World chess federation bars transgender women from competing in women's events
World chess federation bars transgender women from competing in women's events
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.
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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Reading between the lines, I can kind of see this one. The point appears to be to correct for societal inequities in the space of chess. If you learned chess and came up as a masculine presenting individual, they believe that the environment was more advantageous to you, so transitioning later in life doesn't change that advantage.
As people have already pointed out, this is clearly not an issue of the effects of testosterone on the body. So you are right in the sense that this policy can only be defensible on equity grounds.The overlooked issue with the argument that the organization is providing an equitable space for feminine presenting individuals coming up through a system that is overwhelmingly make dominated is that under the current policy, transmen are having their women's titles stripped from them unless they officially change their designations back to women. Only then, their awards would be restored. Suddenly presenting as male due to testosterone does not immediately negate the past experiences. If this policy is really about recognizing the challenges of climbing the ladder in chess as a feminine presenting individual, then these transmen who are also transitioning later in life should be allowed to keep their hard earned titles. Unfortunately, this policy is not actually about acknowledging the challenges of being a feminine presenting chess player. It smells like the organization wants to be able to claim they are acting equitably without thoroughly thinking about the logic of the policy. Whether people like the policy or not, or whether it is morally right or wrong is irrelevant. Well-crafted, consistent policy is much easier to defend. This policy is neither well thought out or consistent.
I did notice the invalidation of women's titles if you transitioned to male, but not if you transitioned to male. It seems like the general view is because the women's league is the easier league to achieve titles in, if you go to the "more competitive" league you then could game the system to "farm titles" or something if you transition and detransition.
The whole thing does seem a bit ridiculous as you mentioned based on my understanding of the system. The titles are clearly qualified as for a specific league, you don't lose junior league titles because you get older. Maybe this factors into elo calculations?
Either way, I appreciate the well written response. In my personal experience, the onus of trying to understand seemingly transphobic positions to potentially change them seems to fall on trans people, while allies seem more than happy to stick to the shouting and protesting. I had mentioned a point from a trans women who felt the discourse around pronouns was counter productive in her view, and someone immediately jumped to the defense of his partner who wasn't there before I could finish the sentence.