Accusation against Alejandro Ramirez

[Paul Cooksey]

I think you should remove that story, Paul.

Djuna - I have removed the name of the female player, you might want to edit your quote if that addresses part of your concern.

I haven't removed it. I am trying to work out what I can do to respond to harassment which necessitates discussing it.

[Chris Goodall]

I think you should remove that story, Paul. It is not as though you've said "I was aware of someone making highly inappropriate comments"; you've named a female grandmaster in a lewd anecdote about how her body and clothing distracted your unnamed friend.

My point regarding asking women to dinner is that it's the more appropriate channel for attraction toward someone than harassment (which the above post certainly constitutes) and assault. Compared to the juvenile comments directed at young women in chess spaces, I infinitely prefer sincere invitations that I can politely decline. It is perfectly legitimate for people to want to meet a potential partner through their hobby.

If you agree that sports wear is common clothing for any young woman and that women have breasts, and that attraction to other humans is allowed, then there was nothing "lewd" about the anecdote; maybe your "ick" sensor is too heteronormative.

[Djuna Tree]

Attraction is allowed, Chris, but making published comments about another player's breasts falls well below the standard of common decency, as you must surely be well aware. I would be surprised if I were heteronormative, being a lesbian woman.

I am trying to work out what I can do to respond to harassment which necessitates discussing it.

If you intention was genuinely to highlight a case of harassment, make your description of the victim less graphic/sexualised, do not name the victim without their consent (or their own decision to make their experience public), do not describe what the victim was wearing, and concentrate on what you found unacceptable about the harassment. It reads much more like you continued to consider the harasser a friend, did not correct him, and went online to tell what you considered an amusing story.

[Paul Cooksey]

I'm a bit surprised you considered I was making light of sexual harassment given everything else I have said on the topic over the years. But I do have to admit I did not consider it an example of harassment, given the female player was unaware it had happened at the time.

Do you consider that it was harassment nonetheless?

[Djuna Tree]

Do you consider that it was harassment nonetheless?

The fact that this player told others he found her appearance distracting (it sounds like in some detail), and now yourself publishing the anecdote with the victim's name, a description of her clothing and apparently even her "prominent boobs", or that she "was finding it necessary to perform back stretches" (what wording for a human momentarily stretching or adjusting their posture) -- certainly harassment, and one of the most disgusting examples I have seen recently.

I'm a bit surprised [...] given everything else I have said on the topic over the years.

I apologise if we have met, I don't recognise your name. I'm unaware of anything else you may have said on this topic.

[Matt Bridgeman]

I'm a bit surprised you considered I was making light of sexual harassment given everything else I have said on the topic over the years. But I do have to admit I did not consider it an example of harassment, given the female player was unaware it had happened at the time.

Do you consider that it was harassment nonetheless?

I think hypothetically it is a safe guarding issue. Say instead of Sabrina and Story 1 GM, it’s two police officers who exchanged social media messages over the years, one of which was this comment about being sexually aroused by a 14 year old girl. And then they fall out and one police officer makes a complaint about this message and other sexually inappropriate messages (Sabrina says there’s a number of these) to internal investigators. Police officer 2 would be lucky to keep his job in the current climate. Similarly two teachers, etc. So I don’t see why it shouldn’t be safeguarding as Story 1 GM gets himself an awful lot of access.

[Chris Goodall]

Attraction is allowed, Chris, but making published comments about another player's breasts falls well below the standard of common decency, as you must surely be well aware. I would be surprised if I were heteronormative, being a lesbian woman.

I am trying to work out what I can do to respond to harassment which necessitates discussing it.

If you intention was genuinely to highlight a case of harassment, make your description of the victim less graphic/sexualised, do not name the victim without their consent (or their own decision to make their experience public), do not describe what the victim was wearing, and concentrate on what you found unacceptable about the harassment. It reads much more like you continued to consider the harasser a friend, did not correct him, and went online to tell what you considered an amusing story.

Graphic? Sexualised? "She was wearing sports wear". It doesn't read like anything of the sort, it reads like you being grossed out by any reference to any woman's appearance by any man and assuming the worst possible motives.

[Djuna Tree]

You are well aware that "she was wearing sports wear" was not the worst part of the comment I objected to.

[redacted] herself. My friend in his 60s talked to me about finding her distracting. She was wearing sports wear and finding it necessary to perform back stretches during the game.

Honestly, I think my friend was rather shocked to be in close proximity to a young woman's prominent boobs.

Do you honestly think every word of this is acceptable, bearing in mind it was about a named player?

...it reads like you being grossed out by any reference to any woman's appearance by any man and assuming the worst possible motives.

Your first incorrect theory was that I am heteronormative... now you have switched to thinking me a man-hater. On the contrary, I have been privileged to meet many wonderful people through chess of all genders. Had the comment read merely "My friend found GM ____ attractive and it was difficult for him to focus when playing her", I cannot see what problem there could be (unless the player in question were uncomfortable). Many of us experience attraction to our opponents and it can add to the art form. I don't think your insinuation that I find sexuality "icky" or "gross" is worthy of a response, but you must not have met me.

[Paul Cooksey]

I can see why Djuna might consider it offensive if I was describing a small adjustment in posture as stretching for comic effect. I was intending to convey athletic stretching, including some hamstrings stretches as well as the behind the back arm clenches that move your chest to a more prominent position. I assumed at the time, from the stretching and clothing, she had done some strenuous exercise in the hotel gym in the morning.

I accept that I should not have named the individual, although I have met her and do not think she would herself be offended. But accept that was not necessary to make my point, which obviously is now lost.

If I had written a straight friend once said to me he found his female opponent attractive it would not have conveyed that he had done anything inappropriate, and would not have been analogous to the incident Sabrina shared. Somewhat ironically, I thought using an example from my own experience might be less controversial than talking about one of Sabrina's.

I do not think we have met Djuna, but thought you might have some context from some other threads on this forum. I have been posting here for a long time. I mostly use this forum to discuss ECF matters because it has some influence over ECF actions I might have just offered Sabrina unqualified support if she was from another country posting about another federation. But for ECF issues, I feel I am part of the establishment that ought to be responding somehow, however difficult the issues.

[Chris Goodall]

You are well aware that "she was wearing sports wear" was not the worst part of the comment I objected to.

[redacted] herself. My friend in his 60s talked to me about finding her distracting. She was wearing sports wear and finding it necessary to perform back stretches during the game.

Honestly, I think my friend was rather shocked to be in close proximity to a young woman's prominent boobs.

Do you honestly think every word of this is acceptable, bearing in mind it was about a named player?

Some people have prominent boobs. You said yourself that there is nothing sexual about them. Except when it's a man referring to them, apparently.

I am not intending to get more exercised about this than Paul himself, but you didn't claim there were some unacceptable words, you claimed it was one of the most disgusting examples of harassment, in other words, all the other examples of harassment are equally innocuous or even more so. I think Sabrina might beg to differ.

[Paul Cooksey]

I am not very exercised, if I had meant what Djuna thought I meant, her response would have been fair. If she didn't understand what I meant, it can only be because I did not explain it clearly. If she still thinks I am defending harassment of women, I still have not explained well enough.

I thought I was avoiding the more controversial things I wanted to comment on. But since I am here now, I am going to continue.

I understand why Sabrina is relentlessly keeping her focus on wrong doers and considers any other perspective to be defence of abusers. It is certainly difficult to talk about risk management without being open to the criticism of victim blaming. But if I look at Matt's situation, I do think it is more important for his daughter to know which situations are high risk than which men were dangerous 15 years ago. She is much more likely to be at risk from those situations than those men.

Where I disagree most strongly with Sabrina is about the safeguarding processes that the ECF has introduced over the past ten years. I do think things have changed in a meaningful way since Sabrina was a player. I do not want to criticise Sabrina for not acknowledging this and even directly rejecting it, she is more than entitled to focus entirely on her own situation. But I hope women are hearing Aga saying the ECF can help them if they need help, rather than Sabrina saying the ECF will not help.

Finally, both Sabrina and Djuna have said they feel resistance to change comes from people who want perpetuate abuse. I think the experts in trauma do offer some other views, notably a resistance from people not directly impacted by an issue to acknowledge its seriousness because it challenges their world view. I certainly found that when I was trying to persuade people to adopt safeguarding policies.

[Chris Goodall]

It is certainly difficult to talk about risk management without being open to the criticism of victim blaming.

Unfortunately very true - not even necessarily the criticism that you yourself are victim blaming, but the criticism that you are possibly facilitating future victim blaming somewhere down the line.

Just look at the backlash when some scientists in the US invented a nail polish that could detect date r*pe drugs in drinks. A practical way of making the world a bit better, you might think. Increase the number of date r*pe drugs that get detected.

No, they got absolutely dogpiled for their "quick fix" that "ignored" the need to educate men to not use date r*pe drugs on women to begin with, and the kicker - a hypothetical future scenario in which a woman who is a victim of one of these drugs gets asked "why didn't you wear the anti-date-r*pe nail polish?"

Not Invented Here Syndrome has a lot to answer for.

[Djuna Tree]

I think several commenters here should completely rethink their way of speaking about these issues. The tone across much of this thread is far removed from the behaviour accepted in ordinary society, and in some cases plain hatred of women is very clear.

[Roger de Coverly]

I think several commenters here should completely rethink their way of speaking about these issues. The tone across much of this thread is far removed from the behaviour accepted in ordinary society, and in some cases plain hatred of women is very clear.

You think we are all guilty of thoughtcrime then? What do you consider "ordinary society" though? I would have thought a certain amount of tolerance of opposing, even old fashioned, views was normal. But perhaps I ought to be sent away for compulsory reeducation.

Incidently I came across this old article recently.
https://en.chessbase.com/post/the-best- ... ess-player
Acceptable?

[Chris Goodall]

in some cases plain hatred of women is very clear.

Since we're listing credentials: I took my wife's surname on marriage, simply because that was fair and it shouldn't always be on women to change theirs, and I asked the maid of honour to make a speech so it wasn't all men. I haven't made any headway yet on my workplace's use of "2 man job", but I did stealthily edit the Northumbria League rules to remove all the default male pronouns, and if you've ever noticed that lichess.com uses default female pronouns in some of the opening explorer content that it pulls from Wikibooks, that was because I made female pronouns an unofficial policy when I created the Chess Opening Theory Wikibook. A long time ago I dropped myself from Tynemouth's junior team purely so that we could have a majority-female lineup for the news bulletin, and more recently I asked the University captain to play Victoria on board 1 ahead of me because she was clearly better than me, and I agitated for the same University captain to deselect a player who shared vile anti-LGBT+ content and then tried to play the religion card when challenged (you can Google that one; it happened under my current surname). And although some very lovely people bought my baby daughter lots of pink clothes when she was born, I have tried to keep her clothes gender-neutral in photos with me, and she has at least one outfit that can only be described as "blue".