Thursday, December 07, 2006

Chess and Sex

chess and romance
There is an excellent essay by Sarah Beth Cohen titled "Chess: Romance, Love, and Sex" at her blog. It offers a wide-ranging survey of the ways chess has been associated with relations between men and women, both throughout history and across all sorts of media (from medieval poems to contemporary films). The collection of advertising images alone is worth the visit. Of course, Cohen might add how Gormally-gate made us ponder chess as "sex by other means," or how the Britney Spears / Kevin Federline debacle gave us the phrase, "They did nothing all day but have sex - and play the odd game of chess." But she makes her case, and suggests why women might be put off from attending a chess club: playing with men just seems a bit too intimate. If only they knew the truth... As Cohen quotes Bobby Fischer: "Chess is better than sex."

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

While I might not go as far to say that chess is better than sex, it definately has one advantage; all you need is a board and/or a FICS account.

Unfortunately, I find myself running into the problem of time trouble in both endeavors.

Michael Goeller said...

"Time trouble"--that's a good one.... I actually had meant to suggest that female chessplayers hardly need fear male desire at a chess club, since the men there are actually more interested in chess than they are in sex (at least while at the club, anyway). But I also rather enjoyed the idea in Fischer's famous quote that chess may somehow be a superior form of intense interpersonal interaction. It is certainly less messy....

Anonymous said...

"It is certainly less messy...."
Depends on the variation I suppose :-)

I finally figured out how to post with my name instead of anonymous.

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