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.
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.