@nmc2008: I assume you're trying to say that the "special treatment" in this situation is a net benefit or gain for women. I would argue it's actually quite patronizing. Either have a separate men's tournament and a separate women's tournament for all the games they feature or do all mixed tournaments.
This was not what they were originally doing, so it was inherently unfair. They were saying men will have tournaments for a, b, c and d games while women get tournament for a and z. So men not only had more games to play than the women's offerings, but they also had different games. As someone said earlier, what makes Tekken Tag a women's game and not a men's game? What makes Street Fighter IV the opposite? It made no sense to me as an outsider looking in. Games are games and the people who play them shouldn't be portioned out as though one side is more delicate than the other or one side is "better" than the other.
As a woman, If I had a choice between a mixed tournament and a women's only tournament, I would pick the mixed tournament every single day of the week. The thought at the back of my mind would be that I would never get any real recognition from people if I won the women's tournament when there is a mixed tournament going on at the same time. In the back of some minds, there would be talk that you were good enough to do well with the other women, but if you joined the other tournament you'd get smoked because guys are just better. Duh. This is similar to me when I see people argue the numbers of actual women who play games. Whenever the numbers come up that say close to half play games, a deluge of people chime in and say that they aren't playing "real" games, they're playing Facebook games and Candy Crush, so they aren't really gamers. I would feel worse for not trying my absolute best, which would be the mixed tournament that has, what I would assume, the best players of both genders.
Now the only good argument, I suppose, for this is that some women may be intimidated by joining the men. Well, intimidation is a natural part of competition. Maybe men are also intimidated by women, why wouldn't they get the benefit of not facing them? I think segregating only leads to bad things and reinforces stereotypes. I understand it in some instances, classes at a gym for instance where women would otherwise not exercise at all and decide to pay for the added privacy, but I don't approve of it in most other cases, especially the situation that precipitated this post.
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