The international chess federation known as FIDE has published new rules that state that a person whose “gender was changed from a male to a female the player has no right to participate in official FIDE events for women until further FIDE’s decision is made”.
The new rules introduce the following changes:
- Trans women cannot participate in the women’s category unless they are explicitly allowed in a case-by-case process that can take up to two years.
- Trans men will be stripped of their titles achieved before their transition while trans women will retain their titles achieved before their transition.
- In case a trans person is allowed to participate, their trans condition will be added to their files and communicated to events organizers.
See, I can see the arguments for this for like physical sports. And to be clear I fully support trans people but I can understand how being born male can give you certain advantages in physical sports that make it unfair towards women who were born female. I don’t know the right answer for how to handle it, but I can see how the complaints make sense.
But fucking chess? Come on what the hell advantage do people amab have over cis women in chess? This is bigotry pure and simple.
The idea (and I’m not defending it here necessarily, just stating FIDE’s reasoning) is to offer a safe space for women to compete professionally at the game. There’s a huge “boy’s club” problem in chess and many of some of the best male players in the world are notoriously sexist. Women who have participated in the mainline tournaments in the past have complained of sexism. Garry Kasparov even notoriously claimed one woman was cheating after she bested him.
Chess isn’t also gendered both ways. There’s women’s tournaments and women’s titles, but not a men’s tournament. Men participate in an “everybody” tournament that women are welcome to join.
Think of it like the women’s only carriages in trains in some countries. Only women can go in those carriages, but women can go in the other carriages if they want to.
Yeah but that’s dumb (I know you aren’t agreeing with it) because trans women are women. It’s not like being in swimming where having gone through puberty as a male gives you an unfair advantage.
Except for the bit where it doesn’t (assuming you are on feminising HRT)…
I’m not really trying to comment on the trans part of the post even though that’s the main thing. I just wanted to provide clarity on why the gender “separation” exists within FIDE rules. A lot of people seem to automatically think that FIDE is assuming there’s a clear gender advantage when it’s really just making space for women to play without judgment.
Their motivation essentially boils down to “We have to separate them to protect women from the terrifying power of the superior male intellect”.
might as well just open the female only tournament to all genders, fuck bi genderization
The reason for gendered distinctions in chess is entirely social, ostensibly because boys are pushed toward chess more than girls. This ruling is entirely bizarre, imo
Other reasonable suggestions have been offered for the existence of the women’s competition.
But honestly, I have no clue to what degree women players were involved in this decision.
wtf is amab?
Assigned male at birth