You&#x27;re right, the mockery was unnecessary. It&#x27;s just, agh, so frustrating to me, for men to call out gender-related &quot;unfairness,&quot; based on just how far the scales are tipped to one side (imo).<p>&quot;Across the board&quot; and &quot;overall&quot; seem synonymous to me, I did not mean to imply that men have the advantage in literally every conceivable scenario&#x2F;dimension.<p>In this situation I would just tend to err on the side of graciousness and over-correction...men have been calling the shots and having their way with nothing to stop them for so long, for most of us it is impossible to empathize with the challenges faced by the other half. Due to this long legacy there is a tangled web of deep-seated factors contributing to why women might not be competitive with men in chess, and why we might look into ways we can attempt to balance for that. I strongly believe that &quot;just toss them in the ring, no special considerations, because lassiez-faire competition is the best and most fair&quot; totally ignores the larger picture of these issues.<p>So yes, it is not <i>insane</i> to consider both sides, but in this particular instance - of someone claiming &quot;unfairness&quot; to men because women have their own bracket where it may be &quot;easier&quot; to get a cool title (and you see this argument all over sports) - I find it pretty gauche. It&#x27;s just the same general issue where people of privilege see no problems because they aren&#x27;t affected by them, and then label attempts to correct them as &quot;unfair&quot;, I guess because of the explicit and intentional nature of the initiative? (Contrasted to the &quot;naturally occurring&quot; or &quot;subconscious&quot; unfairness all over, which I guess is acceptable?)<p>How does it hurt men, hurt competition, for women to have their own prize? For whatever reasons, women aren&#x27;t competitive with men (in chess, at this point in time), men are the best, everyone knows that as a given, do we really need to rub it in by forcing them to be ranked alongside men? Is that really preserving some concept of integrity of the sport? Is that helping women get better? Or does it just further discourage them? Obviously some people are fine if women are muscled out of playing chess, if they can&#x27;t hang that&#x27;s their problem, right? There I go with the mocking, but agh! Have some compassion, understanding, graciousness...