- cross-posted to:
- news@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- news@lemmy.world
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.
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Lol, literally the only game where physical size, bone density, lung capacity and muscle strength does not matter is keeping men and women separate! Haha… In chess there should be no separate category for women, unless… Unless… Unless we believe that women are less smarter than men.
Chess got an open class and a female class. The latter is there to provide a safer environment for girls and hopefully encourage more to try out the sport.
Why do girls need a safe environment when playing with boys?
Because as we’ve proven times and times again when in presence of women, we’re a bunch of morons that can’t treat them with the respect they deserve.
Men can be nasty and intimidating towards women as history have shown a million times. Add in the fact you have a lot of “old fashioned” men in the sport that may not be up to date on how you should behave in the third millennium. If you want to grow the sport, you need to facilitate a safe and welcoming environment for everyone. Tournaments exclusive to girls is one way build towards that.
If you want to grow the sport, you need to facilitate a safe and welcoming environment for everyone.
Hm. In addition to a welcoming environment it might be fun to have a ‘cutthroat’ class with an opposite approach where intimidation, bullying, and over-the-top shit-talking is encouraged. They could have competitors come out in like pro-wrestling gear or something and have a stare-down at the beginning of the match.
Nerdy men playing a board game are intidimating? How do women even get anything in life done of they are this fragile? WTF? Do you also want separate women-only schools, and women-only companies?
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What is abusive about saying that women are strong and should play with men without issues?
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Holy fuck. Stereotype often?
Because they want one? Why are there woman only gyms?
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You seem hurt
The vast majority of times when men’s and women’s sports are separated it isn’t for the benefit of the men. It is because it would be a blow-out if the two sexes were together.
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Football? American Football has no restrictions on gender, it’s just that no woman can compete after puberty truly sets in. What that guys says is true about physical sports. Women can’t compete and never could. I can’t think of a single sport where a woman could outcompete a man in a physical sense. Even something like gymnastics, I think men still overcome the natural female advantage that comes from being small.
Chess from what I recall created a woman’s division because of the systematic biases and pressures girls faced. However, if I’m recalling correctly, it’s not particularly weird for a woman to complete in the open division. It’s just not a welcoming place for woman, so beginners often start in the women’s division. With that in mind I don’t see why transpeople shouldn’t be allowed. They wouldn’t be welcome much either in the open division, but also I’m not sure they’d be welcome in the women’s division either, so it’s kind of a wash.
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Women traditionally have been discouraged from competitions, including chess. To speak in broad strokes, even in progressive locations around the world, there are still those who believe that traditional gender roles mean women should but compete. Men have a generational head start. We are at the stage where, in order to be equitable and fair, we should be creating extra opportunities for women. If we didn’t, tradition and systemic practices would continue to discourage women.
Chess has no male category. There’s open, and female. This allows an extra space for women to compete against each other, feel safe, and make connections and friendships with other women in the minority. While still allowing them to compete in the coed category on a level playing field.
We will most likely continue to be at this stage for generations.
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Sorry to be contrarian here, but at the high competitive level chess is a cardiovascular challenge. If you listen to serious chess players talk about playing it’s not just a simple mental exercise.
High performing chess players have a higher HRV. Chess grandmasters might be sitting still but their body is undergoing a high degree of stress. https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2019-14359-001
Men statistically have higher HRV on average, and the outliers are even more extreme. https://www.whoop.com/ca/en/thelocker/normal-hrv-range-age-gender/
So when you enter into a competitive environment it’s just nicer to know you have a MORE level playing field.
I know chess specifically is controversial with regards to gender stuff and I’m not saying it’s perfect. I’m just saying that there are real reasons to support separate brackets.
Well… this is certainly enough bullshit to make the crops grow
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Pretty typical for here to see a post with actual sources and instead of people doing their own research they instead want to downvote and dog-pile. You can be upset with the outcome but there are reasons behind it (and it’s not just them jumping on the trans bashing bandwagon, they outlined exactly why it was done and how it works for male-female transitions and vice versa)
Providing a source doesn’t make a statement unchallengeable, especially if the source is deeply flawed.
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You could just say “I’m a fucking moron” and save yourself some time
Why are men like this?
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This dude channeling his inner Radovid
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This just in: throughout all of history women were never involved in politics; somehow relates to them being bad at chesd
Women often ruled capably (Nefertiti, Boudica, Catherine, Elizabeth, etc) were politically involved throughout history ,and were likely some decision-makers in early societies, as temporary habits were likely determined by foragability.
They are not bad at chess. There are biased circumstances both social and epistemological that have prevented their involvement with the evolution of Chess. I think these chess people are more afraid of someone insulting Chess and in the process insulted a lot of people.
Yeah dude this was sarcasm, ain’t there a whole era named after a female ruler?
If you want my personal chess opinion they statistically do worse cause chess is nothing but a game of emotions now, and the old masters made sure they had less competition by making women an easy target. Idk why the whole tourney isnt done online if they want an actual representation of chess skill, not just the bachlorette type drama we got going on
I agree. I just think it’s detrimental to just shout that something is wrong as though it’s common sense without analysis or reasoning.
How important to your survival is composing weirdo passages like this on the Internet? Or are you calling yourself one of the “stupid” or “insane” people who can concentrate on something other than “but what if lion might put me in mouth?” or “my tum tum feel empty soon”?
No, I’m saying chess has been biased from the start and the games greatest players have been neurodivergent for a long time. Gender injustice is happening here, but it also has complex layers worth investigating, too. Like, how much of Chess’ DNA and evolution has been balanced based almost exclusively to satisfy traditionally male interests (domination, competition). How did the pieces and board change to fit the boys’ game.
Is it helpful the WNBA ball is smaller? I’d say yes, but not just in the obvious ways, but also in service of the meta game and to put the best product forward. There are extenuating circumstances. I was trying to say: the exclusion is so deeply entrenched in the historical male worldview that it might just need to have these debates and growing pains to become what it should be: fair and fun.
None of y’all are getting it. Trans women have an unfair advantage in chess because they can turn the king into another queen.
Trans men can do the opposite, but that’s way less useful…
That would put the chess judges into a paradox and their mind would lock up, requiring a visit to the ICU. Because trans pepople can only do that, thay are “a danger to the whole chess community” /s
And they also made it so trans men have to give up any women’s titles they’ve earned. So, they simultaneously think trans men are men, but trans women are not women.
If anything, based on the past comments of the head of the organization, they have a position that’s generally “women are dumber than men and we want to make decisions that align with that ethos always”.
I’m still wondering why there is even gender based play in Chess.
I’ve always heard that it’s to encourage visibility of women players and encourage women to take up the game, but this ban goes against that idea and just makes it sound like women aren’t as good at the game. Just like ol’ Bobby would want, I guess.
Strangely, in chess, there is almost never a man category. There is everybody and there is women. wikipedia . See also motivations why and arguments against. It’s tricky.
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Arbitrarianism, “everythng else is gendered, so…”
To be clear, the head of FIDE is this guy with close ties to the Russian fascist state.
And the CEO is Emil Sutovsky, who recently made a twitter poll, basically asking, let’s be honest, does anyone actually care to watch this women’s tournament? When he never made a similar poll for any other tournament.
The chess world really needs to outgrow the sexist and transphobic FIDENo wonder the “gender change” wording of their new rules is so similar to the new Russian law that essentially bans transitioning.
One can imagine that every oligarch who wants to suck the milk of Mr. Putin is required to demonstrate loyalty periodically by pissing in the eyes of one of Mr. Putin’s designated targets. LGBTQ+ is just one of those.
this makes sense because cis women have such small bones they can’t reach past the centre board, giving most trans women and tall cis women an inherent advantage. /s
what the fuck chess this is just blatant transphobia
It’s transphobia and misogyny. Because it implies that men are smarter than women.
Why are men and woman separated in chess??
Traditionally chess has been a men’s game, and female adoption is limited. The creation of an exclusive women’s division is to generate a pathway to success for women, even if it’s known to have a lower ceiling compared to men. Basically, it is to foster the game in females.
There is literally no disadvantage to being female in chess.
Making a female only division is a form of soft sexism through low expectations.
Next thing you will be patting them on the head and condescendingly praising them for doing so well.
We are not discussing the physical advantages. We are discussing about career advantages.
In some countries it is actually advantageous to be female when attempting to get into STEM at college , there is additional talent identification and tuition at high schools with the girls in STEM programs that makes sure that girls who have an aptitude for STEM are identified and offered additional tuition, coaching and mentoring above and beyond what boys would receive (who’s STEM grades have on average fallen over the last 20 years. Since school budgets have not grown but additional programs that favor girls have been mandated the funds to run those programs have come at the expense of the general programs that have been cut back and underfunded resulting in a two tier education system with girls occupying the upper tier while feminist misandrists doggedly deny that a gender gap even exists)
So yes , there are advantages , but now how you think . And egalitarians have been looking on with increasingly despair as a new gender gap is emerging that mirrors the old gender gap almost exactly.
So there should be no barrier to entry for females in chess.
(This post is explicitly anti-sexist , for those that need it spelled out to them. What I am suggesting is that education budgets need to be beefed up so that nobody’s education is suffering)
You know what, I also hate these women’s only scholarships and accelerated education programs too, but I was just speaking the way of the world, not my opinions.
Based on my position in STEM education as a lecturer I am not allowed to have opinions. (Not until I receive full prof.)
Why does men being around affect their liking of chess? Why does anyone care if they like chess or not? It’s a board game you sit at a table playing. If they want to play board games with other people, it really shouldn’t matter who those other people are.
That isn’t the problem. The problem is how it has been naturally male-dominant makes it naturally unfriendly to other groups in the first place.
Not everyone is comfortable with this. By a large margin. The dedication of an event for women only creates that comfort zone.
This situation, and I humbly state I mean no fallacy, is strikingly similar to STEM education. Nobody is preventing them from joining, nobody cares if anyone likes it or not, but the fact that it is dominated by a specific group in the “open” field makes it less appealing to the other groups.
Alright, so woman want to have a woman’s only chess club to dominate their club with a gender because they feel the regular club is dominated by another gender. Id assume though, woman could play in the normal club dominated by men if they choose to? All seems silly. Part of the appeal of board games or videos games is that it’s a battle of the minds. A 10 year old kid can win against 300 lb MMA fighter. We can’t really help that naturally less men want to learn to bake, while less woman want to learn to hunt, can we? It should be open though to whoever. I think excluding a transgender woman on this is wrong, she has no advantage. It seems plain hurtful, and id think the woman who say they feel excluded from the main league should be able to empathize. I can understand physical competition, but that’s just my opinion.
Come to think about it, maybe it’s probably similar to how weight classes work in martial arts, except that the point of this is to guarantee that women can progress somewhat within their careers.
Of course I do not agree that we need to elevate or celebrate them to the level of grandmasters.
In a specific case of transgenders, I understand that transgender women are excluded until an official statement of medical or psychological evaluation has been made, to prevent cases where men illicitly transition just to play in these, and pardon my sexism, weaker leagues.
How can it be like weight classes? What are you measuring? In a tournament people play, the winners move forward. Doesn’t matter what’s in the pants. If ya lose, you’re welcome to keep playing with whoever else you want. Is the woman’s chess league saying men have an advantage in chess? Chess is about memorizing a bunch of different outcomes. I dunno, don’t have much interest in it myself, but if I was a woman and wanted to be the best in the world, I’d want to play against the best. There’s plenty of dudes that get their ass kicked in the men’s league. Should they make a separate league so they can win it? Are men just better at everything? Even board games? Or do men just care more? I’ve seen the graph that says men are more likely to have geniuses, but also more likely to be retards. Is that where it comes from? Does everyone have to be good enough to be a grandmaster to play? Cause I’d have to guess there’s a handful of superstars and the rest just play. But I don’t follow it.
Again, you are missing the point. It’s that the point of a protected space for women is to promote women’s participation in chess, not to overly tout their position over others.
And no, this does not have to do with the intelligence curve. It’s entirely about careers and participation.
Men and women aren’t separated, at least not usually. Its a woman’s category and an open (everyone) category. Is almost completely opposite of sexist, gives women more opportunities to succeed.
Edit: link to a larger discussion on this topic
Women experience a fair amount of harassment in the open league. They aren’t forbidden from participating, but the environment discourages it, so they set up a women’s league too.
If there wasn’t widespread cognitive damage amongst a fair bunch of male players and organizers, they could implement a far more sensible solution: punishing harassment.
And the real reason is because women don’t do well against men. They get dominated except for a very small minority. So I orde for women to have more parity, they have women’s chess A biological man competing with them is, statistically, a huge advantage.
Do you have any papers backing this up?
I hope this is a joke. if it is, add “/s”
Tradition would be my first guess.
There’s a very simple explanation to this, sexism.
And that answer is wrong
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.
This is such a stupid argument, while you might be able to make the argument about sexual dimorphism in physical sports there’s literally no good reason why a woman shouldn’t be allowed to play chess against a man, or play chess against another woman if they are trans.
Chess is a game based on intelligence and strategy, it’s not based on strength. It seems that this decision was made primarily on the basis of sexism, either because they think that chess is ““manly”” or because they think that men are smarter than women or that women are stupid. Either way not logical, purely sexist.
Women have been allowed in the open division and Trans females will also continued to be allowed in that division just not in the women’s division.
So you’re saying there’s a case for discrepancy in other sports?
They said that while you might be able to make it for sports, you certainly can’t make it for chess. That doesn’t mean they personally think there’s a case for sports too.
Exactly, I’m saying that in chess there is no advantage or disadvantage between sex (or gender for that matter) because it is not a physical game.
No I was saying that for chess you can’t since there’s no unfairness or difference in advantage to playing chess as a man or as a woman.
Clarifications and comments (some pre emptive)
Chess has a women’s category to boost participation and spotlight female players.
Women can and do compete in the open category, which allows men and women. However, currently the highest rated women perform under the super closed “Super GM” level, so they participate in the tournaments that are less prestigious but fitting their rating. Male players like IM Eric Rosen also participate in such tournaments.
The best female player in history , Judit Polgar was 8th best in the world when taking both genders into account. There’s nothing stopping women from reaching the elite level in open chess. She even participated in the candidates tournament which decides who gets to play against the world champion for the world champion title. Unfortunately she didn’t perform too well, but it’s not because of her gender, she was basically beaten 2-1 (plus draws) by a male competitor, just like the other contestants in the round she was eliminated.
At her peak she had 2735 Elo points, making her 55th highest rated person in the history of organized chess. This is higher than one of the actual challengers to the crown, Nigel short.
Regarding the rulings:
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No one is going to pretend to be a woman, in order to convert the person’s identity with fide, they are required to have government issued paperwork saying they have transitioned. It’s not worth it.
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it’s funny that male to female transgender people are not regarded as women by this ruling, hence cannot participate in women’s events, but female to male transgender people also forfeit their women’s titles as they are not seen as women either. (To be fair, they can convert them to open titles, and get them back if they detransition officially)
So according to FIDE, transitioning from a man to a woman doesn’t make you a woman, you are considered a man, but also, transitioning from a woman to a man makes you a man, so you are also not considered a woman.
Seems paradoxical. You’d think they’d pick one and stick to it.
Also: chess does have physical advantages, but they seem to be reletive and not competitive. Most high level players have some sports regimen as it helps increase cardiovascular efficiency, but size of competitor doesn’t seem to matter as seen by David Bronstein and Mikhail Tal. Ian Nepomniatchschi intentionally lost weight for the world championship, and his ratings grew as a result.
Remember that whales are not necessarily more clever than humans even though their brains are huge in comparison.
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What? Is this real? Are the men and women not competing together? It is not a physical competition. Why the separation?
Currently, the top women don’t come close to the top men. Considering how few female chess players are in comparison, it’s not a surprise.
Having a women’s league means you can have chess news about women’s tournaments and champs and give them some visibility.
Currently, the top women don’t come close to the top men
because they’re excluded at all levels, lets not pretend it’s because women aren’t as good and need “protecting” from the “superior” men.
That doesn’t make any sense.
Yes, they don’t compete with men, but they still have women’s league and women from that league don’t come close to men (not all, ofcourse).
Could making united league deter women even more? Very possible.
I am not against, but still I think a strong bump in women’s chess league with marketing, money, better condition would be great, before possible merging.
Currently, women would just suffer with results for long time.
Unfortunately Chess doesn’t seem as healthy and open for that, and that is just sad.
I feel like if you really wanted to know you could easily look up the barriers that women face in chess (and in all sports), and I honestly don’t feel like spoon feeding you such basics, so I’m going to just paste my other reply here and leave it up to you to start educating yourself if you really want to:
The solution to men harassing women (and generally making them unwelcome, as they do) should not be to segregate women though, it should be to discipline men.
Which leads me to the real reason why women are segregated (because clearly isn’t about their safety or their inclusion) - because the men involved would have an absolute breakdown if they were beaten by a woman (not a problem exclusive to chess, either).
The reason there’s a women’s league in the first place is so they don’t get harassed by the men (ostensibly).
So while on the surface, a gendered League is stupid, there are real world reasons for the separation.
This decision might / maybe / could be an extension of that reasoning. But very likely it’s not, and it’s just more bullshit anti trans policy.
The best way to prevent harassment is not bigoted segregation by gender, but in fact punishing or banning people who harass others.
Yes, but to do that the organization would have to accept that the sexism is wrong and have the motive to do something about it.
Totally. But, you know, some people are idiots.
The solution to men harassing women (and generally making them unwelcome, as they do) should not be to segregate women though, it should be to discipline men.
Which leads me to the real reason why women are segregated (because clearly isn’t about their safety or their inclusion) - because the men involved would have an absolute breakdown if they were beaten by a woman (not a problem exclusive to chess, either).I think a lot of people are misunderstanding what’s going on here. There is an open league and a league restricted to women only.
Without a women’s league, there are fewer women seen playing, which reinforces the perception that it’s not a sport for women, which creates this feedback loop leading to a smaller pool of women playing chess, thus fewer grand masters who are women. I see value in creating more space for women in chess to create more opportunities for following generations.
I don’t like excluding trans women. I can imagine an argument that we’re not ready for this until we get to a place where we don’t think to distinguish between trans and cis women. A women’s league in 2023 that a young cis girl is watching that had 3 cis women and 97 trans women, still may look to that young girl like a league for trans women, and not a league for all women that they can see themselves competing in. Personally, I enjoyed watching a marginalized gender eSports competition, and I don’t think the presence of trans women invalidated the impact it could have inspiring young cis girls to pick up gaming.
If that’s the reason, I’d imagine trans women would be the most likely to be harassed by the cis men who are harassing cis women.
or they could just like… Not allow harassment.
Really the game is chess, you shouldnt even need to see your oponent, so it could be all done online.
Chess was pretty much perfected decades ago - now all the tournaments thrive on is psyching out your opponent, which they’ve made women an easy target by isolating them. No wonder they statistically do worse
Everyone make way! The White Knight has arrrrived!!
“Chess was pretty much perfected decades ago…”
Go to fucking BED Elon wannabe
Love how I got 6 notifications and like 5 are you
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I do other things too :(
Do you really have to ask…? It’s so obviously a bigoted decision, if real.
well this just doesn’t even make any fucking sense at all
I don’t think it’s a issue in chess. Unless they have to run 100m while holding the chess board.
They consider trans women men, and men are smarter than women. That’s what it implies anyway.
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Being good at chess isn’t about being “smart”, a lot of top chess players will tell you as much. It is however about things like spatial awareness and pattern recognition, and some studies have demonstrated those traits to be, on average, stronger in male subjects. I’m sure evidence to the contrary exists though.
Plenty of enlightened gents hitting the thread here to rubbish the need for a women’s category whilst simultaneously demonstrating the need for a women’s category
This place feels more like Reddit every day. Incidentally I notice also that Lemmy has inherited Reddit’s rule that every commenter is assumed male until proven otherwise. For a few days this place seemed like it might turn out different. Oh well.
can you explain this a bit more? I’m not seeing it
Double_A Nerdy men playing a board game are intidimating? How do women even get anything in life done of they are this fragile? WTF? Do you also want separate women-only schools, and women-only companies?
Rbmellor Tf are they in separate groups for? Don’t girls know how sexy they look playing cheers?
System_glitch And the real reason is because women don’t do well against men. They get dominated except for a very small minority. So I orde for women to have more parity, they have women’s chess A biological man competing with them is, statistically, a huge advantage.
Two others I recall have been since been removed
Etc
Why is chess even seperated by gender? Its a completely non physical.
The environment around men favors them to be stronger than women. If there were no women’s category, there would only be men playing chess and very very few women and that would sucks.
I think it’s to give the top women a platform, for young girls to see people like them on the TV and make them believe they can do it too. If enough young girls start playing and keep playing, there should be plenty of female players that can compete with the best men in short order. There are also women’s titles that have lower requirements than men’s. It’s a pretty controversial thing; some women refuse to take the “lesser” WGM title over the open IM title.
I’m not saying this works or I agree with it, but that’s the thinking.
To be honest, the girl’s category may not be as useful as it used to be but in certain country, it definitely is still very useful.
If transwomen wants to compete, compete in open. In my opinion, this has nothing to do whether or not a transwomen is a women but with the environment a person is growing in.
Because it’s already a sausage fest
There is usually an open section (what I guess you think is the men’s division), that is dominated by the top players who are almost if not all men. Why the top players are all men is not an easy answer.
Here is a post discussing it some. https://www.chess.com/forum/view/general/why-are-there-only-few-female-chess-players-at-the-top-level
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Bait
Of all the sports where someone’s biological sex would matter, chess is not one of them.
There is an open division where everyone can compete.
You have never been suplexed by someone you beat
