I dont think chess titles should specify gender

Thanks for sharing your ignorant opinion about something that doesn't affect you and that you know nothing about.

Personally I agree. I find it weird that there's a category of titles for women which basically means lower required ratings. Women chess players play against male chess players regularly, so there is no good reason to seperate the two. Basically it means that, for example, when I see a WNM I have to take into account that they might not even be worth the CM title. Why not give them the same titles, there are plenty of women who deserve the titles without the W in front of it, being in a lower catagory.

There are no men titles, there are women titles and neutral titles. For example Yifan Hou is a GM (not a WGM).

@StingerPuzzles Actually, it DOES have an effect. For example, I'm 2005 USCF (and improving). If I was a woman, I could reasonably soon try and get a title...the WCM title which only requires 2000 FIDE. I could play in events restricted to titled players online, I could more easily gather students, I could put the title on my resume, all sorts of things. However, there is no male equivalent. There is only a neutral title with the same name and 200 higher ELO requirement! Now, I'm not saying I would personally even put much stock in a title like WCM, but FIDE does and some websites and people do. So it DOES affect me. You are factually incorrect (note: not opinion. fact.)

I'm convinced that women are just as strong in chess as men. You've heard this before haven't you? Since 97% of the chess players are men the probability that the world champion would be a woman is 3%. Why don't women like chess? That's a different story. I don't think we do women any favor by having women titles.

@JunoCunerino in general, you are basically right.

However, there is this little thing about the IQ distribution between men and women. Women generally have more of a "normal" IQ compared to men. If you google "IQ difference men women" you'll find a ton of graphs and articles about this. Basically there are more very smart men than women, and more very dumb men than women. In the world top, or basically in any massive tournament or competition, this results in only men reaching the top if IQ is the dominant factor.

@SynapticSentinel That is very true, but that is a phenomenon that really only affects the very tail ends of the bell curve. This may mean the world elite and world champion are almost always men for eternity due to this phenomenon, but there is a tremendous gap between the 2500 ELO required for the highest title of GM and the generally 2800+ required for world champion. My point is, the reason there are fewer women GMs is predominantly due to societal factors, not biology. Given this, I see no need to segregate titles (certainly not 200 ELO difference in strength). I mean let's think about this, Magnus is well over 2800 and has been close to 2900 before. A WGM only needs around 2300 ELO. 500-600 ELO between the champion and a "grandmaster" of any kind is absurdity. There's a reason Polgar never played in women's events and showed disdain for women's titles. They are belittling crutches, not empowering motivators.

My understanding is traditionally young boys were encouraged to play chess and young girls weren't. So there is a big imbalance of gender at all levels but especially at the top.

FIDE wants to reduce the imbalance, so they came up with some strategies. The women's title was one. If the imbalance ever goes away, or even swings too far and men become the minority, then FIDE will probably change their strategy and that might mean the women's only title goes away.

It could also be if we encourage young girls and boys equally, more boys will enjoy it than girls and the imbalance will always remain. idk.

my friend identifies himself as a fridge, can he be a fridge master?