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.

  • NewEnglandRedshirt@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    73
    arrow-down
    15
    ·
    1 year ago

    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.

    • binkster@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      27
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      1 year ago

      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.

        • Squids
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          4
          ·
          1 year ago

          Fuck it we should do the masked singer thing for chess. Masked grandmaster!

          • Mouselemming@sh.itjust.works
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            3
            ·
            1 year ago

            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.

    • Lmaydev@programming.dev
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      17
      arrow-down
      3
      ·
      edit-2
      1 year ago

      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.

      • gAlienLifeform@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        12
        arrow-down
        3
        ·
        1 year ago

        Except it’s going to discourage AMAB women from playing, so that excuse for this bigoted policy doesn’t hold water

    • Sarsoar@lemmy.ca
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      17
      arrow-down
      4
      ·
      1 year ago

      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.

    • Squids
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      14
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      1 year ago

      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”)

      • elscallr@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        7
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        1 year ago

        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.

        • CoderKat@lemm.ee
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          3
          arrow-down
          1
          ·
          1 year ago

          It’s true. Cheese is extremely fascinating. Please give me cheese.

    • nutsack@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      6
      ·
      edit-2
      1 year ago

      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.

  • jmp242
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    9
    arrow-down
    2
    ·
    1 year ago

    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.

  • OldWomanoftheWoods@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    8
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    1 year ago

    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.

  • qwertychomp@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    4
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    1 year ago

    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

  • Candelestine@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    5
    arrow-down
    14
    ·
    1 year ago

    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.

    • BiNonBi@lemmy.blahaj.zone
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      22
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      1 year ago

      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.

    • skymtf@pricefield.org
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      10
      arrow-down
      3
      ·
      1 year ago

      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.