English Chess Forum

"A 12-year-old girl was forced to withdraw from a chess tournament because
her outfit – a knee-length cotton child’s dress – was deemed ‘too seductive’.

‘The tournament director deemed my student’s dress to be “seductive” and a “temptation from
a certain angle far, far away”,’ Kal wrote. ‘We found this statement completely out of line!’

"Kal said that the director told the girl and her mother that they needed to go to the mall and by her a pair of
trousers – but by that time it was already 10pm, and the matches the next day restarted at 9am."

'Because they weren’t able to get a replacement outfit in time the girl – who was
a regional champion in Kuala Lumpur – had to pull out of the competition.'

Story here:

http://metro.co.uk/2017/04/29/girl-12-f ... e-6606114/

Story has attracted a lot of media coverage, for example in The Times this morning,

Roger Lancaster wrote:Story has attracted a lot of media coverage, for example in The Times this morning,

Google for "chess arbiter Malaysia" gets a number of hits, almost all are the story in the same words.

Will we ever understand these Eastern races? Will we ever learn anything?'

https://academic.oup.com/screen/article ... een/hjs036

John McKenna wrote:

Will we ever understand these Eastern races? Will we ever learn anything?'

https://academic.oup.com/screen/article ... een/hjs036

I would suggest that this has nothing whatsoever to do with race and everything to do with religion and culture.

"A 12-year-old girl was forced to withdraw from a chess tournament because
her outfit – a knee-length cotton child’s dress – was deemed ‘too seductive’."

That really says more about the person making the comment than it does about the dress, much like a lot of Freud's theories!

I hope Malaysia's Chess Federation will be sensible and overturn this decision (not it will help the player of course). If they don't, surely FIDE statutes prohibit discrimination like this?

Brian, I take it that by "this" you mean the topical title of this thread, that Kevin quotes in his post, above.

Hi Kevin, I have my doubts about the impartiality of the chess federation of a country where things like this happen -

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/ ... t-minister

I'd like to suggest that you, Brian, are old enough and wise to know that the word "race", in general (as opposed to scientific) use implicitly included the religion and culture of the specific group(s) it alluded to.

However, I used a quote from a time when "race" was still an accepted word to indicated a specific ethnic group.

In Malaysia today there are three main ethnic groups (races) - the "indigenous" Malays, and the "immigrant" Chinese and Indians.

Since the British departed the country has been controlled by the Malay majority and Islam is the state religion.

It is that context in which my somewhat archaic quote (inspired by reading the "Wong Board" thread) could be better understood.