On Chess and Feminism

First performed live: Monday, April 4, 2011

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You can turn on your television and travel at button pressing speed from the Discovery Channel to the History Channel.

You can surf the waves of the World Wide Web and you can pick up a book or listen to the stories your grandfather may have been telling you since before you can even remember about some man who invented some thing. But, not if you want to know about chess. See if you google chess, your 35,400,000 results will inform you that the tradition was planted by the Indians, watered by the Persians, fertilized by the Arabs, and harvested by the Southern Europeans, but no where, no where will it tell you about a man. However let me tell you that I think chess was invented by a feminist.

Whether you want to beat your opponent in just 4 moves, or somehow, if your pawns have all become prisoners of war stuck chained to the table, neatly in a row, parallel to the board, inches from your left hand, palm spread, flat on that same table, holding you steady, while your right hand grazes the surface of your pieces delicately craving combat… you need her.

She will play your modern day Jesus Christ, Buddha, Muhammad, whatever you wanna call it, this girl, this girl will be your saving grace… that look on your face when the girl next store walks by, the apple of your eye… this girl, this girl is the one.

She can shuffle or slide from side to side, she can become a hypotenuse. She has the ability to stand it your path or stop you dead in your tracks. She can destroy. She can ambush. She can kill. She does not ask for respect, nor does she even demand it, for she simply has it. Whether you were a scrawny, lanky, socially awkward boy, dawned in suspenders and pocket protectors, and you saw her through duct-taped spectacles, or you were a thirteen-year-old girl who read a flyer that told you you could miss third period if you joined the chess team, and you really hated that math class…

Your queen nearly immediately stole the respect right out from underneath your fingertips as you felt her power surge from the tip of her crown, up through your hand, along your arm, speed into your heart, seep into your veins, and force its way into your pulse when you moved her for the very first time.

Yes, a feminist must have invented the game of chess… or so I had once thought. But then I heard a poem by a wise man who said that “the reason pawns can’t move backwards is that if they could they’d kill their own king in a heartbeat.” And then it dawned on me that no feminist would have invented the game of chess. See she can shuffle or slide from side to side. She can become a hypotenuse. She has the ability to stand in your path or stop you dead in your tracks. She can destroy. She can ambush. She can kill. But I forgot to mention one important ability she has; the queen can move backwards. She can charge at her own king with strength, confidence, and ease, but she will always be one step away from him. She can never be in the same space. That smug look on her face when she glides across the board… the smug look on that scrawny lanky boys face, on my face, when I was just a thirteen-year-old girl trying to get out of math class… the smug look we all share when we take advantage of her beautiful figure, her grace, her power, her resilience, her privilege… but never did I realize that it was all just a facade. Hidden beneath her cloak and crown if you look deep into her eyes you will see, she was defeated before the game even started, destined to a life of subservience… of work to benefit her king, and while he can only take one single step at a time, she takes on the entire world, I mean board, protecting over a dozen at a time and fighting off just as many, yet she can't even live without him. You see, no feminist would create a game where the king and queen could not share the same space and no feminist would create a game where her queen would die for her king nearly every time and he could never do the same for her.

No feminist would create a game, no… No feminist would create a world… void of equality.

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This piece is my original work and may not be duplicated or used without my permission. Thank you.

The quote referenced is credited to Minneapolis poet and rapper, El Guante, in his poem "The Family Business."