The Phenomenon of Rebecca Harris
By: Persephone Page
Tags: Feminism, Equality, Womens Rights, Chess, Sexism

Although I signed up an account on chess dot com years ago, I had no real interest in the game of chess and hardly ever played at all, therefore, I consider myself an absolute beginner.

When I was a young girl, I only saw my father, uncles and male cousins play Chinese chess. Girls were made to cook, clean and look after young’uns. I remember this one time, I was peeling potatoes in the kitchen while my mother, aunties and other female cousins were busy preparing for the weekend feast for the whole family. The self pointed ‘China Number Ones’ started some serious intellectual debate again and got really noisy. My dad came into the kitchen in a hurry and brought me into the study filled with cigarette smoke where all the male members of the family gathered around the chessboard. My dad told me to sit down so I did, one of my male cousins was sitting on the other side of the board with a signature evil smirk and sparkles in his eyes. I was thinking ‘what the heck is going on?’ And my dad told everyone that I was smart, then my uncles rebutted that girls who were smart when young didn’t count because when they grew up their brains would shrink and they would mature as inferior beings compared to male children. They explained the basic rules of the game quickly to me, told me to go ahead and play so I did, and naturally, I lost. They were satisfied that they proved their theory with empirical data and sent me back to the kitchen. I felt I let my father down because he was a feminist at heart and was always trying to speak up for my mother and me and I did nothing to support his noble cause. This incident left some negative impression of this game on me and I never played it again.

But then, I was young and impressionable. Now, I am a fully grown adult and am a cheerful Nihilist. I am mainly into self-indulgence and brick walling the rest of the world thus I care very little about the opinions of others on anything. I have since long realized that my uncles’ speculations were just that, speculations, they may or may not be true, who knows and what does it matter. I was just one female, probably not the sharpest tool in the shed either and could hardly represent the entire female sex. In any case, I couldn’t care less about their debate over gender or anything else for that matter. They lived in their little bubbles and only saw what they wanted to see, they misattributed and over-analyzed a lot of stuff to self congratulate and justify their rotten attitudes and mistreatments of the other sex. They laughed then, I wonder if they are still laughing that I’m not around, eh.

Ok, enough of them pathetic fools. You may want to know what made me play chess again. You guessed right, Queen’s Gambit. When I started watching the popular Netflix show, I had no idea what a gambit was. I only had a vague idea of how the pieces moved but even then I couldn’t be sure. The show is ok in my opinion despite the press hyping it to a whole new height, presumably because a female player is a lead character and she is winning the world chess champion title with the help of all her he-seconds. This feels like a novelty in this commonly considered intellectually intense and extremely competitive game dominated by male players. But I didn’t read any of those articles, I already guessed what they’d probably say and was not that interested in any agenda pomping. I just wanted to play the game and see if I like it.

I liked it okay. I briefly read up on the rules and off I went, as foolhardy as the little girl I used to be. I learned fast and within a week of just playing the bots, I was able to go through them one by one from the starting rating of 250 to 1100 without any assistance. With the AI assistance, so far I was able to beat the bots of rating 2100. I don’t know if this is the norm but I feel fine and am happy to learn more though clueless on my next steps. I went on Twitch to see what’s good and soon was drawn to the channel hosted by a handsome young grandmaster named Daniel Naroditsky. He seemed different from the other streamers in that he is very well mannered, extremely conscientious and incredibly good at multitasking. I couldn’t believe anyone who could play a game of chess which requires intense concentration, read the fast-rolling texts in the chat and reply with well-thought-out responses at the same time, especially sometimes during prolonged hours of streaming. His ability seemed, extraterrestrial. Entertaining as it was watching him doing it, the moves he made were just too fast for me to comprehend in that kind of short time frame. Just as I was dropping off from frustration, his chatbot directed me to his YouTube Channel and there I found some really good videos where he played beginners and explained his thought process patiently and painstakingly. I started to pay more attention and warm up to him again, soon I discovered his speedrun sessions which he played players of all capabilities and explained the logic behinds the moves which could be immensely helpful to players who want to have a piece of a super GM’s thought process.

Then the most interesting thing happened, a female sounding username called Rebecca Harris was popping up everywhere on a free chess website called Lichess and most crucially winning top spots consistently over a steady period of time too. Who is this Rebecca Harris? The chess community was curious and went on a worldwide fanatic hunt for this mysterious lady who did the so-called impossible. Then after a period of intense debating and researching, the mystery was revealed that the real player behind this username is actually Daniel Naroditsky. Okay, it’s a male GM, no surprise there and everyone went on with their business as usual.

But hang on, this is actually interesting. From my personal experience, a lot of female players online use male-sounding usernames to blend in the community, that is very common and understandable, but when the true sex is revealed the situation sometimes becomes awkward, especially after a recent article published on Lichess explaining this gender dynamic in great details which I won’t repeat. But a male player using a female username? This has almost never happened before in chess history or any history for that matter and there’s no apparent awkwardness there. People realized Rebecca Harris is Daniel Naroditsky and that’s that, it’s just a username, right? Right? But why on earth would someone who is considered as superior sex submit to the degradation of the inferior sex? There are theories out there where Daniel never openly admitted to any particular one, therefore, the true reason remained a mystery. But one thing is for sure, Daniel himself is certainly ok with it. I think it comes down to the fact that Daniel is a very fair and gentle soul that he respects women and does not consider them as inferior. For the period of time I’ve been watching his channel on Twitch, never have I heard him making any sexist comments at all. As a matter of fact, every time someone subscribes to his channel or gifts him, he always playfully shout out ‘Damn girl’, regardless whether the donor is male or female. For someone despite being young as he is and still remains open-minded and respectful, I have a great deal of admiration.

So there, for the depressed young females with low self-esteem who struggle to carry on, use whatever username you want and do not beat yourselves up with the rudeness from random people. If you were lost and sad before, it’s high time to jump ship and rejoice. I’ll say no more and wait for you on the other side. Happy holidays!