Women in go

General Go Discussion
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I said I didn’t want to argue more on this because I feel this subject is too sensitive but @Cchristina quoted me so I will add a few words. The study about Scrabble is here Gender differences in SCRABBLE performance and associated engagement in purposeful practice activities | SpringerLink you can read it and make your opinion. I understood that, given some amount of time dedicated to Scrabble, men and women spend that time differently, despite the fact that there are more women playing Scrabble than men.

Additional remarks about the current discussion:

The population is divided in two groups A and B. People in A are discriminated and underrepresented in some domain. Someone asks “why is the A group underrepresented?”. Reasons may be

C: discriminations/unfriendly environment created by B
D: other reasons.

The group B is divided into
B1: people who discriminate/harass/whatever people in group A
B2: people who don’t discriminate but don’t care or are not aware of discriminations
B3: people who are aware and care about the discrimination problem.

@Gia apparently says that we shouldn’t talk about D at all, because this distracts people from thinking about C which is the main problem and comforts the attitude of people in groups B1 and B2. I understand that point of view, however I am afraid that this can be counterproductive. People in group B1 will react by saying that the discussion is biased since not all aspects of the problem are discussed, and this will just comfort them in their opinions.

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Not what I said. :woman_shrugging:t2:

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To keep it simple, start with a history book on 20th century Europe and continue with school curricula of the same period. Then we’ll take it from there and expand worldwide.

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Which history book? Also, if you could give page numbers, that would be very helpful.

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The implication is “you apparently need all of them”.

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Sorry then I misunderstood your point of view. Still I can see that kind of point of view in many similar discussions about any kind of discrimination.

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Let me try an example:

If a dan is trying to debate a ko to a dan opponent, and let’s say a mod comes in, it’s expected that both dans understand the meaning of liberties.

Mod is expected to explain liberties to two newbies, but it’s hardly in good faith if one of the two dans starts demanding explanation of what is a liberty.

Inb4, yes, pedantry over liberties exist, and there can be a complicated ko, but we’d expect the two dans, in good faith, to agree what is a liberty and move on with the mod to solve the issue at hand, the ko.

Also, if I go to the doctor and my knee hurts, he should start with looking at my knee. It’s right there, it hurts. Not question every page of their medical books to verify, that indeed, when I say “knee” I mean “knee” and yes it hurts. Maybe my blood pressure is high, but let’s start with the issue I’m bringing here.

We keep saying “we are experiencing this problem and we’re bringing it up for discussion”, do you see the negating of our concern when the discussion becomes “hm, let’s consider everything else first. You bring this problem that affects you, but we want to come from outside and treat it like a case to debate on, solving it is secondary”.

And this happening every time. Sometimes because it’s news to you, sometimes because you are secretly hoping we’ll just bleed out from that wound in our stomach while you’re examining our ears and stop pestering you.

Also this is not nice, I’m not responding to you based on hateful DMs I usually receive, I’m responding to you based on what you say. It’s not good tactic to pile up something on someone because we’re guessing they’ll mean X.

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Misunderstandings happen in every conversation, and even more on the internet. People don’t always express explicitly the message they want to convey so some amount of guessing is necessary, and clarifications can be made in case of misunderstanding.

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This is a topic I keep being careful all my life.
In my first years with go players i enjoyed some no difference between gender among go players. A kind of paradise where we had better to think as to discriminate, and let everyone join in this quest of gods’ moves in which everyone had the same chances and abilities. I played women in tournaments and i didn’t see anything special.
Some said they were good at endgame, or at fighting. I dunno, never noticed anything like that by myself.
Later i read the biography of Rui Naiwei (In a goworld). I organized women national championship. And i discovered the online go world.
So i realize that even in the weiqi world it was far from being perfect.
I want to keep fair differences between men and women, it would be boring to be same. But i want fair differences which don’t put one with more advantages and power.
Cliches are boring. Take the tournaments reports in weiqi tiandi or goworld. For women pro you have almost always words about how they dress pretty or how they liked to go shopping at the place… That sort of thing that will never be told about GuLi or Yoda Norimoto! Internet world proved to be very different from my cozy go clubs, i met players in kibbitz saying “he is playing like a woman”, which is so nosense expression ofc.
Talking about here, i met many girls (child), less as boys but still seems weiqi is for both. But in the clubs and meeting for adults there are almost not even 1 woman. And i visited a lot of these places…

Note: noone reacted on the rose color in the charts of nihon kiin underlying women pros, so cliche :joy:

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I like pink. I support pink on everything. :woman_shrugging:t2:

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There are less women playing as men,but their strength go from the bottom to the very top (9p)…

Some are very good and famous at teaching, i hope one day you will have the chance to move from hate to admiration.

I developed a go club years ago, and i dunno why exactly but most of the participants were women. Interested, motivated, happy to come meet and play twice a week, no difference with men.
I think you are full of cliches and wrong ideas, i hope you get a different experience and opinion.

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I was writing another reply but I’ll stop for a moment to answer this post (which perhaps deserves to be deleted, but I’ll let someone else decide).
I am a woman and I don’t know how strong you are but if you are a kyu player I think I have a good chance of beating you. Why if I were a boy I would help you more to understand the game?

What leads you to hate girls?

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Can’t disagree; that’s what I’d chalk it up to as well.

I think it’s fine to have this opinion. I would suggest that while gender may be a slight predictor for who can help you understand the game better, playing strength might perform better as a metric. That said, the ways people explain things can matter, and you may find other men explain things in a way that makes more sense to you. I think this is what you meant, no? I’d keep an eye out for exceptions, though, on both sides. There are differences between men and women, yes, but those differences pale in comparison to how much variety there is within each category. I think being a bit clearer on this may also help people understand your viewpoint better.

I’m sorry about that. I have not been personally hurt by women, but when I hear about things some good well-intentioned men have been put through by vile women, I do have to remind myself that while I can make a personal decision to reserve trust in certain areas because of the bad apples, I would be letting myself be controlled by anger to hate people God created if I didn’t keep clear in my mind that noone’s sin is any but their own, and even if there were only one good woman (or man for that matter) on the whole earth, it would still be wrong to judge them for the actions of others. It is here I sometimes have to divorce my feelings, from what I know to be right and fair.

Do you hate girls because they’re bad players? I’m a bit confused as to why the antecedent here should imply that girls should be defeated more often.

Could you clarify? I was waffling between saying “You have a point there” and “93 posts says otherwise”, until I realized that which of those applies depends on how you meant this sentence. Why isn’t there a need to discuss this topic?

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Excuse me for my impulsive response to @teomj1999. I didn’t mean to brag about my strength of course, there are plenty of players (including female players) stronger than me of course. Reading things like that, however, is not very pleasant.

Thank you for all the answers you have written so far.
I have probably been very lucky but I have never felt discriminated against because I am a woman. I have felt discriminated against for other things though, for example my choice to study psychology and not something more scientific like maths and IT or, expecially when I started, for my age (I was 17, everyone in my go club is older, sadly). But I might not have noticed it, of course. So thank you for making me realise how much this problem is present. I’m very sorry to know that things like what happened to @claire_yang exist.
One thing that I think is worth mentioning is that, probably for cultural reasons, women on average tolerate less the idea of feeling incapable (Read this for example). In go, almost any player with a bit of experience (probably one week is already enough) is much stronger than an absolute beginner.

I’ll stop here for now although I didn’t say much, I want to distract myself a bit.

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I don’t think it came across as bragging, it was a valid counterpoint to ask him to clarify his argument.

Interesting article. I won’t comment on the reasons why this phenomena exists, but certainly perfection is the enemy of good here, and everyone, male or female, should be introduced to the idea that while there are many areas where safety and caution are very valuable, there are other areas where a less risk-adverse approach, and a willingness to fail can be not just helpful, but almost necessary.

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One reason is that, if we enter a male dominated environment, we are expected to excel, otherwise we are treated as we don’t deserve to be there.

Men are allowed to be average, even mediocre, in fields they consider “their own”.

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Well, this thread exploded quite a bit… I haven’t read everything, but I think the discussion goes to illustrate the pervasiveness of sexism. Positions that argue that disparities in representation are all just due to personal inclindations are naively dismissing (or perhaps intentionally downplaying) the effects of sexism and biases that are still ingrained in society.

Just about 55 years ago, Kathrine Switzer was the first woman to officially run the Boston Marathon. Of course, that run is also notable for an incident where a race director assaulted her in a failed attempt to end her run. In current times, about 45% of the Boston Marathon runners are female.

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I also wanted to note something in response to this comment:

From Judit Polgár’s (strongest female chess player of all time, so far) Wikipedia article:

Polgár excels in tactics and is known for an aggressive playing style, striving to maximize the initiative and actively pursuing complications.[222] The former World Champion Garry Kasparov wrote that, based upon her games, “if to ‘play like a girl’ meant anything in chess, it would mean relentless aggression.”[223]
…
Jennifer Shahade, writer and two-time U.S. women’s chess champion, suggested that the influence of Polgár as a role model may be one of the reasons women play more aggressive chess than men.[227]

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Thank you for sharing this study in the scrabble world.

It has a very interesting introduction with a panarama on different studies made on the same subject.

Later it mention that this study is very specific to the scrabble players. Similar studies applied to music don’t work at all, women and men having same level or quality of engagement in studies.

So before using the conclusions we should determine first if weiqi is more like music or like scrabble.

On Rui NaiWei, if you don’t know her:

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There is a nice detailed article/(auto?)biography in a goworld magazine but sorry, can’t remember which one. I highly recommend it.

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Gold quote.

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I would like to use this as an example, in the spirit of this discussion, if you don’t mind.

Question to men: how does this picture make you feel? What is your first reaction? What are your first thoughts? You don’t need to share, the question is meant for reflection.

Mine

I felt a deep hurt, the fear of having someone with the ability to harm me move to assault me. I couldn’t help but identify with this woman. Also, she had guts of titanium, which sadly I don’t identify with.

ETA: the hate this man must have…

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