' the women. Perhaps someone is currently good enough to consistently win good prizes in women's sections, but if she started playing open sections, she'd likely struggle. One might argue that she should, nevertheless, play open sections in the interest of her long-term improvement, gaining the experience of playing against the absolute best players. However, her direct financial incentive is to play in the women's section, where she's more likely to make more money now. This has been argued by some number of top female players, and a few have even eschewed women's events entirely, choosing to play only opens. So far, none have made it to the top top with the men, but a few are at least putting their money where their mouth is, in a sense, and playing only open sections in accordance with this line of thinking.
So, the controversy is a bit of a trap. Both having women's sections and not having women's sections can be 'problematic', depending on how you view it. The debate is still unsettled in the community for whether there is an underlying theory that can explain the current disparity or whether that disparity can, in theory, be 'fixed'. It's not the most public controversy of controversies, but within the small community of top-level chess, it's absolutely a controversy.
Hm, are you pretty knowledgeable about competitive chess, and, if so, do you know if there's any controversy about transwomen competing in the women's division? I wonder if it would create a videogame speedrunner-like situation where basically every last one of the top "woman" speedrunners are male (I'm sure high correlation with autism would play a part, as well as the sex, though I'd also guess that high level chess or speedrunning tends to be disproportionately autistic, both male and female).
I've heard off-hand that men also dominate "sports" like darts or billiards/pool/snooker, despite there being minimal advantage from physical strength in those sports. If that's true, I wonder how much of that's biological in terms of men being innately better at geometry versus biological in terms of men having greater penchant for obsessing over some meaningless task until they achieve mastery versus biological in terms of men having greater incentive to become known for being great at something.
Unsurprisingly, there was some controversy.
First, some organization. The primary international organization that is involved in many of the highest-level chess tournaments is FIDE. Since I know the most about US concerns and TheMotte is still somewhat heavily US, I'll also discuss the US Chess Federation, which operates, unsurprisingly, within the US. Some international events are directly organized by FIDE. Many times, FIDE will 'rate' an event run by some other organization. USCF also does their own rating system for their own events, but FIDE may rate them, too. That is, USCF hosts a variety of events, and some of them are not FIDE rated, while others are. What it means to be 'rated' is that the organization will take the results of the event and use them to update their list of ratings for players (which is meant to be a measure of how good they are). USCF may host an event that is not FIDE rated, and just your USCF rating will update. USCF may also host an event that is FIDE rated, and then both USCF and FIDE ratings change.
The perception of FIDE is that it has many institutional connections to Russia and similar countries. The Soviet Union used to be a powerhouse in international chess, and they still have a fair amount of pull in the organization. The current president of FIDE is Russian. This is not strictly determinative of what they will choose to do (for example, at least one top-level Russian player who was an outspoken supporter of the Ukraine war was banned, and other Russians have been playing "without a flag" since the war started), but FIDE does not necessarily lean in the direction of US politics. In 2023, FIDE enacted a policy on transgender players. It was controversial, and I'll just let chess.com describe the controversy. USCF, on the other hand, had enacted a much more permissive policy that simply accepted self-identification. My understanding is that if USCF runs an event that is FIDE rated, the FIDE rules control.
There is, of course, controversy, but I think there are at least a couple factors that make it less likely to come up as much. First is that the people who are most likely to be upset about it are in the US (or perhaps in other countries that have more US-levels of pro-trans, and perhaps their own national federations have taken similar stances to USCF), and there's very little point in complaining about/to USCF, since USCF has enacted their own, more permissive policy. They would have to complain about/to FIDE. And, well, everyone seems to have something to complain about with FIDE, so it's hard to have this one move very far up the list. FIDE is also viewed as being pretty hard to influence, and so especially with such significant Russia/Russia-like connections, many folks probably think that it would be basically shouting into the void. They're probably not going to change FIDE's mind. The best chance would be to prop up a competing organization, and if that's going to happen, it's probably going to be primarily because of other grievances, so a pro-trans person may just not bother emphasizing the trans thing and just latch on to other criticisms/reasons to split, but holding hopes that if such an effort is successful, maybe there's a chance that whatever replacement organization would be more likely to be more pro-trans.
The second factor is, frankly, the vibe shift, where it seems like trans stuff has just been getting less sway in general. It's not that there's no controversy, just that it doesn't seem to be getting quite as much attention.
I'm not really aware of any high-rated male players transitioning and then winning some or a bunch of highly-respected women's events.
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