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.
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.
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.
If the gender ratio was something like 1:4 or less, you’d have an argument that everyone should just get along. But there’s like 16 times more men in chess than women and separate tournaments means the gals won’t have to learn chest thumping to deal with the asshole faction they can simply be catty which they already know how to do.
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?
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.”
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.