British chess grandmaster Nigel Short told a chess magazine recently that men are just better at chess than women, because of their brains, because of evolution, because women have higher “emotional intelligence” while men zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz. What? Sorry, no, I wasn’t sleeping, this is all so interesting and original! I’m awake. I swear. This is great.
Short, 49, who’s been a chess prodigy since age 12, told New in Chess magazine, a print publication, that men are “hardwired” to be better at the game, remarks that were picked up by the Guardian. He added:
Why should they [men and women] function in the same way? I don’t have the slightest problem in acknowledging that my wife possesses a much higher degree of emotional intelligence than I do. Likewise, she doesn’t feel embarrassed in asking me to manoeuvre the car out of our narrow garage.
One is not better than the other, we just have different skills. It would be wonderful to see more girls playing chess, and at a higher level, but rather than fretting about inequality, perhaps we should just gracefully accept it as a fact.
Several publications have pointed out that Short has been beaten eight times by Judit Polgar, a female grandmaster. Short has admitted that’s true, but says it’s not relevant and that girls are still bad at chess. (Polgar, meanwhile, told Time, “I grew up in what was a male dominated sport, but my parents raised me and my sisters [to believe] that women are able to reach the same result as our male competitors if they get the rights and the same possibilities.”)