The female Soviet chess champion Nona Gaprindashvili is suing Netflix for $5m for a line in its hit series The Queen’s Gambit that claimed she “never played men”, calling the assertion “grossly sexist and belittling”.
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In the series finale, a character says: “Elizabeth Harmon’s not at all an important player by their standards. The only unusual thing about her, really, is her sex. And even that’s not unique in Russia. There’s Nona Gaprindashvili, but she’s the female world champion and has never faced men.
Gaprindashvili, who is now 80 and lives in Tbilisi, Georgia, did face men. Dozens in fact. According to the lawsuit, she had faced 59 men, including 28 in one simultaneous match, as well as 10 grandmasters by the time the television series was set in 1968.
“They were trying to do this fictional character who was blazing the trail for other women, when in reality I had already blazed the trail and inspired generations,” Gaprindashvili said in an interview with the New York Times. “That’s the irony.”
Just add this to the list of all the fucked up shit about that show.
