According to a friend who is a chess coach at the elementary school level, this misogynistic attack on girls in chess starts early. She says that the youngest kids are evenly split between boys and girls, and by the 2nd or 3rd grade, it’s dominated by boys - in part because the boys start to push girls out by their behavior and partially because of the larger culture around tournaments, which are still dominated by older men who hold pretty sexist views (much like on display here). She’s doing her best to push back against that, but she’s only one coach in one place.
Systemic misogyny is pretty strong in the chess world, in other words.
