Is chess sexist?

I play chess, we all had to learn in my family. I think a lack of interest by girls is the result of conditioning more than biology. But in my family everyone, boys and girls were expected to be logical, Vulcan like tacticians.

The same is true in music. how many women composers can you name? And why arent there more? there are plenty of women of high caliber in music. I'm guessing there's some odd misconceptions about the propriety of women composing and marketing, rather than women can't compose.

www.themarysue.com/rochelle-ballantyne/

Chess isn't sexist, but I remember when this first came to light. Nigel Short was involved. Makes me sick. whychess.com/node/82

The King is important but weak. The Queen is the best piece.
The Rooks are castles.
The Knights are horses. Man and woman horses compete pretty much with each other on ability.
The Bishops must be men at the moment, but they're really annoying to use.
The Prawns are cannon fodder common people and therefore irrelevant.

Not sexist.

I always call the pawns 'she' as well, because they can turn into Queens. Never considered the sex change angle!

Very interesting re the King. I suppose the thing is, if the King is lost then so is the game, so there is an element of the King being most important, even if he is a weak piece. Weak, but important.

Sinistersal - I suspect that your daughter stresses that she is a 'girl doctor' because she sees doctor as something that girls or boys can do, and she is a girl at a stage where she feels she needs to stress gender. She probably doesn't say 'girl nurse' because she assumes that nurse=girl.

Of course chess is sexist. Just look at all the pawn in it.

Not many female chess players. The Polgar sisters. They had to get over a few barriers. In fact they are an interesting family. Heard a fascinating radio play about them once.

They'd ban it from female-only spaces.

Are the pawns female too? What would the other pieces say when a male pawn sets off and returns as a queen?

It's just names for pieces.They could easily be the horse and the donkey, or the jellyfish and the candlestick.

But on a serious note- why do you think chess players are dominantly male?

Going off topic I remember DS telling dd that she couldn't be the doctor when playing hospitals as she is a girl. Cue ten minute discussion lecture from me. Transpired "james at nursery" had told him girls only be nurses!

YY sinistersal my DD is obsessed with the doctor / hospital game, she is 5 and has three kits!

The queen isn't female? Fuck me, I learn something new every day.

For those of you who want to read more, here is a link to Wikipedia. The Queen is referred to as 'she' throughout the article. Apparently the position of Queen only became strong in the 15th Century.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queen_(chess)

oh i know Greenhill but she is never a girl nurse (can you tell this game gets played a lot)
it is a minefield

Sorry to disappoint you, but the queen piece isn't female. He is the queen's champion, the top knight. ('It's a medieval battlefield, there's not going to be any women on it.' - Mr Turquoise.) There are few excellent female chess players.

sinistersal but she is a girl, that's possibly the only reason she is stressing it ie she is not a boy doctor. They are particularly interested in whether they are girls or boys at this age.

FWIW I bought my DD a medic kit and she always calls herself a doctor, whereas my friend is a nurse and her DD has a nurse's outfit as 'all the best nurses are girls'. See, its a minefield, you can never be right

You have to trap the male to win, but the queen is usually the piece that does the winning. You could conceivably claim that the rooks and pawns are also female.

The queen is the most powerful piece on the board. The king is pathetic in strength, barely stronger than the pawns. I think that says quite a lot.

Dunno mango, it's a definite trend of male being default the most important. If you add up all the subtle clues from everywhere around us

I was shocked today to hear my 3 yo playing at doctors 'I'll be the girl doctor'. At our GP practice she would've seen 50/50 male and female doctors, so where is it coming from?

(Not me!)

I think of the King as Henry VI, bit of a puppet king, and the Queen as Marguerite d'Anjou, his powerful wife who knew a fair bit about battle strategy. She needed to avoid the deposition of the King but she led the quest to do that.

Um... he's winding you up, tiggy. He's 9 years old, that's what 9 year olds do.
He knows there's a point to be made, he's making it. And he probably doesn't care how silly it is or whether he really believes it. Or whether you or anyone else does.
I think it's good to argue it out, but from what you say it doesn't sound to me as if he's absorbed dangerous misogynist ideas, it just sounds like he's being a typical 9 y o playing devil's advocate.

Seems to me that in general (there are of course many exceptions) girls are less into games as a whole - you don't seem to get the same level of computer game obsession. More into real stuff involving real people maybe?