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.

  • Hairyblue@kbin.social
    352·
    1 year 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
      401·
      1 year 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
        1218·
        1 year 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
          53·
          1 year 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
            73·
            1 year 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
      397·
      1 year 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.

      • donuts@kbin.social
        182·
        1 year ago

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

      • DessertStorms@kbin.social
        91·
        1 year 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).

      • ShakeThatYam@lemmy.worldEnglish
        113·
        1 year 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
        5·
        1 year 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.

      • Sethayy@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        35·
        1 year 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