International Chess Federation, FIDE, has released new guidelines targeting transgender players. The guidelines would strip trans men's titles, and potentially bar trans women from playing.
With these new rules, FIDE has managed to
Imply the mental inferiority of women
Validate the existence of transgender men
Destroy the integrity of awards record-keeping
Call transgender women men
Very nice, FIDE, incredible mental gymnastics performance! ๐ Add them to the ever lengthening sports federation shitlist.
Why are men and women separated in chess competition at all? There is no logical reason other than sexism and transphobia. The reason the top women in the world are so far below the top men is because chess has historically been a man's game and the history of and continued sexism has no doubt kept out women who could be just as good as the best men. I play chess regularly online and have lost to both men and women. I wouldn't be surprised if several top chess players chose to leave fide in favor of other competitions over this.
Oops, you gave it away! Turns out if you make this move you either admit:
That you think people who are biologically male have an advantage in mental only competition
That you want to punish transgender people for transitioning by taking away what they've earned and preventing them from participating in the future.
How completely and utterly shocking, that the trans people in sports "fairness" debate was just a badly put together costume for sexism and transphobia. I tell you, I'm more shocked about this than anything. Definitely.
Ah here we fucking go again... 20 years of progress lost.
Chess and eSports always do that. They're the perfect opportunity to demonstrate how, if you work on the social pressures and limitations that keep women/queer/trans people away from the sport, they can absolutely join in, compete, influence younger people, attract advertisers and so on. They can bypass the "bUt PhYsiCal DiffEnCeS" argument entirely, they're the perfect category for inclusive sports.
But without fail, after we get some progress, they come up with some way of absolutely setting everything back with new weird regulations, changes in funding, changes in language. It's bizarre. It's self sabotage.
But you don't understand! Clearly trans women having a different bone density gives them an unfair advantage because of, uh, something something integrity of sports.
I like how this manages to be both transphobic and like insanely sexist. Way to go, FIDE! Can you guys work homophobia or racism in there for a hat trick?
This shit doesn't even make sense. It's God damn chess! Men and women don't have different minds. You might have a case with physical sports, maybe (IDK anymore; used to think women were not able to be as physical strong as men due to physiology, but even that seems like it is inaccurate with new studies), but there is no such case to be made with a mind. Human brains are human brains. The body they are encased in doesn't change them fundamentally.
Ah yes, men and women are physically built differently so trans women have an advantage because they can... grip the chess pieces better with their bigger hands, and crush the pieces/flip the table more easily due to their increased strength. Makes total sense.
Now wait a minute. I can see why there are issues with males transitioning to female participating in female sports because a man is clearly advantaged over a female but in mental activities what does it matter?
What a weird way to go about it. Knowing a small amount about chess ratings the loss or changing of title does in some ways make sense though in the way that the bar for a woman to be considered GM is lower than a man. So effectively you would have a title that may have a rating requirement higher than your pre-transition rating. I get that partโฆ. But the rest?
These are weird rules that really donโt need to be there and I hope too GMs speak out against this in both the male and female sections. There has been quite a bit of drama in the chess community in recent years over what is essentially gender discrimination. So another stain on chess with this one.
Editing to add: the differing rating requirements in an intellectual game are very strange to begin with. There are many women who meet the requirements of being a GM(male) rather than a WGM and theyโre a significantly smaller portion of the overall chess players
I really wish posts like this included more interesting discussion, instead of 90 % of people just white knighting how shocked they are and how awful this is!
Yea we get it after the first comment, you don't need to post the same shit over and over.
My personal genuine question is to women, how they feel about transgender women in their sports? For physical sports I'd imagine it matters even more.
Chess is just a brain game so it really shouldn't matter at all, but I'd still love to womens opinion on the subject.
This whole transgender people in sports "debate" (a debate should have good arguments on both sides, this one doesn't) is nothing but shitass boomers punishing people they think are "weird" for no other reason than spite.
Yikes... That's fucking gross.
Hopefully there's some kind of backlash from chess players and community figures, this is absolutely vile.
Honestly lately I'm kinda just losing hope in humanity, and wondering if LGBT folks will ever be accepted in society. Seeing what little progress we acquired over the past century or so be undone so easily is crushing.
Fuck FIDE, fuck Russia, and fuck all the ignorant, hateful bigots that keep fighting against people's very right to exist.
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