Re: Wimbledon prize money 'equality'
Posted: Sun Feb 25, 2007 7:40 pm
I don't know much about about tennis, but I do know something about chess.
The Dutch grandmaster Jan Hein Donner, Dutch chess champion for many years, once argued women are unable to play chess. A feminist went berserk: "The next thing he will tell us is that negroes are unable to play chess." Donner replied: "This lady has not quite understood my article. Negroes are perfectly able to play chess, but negresses aren't."
Donner died in 1988, the year Judit Polg?r, the first female chess player who preferred to play against men instead of women, started her career. Judit is now the number thirteen chess player in the world (two years ago she was in the Top Ten). I have heard that many promising junior chess players are girls nowadays. None of them feels the need to confine herself to playing against women.
Would a female tennis player be able to defeat a man? Perhaps she should just give it a try. Then we shall know for sure if "any male club pro would beat any woman player". There is a precedent, by the way. In 1973, the female tennis player Billy Jean King defeated Bobby Riggs, who had boasted he could beat any woman player.
Personally, I was on King's side. Not because of my middle-class background, not because of my left leanings (if I still have any; I had them 15 years ago, but since then the left-wing parties in the Netherlands said and did too many things that I heartily disagreed with) and not because I am particularly fond of feminists. I just love to see a big-mouthed braggart bite the dust. Perhaps it's the Dutch national character.
M_A_D: proud to be middle-class!
The Dutch grandmaster Jan Hein Donner, Dutch chess champion for many years, once argued women are unable to play chess. A feminist went berserk: "The next thing he will tell us is that negroes are unable to play chess." Donner replied: "This lady has not quite understood my article. Negroes are perfectly able to play chess, but negresses aren't."
Donner died in 1988, the year Judit Polg?r, the first female chess player who preferred to play against men instead of women, started her career. Judit is now the number thirteen chess player in the world (two years ago she was in the Top Ten). I have heard that many promising junior chess players are girls nowadays. None of them feels the need to confine herself to playing against women.
Would a female tennis player be able to defeat a man? Perhaps she should just give it a try. Then we shall know for sure if "any male club pro would beat any woman player". There is a precedent, by the way. In 1973, the female tennis player Billy Jean King defeated Bobby Riggs, who had boasted he could beat any woman player.
Personally, I was on King's side. Not because of my middle-class background, not because of my left leanings (if I still have any; I had them 15 years ago, but since then the left-wing parties in the Netherlands said and did too many things that I heartily disagreed with) and not because I am particularly fond of feminists. I just love to see a big-mouthed braggart bite the dust. Perhaps it's the Dutch national character.
M_A_D: proud to be middle-class!