Finnish Hearthstone Tournament Bans Lady Gamers--UPDATED

So you know that, given the opportunity, Ill try to write about esports.  Its a growing field, its an important sub-culture of gaming thats helping boost its legitimacy, and lets face it: theres lots of good money in the world of professional gaming.  Plus, watching it change and develop over time is a joycompare your 10 million dollar prize for the International to the first Street Fighter tournaments all that change in a matter of years is just enthralling.

But the growth of E-sports to a legitimate sport may not be all good.  In fact, if the actions of south Korean-based International E-sports Federation are anything to go on, we might be better off keeping e-sports nichebecause in a startlingly depressing move, theyve recently announced that a Finnish-based Hearthstone tournament will be a strictly male-only event.  No females will be allowed to compete.

Slightly baffling, right?  Indeed, according to IeSP, female and male gamers will play different games and will be segregated by gender. Men can play DOTA 2, Hearthstone, Starcraft II and Ultra Street Fighter 4.  Women, on the other hand, will be relegated to Starcraft II and Tekken Tag Tournament.



Why?  According to a post on their facebook page...

1 - promoting female players. We know that e-Sports is largely dominated by male players and females players are actually a portion of the overall player base. By hosting a female-only competition, we strive to promote female gaming on a global scale.

2 - International standards. IeSF is very close to get e-Sports recognized as a true sports like it should be. Part of that efforts is to comply with the international sports regulations. For example, chess is also divided into male / female leagues.

The first point is interesting and actually not unfair.  For example, I watch professional League of Legends, and I think of all the teams Ive seen around the world in three years, Ive only seem a girl play once. But an all-female tournament could be started while still allowing girls to participate in normal tournaments (and would be infinitely less controversial), so its not a great excuse.

And the second one would make more sense if Esports were a physical sport, because hey; there are legitimate, undeniable physical difference between men and women that makes that divide necessary.  No such divide exists in eSports, and I think by following the standard isnt so much making us look more legitimate as it is wasting an opportunity for equal gender rights.  Sure, chess divides by genderbut its older, set in older traditions, and female grandmasters dont get nearly as much attention as men.  Why fall into that trap when we, a new sport, have the opportunity to take a step forward?

Unsurprisingly, this is a very controversial subject and is getting the ire of people around the web: what do you guys think?  How angry should we be, if at all?

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UPDATE: After only a day of controversy, IeSF has officially reversed their previous stance and has since opened up the tournament to both male and female participants.  This comes to us from a new posting on their official facebook:
 

Our reason for maintaining events for women only is that we acknowledge the importance of providing women with ample opportunities to compete in e-Sports,
a currently male-dominated industry. Without efforts to improve female representation in e-Sports events, we can't achieve true gender equality.
However, we realize that hosting a "male-only" competition is not the right way to go - as we stated, the industry is already male-dominated.
The fact that a female-only competition is being held for the reason stated above doesn't mean that there is need to define the main competitions as "male-only".
Therefore, we have decided to remove "male-only" competitions. This means the upcoming IeSF World Championship will host tournaments in 2 sections:
an "open-for-all" section which is open for all genders (replacing men-only competitions), and a female-only tournaments as stated previously.

The forces of good triumph again!