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.
Silly question, why does chess, a mental activity, need gendered leagues?
Have you met chess bros?
I can see why women would want their own league.
The average chess bro is not a trans woman.
The average trans woman chess player was assigned chess bro at birth.
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.
That’s exactly what I was thinking.
Yeah I don’t get it either
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
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If chess.com’s rankings are to be believed, none :/
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So is your argument that women are inherently inferior at chess or…?
You did see the numbers? I mean, what else do you need?
I weep for your (in)ability to interpret statistics.
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What you have just said is that there is a cultural difference and I agree with that. Dont confuse that with a difference based on sex, or physiology, in other words.
Obviously, men and women on a 1:1 basis have equal potential to excel at chess, based on their sex, right?
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I can’t help you to understand the difference between cultural statistics and physiological potential I guess lol
Anyone know what the highest rated trans male and trans female chess players are? Would be interesting to know if this rule is even currently necessary.
I can’t find any trans men ranked, but the highest rating I can find for a trans woman is Natalia Pares Vives with a ranking of 2213, or about 325th on the chess.com women’s rankings.
You basically have chess and women’s chess. Anyone can play chess, both men and women, but only women can play women’s chess.
The removed the titles from transgender players who won titles in women’s chess.
In girl chess the pieces are pink.
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.
Actually women are just better at seeing colour and for them what looks like the same pink to us is actually 17 different shades.
And on average, they only start out with 80% of the pieces of the men’s set.
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.
So women can play chess without the added mental burdens that come along with being a women in a male dominated space.
I’d say, trans is way more experienced at use of anal buds
Because otherwise women couldn’t currently compete beyond the local level. But I don’t have an explanation for the difference in playing levels beyond the fact that much fewer women seem to be interested in playing Chess competitively.
So you’re saying that women are not as smart as men?
No. First of all Chess has nothing to do with being smart in any sense I would use the word.
Otherwise a Raspberry Pi would outsmart all of humanity.Secondly, it’s much more similar to why the Faroe Islands can’t compete in soccer with France.
Nothing suggests they have less natural talent for soccer (and it’s quite popular there), but there’s just 1/1000 the number of players to draw from.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.
shaun did an excellent video on exactly this. TL;DW: stereotype threat & harassment.
As is tradition
Fucking hell some of us can be idiots…
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Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
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Women are scared of weak nerdy men or something…
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
Women have more places to hide the sex toys.
Edit: it’s a bad joke referencing the recent cheating scandal
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.
Ugh, why do they feel the need to even write these rules in the first place? I can almost guarantee you there’s like, five trans people who are even registered to play chess. Why go to so much effort to block such a fraction of a percent of people anyways?
Whenever I read articles like these, I substitute “trans” for a different minority, such as a racial or ethnic minority, and it really puts it in perspective.
I remember when Utah made a huge deal about it in women’s sports. And someone like the Utah governor was against it, saying he’d never seen so much hate around something so little. He told his colleagues that in the entire state, only four trans youth were even playing registered sports, and most were JV, not even going to competitions. It’s sad to see people so stoked by hate for something so…mundane. :/
Because Amy Scnider now owns all the women’s jeopardy records?
Take what you want from that, I don’t really have an opinion on trans people in pure intellectual competitions.
Because the point is to eschew hatred towards people who are different. Since they can’t have a “no black people” rule anymore, they target another vulnerable minority community.
The same people claiming transwomen would ruin women’s sports were celebrating when the U.S. women’s team lost the World Cup.
I’ve been on Lemmy for a couple of months now - best comment I’ve read so far. You absolutely nailed it.
it was never about fairness.
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
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Please use some punctuation, your comment was really hard to read.
Having said that, I agree
Sorry dude adhd man
And they also made it so trans men have to give up any women’s titles they’ve earned. So, they simultaneously think trans men are men, but trans women are not women.
If anything, based on the past comments of the head of the organization, they have a position that’s generally “women are dumber than men and we want to make decisions that align with that ethos always”.
I’ve stopped being surprised by chess dorks after it came out that America’s Champion, Bobby Fischer, our Hope Against The Commie Gameplaying Menace was literally a neo-Nazi and not subtle about it.
America supporting fascists, because they are anti-communist, has looooong history.
Fascists 🤝 Capitalists
At least for the first stage of the tumour.
And the terminal stage.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bobby_Fischer
Holy crap that was a wild read. Jewish Mother but a Holocaust denier. Died in exile in Iceland while evading criminal deportation to the US. I had this vague memory that he was an asshole but I had no idea.
I’m more partial to Kasparov myself.
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.
“Damn those trans women, they’re so hot, and smart, and funny, and athletic…”
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.
That results in fewer women participating
Transphobia, sexism and nft’s being sold on their official site? Chess really deserves something better than FIDE.
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:
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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.
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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.
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?
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.
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.
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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.
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.
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.”
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
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average @mtgzone user
It’s transphobia and misogyny. Because it implies that men are smarter than women.
I didn’t even realize chess had separated mens/womens events. I figured maybe a U18 and an open tournament. Is this par for normal? Or do most grandmasters etc compete at open tournaments?
Open and women, not men and women. The reason why there’s separate women competitions is so they have a space where they can compete without some men being disrespectful towards them as happens every time there’s mixed gender competitions.
People keep saying that, but its really more because there are currently no women at the highest levels. So if they didnt have their own tournaments their would be no women pro players.
Why are the categories women and open then instead of women and men?
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You’re exactly the kind of man that justify them having their own scene.
TIL: Chess had separate things for genders.
Weird…
There open and women so it’s not exactly separate
I’m not sure I understand your sentence, could you explain a little more?
Isn’t this sexist ?
The sexist assholes were driving away women, so the separate league was to allow women to compete without (or with less) hostility.
I just don’t understand this shit but it seems to happen with all sorts of games: Why the fuck do people care what gender players have? Like, why!? Just play the game and stop worrying about other people. Damn.
It isn’t a game specific issue. It is a general social problem that is easier to observe in sports because of the historical exclusion of women from most high profile sports.
They don’t want the chess geeks to jizz their pants. /s
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Of all the sports where someone’s biological sex would matter, chess is not one of them.
Wait, there’s women’s chess?
What? Is this real? Are the men and women not competing together? It is not a physical competition. Why the separation?
Do you really have to ask…? It’s so obviously a bigoted decision, if real.
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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
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
The best way to prevent harassment is not bigoted segregation by gender, but in fact punishing or banning people who harass others.
Yes, but to do that the organization would have to accept that the sexism is wrong and have the motive to do something about it.
Totally. But, you know, some people are idiots.
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).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.
