Men in Women's only poker event at IP (5 of 5).

If the purpose of women’s events is to sell the game to new audiences, this type of lightheartedness should have been embraced not turned away. It’s scary when you think it through, that the reasons it didn’t happen were most likely because of personal ones and not for noble reasons.

I compared notes with another writer on another Texas Hold em
poker site once and we talked about the tone of “correction” emails. Usually, it’s when a player tells us we misspelled their name. Generally, especially for GCP which is really still more a service to the local community who play poker
than a business, they are very respectful and appreciative. Though, I’ve gotten a few that have been downright rude and accusatory. Oddly, they have always been from women and women only. These offending few have a chip on their shoulder it seems. And by the way, generally the warmest emails are also from women, so I’m not talking about ALL women or making any blanket statements.

Also, I’ve never had a man not be polite when they write to tell me I got their name wrong. Some might not even mention the typo until I see them a tournament months later, but if I get a woman’s name wrong and they write to tell me about it, at best I’m harboring indifference and apathy to their tournaments or their sex, and at worst I’ve been accused of being a sexist. The writer from the far more journalistic news site told me it was the exact same for him. Many women came at him like he intended to screw up their names, men never did.

First of all, by volume we make far more mistakes with men’s names than women’s names. Second of all, lighten up. I spelled your name wrong. My apologies, I’ll fix it. I got it wrong, but it’s not because I hate women or don’t respect you, it’s because I’m a bad proofreader and I’m sloppy. Attack me for that, don’t call me sexist because I spelled your name wrong. You want to call me sexist base it on something tangible... I'm sure you can twist something in these posts do so.

I bring this up, only because it is a small segment of the female poker community that looks for slights where there are none. Just as only a handful of women were opposed to Monkey and Kai playing, there is a small handful of women with their own agenda that is hurting the game for the own sex more than helping it—though they’d be happy to tell you otherwise. I wouldn’t doubt if they were the same handful.

***Look, before I get any hate mail, I love women, I respect women, and I’m all for equal rights. My wife, my mother, my sister and any other woman I've met are just as good as any man. There are millions of smarter women than me, a ton of better female poker players, and a huge number that are better writers than me (maybe a billion). I admit that freely, as I don't think women are inferior in any way. Though as a group there are some things men do better than women and vice versa. I'm pretty confident more women are better skilled at breast feeding than men and more men are probably more proficient at writing their name in the snow with their urine than most women.

I’m not opposed to women having women’s only poker tournaments or women’s only anything. I’m just pointing out the latent hypocrisy in the stated rationales I've heard for not letting the Monkey and Kia play and the real reasons they were excluded. The truth is a hand full of female poker players have an edge over the women’s fields, and they want to protect that edge and protect those fields. I don’t slight those women for feeling that way or protecting that edge, just don’t claim you were barring Kai and Monkey for playing for any other reason than personal ones.