Girls Don’t Talk About Chess

I’m feeling vaguely ashamed again, and as usual I don’t quite know why. I think I must have overstepped a subtle social barrier, plunged myself into the usual minority of one.

Here’s what happened: I went to someone’s house. In with half a dozen or so other women, all of whom I know and like as individuals, but I can’t say I always fit in with the group. On a table beside where I sat, I noticed a large antique chess set. The pieces were little replicas of early 19th-century soldiers, and the kings had to be Napoleon and Wellington by the way they were dressed.

“Oh wow, that’s an amazing chess set,” I said, staring.
“I could never play chess,” someone remarked. “It’s hard. All the pieces do different things.” 

“Oh yes, chess is hard,” the others all agreed. Unanimously. I’m middle-aged and I’m still trying to figure out why a group of women always has to be unanimous about everything. I am never unanimous. Even when I talk to myself, I don’t often reach agreement. 

Bemused, I stared at the chessboard again, trying to figure out which pieces went for bishops and knights. It wouldn’t be easy to play, I reckoned, because the difference in colour between the two armies wasn’t very distinct, and I didn’t know which general had a blonde wife and who had married a brunette. I moved the pieces around a little, putting the castle-shaped ones at the corners and queen opposite queen. I wasn’t comfortable with the not-quite-spoken implication that chess is not for women. I think I said some stuff about having taught my children to play, and someone said they thought my son might be good at playing chess. At all events, the room seemed to chill by a degree or so. Someone else repeated, firmly, that chess is hard. Because. The pieces. Don’t. All move the same way, and I realised I should have avoided the subject, or at least dropped it on cue.

It’s a trivial thing, but you need to spend time and attention figuring out the trivial things if you don’t want to keep finding yourself surrounded by women you’ve offended. So it’s another lesson learned: Don’t mention chess in a group of women. Talk about shops and smartphone stuff and mutual acquaintances’ illnesses. Stay inside the box of what’s socially accepted. Guess correctly ahead of time where the groupthink’s going to land within a topic.

Yes, I’ve learned the lesson, but I’m not sure I’ll put it into practice. It’s not right.

In a roomful of women, most of them professionals or thereabouts, I probably wasn’t the only one who’d ever touched a chessboard. I reckon at least one or two of the other women were nodding their heads and agreeing that chess is hard and no woman can possibly play chess… when secretly they know the game, but they also know how to agree with the majority opinion, and so they’re faking ignorance and inability. You can do anything you choose, schools tell girls nowadays, but by the time they reach teenage, girls pick it up from social cues: Always choose the pink option. And by the time they reach middle-age, these girls are telling their daughters, “You can do anything you choose,” while their actions say, more loudly than their words, “CHOOSE THE PINK OPTION!”
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It’s compounded by the terror of being labelled ableist. If a member of the group lets on that they can do something that the majority might subsequently decide is difficult, then that could trigger the insecurities of those who lack confidence in their own skillsets. Well sure, if someone said anything derogatory about those who can’t play chess, that might indeed be ableist. But at what point does anti-ableism become anti-ability? ​

Because (a) I wasn’t denigrating the non-chess-players, (b) if I were male, it wouldn’t have triggered anyone’s insecurities, and (c) everyone in that group knows I lack all sorts of skills in smartphones and apps and blueteeth and so on. So should I start hinting  that nobody may speak about technology in my presence? Why not? Because I’m not in the majority with that?

OK, if it all depends on whether you’re in the majority position or not, then that’s not anti-ableism. That’s just flock mentality. Chicken-coop stuff.

I can play chess. I like playing chess. I’m not a grandmaster (grandmistress?), but I get a buzz out of winning a battle of pawns and queens—or even losing a well-played game. I’m going to notice if there’s an unusual chess set and quite possibly mention the word chess. Even if I’m not male.