Re: Chess Bitch


"Kevin Croxen" <klcroxen@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:slrndptutm.6rh.klcroxen@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> On 2005-12-12, Chess One <innes8@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

>> Firstly, what we men 'imagine' is rather moot, eh?
>
> I guess the "I am human; I consider nothing human to be alien to me" credo
> doesn't fly well in the balkanized world of 21st century group politics.

Ha! I am am for humanistic expression, as long as this includes allowing
women to speak for themselves. I may be more or less sympathetic to women,
but I think most women prefer to represent themselves since we men have not
always been so sympathetic, and even in our modern time, are frequently
duffers.

>>And secondly, the reviews
>> are led by none other than Yoko Ono who certainly does not profile as a
>> late
>> teen, but who was also a female 'performance artist', and I would credit
>> her
>> her own experience of that.
>
> Yoko Ono displays a number of exceptional qualities, some of them
> positive, but scholarship, and perceptiveness as to English usage do not
> immediately spring to mind among them. The issue is not how the usual
> feminist cheerleaders or "artistes" rally around the text now, but rather
> whether or not this text will still be on anybody's bookshelf in five
> years. Will someone use this book as a resource for the further
> investigation of the subject in 10 years, or will the next researcher on
> the overall topic of women in chess or on the biographies of any of the
> characters who appear in the text just chuck this book and start building
> his bibliography entirely from scratch. Dr. Root would be inclined to
> believe the latter, and she is probably right.

I do not know how to answer your supposition, but I think there are at least
2 constituencies of people who might read it: those interested in
women-in-chess, and the other women in performance-art realms which involve
competition.

I would estimate that this second category is substantially larger than the
first, and that anyone wanting to read of the experiences and opinion* of a
young woman writing circa 2005 would find her expressions as interesting as
they found the writing of George Eliot in mid C19th.

*a difference between a history and a memoire, is that one also comments on
what any subject felt like, no? its not just that a tournament may have been
won, and a crosstable of other participants and game scores included, but
how was it to take part in the thing? what sort of preparations were there,
for how long, were they adequate, what was biggest challenge on the board
and off?

>> As for the timbre, its the more than 30 year old women of my aquaintance
>> who
>> freely use the term bitch, as in to bitch, and as reference to themselves
>> as
>> bitchin'. Maybe they don't say that at Harvard, but they do in Harvard
>> square?
>
> Wha'? Wuzzat a Harvard shot? Gack! How original. ;)

Not any /particular/ shot! A normal sociological comment, often offered on
the difference between relatively formal textual-based worlds, and everday
speech and customs out there on the street

> Maybe such language is
> used in the square, and maybe by the 30-year-old women in the square, most
> of whom, if anything, are even less well-educated than Ms. Shahade. But
> rarely by men, and certainly not by men in the lecture halls, workspaces,
> and libraries of the university, where the actual education and research
> take place and where, if men do use such loaded language, they may be, and
> frequently are dismissed for indulging in gender-based hate speech and/or
> sexual harrassment.

And there you have it. That world is literally a world apart from the
streets of NY city, where the term in question would not raise an eyebrow,
and where there are no blue-stockings [they're all black stockings down
there, and pink]

> Language is not a neutral medium. Even constitutionally protected free
> speech has consequences. While Ms. Shahade and the publishers have the
> legal right to call the book anything they may wish to, and have the right
> to publish and present a text composed in any manner whatever, they also
> need to realize that tone, timbre, and loaded word choice are going to
> affect, and in some cases prevent, the text being taken seriously, or at
> all, by audiences that, in retrospect, they may come to wish they had
> written more inclusively for. That's all any of this little tempest in a
> teapot is about.

Except that you seem to be missing the point that language is entirely
determined by its use - and its users. Language is not text for most people,
its speech. I refer you to Mores [L.] = custom.

You make a point about ethics, and minimum standards for /texts/ which in
your opinion have long term values.

To some degree I concur with you, and yet to greater degree I do not resent
the young woman's [I keep saying that, she is my daughter's age] 'loading'
her text with words not normative to academics, but which generally readers
will grok.


>>> I think this was the issue Alexey Root was tiptoeing around in her
>>> partial
>>> review of the book in CL, while gently chastising its accuracy and tone.
>>> The striving for shock value can be amusing, but is ephemeral and
>>> immature. I suspect that in 10-15 years, even the author will be
>>> distancing herself from this, by then long-O.O.P. bit of juvenilia.
>>
>> I also suspect that in 10 or 15 years that Shahade will write as a 34 or
>> 40
>> year old would. How should she not now write as a 24 year old?
>>
>
> Life is short, but art is long. As a 24-year-old, she should write with
> the goal that that 40-year-old will not be embarrassed (by content, style,
> accuracy, or what-have-you) when she picks up that book again after a long
> absence. Nor the eventual 70-year-old either, who will be looking back at
> them both.

I might agree with you Kevin. And if the author of this title intended to
become 'an author' writing for posterity, and those who would read the book
50 years on, there may be justice in this criticism.

But I get the sense that the person wishes to be a commentator on the chess
scene, and also active in it, and while presenting her comments as texts is
the current means, it is not the only possibility, and perhaps not even a
natural one. Even Shakespeare didn't write 'texts' as such, the plays are
performed, no?

I do not accuse you of being in any ivory tower, nor in an ebony one, nor
deflate the merits of good scholarship. But the general public are mostly
indifferent to those charms.

>> I might as well disagree with you completely <g> and re-state that
>> talking
>> about "woman's stuff" in the book is my sense of the taboo that the
>> author
>> has mentioned, and not so much any objection to the title! ;)
>>
>> Phil Innes
>>
>
> And taken in that light :) Consequently, I hope Ms. Shahade sells the
> socks off the book, and makes beaucoup de royalties from it for however
> long the shelf life is. However, by way of full disclosure, I must also
> confess that while my personal Christmas giftgiving list includes a few
> copies of "Breaking Through", it does not happen to include any copies of
> "Chess Bitch".
>
> Best,

And to you! I would write to you about the women's choices in our own
household, and if offered the choice, which title they would choose.

I think you understand Kevin, that no one else -at all, that I have noticed-
has thought what women will choose to be an important thing to say, and
while we blokes choose one title, we blokes are not the only people who can
address "I am human; I consider nothing human to be alien to me" unless we
wish to appear more farcical than we already are, in speaking for all
humans.

Cordially, Phil Innes


> --Kevin


.

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