Posted 2019-November-08, 12:11
I expect that gender issues will be debated for as long as tournament bridge is played, although how long that will be is another issue entirely.
Go back 40+ years and the Bridge World had lots of content on the then-hot topic of male-female stereotypes. One article, that may have extended over more than one issue, posited that Paul Soloway, arguably the best player in the world at that time, and certainly the most prominent tournament pro, woke up one morning as a woman, named Paula. The article explored what the author presumably thought might be the reaction of Paul's peers and clients. It was both funny and sad, since I remember thinking that the author was probably largely correct. 'Paula' was treated with condescension and found clients and other pros begging off playing with 'her', even though the basis of the story was that 'her' bridge playing skills were as great as ever.
Then there was the old 'nature v nuture' debate about whether the factual reality that most of the best players (by titles, mps, etc) were male was caused by genetics or cultural conditioning.
By contrast, even as little as a decade or so earlier, the gender stories in the BW were all chauvinistic, with the female players portrayed as very lucky: the 'funny' stories were all about some hapless female, sometimes even the wife of the editor, Moyse, stumbling into good results. Not only that, but in the ACBL bulletins and the BW, successful women players were often identified as 'Mrs. Frank Williams' or 'Mr. Thomas Smith', etc, as if their only role in life was to be, as my wife calls it, 'she of he'.
Now we add in the cultural awareness of trans-identification on top of the unresolved gender questions between cis-male and cis-female, and we have a ready made controversy. However, note that the old stereotypes underlie this tempest in a teapot. If we did not at least partially buy into this 'males are inherently superior to females at bridge' notion, who would care about the 'distorting' effect of a genetic male identifying as and playing as a female?
I lack the expertise to have an meaningful opinion as to whether there is any real genetic difference. What little I know of neuroscience suggests that the data is debatable at best. Meanwhile, it is pretty much impossible to live in a western society such as Canada, or to be exposed to mostly US entertainment, and not recognize that gender conditioning is omnipresent.
Things change, but slowly. In our firm we finally hired a male legal assistant. A comparable firm to ours, which was founded more than 100 years ago, finally had their first ever female lawyer last year! I still find it odd the very rare time when I phone another lawfirm and find the telephone answered by a male receptionist: I appreciate that says as much about me as it does about the culture.
I hope, but doubt, that bridge will still be relatively popular 50 years from now, and that culturally we continue on our current path (but have my doubts about that as well). It would be interesting to see then how relatively successful women, whether cis or trans, are, and maybe then the old debates, usually fueled by stereotypes and prejudice, have played out. However, I won't be around to find out.
'one of the great markers of the advance of human kindness is the howls you will hear from the Men of God' Johann Hari
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Vampyr, on 2019-November-08, 09:03, said: