Chess Bitch: Women in the Ultimate Intellectual Sport

by Jennifer Shahade

  Pascal’s listening skills and good manners have influenced Irina, who recently confessed in an interview with New In Chess that her biggest flaw was “selfishness,” a trait that in her youth she exhibited at times with anti-social behavior at tournaments. I’ve had several heated arguments with her about whether or not she should have read at the playing hall while her opponents were thinking or ignored people just because she didn’t feel like talking. Irina often got away with such antics, not only because of her status but also because of a depth of sincerity that both strangers and friends alike saw in her. Irina is and was straight-up. These days, Irina has adopted more traditional manners, possibly an influence of Pascal’s. I was alerted to the change when Irina called me and, in an urgent tone, asked me about flight arrangements for an upcoming tournament. I hadn’t heard from her in months. Five minutes later, she called me again to ask how I was, apologizing for being so curt. Meanwhile, Pascal was affected by Irina’s perfectionism. He started college with lackluster ambitions, but now he gets 4.0 averages each semester: “Irina convinced me that if I were taking classes, I might as well get As.”

  Will Irina throw her talents into chess after college, or will she abandon it for more lucrative pursuits? Irina is conflicted, and is both envious and critical of professional chessplayers. “It’s so great to study and play chess all the time, but part of me doesn’t understand why they’re not aiming for a better life.”

  Irina would love to play chess for a living, but worries about the limited financial resources. “The problem with chess is that sometimes it feels like begging.” Pascal said, “You have to depend on rich people who are chess fans and sponsor tournaments and players out of the kindness of their hearts.” Irina is intent on making a comfortable living, explaining, “I identify with a subculture of first-generation Russian-Americans, who aim to go to elite colleges and make a lot of money after graduation.” Her parents are successful accountants, and though they have encouraged her in chess, they ultimately want her to have a secure career. Irina, in trying to convey to me just how rich she would like to be, tells me, “Remember the hotel we stayed at in Shanghai, Jen?” I tell her I do, an extravagant five-star hotel. “I want to be able to afford to go on vacation to places like that without flinching.” On another occasion, Irina described her love for shopping as a “passion for finding that perfect item to complete my wardrobe.” Irina sarcastically describes herself as “degenerating into a materialistic parasite.” Chess is the counterpoint to all this, and what keeps her life spiritually fulfilling. “It’s a panacea with which I combat the emptiness.”

  When I ask Irina about her dreams in chess, I get a passionate response. “My ultimate fantasy,” she says, eyes flashing, Russian accent on full, “is to play e4 and d4 equally well…to be a two-headed monster. That’s a dream with some soul in it.” Although she plays in occasional women’s tournaments, her goal is to become one of the best players in America, male or female. She’d like to become the first female to earn a seat on the six-person U.S. Olympic team. “That would be historic.” Sometimes, Irina prefers to focus on the chess itself: “I think that if I understand a lot of different positions, the results will come.” Irina has similar ideas on fame. “I do want to be famous, give interviews, be in magazines,” Irina tells me, “but not because I’m a young woman who’s good at chess. I want fame as a result of impressive tournament results that I can be proud of.”

  The opportunities for money in women’s chess in America today are improving. The prizes for U.S. championships have increased dramatically since the eighties, when the sums were in the three-figures.

  Women have a strong presence in the American chess politics—in 2003 Beatriz Marinello, an inactive master, was elected president of the USCF. Two non-profit organizations, America’s Foundation for Chess (AF4C) based in Seattle, and Chess-in-the-Schools (CIS) in New York City, are attracting major sponsors. The first CEO of AF4C was Michelle Anderson. Marley Kaplan has been the executive director of CIS since 1999. The organizations, while not explicitly focusing on women’s chess, have promoted the interests of girls. The prizes for the U.S. Women’s Champion more than tripled after the AF4C took over—from $4,000 in 1998 to $12,500 in 2003.

  CIS teaches chess to as many inner-city children as possible. Some stars have been born in the process. Particularly impressive is the rapid progress of Medina Parilla, a mature, sweet girl from the Bronx. At twelve, Medina became the first African-American female to win a national title in the Grade Nationals in Chicago. She was well prepared, having just returned from representing the country in the World Youth Championships in Crete. Throughout the international event, Medina was battling on the top boards with girls from Russia and China and realized that she could compete with the world elite. Medina’s achievements were recognized on the cover of the New York paper Newsday.

  The increased sponsorship of chess in America and the growing subculture of well-rounded child participants are slowly changing its reputation. But all is not rosy, in my opinion. Chess in America is still suffering from an identity crisis, an intellectual endeavor in an anti-intellectual society. Chess is often praised for combining aspects of art, science, and sport. Unfortunately, what that means right now in American society is that it doesn’t fit easily into any category. Chess is not on TV or represented at the Olympics, nor is chess well represented in artistic or academic communities. The negative image of chess in America may prevent many young girls from pursuing it. In Europe, recognized chess players can range from a respected sportsman to a young, hip teenager, but to the America public, the stereotype of a chessplayer as geeky and monomaniacal lingers.

  Ironically, it might be that emphasizing the eccentric elements of chess, but with a positive spin, could increase its popularity. Marcel Duchamp, an influential artist of the twentieth century, liked chess because, in comparison to the glitzy elite of the art world, chessplayers were “madmen of a certain quality, the way the artist is supposed to be and generally isn’t.” He believed that artists were often pressured to repeat their styles and successes in order to promote themselves and make money; chessplayers, on the other hand, were less likely to be corrupted. Most important to Duchamp was that chess games, unlike art, could not be turned into commodities. “Chessplayers at least,” he remarked wryly, “cannot make money.” Chess might just be the right activity for anyone seeking an alternative to the more media-driven subcultures.

  One of my students, Venice Adrian, was an eccentric, glamorous woman, who managed the downtown New York City nightclub called Plaid. Blond with plump lips, a Barbie-doll figure, and feline gestures, Venice was described in a gossip-and-style glossy, Paper, as “the chicest person in New York City nightlife.” I met Venice in 2003 at the Man Versus Machine match between Garry Kasparov and Deep Junior. Venice attended with friends who were working on a documentary about the chess scene in New York City. “I always had an attraction to chess, but never really got around to pursuing it,” Venice told me, “and then one day I opened the phone book and looked up chess, and called the biggest number I saw.” For a while she took lessons with a Russian grandmaster. After watching Kasparov live, Venice’s interest in chess was rekindled. She wanted to take lessons with me, and I wanted to teach her.

  At ten o’clock on a Wednesday night, I met Venice at the Hotel Chelsea, what had been New York’s bohemian epicenter in the 1960s and 1970s. This was where Dylan Thomas lived and Sid Vicious killed Nancy. Venice’s apartment is decorated with her extensive taxidermy collection, but when I arrived, the centerpiece of the room was a wooden chessboard, set up between antique couches. Venice was just starting out in chess, so I showed her some basic checkmates. She was intensely interested in the positions I set up: sometimes she got up and pounced eagerly to the opposite side of the board to get a better look. Deeply involved in the media and nightlife culture, Venice was disenchanted with many of the fame-seeking New Yorkers she knew at her nightclub. Venice viewed chess as a purely intellectua
l activity, balanced her lifestyle.

  In the winter of 2003, nearly a year after we had met at the Kasparov-Deep Junior match, I ran into Venice on a plane to Chicago. She was poring over horseracing magazines. We hadn’t had a lesson in several months; her interest in chess had been replaced by a new addiction for horse-betting. I told her I’d read about her in some recent magazines, to which she responded, “I hate fashion magazines. It’s all superficial—all about being hip and beautiful.” She asked about my chess career, and at one point, grabbing my arm, she confided, “I wish I could be as smart as you.” Usually, when people confuse skill at chess with intelligence, I take pains to explain that chess does not always correlate with general mental abilities. This time, I decided to let Venice’s mistake go uncorrected.

  12

  Gender Play:

  Angela from Texas

  (S)he was a man; she was woman; she knew the secrets, shared the weaknesses of each. It was a most bewildering and whirligig state of mind to be in. The comforts of ignorance seemed utterly denied to her. She was a feather blown on the gale.

  — Virginia Woolf, Orlando

  In Medieval chess, when a pawn reached the eighth rank and became a Queen, a moral quandary arose. How could a male foot soldier change sex to become a woman? In 1912, the great chess historian H.J.R. Murray wrote about the dilemma: “The pawn had to change its sex…the moral sense of some players was outraged…the usual practice was to use a different name for the promoted pawn from that of the original Queen.”1 The pawn promoted into a piece that moved like a Queen but was given a masculine name, reserving the title of Queen for the original. Now, sensitivity to gender has shifted to the players themselves. The gender of each player in the U.S. and World Chess Federations is carefully registered, and usually—but not always—maintained till the end of his or her career.

  In Texas a chess expert ushered in the twenty-first century by transforming from a man, Tony, into a woman, Angela. Angela Alston calls the day she got her sex-change operation “the happiest of her life,” echoing what millions of pawns must have felt when they reached the eighth rank. And like pawns, Angela struggled against ranks of adversity.

  “I was born aspected of both genders,” Angela says. “I have more testosterone than most women, but less than most men.” Angela’s condition is known as pseudo-hermaphroditism, in which a child is born with ambiguous genitalia. The incidence is estimated to be 1 in 20,000. In the more rare case (approximately one in a million) of “true hermaphroditism,” a baby has tissues of both male and female sex organs.

  Angela’s wavering between the male and the female and eventual transformation has been painful, expensive, and ultimately redemptive. In my first e-mail communication with Angela, she referred to herself as “two spirit.” In Native American culture, a two spirit is a revered person who has special insights into both the male and female psyches. Angela, who grew up in a traditional family in the fifties, feared that revealing her gender confusion would elicit more scorn than admiration.

  On a visit to Austin, Texas, I got a chance to speak with Angela face to face. We met in a dim, laid-back café, where Angela had driven from her home in San Antonio. She arrived dressed in white jeans and a black-and-white knitted sweater. She wore glasses and her long hair was crimped. She is self-conscious about her voice, which she worries sounds like a man’s. “My voice is the one thing I cannot change.” I did not notice anything about Angela’s voice. Only her large, masculine hands might have led me to guess her history.

  Angela Alston. (Photo by Jennifer Shahade.)

  Angela and I immediately felt comfortable with each other. We settled into couches on the smoking side of the café. Angela ordered a latte, lit up a menthol cigarette, and began to rhapsodize about the Texas capital. “I love getting a chance to visit Austin—it’s an oasis in Texas,” she raved. “In this state, intellectual activity is like water in the desert.” Austin has a liberal, artistic community. The largest branch of the University of Texas draws 50,000 students, and the downtown is scattered with independent bookstores, country-music bars, and coffee shops. I spotted a vegetarian restaurant offering ten percent off to anyone with a mullet haircut. George W. Bush’s face was silk-screened onto T-shirts that read One-Term President, while Keep Austin Weird was the bumper-sicker slogan of choice. Angela thrives in such an accepting environment. “In Austin you can do anything without being persecuted. Intellectual activity is what life is about for me.” Angela is drawn to chess for its challenge, pointing out, “I could play this game for my whole life and never near the pinnacle.”

  Born in Boston on December 14, 1955, with both male and female genitalia, Angela was quickly designated as a male and named Tony. “After that, no one bothered to look for years.” Early on, Tony knew that he didn’t fit in. “As a six-year-old, I realized that something was very wrong. I did not fit in with the boys. I thought I was mentally ill.” A ten-year-old Tony would browse in the psychology section of the public library, hoping to find some clues to the nature of his condition. At thirteen, he chanced upon a copy of a book by Christine Jorgenson (1927-1989), a photographer who traveled to Denmark to get a sex-change operation. When the story leaked out to the press, the charismatic, multi-talented Jorgenson instantly became a public figure—an object of ridicule for some and an inspiration to others, like the young Tony, who said that finding Jorgenson’s autobiography “was like a revelation. Finally, I saw someone who was like me.”

  Throughout her life as Tony and as Angela, she has maintained a passion for chess. Tony learned the moves from his sister when he was six and played in his first tournament as a teenager. Tony became quickly hooked on the game, particularly attracted to its psychological aspects. He devoured the writings of his favorite player, the second world champion, Dr. Emmanuel Lasker. Lasker was well-educated in math, philosophy, and psychology and was friends with major intellectuals, such as Einstein. “If I could be a fly on the wall, anywhere, anytime, it would be during the conversations between Lasker and Einstein.”

  Tony had a frenetic lifestyle as a youth, switching from job to job: taxi driver, land-surveyor, cook, and Navy payroll officer. Throughout all of this, Tony was depressed. In his stint as a cab driver, passengers used to recount their woeful tales to Tony. “I listened, and thought, I could live your life standing on my head.” Tony used to drive into the worst neighborhoods of San Antonio in the dead of the night, which he now sees as a “subconscious suicide attempt.” He told me, “Part of me just wanted my life to be over. When I was eighteen I thought I would never make it past twenty-one, and when I was twenty-one I thought I would never make it to twenty-five. But, somehow, I kept going.”

  Tony’s lack of comfort in his masculine body led to his indulging in reckless behavior from hitchhiking to alcohol and drug abuse. Reminiscing, Angela assures me, “I did have fun.” But the troubles outweighed the good times. Tony didn’t feel like a man, so he created a male persona “imitating different aspects of dozens of the men I knew in my life—it was like making myself schizophrenic so I could fit in.” Tony lived in constant fear that his carefully constructed masculine identity would be unmasked: “I sometimes used feminine gestures—women tend to move their hands around a lot more when they talk, and one time, a tournament director told me, ‘You behave like a woman.’ I was terrified that I was going to be found out.” After such incidents, Tony would retreat, desperate to iron out the kinks in his personality.

  When Tony settled down in San Antonio, he set himself two goals: he wanted to become the top player in the city and the president of the chess club. He accomplished both feats in just four years. Instead of feeling joy, Tony felt only restlessness, wondering what to do next.

  In order to truly fit in, Tony decided that he would have to start a family. He met Teri in San Antonio while employed as a land-surveyor. They married and had two children, Ian and Sean. “Doctors told me the chances of me having kids were very low, but it happened.” Tony kept his birth co
ndition secret from Teri: “She told me that I didn’t look or feel like other men, but she didn’t realize the extent of it.” During this time, Tony stopped using drugs, although he was drinking a lot. “I replaced one vice with another.” The relationship was problematic and, though Angela does not reveal exactly what went wrong, she claims, “We never really got along.” In 1993, after twelve years of marriage, Tony and Teri divorced.

  Angela recalls being in a constant state of depression while living as a man. “I used to be so jealous of people who were born into one sex, and did not have to go through what I had to go through.” In May 1996, a few years after his marriage with Teri fell apart, Tony became determined to pursue the dream he’d had since he was twelve years old. Tony yearned for an external body and social identity to match his internal female self. “I had tried everything else. I had to either live as I really was or die.”

  Tony was well aware of the obstacles he would face along the way. “Some people thought I was just insane to give up being a white man in this culture. They did not understand why I would voluntarily descend the socio-economic ladder.”

  Tony let it be known that he’d decided to let his female self emerge. As there were no laws in Texas to protect the rights of transgender individuals, employers cut back Tony’s hours as a cook and were openly nasty. In March 1998, Tony went to a medical doctor, who confirmed the existence of his rare medical condition. Then he went to the courthouse, changed his birth certificate designation to female and renamed himself. “When I was seventeen years old, I decided I liked the name Angela, and wanted it for myself. It took me twenty-five years.” Once she legally became a woman, her rights were protected at work, since she could claim sexual discrimination based on gender. This attracted the immediate attention of worried managers. Angela said they walked on eggshells once they understood her new legal rights. They gave Angela her hours back and were careful not to say anything offensive, at least not to her face.