>>>>
>>>>Which is why I said "slightly more." I have a lot more respect for the ones who refused to endorse him at all. I was truly disappointed last week when Huntsman endorsed; while I disagree with him on pretty much everything, I thought he was better than that.
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>Slight thread drift, but not completely outside the original topic - do you have an opinion of the U.S. women's chess champion (Paikidze-Barnes) and the world championship in Iran (and the possible boycott)?
>>
>>It's pretty clear that I'd set a record low score while flunking Political Correctness.
>>I can't fathom why the notion of a Women's Chess team (clearly separating by gender) is not sexist, while other things that discriminate by gender are.
>>Why wasn't "A league of their own" the most blatantly sexist movie ever made?
>
>If a group of people are systematically excluded from things, why is it wrong for them to create those things for themselves? Many of our finest hospitals were created because Jewish doctors weren't allowed practice in existing hospitals. Same thing for colleges--Jews, blacks, others were excluded, so they created their own. While I can argue as to whether we should have fraternities and sororities at all, there are some that were created by Jews and by blacks because they were excluded from existing sororities.
>
>I don't know anything about the history of world chess competition and whether women have traditionally been excluded. (I can't remember ever hearing about a female chess champion.)
>
>For sure, major league baseball excluded women, so having a league for women who wanted to play seems like a reasonable remedy. The movie wasn't sexist because it told a (fictionalized) true story. Incidentally, one of this season's new TV shows (Fox's Pitch) is the story of a woman becoming the first in MLB. I think so far, they're doing a pretty good job of showing the kind of issues such a woman would face.
>
>Do you think the people who created the Negro Baseball Leagues were racist? I don't. The people who kept black players out of MLB were.
>
>Seems to me what you're doing is victim-blaming.
>
>Tamar

I see little correlation of gender separation with racial or religious separation.

Gender differences are a fact.
Anyone who wants to put up the entry fee can try to play on the PGA tour.
Annika Sorenstan, then the greatest women player alive, played in several PGA tour event and couldn't make the cut.
Michelle Wie, a great woman golfer and one of the most powerful women drivers ever, also tried several times and never came close to making the cut.
Women just aren't as strong as men.
Women's golf is fun to watch, but it's a totally different sport from men's golf.
As a teen I caddied for Helen Hicks, a top caliber woman player and one of the founders of the LPGA.
She was good, but she was no match for top caliber men golfers - so she and several other women founded the LPGA.

My point was facetious and rhetorical. Of course the LPGA isn't sexist- whatever that word means. It makes perfect sense.
I was questioning the decision to label some gender groupings as sexist and some as not.
Who decides?

There is no connection between women not competing with men and the fact that black players were until the 1980's, and in some places still are, not permitted to play in some events.
I also caddied for the great black player Ted Rhodes and unlike Helen Hicks, Ted could have beaten most of the top men golfers of his time, had he been allowed to compete.
That was just plain bigotry.

Racial and religious barriers are man-made artifacts, not facts.
There are still country clubs that don't allow specific racial or religious groups.
That's plain old bigotry and it's deplorable.