The world’s top chess federation has ruled that transgender women cannot compete in its official events for females until an assessment of gender change is made by its officials.
Wow. The argument against trans women in sports is already unscientific enough. Why is chess even split into gendered categories? This just makes zero sense.
It is generally not, most tournaments anyone can enter. However, there are women-only tournaments because for a lot of social and historical reasons, men dominate the open tournaments.
Interesting side-note fact on the power of social norms: if a woman and man play without knowing each other’s gender the woman will be more likely to win than she would if either party is made aware.
All the more reason to include trans and nonbinary people then. Blur the lines. Drag should also be encouraged.
Fuck it we should do the masked singer thing for chess. Masked grandmaster!
Seriously, a lot of people would play better chess if they weren’t intimidated by their opponent. Unless you consider headology part of the game, the way it is in poker and Cripple-Mister-Onion.
Good thing trans-women haven’t ever faced any historical or social oppression /s
There most certainly is evidence that going through male puberty can confer an advantage in some sports. Not all sports. If there are going to be restrictions placed, I would prefer they be placed by the sports’ governing body, who presumably understands how competition works in their sport, based on science.
In this case, though, it seems to be based on social issues, as some others in this thread have pointed out. There are reasons why the womens-only tournaments were formed in the first place, and some feel that letting trans women in would undermine those reasons. We can’t just pretend those reasons don’t exist.
Socially, I have no problem addressing trans women however they want to be addressed, or letting them use whatever bathroom they want. I would prefer to let the governing bodies of individual sports and activities decide what is most fair for all involved, using science. I think politicians should generally get their noses out of all of it, and leave people alone to discover who they are.
using science
I would love to see the “science” behind this FIDE decision though.
The science here is a bit more roundabout. The women’s leagues appears to have been started in the first place (based on some of the other posters here) because males have more success at the highest levels than females. Everyone acknowledges that this gap shouldn’t exist, yet we still have it. So it’s not a scientific basis justifying the segregation, it’s that science can’t explain the outcomes, so the segregation was established to try and make the outcomes more equitable.
Another poster asked whether trans women somehow need to “prove” that they’re oppressed to the same extent. And, ultimately, that might be what’s required, as absurd as it sounds. Because I think we legitimately don’t know whether this male advantage maps to all males, or just those born male.
Maybe, once we establish some data from more trans women competing at the highest levels, we’ll be able to answer that. For now, they made a decision which basically turns the women’s leagues into cis-women’s leagues.
So it’s not a scientific basis justifying the segregation, it’s that science can’t explain the outcomes,
Biology can’t explain the outcomes (which historically meant women were less likely to compete successfully) but I bet sociology can.
toothless smile
There are reasons why the womens-only tournaments were formed in the first place, and some feel that letting trans women in would undermine those reasons. We can’t just pretend those reasons don’t exist.
Yeah, sadly transphobic bigotry is real and we can’t just pretend it doesn’t exist, we have to fight against it, but there’s no legitimate reason for this
based on social issues,
What issues?
There are reasons
What reasons?
Prejudice is not a reason, and it’s not a valid social issue either.
I believe it’s done mainly to encourage women to play. More than any genetic differences like other sports.
I feel like as it makes very little difference, so letting trans people play either doesn’t really matter.
Except it’s going to discourage AMAB women from playing, so that excuse for this bigoted policy doesn’t hold water
Why are cheese tournaments even gendered to begin with?
To add to squids answer: There isn’t a segregated mens and womens category. There is an open category and a women’s only category.
What happened in the open category is that because the societal pressures and social constructs that disincentivized young girls to play, women weren’t placing high in the open category. (Because top players end up being top players because they started when thwy were 5) This leads to a feedback loop where young girls see less women in the sport and get reinforced that it is not for them so don’t pick it up at a young age, so less persue it and get good, so less women are seen at high levels, etc.
So then comes the women’s category to combat women not feeling like they belong in that space. Women can compete in both the open and women’s categories.
But because it is an intellectual thing mostly, barring transgender women is ridiculous. In athletic sports you could almost try to argue that a woman that went through male puberty could be stronger(ignoring how estrogen weakens them and they cannot compete in the men’s category anymore). You could try to make that argument in athletic sports (and it is a different discussion to this) and almost seem logically consistently on the surface level if you don’t think about it any further than your fox news talking points, but what is the argument here? If a woman went through a male puberty they were possibly socialized as male and weren’t told as a kid that chess wasn’t for them and so they have an intellectual advantage over cis women?
I don’t get it. It seems like, just with athletic sports, it is not about the sanctity of the sport or about fairness, it is about banning trans people from public spaces and policing what women can be.
Because different genders taste cheese differently obviously duh. Don’t want to give them NBs an unfair advantage in the Roquefort round
(Serious answer - I think it’s to try and combat entrenched sexism in the sport? There aren’t many women in chess and by making a space explicitly for them you hopefully create a safe space that can encourage more women to take up the pursuit. As it’s a social perspective thing, AGAB therefore really shouldn’t matter because the point is to go “look women!” Not “women are inherently better/worse and so we should segregate on gender”)
Because different genders taste cheese differently obviously duh.
I’ve heard it is possible to fascinate a woman by giving her a piece of cheese.
It’s true. Cheese is extremely fascinating. Please give me cheese.
How is gender even relevant in chess?
it isn’t. the main league and FIDE scoring have no such restrictions. the women’s scoring and events were created separately because chess is heavily dominated by men for whatever reason. i think trans women can compete in the main events which are not gender restricted, just as non-trans women are welcome to.
Unlike many other sports, I honestly don’t see how chess is impacted by gender, nor why we’d have different leagues other than legacy historical strangeness. If I were king for a day, I’d just get rid of gendered leagues for chess. Everyone plays in an open league.
Oof. Fucking FIDE. Trans women should be able to compete in the women’s sections.
About the gender gap - the gender gap in performance is a statistical relic of the participation gap. Control for participation and the performance gap vanishes.
Women’s sections exist to help promote participation and competition in that cohort. Its the same reason junior sections for kids exist, senior sections for older adults exist, and ratings limited sections like U1200 and U1500 exist.
Unlike other sports, a trans person would have no physiological advantage or disadvantage competing across gendered sections.
So what’s their plan when someone accuses their opponent of being AMAB to try to get them DQ’d?
The fact that this is a stupid thing to do aside, what does “assessment of gender change” even mean? Like, are they gonna go hand you a quiz to find out how “wOmAnLiKe” you are or something
Didn’t even know there were separate women’s tournaments. Don’t really see the point, honestly, chess isn’t like Greco-Roman wrestling or something where the gender disparity is pretty significant.
But, whatever. On the whole this strikes me as an actually reasonable compromise, so long as they do remain willing to conduct these investigations and reassignments without too much feet-dragging.
analysis of individual cases that could take up to two years.
They are already getting ready to drag their feet. The other policies announced here aren’t much better. In particular:
Holders of women’s titles who change their genders to male would see those titles “abolished,” the federation said
There’s no reason for that. What does transitioning have to do with past titles. It all reeks of transphobia.
It’s just a technicality. The gendered leagues don’t need to exist in the first place. But since they do, cleaving to the rules helps maintain the sense of fairness for all the cis folks. Say, if someone was a teen champion, they would no longer be the teen champion once they aged past their teen years. They become a former teen champion.
I agree it’s fundamentally rooted in transphobia, it’s literally a compromise with it. But I find that preferable to an outright ban of even acknowledging transition in the first place.
And yea, we’ll have to see how they handle it. I definitely noticed them opening the door for foot dragging. It’ll ultimately be up to whoever is actually in charge of their investigative wing though. If they actually are fair about it, this could be a step forward.
The gendered leagues exist to promote women in chess. They need to do this because women have historically been discriminated against. These new rules feel like they are asking trans women to prove they are oppressed enough to deserve to play in women’s leagues.
Some of the requirements for the change in status is problematic as well.
That is a hard requirement to meet in large chunks of the world. Many countries don’t legally recognize gender change so it may be quite literally impossible to comply with “national laws and regulations.” There’s some carve out for asylum and refugee status. But it is possible to be a trans woman in a country, not be able to legally change your gender, and not feel unsafe enough to seek asylum.
I’m reading more on the titles now. So from the actual FIDE document:
And from what [FIDE titles]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/FIDE_titles) are on Wikipedia. It seems there is an underlying misogyny in how women’s titles work. It seems to me the proper solution is to get rid of the separate title requirements.
Ooh, that’s clever. They ducked out of having to set their own criteria.
That definitely changes things somewhat. I was assuming the investigation would involve your doctor providing testimony, not whatever hoops your local jurisdiction may or may not have in place.
I suppose women’s leagues had more value in the past than they do now, I don’t see any problems with just getting rid of them at this point. But this could just be my western perspective speaking. They might still have great value in other parts of the world.
It now sounds like they just ducked the issue though, for the most part. Not setting their own criteria or using the criteria of an international medical association was a little underhanded. Just because the local laws vary from place to place shouldn’t mean trans folks from some places can’t win chess tournaments anymore.
Honestly that surprises me a lot less though. Chess is unusually popular with intellectual-leaning bigots for some reason, it’s a bit of a refuge for racism sometimes. Makes me really glad Magnus is the top player these days, he’s a bit more of a modern guy.
I think women’s leagues have their place still. Or some kind of system to encourage more women into chess. There’s currently 15.7k men with titles and only 4k women with titles. Until those numbers get closer I would want to see some kind of action taken.
If you want to get radical with women’s league you can just have the requirement for them to declare that you are a woman. It can quite literally be a checkbox on a forum when registering. Social pressure will take care of most of the issues. The edge case of men regesterioin bad faith can be handled on a case by case basis.
We really do need some better way to catch cis folks mis-registering in bad faith. It’d resolve some issues around the whole broader battle.
We could just do blood tests. Check for a wider variety of steroids in professional sports while we’re at it. Then, your hormone levels would classify you, not anything you could say or choose.
Invasive as all hell though.
We really do need some better way to catch cis folks mis-registering in bad faith. It’d resolve some issues around the whole broader battle.
No we don’t and no it wouldn’t, bigots are just going to come up with the next excuse for their bigotry while we’re subjecting innocent people to things that are (as you aptly put it) invasive as all hell
So you think we should “maintain a sense of fairness for cis folks” at the expense of creating actual unfairness towards trans and nonbinary folks? Since it’s been shown (cis) women fare better against men when neither knows the other’s sex, wouldn’t it be fairer to simply hide the combatants from one another? Then it would be pure chess.
Okay lib, let’s see how “compromise” works for ya. Easy to say when your cis.
“You need to compromise on your requests for equal treatment and basic human dignity, and if you don’t you’re being the unreasonable one” /s
Amazing and heartbreaking how many people honestly expect trans people to live like that
Some people want the whole world. Others just want to see improvement.
I’m just saying if your compromise involves throwing a minority under the bus, your just a speedbump on the road to fascism.
Eh. Just because some compromise is bad does not mean all compromises are bad. Every situation is unique, and it’s not like compromise is murder or something.
Democracy outranks human rights. The human rights were put there in the first place by the democracy, and can be amended by it as well. It completely outranks them, unless you believe they are “god-given” or something.
This is why compromise within your own political system, in certain cases, retains value. If your faction is not strong enough, as trans folks in international chess probably aren’t, then it’s a tacit acknowledgement of your right to exist.
Assuming the previous position was an outright ban, anyway. I don’t actually know if it was or not.
Democracy outranks human rights. The human rights were put there in the first place by the democracy, and can be amended by it as well. It completely outranks them, unless you believe they are “god-given” or something.
Just have to chime in here.
Human rights are fundamental and intrinsic. They can’t be “outranked.”
Legislating for them and enforcing them is due to institutions such as governments (and in an international context the ICC if, say, the government has become genocidal).
Democracy outranks human rights.
I don’t recall any part of the bill of rights saying “this doesn’t apply in cases where it’s unpopular”
I don’t really agree here, as a trans women myself I face issues like sexism just as cis women do, and depending on how well a trans women passes she might face additional issues with transphobia. Chess is a sport of strategy and there is no science that somehow suggest AMAB people have more brain power than AFAB people.
