Breaking The Silence Online

@STR00PWAFEL said in #30:
> Was seeing if the comment made about if you knew how to move a knight was accurate or not.

Well you can make up your own mind about that. My opponent resigned on move 8 after a knight fork and then a knight check...

@STR00PWAFEL said in #30:
> Was seeing if the comment made about if you knew how to move a knight was accurate or not.



Trust me she can move her knights XD

Glad you wrote the blog, Rosie. It is an issue that people should be aware of. I know I'll be keeping an eye out for this kind of stuff in tournament chats (especially big arenas, lichess swiss tournaments, etc). Usually I play in tournaments run by smaller teams where people know each other and this kind of abusive behavior seems less frequent. Then again, maybe that is just my perception as I do know there have been a few incidents we've talked about.

I do agree with some of the comments about blocking users - given that this stuff is so common, it makes sense to me that if a user needs to block someone, the blocked individual should be prevented from viewing _anything_ about the blocker, including spectating at games. If that's not feasible for some technical reason (though I can't imagine why), at least implement the suggestion by @Bogenko, i.e. don't show that the blocked person is watching.

Thank you for writing your blog and expérience

I Remember when i was ... Years old
One of my précieuse QRM stand for me when I were getting harassed by some guys.
And she told them to leave me alone cuz I'm here to play chess, and they were abusive to me then and got banned, they were asking me for my Phone Number and stuff,
it was in the arena chat
everyone could see it.

@KateCarlosBFFE said in #35:
> Thank you for writing your blog and expérience
>
> I Remember when i was ... Years old
> One of my précieuse QRM stand for me when I were getting harassed by some guys.
> And she told them to leave me alone cuz I'm here to play chess, and they were abusive to me then and got banned, they were asking me for my Phone Number and stuff,
> it was in the arena chat
> everyone could see it.

Thank you for posting this Kate xx I remember that incident well, it was one of the first times I had seen such persistent harassment of a young female player in an arena, you were just trying to play chess and they would not leave you alone, I was appalled, and told the guy to leave you alone in the chat, then he got nasty and so I reported him. You were literally there to play chess in the arena and you should not have had to put up with that abuse, I'm sorry that happened to you. But this story has a happy ending, we became friends after that and have been friends ever since, win-win for us! xxx

This is great, QueenRosieMary, ... you wrote about that!

Thank you so much, and thank you to remind to my forum post:

lichess.org/forum/lichess-feedback/problems-with-blocked-players-why-are-they-allowed-to-watch-my-games-and-write-comments-to-me?page=1

Still hoping, other female players come to that and give support with telling experiences, telling their needs, so that the lichess team will make some changes for us to feel more secure soon. Give your opinion. Male players are also invited, ... of course.

All points are understandable, so thanks for sharing about this, but Judit Polgar has mentioned several times that the women exclusive titles have to be done away with at some point. How would you react to this? She agrees it's merely a temporary soothing balm to address the disparity. No two ways to it, so future decisions about women's chess cannot ignore the vision that these titles have to be let go of.

My point is to highlight that these are fundamental questions that can be answered in advance to have better long term plans such that anybody could just sit and play chess in front of a board, which is what chess is all about.

And the womeninchess site also doesn't make clear about this specific detail, although it does mention hopes for maintaining equity among all at tournaments which is great.

So the question still stands that if an organizer has pre-emptively taken ample measures after thorough consultation with women as well to ensure peaceful playing conditions, there should be no reason for women to not just jump into open tournaments and test themselves in conditions that are same for all. People can get coached by Kasparov or Polgar or Carlsen even, but eventually it's the person's nerves over the board that matter so no point in delaying the process. If people at the top can question the organizers and get them to setup guidelines, that'll help speed up the process to move away from exclusive titles.

It can be a mass movement as well and for policy changes there is a need for collaboration with lawmakers which by itself will take time, if it has to bring change at FIDE levels, so it's better to start now than later. I see very less of this happening. The focus has been more on retaining the exclusivist ideas for business opportunities, so women too have a role to play in this if the discrimination is continuing.

This is just so sad ....Women Lives Matter too :) let's all support WLM in Chess the reason a lot of females have great potential to become great chess players but due to the lack of support in the system they don't get very far and they stop even playing the game so we should all support them and let them just have a good supportive community for them to be the best they can be

By the way. My sister plays on Lichess, but so far only 1 person from different accounts has written sexist messages to her. Well, she simply blocked them all, and the spam stopped.