Men better at chess and music?

Read this article in PDF format by Tim Harding about the “Queens of chess”…kibitz109.pdf

 You might find this article interesting… it’s not about chess/music and if men are better… or not… what is your opinion when it comes to chess…why do you think  men are better at playing the game? Is it because you agree what they’ve “discovered” according to this article? or do you think differently?

Chess players on the chess site always ask me…how long have you been playing chess? Then my reaction is always a kind of lengthy reply… When I was 11, I learnt how to play the game…my first chess book…about Bobby Fischer/Boris Spassky and their games…was given to me as a birthday present at age 12. – see image here:

 

 I was the only one in the family to play it and played through their games to learn a bit more.. and I think that’s why I like Bobby Fischer till today…for his chess. When at secondary school, one teacher called all children interested in playing chess to his class. I turned up too…. very enthusiastic…of course the only girl too….but, only to be greeted  with a sea of boys’ faces…sending me different messages…..”wow, a girl to play chess!”…or…. “gee…you wanna play chess? and you’re a girl…don’t tell me you know anything about chess!”…or… “hey! chess is for boys..what are you doing here!”… or…”are you sure you got the correct message?”… anyway.. a lot went through my mind, but those expressions were a bit intimidated and I didn’t even enter the room, as those boys were all about 3 years older than me! I was first year in secondary and they looked like 20 yr-olds!  It was really scary looking at them and you felt so “small”… so, never played at secondary school! Take it from me today.. if you’re a girl..and your dream is to play chess and to be good at it……don’t even let these lovely humans, we call “men” stand in your way! Live your dream and play chess! It is cool/kewl for girls to play chess! and not if boys play it…there are too many of them…boring! 🙂
At my first school where I taught  my colleague-friend was the chess teacher and I used to help her and also taught some of the kids whenever she asked me…I sometimes spent the afternoon with her chess kids for the fun. At my second school my headteacher asked me to start a chess club almost immediately after I started teaching there and I was on cloud 9 as I was about to tell him that I want to start a chess club and from there on…it was non-stop. We always tried to get more girls into chess and I think it was easier for the girls to come and play because of me being a female and they could easily relate to me too.

Article:

Men and women are clearly different species. And this is more than just physical: it goes in all inner organs, including the brain, explaining behavioral differences but also the opposite desires, sensitivities, preferences…

The brain is masculinized from the womb by testosterone (its lack determines the feminization of the brain), generating anatomical differences that explain why the males find it harder to read facial expressions than women do, but explain their higher ability to visualize objects in three dimensions or read maps, labyrinths and diagrams.
When it comes to women – the corpus callosum, the major white matter tract, connecting the two brain hemispheres, allowing their intercommunication – is much wider. That’s why women have their brain functions more finely distributed, while men have a more “asymmetrical” brain, with more specialized areas and, for example, a lesion on the left hemisphere, which can induce speech loss, is more devastating for men. If the stroke is only on one side of the brain, a woman can rehabilitate, while the man may have more trouble with it, because the woman may be able to perform tasks using the other side of her brain. This also mean that men are more prone to senile dementia and the age-related decline is much steeper than in women. But this also explains why women have better concrete thinking while men have a better abstract one (and are better at chess and composing music) and why women prefer to repeat loudly what they are learning while men must learn in silence.

The female brain is 11 % lighter than the male brain, still IQ coefficients of the women are similar to those of the men. That’s because men have less gray matter (that processes information) and more white matter (that transmits information). This explains why the female brain learns easier and men have more motor ability. Women also express their emotions better, because their emotional thinking centers are close to the speech centers, so they can verbalize their emotions better. Men have a simpler limbic system, and their emotions are bound to action. The rest of the article can be read HERE ….