The notion that inherent differences between the sexes do not exist has been part of politically correct thinking for half a century. Government policies to “level the playing field” and “break through the glass ceiling” have been mandated since the 1970s. Books, particularly textbooks, routinely place men and women in roles which do not mirror what men and women traditionally have done in human society. Correcting “sexist” attitudes toward gender differences has been forced into the policies not only of government but of the business community, the entertainment industry, and almost every other institution of public life.

There are many reasons for doubting this notion of the equivalence of the sexes. Animals, particularly those animals which are closest biologically to humans, have sexual roles which are very similar to those sex-based roles in different cultures around the world: Males tend to be explorers and defenders; females tend to stay with children and conduct communal activities at home. 

Although human civilizations around the world have profound differences in many areas of social interaction, gender-based roles in these civilizations look very much the same.  This is not only true of great civilizations, like Roman or Japanese civilizations, but also of very small and isolated social groups. The gender-specific roles that appear in these human civilizations also mirror closely the sexual roles of different high-level animals. The odds against these similarities being mere accident are very small.

Biologically, men and women have many differences beyond those differences which are obvious. The male and female brains are designed differently. Hormonal differences also ought to make the two sexes behave and feel differently. The natural differences between men and women are great enough that anthropologists can tell which skeletons are male and which are female.

Men and women also perform very differently on intelligence tests. Males, on average, routinely do better in areas like spatial reasoning and analytical ability, while females tend to be more adept at verbal communication and intuition. Feminists have long decried intelligence tests as biased against women and feminists have also insisted that our culture discourages women from entering fields like engineering and accounting in favor of more traditional female work.

But at least one area of human competition, however, produces a compelling argument that traditional sexual roles are real, sound, and reasonable: Chess. This ancient game is pure logic. There is no element of chance in chess. Bigotries have no influence in chess. How removed is chess from invidious bias, psychological pressure, and social conditioning? Chess has often been played by mail. Computers can play chess. 

Perhaps more significantly, great chess players have often come from groups in human society that have suffered from irrational discrimination. Jews, for example, have excelled at chess. Eastern Europeans, often the victim of degrading humor, have also excelled at chess. Physically unattractive people, poor people, and unpopular minorities — all of these types of people have found in chess a way to win competitions which human prejudices would have prevented them from winning, if those prejudices had been effective. 

If men and women had identical mental powers, then a substantial number of the best chess players would be women. But that is not the case at all. Out of the top 100 chess players in the world, only one is a woman, Judit Polgar. A few years ago, Judit had been ranked among the ten best players in the world. FIDE Chess rankings for the last quarter of 2009, though, showed that Judit Polgar had dropped to the 46th best chess player in the world. Her ratings have been dropping steadily for years.

But that is only part of the story. Judit Polgar was raised by parents who were very good chess players. Her sister, Sofia, is also a powerful chess player. Judit’s father took her out of school when she was young to immerse her in chess, and to prove that sex was irrelevant to ability at chess. Judit Polgar is, by anyone’s definition, an extraordinarily good chess player, but what Papa Polgar proved is just the opposite of what he intended: Obviously the male and female brains are constructed in ways which give men much stronger ability in games like chess.

This is even clearer when the lives of some of the best chess players in history are examined. Jose Paul Capablanca, for example, learned the game of chess when he was four years old by simply watching family members and friends play the game. He is generally considered to have created the publicity tool of playing a number of different chess games at the same time. Capablanca could look at a Chessboard which great players had been studying for days and at a glance determine the right move.

Yet Capablanca was not pulled out of school to focus solely on chess like Polgar. He had a career entirely separate from chess. In fact, chess was not even Capablanca’s favorite recreation: He loved baseball and played shortstop on the Columbia University Baseball team  In a much more cluttered life, Jose Paul Capablanca did much better at a game in which male intellectual tools were critical than a very disciplined, well schooled, and focused Judit Polgar.

If men and women are inherently different, then affirmative action plans and other similar government efforts to redress an imagined discrimination against women become irrational and destructive. The playing field for competition ought to be level, but a level playing field will often mean that 99 percent of the winners are men (or, in other cases, 99 percent of the winners are women).
 
 

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JJ Suprise said:

Robert Welch at Chess As I understand, Robert Welch was a great Chess player and beat Kasparov and 2 other players at the same time.

February 24, 2010 | url

Bonnie said:

Is there a FECC (Federal Equality in Chess Commission) in our future? But from the beginning of the creation God made them male and female. - Mark 10:6 And no amount of political correctness, surgery, wishful thinking, or philosophical "transgender" nonsense is going to change it!

February 24, 2010

Colleen said:

Winner of what? If this author is only trying to state that there are differences between men and women, fine, do so. But, the last paragraph leaves the impression that the author doesn't feel that there are merely differences between the sexes, but that the male sex is the "winner" or better sex. What is used to support this argument that men would be the "winner" in 99% of cases is chess. What about all of the careers and activities where a woman holds the natural strengths like communication (conceded by the author)? Does that mean then that in those areas 99% of the time women would be the "winner?" Also I take issue with the use of "imagined discrimination." Does this author really believe that discrimination through history against women is imagined? Is the fact that women were not allowed to enter into many career fields or even into colleges in the past, imagined discrimination? If a woman wants to enter into a profession and she possesses the ability to do so, but is not hired because she is a woman that is discrimination. To say that these policies were not in place and were imagined is a bold face lie and a discredit to TNA. The author is right; the playing field should be level, which means that women need to be allowed to play.

February 24, 2010

Colleen said:

... Correction: My mistake, the author does say "or, in other cases, 99 percent of the winners are women." I do however maintain that to call past discrimination against women imagined, is completely incorrect and inappropriate.

February 24, 2010

Brett said:

... Colleen, In the last paragraph the author wrote that if men and woman ARE inherently different then government action to redress it is destructive. So like he noted women are better at communication and intuition, where men are better analyzers. He thinks it would be destructive for the government to demand letting women work in analyzing, because they are females, not because they are just as good, but because they are females. I know this isn't the truth. Nobody is destructive until proven so. Just because 10 women are bad at something, doesn't mean the one your interviewing is bad. Right? I believe in testing everyone, regardless of circumstance and let the chips fall where they may. Everyone should get a chance regardless of "group" reputation.

February 24, 2010

Lee Gonzales said:

feminist's schtick Case in point: "Obedient women are never remembered in History" "Well behaved women rarely make history" The Virgin Mary was quiet and obedient, and she is the most famous woman in the world. Joan of Ark, a teenager with a passion for her Lord, was obedient to God and her actions prove that feminism is nonsense. God gave her courage to lead an army and an undying faith. A feminist can not see past her whiny tantrums of "equal pay for equal work." She looks to government to force private employers to give her a raise - a raise she may or may not deserve. The right to give or to hold back a raise belongs to the private employer not to the bureaucrat. In persuading politicians to take up her cause she is superior to men - whinying her way to a raise.But employers don't have rights in the feminist mind. Not every industry is the same but feminists do their level best to level it down to their silly formula. I worked as a mason's assistant (hod carrier)for about a year. I was a shinny kid but there was no girl around who could compete with my handling a wheel barrow full of mortal; supplying the masons with bricks,blocks,setting up scaffolding, and all the other light work like skating the joints brushing the dried mortar off the face of the blocks and brick. If the boss was willing to pay an equally shinny woman to do 1/3 of the work I did that was his business not the government's. The whiny feminists know all that but they have an agenda and that is to use their "equal pay for equal work" schtick to stick it to us with more government in our lives.

February 24, 2010

Lee Gonzales said:

discrimination, we use it all the time Websters New World dictionary defintion of discrimination: perception; making or perceiving differences and distinctions;the ability to make or perceive distinctions; The word discrimination has wrongfully been used to mean a person who is biggoted or is a racist, and the terms prejudice and bigot have creeped into the use of a simple word whose meaning is having the ability to pick one thing over another. What of a person who is discriminant in his taste for clothes, restaurants and automobiles? No problem right? Some folks may get mad if he drives an SUV over say an Element or a Smart. But that is his or her right to discriminate between one automobile over another. The queen of England is discriminant in her choice of words to use when addressing parliament. People are not automatically racists or a bigots simply by "discriminating" in their choice of universities, neighborhood, friends, places to shop, ad infintum over something else? Discrimination involves choice and the choice should be up to the individual to make and not up to a bureaucrat who is motivated by filling quotas.

February 25, 2010

Brett said:

... Lee stated, "The right to give or to hold back a raise belongs to the private employer not to the bureaucrat." Until the employer is guilty of conspiracy to "fix" wages with his other cohorts at the "Chamber of Commerce". Business men are not to be trusted anymore than a bureaucrat. Corruption is the enemy, not the methods used to fight it.

March 01, 2010