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
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
