Chess star slams sexists for focusing on her clothes & accent instead of game Instagram\/divyachess18-year-old Indian chess star Divya Deshmukh is hitting out at sexism she\u2019s experienced at tournaments in a series of scathing posts. Deshmukh, one of India\u2019s rising chess talents, is tired of women being taken for granted in chess and called out the sexism she\u2019s been dealing with. The chess star was feeling good about her performance at the Tata Steel Chess Challengers, which she finished 12th at, but revealed that fans weren\u2019t exactly the most excited about how she played the game. According to Deshmukh, this event was the straw that broke the camel\u2019s back, explaining that the audience was paying more attention to everything else about her than her chess matches. Indian chess star calls out sexism at tournament In a scathing Instagram post, Deshmukh said how she has noticed how women in chess are \u201coften just taken for granted\u201d and how the Tata Steel Chess Challengers event was another example of this. \u201cI played a few games which I felt were quite good and I was proud of them. I got told by people how the audience was not even bothered with the game but instead focused on every single possible thing in the world: my clothes, hair, accent and every other irrelevant thing,\u201d she wrote. She continued, \u201cI was quite upset to hear this and I think is the sad truth that people when women play chess they often overlook how good they actually are, the games they play and their strength.\u201d Deshmukh further added how she was \u201cdisappointed\u201d with how few people paid attention to her interviews. Chess Master Yosha Iglesias also chimed in on Twitter in support of Deshmukh, saying that her interviews were full of men insulting her and making sexual comments. Tata Steel Chess has responded to the backlash. In a statement to Chess.com, chief organizer Jeroen van den Berg said that the tournament will \u201cremain committed to promoting women in chess and ensuring a safe and equal sporting enviroment. Step by step, but we will get there.\u201d Divya, meanwhile, says she harbors no ill will against Tata Steel Chess and doesn\u2019t \u201cblame the spectators,\u201d adding that all the ones she met were kind. This is not the first time chess sexism has made headlines. Late last year, Anna-Maja Kazarian was fined over her choice of footwear at the World Chess Championships \u2013 something she says ruined the tournament for her.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Chess star slams sexists for focusing on her clothes & accent instead of game Instagram\/divyachess18-year-old Indian chess star Divya Deshmukh is hitting out at sexism she\u2019s experienced at tournaments in a series of scathing posts. Deshmukh, one of India\u2019s rising chess talents, is tired of women being taken for granted in chess and called out […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-45920","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45920","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45920"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45920\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45920"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45920"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45920"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}