This is an incredible story, how could they let it done. Sad.
Well I played dozens of games with women go players in tournaments. I had women participating in clubs. And I lived beautiful holidays in summer camps. And all this fuss about women being disconsidered were totally inexistent. I mean if any bad apple came in he would have been corrected immediately. I am not exaggerating really. I think it was even more as just equality it was an auto exercise by each of us to fight those bad waves one could come with in his mind and this was induced by the quality of the game of go itself (my guess)
I didn’t need those acronyms and definition to be aware of the sickness of some males and their mysoginy in older time. Anyway world is hopefully evolving in the right direction.
I would say that maybe we have now different ways to communicate like internet. And this let people express more publicly their bad behavior and ideas and let others try to fight it.
Maybe I am bit of nostalgic or outdated, but I felt really better in those older time in which I felt more respect and autocontrol by each individuals
I can’t tell how it was in olden times in the go world since I’ve been playing for less than 10 years, but a few decades ago, I heard (outside go) more than once
sexist jokes
homophobic jokes
the belief that when a woman says “no”, she means “yes”.
I’m not saying that these bad behaviors disappeared, but at least the young generation has been told more explicitly not to do that.
Regarding the Kim Seong-ryong case, even though he was expelled from KBA in 2020, it is worth mentioning that he is still thriving on Youtube, his channel has over 230k followers. Clearly many people do not care at all. KBA did the right thing in the end but it was a very long process and the pressure was huge on them. I really don’t think they would even have cared if they didn’t receive so many complaints from pros and almost daily demonstrations in front of the KBA building.
Now on the broader topic of sexism in the Go world, someone mentioned that most people are OK except a few bad apples. I don’t think it is true at all. There are a lot of bad apples but the level of rottenness differs. From the extreme case of a rape like in the Kim Seong-Ryeong case to a random sexist joke, there is a myriad of problematic behaviors that would take me all night to list. Everyone has to work on their behavior and check themselves. Nobody’s perfect. Even if you are aware of those issues, sexism is so embedded in us, it is a long work. That being said, it is clearly more present among the older generations. I’ve seen that first hand in my almost 20 years of activity in the Go world.
I will not aggree on the finer points that everyone is individually embedded as I think the difference between actively doing things, passively tolerating things and not caring is important, even if all three of those things can be problematic, as I wrote.
When I was in my late teens (late 80s), some guys my age would make misogynistic remarks to a girl and some girls my age would slap them in the face for it.
Things changed since then. I don’t think my 21 yo son is familiar with any of those behaviours. IME people are more respectful now, with exceptions of course.
But how about the sons of the guys who made those misogynstic remarks? Generally polite people raise their children to be polite, and rude people raise their children to be rude.
I don’t know. It was also more generally accepted then. GenA and GenZ grew up in a different world than GenX and boomers.
I feel my son’s friends are more polite than their parents. Also, in my coworkers group app (about 10 men and 1 women) on WhatsApp the person posting (mild) jokes about women is usually the 58 yo coworker, not the 32 yo coworker. But those are just anecdotal sample sizes of course.
Took me some time to think about it. I don’t think so . I think it’s true for a part of the population, it exists for sure but luckily it didn’t show that side too often to me and my part of well educated players did put enough moral pressure so that those part didn’t show much misogyny.
That’s great if mysoginy is disappearing, I hope so.
But please don’t say we were all involved as older generation. Think that we were many to have different view, not agreeing and even fighting against. And when I heard or saw mysoginy it was much more at school, on the street or in family meeting as in a go club.
40 years here and you’re telling me I was blind, I feel sorry if you got so many annoyance that you forgot we weren’t all perverted minds
No one said they are “on equal footing”. But spreading stereotypes like “girls care for other human beings, while boys prefer logical thinking” leads to the belief that women are less competent than men in science or in go. Women themselves may believe they are less competent. They may not think explicitly that men are better than women, but they may lack confidence in their abilities.
So stereotypes are not discrimination, but may contribute to discrimination.
For instance if I say “the surgeon asked the nurse to make a blood transfusion”, who do you think is male and who is female? Is it hard to imagine the opposite? Does it have the consequence that people subconsciously believe that men are better surgeons than women?
And keep in mind that it’s not just random people who may hold such a bias. It really becomes an issue when the bias rests with someone who makes the hiring/promotion decisions.
On the other side of the spectrum, this one can be harmful on its own too:
I feel the line between stereotypes on the one hand and sexism (or discrimination) on the other hand can be thin.
IMO it’s better to consider each child individually, instead of assuming their toy preferences from their gender. Some boys may like playing with dolls and some girls may like playing with toy guns (for example, my wife was more into playing outside with boys from the neighbourhood, while her sister was playing inside with her barbie dolls). I see no need to try convince them otherwise, to make them conform more to gender stereotypes.
When our son was 5 or 6, pink was his favourite color. I think that had a lot to do with him being a big fan of the Belgian children’s TV show superhero Mega Mindy at the time.
We just let him. I mean, why not?
But when he was 7 or 8 he told us that he heard in school that pink was a girly color, so he chose to no longer consider pink his favourite color.
We said that men can wear pink too and showed him some pictures like this:
But it was to no avail.
It wasn’t a big deal, but we felt it was kind of sad that he felt he needed to give up his favourite color to conform to gender stereotypes. I think the world would be a better place if we’d accept people more as they are (as long as it’s harmless).
In my children’s go club I also avoid confirming gender stereotypes, trying to instill into them that go is a fun game that all people can enjoy, regardless of their gender.
Really I wouldn’t think of it at all, but if you pressed me to guess, I would go with the stats and say male surgeon and female nurse.
Not at all, my son’s surgical team had a female surgeon, and I think a couple of our nurses were male (we had so many and I was so sleep deprived, they all started to blur together)
Maybe? People make wrong inferences for all kinda of reasons.
I know lots of idiot male doctors, and some brilliant female ones. Gender might influence you’re likelihood to pursue surgeon as a career, but I don’t see how it affects your skill in any way.
Are you both trying to say that caring for others and wanting to have a nice home are problems that need to be fixed? That sounds seriously messed up. If anything we need more people caring for others not less.
Stereotypes are descriptive, not prescriptive. Why would anyone try to live inside one? That’s like wanting to be “normal” it doesn’t actually exist.
Yeah of course, my son likes to wear his older sisters clothes sometimes. It’s totally normal at that age.
I guess I get this. I have a lot of unique interests, but i’m also extroverted. It’s really hard being the weird one and not fitting in and choosing what to give up to be more welcome in society.
Isn’t that kinda what society is though, don’t we all somehow pay an admission fee to be welcomed by the herd? Maybe we can say it shouldn’t be that way, but I’m not aware of there having ever been any societies that didn’t ask you to give something up wouldn’t you lose all group identity if there was nothing bonding everyone together?
I feel like this is one of the easier ones. Isn’t Go globally one of the most gender balanced hobbies? It has logical thinking which is stereotypically male for some reason, and it also has shape and pattern recognition which is stereotypically female for some reason… it’s aggressive but also patient…
Surely it’s up there with, like, poetry or something at being about as gender neutral as a hobby can get?
No, not at all. Both women and men should be told to care for their home. Not just women.
Another example that my daughter told me. In her student residence, for some reason a group of “tradition-minded” students from another aisle came to the kitchen of her aisle. They were 4 boys and 1 girl. After they finished eating, guess who did the washing up? Of course it may have been a coincidence but we don’t believe so.
wouldn’t you lose all group identity if there was nothing bonding everyone together?