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.
  •  Gaywallet (they/it)   ( @Gaywallet@beehaw.org ) English
    7•9 months ago

    Just going to leave a comment here because it’s the highest up comment chain where you’re cherry picking a single scientific article and ignoring the complexity of the problem. There’s a few issues with what you’re doing and I don’t really have time to write up an entire guide as to why this isn’t nice, but I’m just going to leave the following points:

    • This is the LGBTQ+ community, please chill with the antagonism. If you want to make a point about whether testosterone provides an advantage to individuals, you’re welcome to do so, however it needs to be done with caution if you’re not a medical professional capable of examining a complicated question and exert good faith to fully investigate the issue at hand.
    • To articulate this point, a cursory google of the issue at hand here ‘trans women in sports’ revealed the following 4 top results from vaguely reputable/scientific resources: 1 2 3 4. All four of these articles touch on a lot more than just testosterone levels contributing to performance in sports.
    • A cursory review of the regulating bodies themselves would reveal poor control over who is allowed to compete. There’s no discussion about this present in your point.
    • A cursory review of the effects of testosterone on performance in athletes would might reveal any of the following studies: 1 2 3 4. The idea that testosterone is correlated with a positive performance from male athletes is a simplistic and flawed one. Young boys pre-puberty outperform young girls showing a more complicated story than just testosterone and pointing us towards more likely important factors, such as the social and environmental ones. Additionally, while testosterone may contribute to performance in some sports, it definitively does not for certain sports (especially since we’re in a topic about chess). Reducing a complicated topic to a single dimension generally doesn’t work and isn’t a good basis for argument.
    • With all that being said, you’re right that for some trans women their testosterone levels may not be fully suppressed with just estrogen treatment, but nearly no regulatory bodies care about that - they care about whether the testosterone levels that they test are above a certain threshold. If they are not, they aren’t allowed to compete. It’s ridiculous to be quoting this study at all, because if someone were at that level and wanting to compete they’d have to be on testosterone blockers or post-op so as to drop their levels to an acceptable range.
    • I cannot stress enough how bad it looks for someone to be coming in here and challenging the people directly effected by this issue with such a one-sided and shallow point. In general if you’re going to come in and challenge a minority on something, you need to be extremely cautious about how you do so. Ask yourself, are you an expert on the topic? If not, what could you be missing? Should you seek out education before providing your opinion and attempting to provide “scientific” reasoning for your stance? Ask yourself whether others have likely shared the same opinion as you are sharing- are you bringing anything new or useful to the table? Might minorities already be inundated with people sharing the same opinion, in a scientific manner or not, and might you be contributing to their emotional and educational burdens?
    •  AnarchoYeasty   ( @AnarchoYeasty@beehaw.org ) English
      1•9 months ago

      1.) I am a member of the LGBTQ community as well. There are more letters than just T there. 2.) I did not start with any antagonism. I came in here saying that there is a valid debate about whether trans women should be allowed in physical sports, because there is, but that this ruling on chess is pure bigotry plain and simple. I did not state they should not be allowed to compete, I simply stated that there is legitimate scientific debate as to whether trans women have an unfair advantage over cis women. Ada stated that there is no advantage if you are taking feminizing HRT, and I provided scientifc evidence that this is not true. Sure, I shouldn’t have said she was blatantly lying, but there is significant evidence suggesting that even with feminizing HRT trans women still have an advantage over cis women. Others, like LucyLastic have accused me of making stuff up by changing the goal posts to only post op trans women being trans women and curiously no moderator has reminder her of following beehaws rules. 3.) I didn’t bring up problems with the regulating bodies because I wasn’t trying to start a fight over trans women not being included in physical sports, and was not making any statements for or against it, only again that there is legitimate debate about it. Because there is. The only thing I have argued is that HRT does not eliminate the effects of testosterone on the body especially if the woman undergoing HRT did so after puberty.

      •  Gaywallet (they/it)   ( @Gaywallet@beehaw.org ) AEnglish
        4•9 months ago

        there is legitimate scientific debate

        The entire point of the post that I made is that you are not qualified to weigh in on whether there is legitimate scientific debate. You came into this thread and made a statement in a field which you are clearly not an expert, and then replied to people by posting scientific articles as a means to give your words credit or authority. I cannot find any way to interpret this in good faith except if it is coming from a place of ignorance. The fact that you are trying to explain yourself away to me, ignoring the educational burden that I underwent to show you many ways in which your conclusion could be false doesn’t leave me with a lot of hope either. In fact, you could have completely ignored all the links and information I provided and simply replied as soon as you understood that I was contradicting what you said. You aren’t doing yourself any favor by being antagonistic after actively causing harm by cherry picking and distributing info which goes against actual scientific consensus such as the numerous articles I posted, of which one was an extremely comprehensive review commissioned by a large sports ethics organization.

        Authority and scientific rigor aside, you’re making this place uncomfortable for women and transgender individuals. How do you think women and transgender individuals are made to feel by the content that you have contributed? Do you think they feel welcomed or wanted in the community? That your post makes it easier for them to sleep at night or reduces their stress or has any positive affect on their mood? This is not to say that no one can be critical or offer a counter opinion to one which a minority individual has, but that you need to be conscious about when and where it’s appropriate to do so (and whether you have the background to even provide such an opinion). In addition to simply being wrong, posting this opinion on an LGBTQ+ community does not make this place welcoming or accommodating to minorities. In short, it’s not nice behavior. So cut it out.