Why are all the Chess Pieces (except the King) female? - Chess Forums

dustinkinney · 08-28-2007, 07:28 AM

All of the chess pieces, except for the King are Female. If we, at first, define the king as Male and the queen as female then the statement is correct. Here is why: A Pawn can be promoted into a knight, bishop, rook, or queen (but not a king). Assuming that the pawn's gender is fixed, it cant gender bend, then all the other pieces, except for the king have to be female for that reason, because the queen is defined as a female. Since a pawn can be promoted into a queen, but not a king, it must be female. And if a pawn is female then the knight, rook, and bishop must be females as-well. Why is this the case? Note: I know the king is the most important piece and needs to be checkmated..... is that because "being checkmated" is a code word for being in check by the females without having any way out and you are doing your opponent friend a favor by sending a cute checkmate..... And in the meantime, you can capture their pieces for whatever purpose your side wants to do with them "just remember to think -- Symbolic Logic" Hmmm..... some interesting things to ponder. But, really, what i want is some Answers!!!

Perseus · 08-28-2007, 01:48 PM

Um... I would argue to the contrary. Why are all pieces male except for the queen?

If I recall correctly, chess pieces were somewhat based on chivalry.
Knights were male by nature, as were Bishops. Pawns would be considered common (infantry) soldiers, being male in those days. The word Rook actually comes from the Persian word for Chariot, in Persian history, their chariot riders were male. That leaves the King and Queen, which are respectively male and female...
More to the point, I consider the white and black forces as two armies from the old days and the chessboard their battlefield. Armies (when we employed cavalry) would be comprised of males with a few exceptions..

There is a certain logic to your logic, but I disagree with it. "Checkmate" I believe comes from "kill the Shah" (kill the King), not "mate with the king". For the human species, only females can procreate, yet the genetical chance of the newborn being female is 50%. I'd argue the chess pieces are human in a loose way.

gorckat · 08-28-2007, 07:05 PM

I'm going to blow my wife away when I tell my daughter this way cool bit of forbidden chess lore

My daughter has fallen asleep watching Polgar's Learn to Play Chess DVD a few times, and already thinks its awesome that women can be some of the best chess players in the world (sad an 8-yr old needs to get beyond some gender discrimination

), but this is gonna do it for her, I'm sure

twoclouds · 08-28-2007, 07:51 PM

"All of the chess pieces, except for the King are Female"

Ah... that might explain some of the erratic, spontaneous, totally incomprehensible moves I've seen lol.

Ever move a piece because it 'felt right'? Because it 'looked nice'?

I'm just joking of course. I never understood why there should exist a gender bias in chess. There's a thread in here somewhere that addresses that issue. I think it's great that you're getting your daughter interested in chess. I'm trying to get my nephews involved. If you can ignite that spark the fire spreads on it's own.

On a similar but irrelevent note when I was your daughter's age I wanted to be a tap dancer. My dad though, thinking this was a 'sissy' undertaking, discouraged it in no uncertain manner. Who knows? Maybe I'd have been a great dancer, maybe not, but now we'll never know.

silidef · 10-05-2007, 12:43 PM

wow a tap dancer lol. if i had a son,i would hit him

twoclouds · 10-05-2007, 08:21 PM

Lucky for us Sammy Davis Sr didn't feel the same way eh?

kylierider · 10-08-2007, 06:32 PM

Considering how old the game is and how gender bias things were ages ago I would think all pieces would be male except for the queen....All my pieces seem to have this nice hourglass figure though...

Vibovit · 07-03-2008, 12:43 AM

Interestingly, in Polish (my first language) Queen is "officially" called Hetman; I wasn't sure how to translate it so I looked it up on Wiki - "second highest military commander (after the monarch) used in 15th to 18th century Poland, Ukraine and Grand Duchy of Lithuania". Needless to say, definitely male.

Queen functions as an informal name for that piece - it is "H" in notation though.

And as for such theories, have you heard the Freudian one (I had quite a jaw-dropping moment)

Freudians, in particular, have delighted in speculating on what subconscious drives govern the average chess player. The pupil and biographer of Freud, Ernest Jones, wrote a paper in 1930 entitled 'The Problem of Paul Morphy'. He focues on the relative impotence of the central piece, the king, leading him to the startling deduction that chess is 'adapted to gratify at the same time both the homosexual and antagonistic aspects of the father-son contest'. Grandmaster Reuben Fine, himself a psychoanalyst and author of a book about the Fischer-Spassky match, was also taken by the role of the king and the sexual connotations of the game of chess. Ignoring female players, he maintained that the king aroused castration anxiety amongst men since it 'stands for the boy's penis in the phallic stage, the self-image of the man, and the father cut down to boy's size'. Fine concluded that, 'Chess is a contest between two men in which there is considerable ego involvement. In some ways it certainly touches upon the conflicts surrounding aggression, homosexuality, masturbation and narcissism.' [...]

(from "Bobby Fischer goes to war" by D. Edmonds & J. Eidinow)

I reminded of that quote reading a 2002 article about Fischer when I came across that bit

Paul Kollar said: "(...) He even sacrificed his mother, Regina, to become the King of Chess."
Fischer later said:
"Anything is permissible if it wins...sac the queen...the king’s the thing...isn’t it, Father? Wherever you are isn’t it?"

So well, anyway, the subject you touched upon in this thread seems to be taken very seriously by some.

Quite how does Hetman fit into the picture, probably has not been researched yet.