International Women’s Day

<waves toward the sky> Thanks Mom. There have been times when she had been paid less than men who did exactly the same job.

And I have two sisters, who both have experienced sexual harassment, and have also experienced the gender pay gap.

There are more things that could be talked about, for example why we have more female players than active female forum members, why some female players feel uncomfortable in the forum, why some prefer to use gender-neutral or male nicknames and/or avatar images …

Even though things are better now in many places than they were 100 years ago, we are not yet there where we want to be: equality, equal rights, equal pay, total bodily autonomy, etc.

While none of us can change the whole world, let’s try and make THIS a place where women and girls can feel more comfortable and accepted as normal humans, not just tolerated condescendingly or as being decorative accessories, with some patting on their heads, this also means not going bananas because OH MY GOD LOOK A WOMAN PLAYING GO.

I hope my words have not been too clumsy and awkward.

(yeah I know it’s almost over almost everywhere :roll_eyes:)

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Painfully obvious in any threads created about women Go players in the past…

I personally appreciate it when anyone goes out of the way to talk about this, because the majority is “well, things are better now, so why are you complaining?”. Just because your company has 50%, equally paid women employees and your local Go club has 50% women players doesn’t mean the issue is done and dusted. There’s much work to be done and when the women active in the forums aren’t in the low single digits we can talk again about progress.

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Or why we have fewer moderators who are women. Perhaps a time for some introspection, my friend.

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I don’t even know the gender of most users here. I suppose I sometimes subconsciously assume they are default male if I have no specific knowledge, which might be a problematic bias in itself, but seems a reasonable assumption given go demographics.

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Does OGS keep track of gender?

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What’s the general stance on OGF about multiple genders?

I’m taking bets on:

  • How many other women will soldier on to come into this thread this year
  • How quickly I will have to mute this thread
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Like, more than two? I’d expect a wide range of opinions. I think it’s arguing semantics, and as a linguistic descriptivist I choose to use gender to refer to the two biological sexes, but I can’t say someone is wrong for choosing a different convention. I think people using either convention can understand eachother perfectly fine

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I give it 4 hours before things get rough, but I’ll be happy to be surprised

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What were the threads that were muted in the past?

Perhaps a time for introspection about why you call me “my friend”.

I remember a game we were playing that you resigned very early, without any further word, obviously not because of anything in the game. Made me very sad.

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Fair, friend was probably a bad choice of word.

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Olesia Malko (4d from Ukraine) just won the U18 (young European players) on this woman day. Perfect timing!

See dedicated thread for more.

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Find any thread with woman or female in the title, and there is a good chance it devolved fairly quickly, sadly.

People have, aaaah, opinions.

Gia is often the lone female voice in such threads, until she nopes out in frustration.

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Prize giving picture from the EGF facebook page (though it’s a bit buried):

On her EGF player page I see that this is the 26th tournament win of her go carreer, but I suppose this is her highest profile win sofar.

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I first felt personally attacked here “low single digits women” , was thinking you were talking about rank :laughing: It was strange indeed so after i read carefully again, i felt relieved ~

Happy (late) women day to all the baduk players who happens to be female !!

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Well at least we beat that estimate :slightly_smiling_face:

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https://www.reddit.com/r/baduk/comments/i9c6qf/popular_female_pros_more_female_players_in_general/?rdt=60808

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Well, there is about no recognition or support for female players. In the German Go magazine not long ago, an article shocked me as it was very dismissive of a strong female player. I also experienced that some younger female players had not - I put it lightly - the best experience on their first play night. In addition, the national federations put about no effort into changing this cultural problem in part. Also, go tournaments are many things but not very inclusive without a supporting social group that I got to know - thank god before my first tournament (to clarify I mean here that I have had my problems on Go tournaments as an autistic folk). Overall, I am not surprised by our current state of affairs.

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