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.

    • jsveiga@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      1·
      2 years ago

      Chess at pro level is brutal. One can get mentally mauled if the adversary has a superior, trained for cruel psychological warfare, mind.

      Men just don’t stand a chance.

    • ex_redditor@lemmy.worldEnglish
      0·
      2 years ago

      It’s not gendered. If there is a female super GM she will be invited to the most prestigious tournaments. But there isn’t any… and that’s a whole other debate

          • _wintermute@lemmy.worldEnglish
            0·
            2 years ago

            Whoa, watch out with that logical thinking around here. As has been demonstrated by votes in a comment chain of mine further up the thread, the number of women at the top of the chess scene is totally indicative of womens’ intrinsic ability to play chess. It has nothing to do with the amount of women who play chess vs the amount of men who play chess! /s

            But yeah, it’s simple shit. If men outnumber women 100:1 in the competitive chess scene then obviously we expect women to be extremely under represented at the top. But misogynists gonna misogyny.

        • DrRatso@lemmy.mlEnglish
          0·
          2 years ago

          There is an open bracket (where anyone can play) and a womens bracket, currently women do not perform well enough to play internationally in the open bracket. What they are stating are merely facts. And really were it not for the existence of the womens bracket it is possible that women would perform even worse.

    • whataboutshutup@discuss.onlineEnglish
      0·
      2 years ago

      Women gated off their league because every their move is commented on as a female one. They can’t fail for it’s deepens the stereotype of women=stupid and they can’t win for it’s just man wasn’t paying attention or played easy for her. The lack of women chess clubs and championships, the stereotype of it being not a sport for women is why there aren’t many high ELO players in this isolated and weird situation.

      One of the last strongholds of a fragile male nerd supremacy, that’s all.

      • maino82@lemmy.caEnglish
        0·
        2 years ago

        All of the pieces. On both sides of the board. Mentally it’s much more taxing keeping track of which pieces are yours. We guys have it really easy with the whole black/white pieces.

        • Quokka@quokk.auEnglish
          0·
          2 years ago

          Actually women are just better at seeing colour and for them what looks like the same pink to us is actually 17 different shades.

      • crowsby@lemmy.mlEnglish
        0·
        2 years ago

        And on average, they only start out with 80% of the pieces of the men’s set.

    • _wintermute@lemmy.worldEnglish
      0·
      2 years ago

      Because the whole idea of gendered leagues in games that ultimately don’t matter at all is about segregation and control, not physiology.

      Bring on the down votes from the “but muh sports 'tegridy!” clowns.

      Edit: some of yall need a class on statistics lol

    • who8mydamnoreos@lemmy.worldEnglish
      0·
      2 years ago

      So women can play chess without the added mental burdens that come along with being a women in a male dominated space.

    • Deestan@lemmy.worldEnglish
      0·
      2 years ago

      It doesn’t in principle, and it’s not really either.

      There is the main league, which is open for everyone, and an extra league for women only to offset the male dominance of the main league.

      Why they feel the need to exclude trans women from that I have no idea. Even many of the physical sports allow trans women under certain conditions and only to prevent any unfair advantage due to increased muscle growth during puberty.

    • Kara@kbin.social
      0·
      2 years ago

      And the CEO is Emil Sutovsky, who recently made a twitter poll, basically asking, let’s be honest, does anyone actually care to watch this women’s tournament? When he never made a similar poll for any other tournament.
      The chess world really needs to outgrow the sexist and transphobic FIDE

    • Rose@lemmy.worldEnglish
      0·
      2 years ago

      No wonder the “gender change” wording of their new rules is so similar to the new Russian law that essentially bans transitioning.

      • fubo@lemmy.worldEnglish
        0·
        2 years ago

        One can imagine that every oligarch who wants to suck the milk of Mr. Putin is required to demonstrate loyalty periodically by pissing in the eyes of one of Mr. Putin’s designated targets. LGBTQ+ is just one of those.

    • ax1900kr@lemmy.worldBannedEnglish
      0·
      2 years ago

      Some men are smarter than others, if men can see that. Then why can you see that in average, specially in this high level competition, men are just smarter than women? Top 5 women dont even rank in the top 100 men’s category.

    • Smk@lemmy.caEnglish
      0·
      2 years ago

      The environment around men favors them to be stronger than women. If there were no women’s category, there would only be men playing chess and very very few women and that would sucks.

      • MegaUmbreon@lemmy.worldEnglish
        0·
        2 years ago

        I think it’s to give the top women a platform, for young girls to see people like them on the TV and make them believe they can do it too. If enough young girls start playing and keep playing, there should be plenty of female players that can compete with the best men in short order. There are also women’s titles that have lower requirements than men’s. It’s a pretty controversial thing; some women refuse to take the “lesser” WGM title over the open IM title.

        I’m not saying this works or I agree with it, but that’s the thinking.

        • Smk@lemmy.caEnglish
          0·
          2 years ago

          To be honest, the girl’s category may not be as useful as it used to be but in certain country, it definitely is still very useful.

          If transwomen wants to compete, compete in open. In my opinion, this has nothing to do whether or not a transwomen is a women but with the environment a person is growing in.

  • chk232@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    2 years ago

    I don’t think it’s a issue in chess. Unless they have to run 100m while holding the chess board.

      • static_motion@programming.devEnglish
        0·
        2 years ago

        Being good at chess isn’t about being “smart”, a lot of top chess players will tell you as much. It is however about things like spatial awareness and pattern recognition, and some studies have demonstrated those traits to be, on average, stronger in male subjects. I’m sure evidence to the contrary exists though.

  • The dogspaw English
    0·
    2 years ago

    This isn’t like running or something where men have a significant advantage physically over women just make it mixed gender and be done with it people can claim whatever gender they want and chess can avoid getting into a politically charged firestorm

    • Phoenixz@lemmy.caBannedEnglish
      0·
      2 years ago

      Please use some punctuation, your comment was really hard to read.

      Having said that, I agree

    • Maalus@lemmy.worldBannedEnglish
      0·
      2 years ago

      Except because of some factors, that’s exactly the case. There have been around 2000 grandmasters ever. Only around 40 are women. Don’t ask me why, I’m not touching the topic with a 10 meter pole.

      • ephemeral_gibbon@aussie.zoneEnglish
        0·
        2 years ago

        Probably because there have been a lot more make chess players in general historically. It’s still a long way from an even split today and was probably even more imbalanced.

      • Asymptote@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
        0·
        2 years ago

        There have been many studies done on the factors that are relevant. There are near irrefutable mounds of evidence.

        However, the biggest brained take on this is,

        I’m not touching the topic with a 10 meter pole.

        • kaffiene@lemmy.worldEnglish
          0·
          2 years ago

          No it isn’t. Genius distribution is different between men and women but STEM isn’t populated solely, or even significantly, by geniuses

    • Shanedino@lemmy.worldEnglish
      0·
      2 years ago

      There is already an open division there is just also a womens division to provide additional support and opportunities for women in chess.

  • shapis@lemmy.mlEnglish
    0·
    2 years ago

    Being a minority in any social setting brings difficulties that others just don’t otherwise face.

    Having a women’s category for chess is a way of creating a safe environment for everyone to thrive.

    • kttnpunk@lemmy.worldEnglish
      0·
      2 years ago

      Nah, wait, why the hell is there a separate women’s category in fucking chess in the first place? Those in charge of this decision are 100% misogynists AND transphobes. There isn’t a single good reason for this.

      • hh93@lemm.eeEnglish
        0·
        2 years ago

        For the same reason why we need quotas for businesses

        Having a role model is hugely important for people picking up something.

        If some girl plays chess and looks at the professional players and big tournaments there are no women there. So she likely will not pursue that path professionally. If there is a women’s league then there the guarantee that there will be visibility for the winners which then creates more idols for young people and over the years increases the level of play until they are equal enough.

        Not to mention the chess-clubs favouring boys on their training since they have a bigger chance to make it big and shine a spotlight on that club that produced this talent. With female only tournaments it’s easier to create a name for yourself if you treat both genders equal and create the same talent for both sides there are so many fewer players.

        Sure sounds dumb on paper but it’s actually really necessary in order to create a pathway to more professional female players

        • kttnpunk@lemmy.worldEnglish
          0·
          2 years ago

          I have a really, really hard time believing treating both genders equal and empowering accessibility + diversity is best achieved by segration.

        • zimy@lemmy.worldEnglish
          0·
          2 years ago

          Having a role model is hugely important for people picking up something.

          Maybe society should start teaching kids to just do what they want instead of waiting for some random person that shares arbitrary X-trait to “inspire and empower” them. Be your own person.

          • floofloof@lemmy.caEnglish
            0·
            2 years ago

            There’s what society says and what society does. Society in many countries already says what you propose, again and again. But it doesn’t actually react favourably when people do it, especially women.

      • CaptainBuckleroy@lemm.eeEnglish
        01·
        2 years ago

        I’m going to assume you aren’t trolling.

        Women traditionally have been discouraged from competitions, including chess. We are at the stage where we should be creating extra opportunities for women to be involved in these competitions. If we didn’t, tradition and systemic practices would continue to discourage women.

        Chess has no male category. There’s co-ed, and female. This allows an extra space for women to compete against each other, feel safe, and make connections and friendships with other women in the minority. While still allowing them to compete in the coed category on a level playing field.

        We will most likely continue to be at this stage for generations.

    • Cethin@lemmy.zipEnglish
      01·
      2 years ago

      Minorities like trans people? A place where everyone can thrive?

      It’s fucking chess. I understand men may have more typical interest, but there shouldn’t be divisions based on sex or gender. Maybe divisions for some neurodivergent people, but I’d bet on many of the great chess players being neurodivergent in some way.

      • shapis@lemmy.mlEnglish
        1·
        2 years ago

        Only counter argument I can give you is have a bit of empathy.

        Imagine that you were a young girl and saw this game. Chess. And you wanted to learn how to play.

        The first person you asked was your mother and she told you oh that’s a boys game. But you still wanted to learn.

        So you decide to just read up on the rules. You don’t really know anyone that plays. So you just kinda play vs yourself and redo. Old GM matches you found in old magazines. None of them are like you btw. They all seem like old men that live on the opposite side of the world.

        You really like the game tho. And eventually you realize oh. There are actual clubs/tourneys near here I can go and play with actual people!

        You go. And there’s not a single girl there. Because of all the hurdles you had to jump. Most others that would have been interested just quit.

        So you get there. You are obviously underprepared because you didn’t have the support system that made learning it easy. Because of that you just get wrecked.

        In addition to that you probably will have to hear some dumb jokes. That if you didn’t have such a rough patch to get there in the first place they might have been funny to you. But they aren’t. They just felt like you were being punched down.

        Having exclusive tournaments and leagues is a very minor way of rectifying awful historical disparities. It’s not perfect and it’s not a solution by itself. But it’s absolutely needed.

        • Cethin@lemmy.zipEnglish
          0·
          2 years ago

          Only counter argument I can give you is have a bit of empathy.

          Trans people are people too. If women need protection, trans people need it even more. They’re an even smaller minority that are mistreated even more often. I could write the same made up sad story as you but about a trans person.

          If exclusive tournaments are a way to fix historic disparities, women should be kicked out of the league before trans people. I don’t totally disagree with the sentiment, but we can’t have a league for literally every small group we think of. Maybe there should be the main league and the “historically disparaged” league or something, but trans people should not be being removed from this league.

          • shapis@lemmy.mlEnglish
            0·
            2 years ago

            Entirely agree with everything you said. I never implied otherwise.

            My entire comment was replying to this:

            but there shouldn’t be divisions based on sex or gender.

            There absolutely should. Reasoning: in my previous comment above.

        • EsheLynn@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
          01·
          2 years ago

          If you are going to chess tournaments, you are past the point of getting your ass kicked in chess club. I said it on another thread, but if people are being demeaning and unsportsmanlike, they can get kicked out just as you would any other game. They do it for MTG, YGO and Pokemon TCG tournaments. Bullshittery about trans people aside, this is more of a systemic issue than anything else.

        • Cethin@lemmy.zipEnglish
          1·
          2 years ago

          What the fuck is this sexist shit? Women are inharently catty and men are inharently aggressive?

          If there’s an issue with men being aggressive, there needs to be rules to prevent it. If the ratio is a problem, there needs to be tools created to address that. The solution isn’t “women are catty and sensitive, so they need to be seperate.”

                • Cethin@lemmy.zipEnglish
                  0·
                  2 years ago

                  I’m not going to argue with it being correct because it doesn’t matter. If the issue is aggression then it’s aggression, so just say aggression. Catty is also an insulting term. The league should have sportsmanship requirements and it shouldn’t matter how your aggression is presented or what gender you are when you are aggressive.

        • EsheLynn@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
          0·
          2 years ago

          My apologies. I still don’t understand. Are you suggesting that women are too fragile to deal with men’s posturing, or what? It’s fucking chess. Unless someone is arguing there are blatant skill discrepancies between men an women, it still doesn’t makes sense why there are divided tournaments. Is the argument women are less strategically minded, or what?

    • BNE@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
      0·
      2 years ago

      Only if your metrics are completely broken. This is just plain old fashioned transphobia and culture war copium - nothing straight about it.

  • fubo@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    2 years ago

    To be clear, the head of FIDE (the chess federation) is close to the Russian fascist state. This is the Russian state showing off anti-trans hate as a culture-war move.

  • Hairyblue@kbin.social
    0·
    2 years ago

    What? Is this real? Are the men and women not competing together? It is not a physical competition. Why the separation?

    • wwaxen@lemmy.worldEnglish
      0·
      2 years ago

      Currently, the top women don’t come close to the top men. Considering how few female chess players are in comparison, it’s not a surprise.

      Having a women’s league means you can have chess news about women’s tournaments and champs and give them some visibility.

      • DessertStorms@kbin.social
        0·
        2 years ago

        Currently, the top women don’t come close to the top men

        because they’re excluded at all levels, lets not pretend it’s because women aren’t as good and need “protecting” from the “superior” men.

        • spiritusmaximus@kbin.social
          0·
          2 years ago

          That doesn’t make any sense.

          Yes, they don’t compete with men, but they still have women’s league and women from that league don’t come close to men (not all, ofcourse).

          Could making united league deter women even more? Very possible.

          I am not against, but still I think a strong bump in women’s chess league with marketing, money, better condition would be great, before possible merging.

          Currently, women would just suffer with results for long time.

          Unfortunately Chess doesn’t seem as healthy and open for that, and that is just sad.

          • DessertStorms@kbin.social
            01·
            2 years ago

            I feel like if you really wanted to know you could easily look up the barriers that women face in chess (and in all sports), and I honestly don’t feel like spoon feeding you such basics, so I’m going to just paste my other reply here and leave it up to you to start educating yourself if you really want to:

            The solution to men harassing women (and generally making them unwelcome, as they do) should not be to segregate women though, it should be to discipline men.
            Which leads me to the real reason why women are segregated (because clearly isn’t about their safety or their inclusion) - because the men involved would have an absolute breakdown if they were beaten by a woman (not a problem exclusive to chess, either).

    • PunnyName@lemmy.worldEnglish
      0·
      2 years ago

      The reason there’s a women’s league in the first place is so they don’t get harassed by the men (ostensibly).

      So while on the surface, a gendered League is stupid, there are real world reasons for the separation.

      This decision might / maybe / could be an extension of that reasoning. But very likely it’s not, and it’s just more bullshit anti trans policy.

      • Sethayy@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        0·
        2 years ago

        or they could just like… Not allow harassment.

        Really the game is chess, you shouldnt even need to see your oponent, so it could be all done online.

        Chess was pretty much perfected decades ago - now all the tournaments thrive on is psyching out your opponent, which they’ve made women an easy target by isolating them. No wonder they statistically do worse

      • DessertStorms@kbin.social
        0·
        2 years ago

        The solution to men harassing women (and generally making them unwelcome, as they do) should not be to segregate women though, it should be to discipline men.
        Which leads me to the real reason why women are segregated (because clearly isn’t about their safety or their inclusion) - because the men involved would have an absolute breakdown if they were beaten by a woman (not a problem exclusive to chess, either).

      • donuts@kbin.social
        0·
        2 years ago

        The best way to prevent harassment is not bigoted segregation by gender, but in fact punishing or banning people who harass others.

      • ShakeThatYam@lemmy.worldEnglish
        0·
        2 years ago

        If that’s the reason, I’d imagine trans women would be the most likely to be harassed by the cis men who are harassing cis women.

      • carbonari_sandwich@lemm.eeEnglish
        0·
        2 years ago

        I think a lot of people are misunderstanding what’s going on here. There is an open league and a league restricted to women only.

        Without a women’s league, there are fewer women seen playing, which reinforces the perception that it’s not a sport for women, which creates this feedback loop leading to a smaller pool of women playing chess, thus fewer grand masters who are women. I see value in creating more space for women in chess to create more opportunities for following generations.

        I don’t like excluding trans women. I can imagine an argument that we’re not ready for this until we get to a place where we don’t think to distinguish between trans and cis women. A women’s league in 2023 that a young cis girl is watching that had 3 cis women and 97 trans women, still may look to that young girl like a league for trans women, and not a league for all women that they can see themselves competing in. Personally, I enjoyed watching a marginalized gender eSports competition, and I don’t think the presence of trans women invalidated the impact it could have inspiring young cis girls to pick up gaming.

  • katy ✨@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
    0·
    2 years ago

    Today we learned that bigots think trans women have a biological advantage at being smarter and more logical than cis women.

    Last month we learned that bigots think trans women are hotter than cis women.

    Starting to think bigots don’t think clearly.

    • Csynthare@lemm.eeEnglish
      0·
      2 years ago

      “Damn those trans women, they’re so hot, and smart, and funny, and athletic…”

    • Zapdrive@lemmy.worldEnglish
      0·
      2 years ago

      If trans men (and by extension all men) are equally smart and logical as women, why even have separate men and women categories? Let women compete with men and we’ll soon find which gender is more smart and logical.

  • STUPIDVIPGUY@sopuli.xyzEnglish
    0·
    2 years ago

    I knew professional chess was blatantly sexist, but transphobic now too? Not surprised just dissappointed

      • STUPIDVIPGUY@sopuli.xyzEnglish
        0·
        2 years ago

        Why is there a division between sexes in chess? Why is a “chess master” different from a “woman chess master”?

        From what I have seen in chess forums, many old-school male chess players think there is a difference in analytical vs emotional mind or something in that vein which is just a thinly veiled version of sexism

        • Double_A@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
          0·
          2 years ago

          It’s not helping to disprove that thinking if you need to create a separate protected league for women… Also what does it matter what other people think? It’s not a team based game… Also even if the clubs are separated by gender to create a nicer atmosphere during training or whatever, why should tournaments be?

  • aluminiumsandworm@kbin.social
    0·
    2 years ago

    this makes sense because cis women have such small bones they can’t reach past the centre board, giving most trans women and tall cis women an inherent advantage. /s

    what the fuck chess this is just blatant transphobia

  • Skullgrid@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    2 years ago

    Clarifications and comments (some pre emptive)

    Chess has a women’s category to boost participation and spotlight female players.

    Women can and do compete in the open category, which allows men and women. However, currently the highest rated women perform under the super closed “Super GM” level, so they participate in the tournaments that are less prestigious but fitting their rating. Male players like IM Eric Rosen also participate in such tournaments.

    The best female player in history , Judit Polgar was 8th best in the world when taking both genders into account. There’s nothing stopping women from reaching the elite level in open chess. She even participated in the candidates tournament which decides who gets to play against the world champion for the world champion title. Unfortunately she didn’t perform too well, but it’s not because of her gender, she was basically beaten 2-1 (plus draws) by a male competitor, just like the other contestants in the round she was eliminated.

    At her peak she had 2735 Elo points, making her 55th highest rated person in the history of organized chess. This is higher than one of the actual challengers to the crown, Nigel short.

    Regarding the rulings:

    1. No one is going to pretend to be a woman, in order to convert the person’s identity with fide, they are required to have government issued paperwork saying they have transitioned. It’s not worth it.

    2. it’s funny that male to female transgender people are not regarded as women by this ruling, hence cannot participate in women’s events, but female to male transgender people also forfeit their women’s titles as they are not seen as women either. (To be fair, they can convert them to open titles, and get them back if they detransition officially)

    So according to FIDE, transitioning from a man to a woman doesn’t make you a woman, you are considered a man, but also, transitioning from a woman to a man makes you a man, so you are also not considered a woman.

    Seems paradoxical. You’d think they’d pick one and stick to it.

    Also: chess does have physical advantages, but they seem to be reletive and not competitive. Most high level players have some sports regimen as it helps increase cardiovascular efficiency, but size of competitor doesn’t seem to matter as seen by David Bronstein and Mikhail Tal. Ian Nepomniatchschi intentionally lost weight for the world championship, and his ratings grew as a result.

    Remember that whales are not necessarily more clever than humans even though their brains are huge in comparison.

    • morphballganon@mtgzone.comEnglish
      0·
      2 years ago

      So according to FIDE, transitioning from a man to a woman doesn’t make you a woman, you are considered a man, but also, transitioning from a woman to a man makes you a man, so you are also not considered a woman.

      This is only confusing if you assume the two categories are equal, one for each gender. The anyone category has more relaxed rules. They could make a men-only category that is just as strict as the women-only category, but what for?

      • Anonymousllama@lemmy.worldEnglish
        0·
        2 years ago

        No, you can’t have men’s only categories. The only viable options are open (men+women) or women (just women). It would be horribly sexist to just have a men’s only division apparently 🙄

      • Skullgrid@lemmy.worldEnglish
        0·
        2 years ago

        There is no men only category, there are only open (any gender can participate) and women’s (only women can participate).

        The thing I find funny is how they treat transmen and transwomen differently. Like, if they want to say transwomen aren’t men , and they can’t participate in women’s events, they should also say that transmen aren’t men and can keep their women’s titles.

        • morphballganon@mtgzone.comEnglish
          0·
          2 years ago

          Gender is a spectrum, not one or the other. The women’s category excludes people in the middle. If you understand that, there is no inconsistency.