It’s long past time that women should be allowed to play chess.
This new statement of activism became apparent to me after watching Netflix’s brilliant limited series The Queen’s Gambit. Before this show, I did not know women. Period. But, once I learned about women, I also learned that they were not allowed to play chess. I have asked many women, and they have said, before this show, they did not even know what chess was! This goes to show how much men have kept chess to themselves…and women, for that matter.
If you have not seen the show, this may not make sense. If you have not seen the show and do not want to watch it before reading the rest of this article, I will now explain.
The Queen’s Gambit is about a small woman–called a girl, I am told–named Beth Harmon who comes from a single-parent home on the west side of Philadelphia. After a run-in with some bad mamma-jammas on the B-Ball court, her mother sends her to live with her aunt and uncle in Bel Air, California, where she is educated and becomes a chess prodigy through the tutelage of a strong, woke man. What amazing things women can do when given the opportunity! Beth is also anti-racist because she has a black friend.
The main conflict comes when Beth must compete in the International Communist Chess Championship. Without spoiling too much, the Russians call her a “silly woman,” to which Beth responds “fuck you, you dumb donkey-brained micropenis Red Commie Cocksucker.” She then unleashes the titular “Queen’s Gambit” a chess move that summons Raesillia, Goddess of the Sixty-Four Squares who gives +5 to all Queen movements. Beth wins by beginning the Cuban Missile Crisis, which distracts her competitor, so she can switch around the pieces. President Kennedy honors Beth by signing the Women’s Chess Act of 1963 on November 21, on the eve of his death. All of this was based on a true story.
This story was so enlightening about the history of women, women playing chess, and how chess started the Cold War. Most importantly, it provides a necessary social justice message to all men in the male community, that we, men, have to grow up with the world and allow women to play chess. Beth Harmon is a hero for not only woman chess players but also male chess players; she has broken the chessboard ceiling and shown the limitless possibilities of chess and society. We should all follow in her footsteps and fight for the equality of women in the workplace. For every pawn a man loses, a woman should be made a #Queen.
On another note, women, by no means, should be allowed to play checkers.
