Quote Originally Posted by DataNinja View Post
The reason for that sort of thing existing is often because environments can be frankly extremely hostile to women attempting these activities, so it's suppose to let people have a healthy environment to participate in, encouraging more people to join up. (Unfortunately, this sort of thing can end up kinda... causing a bit of a feedback loop, where the existence of the separate thing means that the overall environment may not change very much.)
Yeah, I'm aware of the intent behind them but IMO it seems pretty clear that it has backfired spectacularly. In providing a safe space, women have essentially been segregated into ONLY participating in that safe space and the optics essentially reinforce misogyny ("Women aren't good enough to play with us, that's why they need their own league").

This becomes sort of a self-fulfilling prophecy where the safe space is generally only used by people just learning the game, which adds to the perception of an inherent skillgap when really it's that true contenders don't really want to participate in the "beginner zone" but find themselves kinda frozen out of the "real" competition as a result.