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International Chess Federation (FIDE) to ban and punish transgender players
(www.erininthemorning.com)
this post was submitted on 17 Aug 2023
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Oops, you gave it away! Turns out if you make this move you either admit:
That you think people who are biologically male have an advantage in mental only competition
That you want to punish transgender people for transitioning by taking away what they've earned and preventing them from participating in the future.
How completely and utterly shocking, that the trans people in sports "fairness" debate was just a badly put together costume for sexism and transphobia. I tell you, I'm more shocked about this than anything. Definitely.
Doesn't supporting gender/sex separated leagues existing at all imply exactly the same thing?
Im not too familiar with Chess, but is there gendered leagues with Chess? Cause if so that seems really weird.
Like physical sports I understand a seperation and understand the need to regulate transgendered individuals due to physical difference between genders.
But for a mental cognitive sport that seems ludicrous to do
Yes, there are gendered leagues with Chess because misogyny
If women were treated equally at the highest level of chess they would only have <1% representation as of 2021.
There is only one woman in the top 100 ELO currently.
If women were held to the same intellectual standards of men in chess, they would only exist as rare, near singular phenomena, and then THAT would, rightfully, be called misogyny.
If you want to compete at the highest level, you must first compete--if you cannot compete, then you are not competing--it's built into the concept a priori. White men who are hateful are all for affirmative action because it keeps the weak weak. You can imagine Don Draper smiling and typing back whiskey while the victims are given handouts--resented by the rest of humanity, wrongfully or rightfully--this is how they make their racist fantasies racist realities.
I don't think it's an intellectual shortcoming either: it may even be that men are just mentally ill when it comes to excellence in competition and not excellence for its own sake, which I think more women are open minded enough to see; and, that men are more likely to take things "too far."
Men also had to swallow that computers--built by people of diverse backgrounds and genders--are far better at calculating chess outcomes, and someone might complain that computer constructors should be allowed to enter AI and have it ELO ranked.
On top of all this, I think chess would be delighted with female stars especially after Queen's Gambit. I can't imagine they would turn down the massive amounts of money that would generate (see formula W drivers/Danica Patrick) even if all they did was ALMOST win.
At some point reality sets and you're left with only hard truths. The hard truth about chess is that it's a war fantasy computation board game probably invented by and for male brain reward structure.
Women are proving much more capable than men in society, which is what matters, but if they want to win at chess or backgammon or go or shogi they're going to have to develop an insane priority structure where you would sooner skin your mother alive than lose.
Next, you're going to tell me skull size matters.
yes - but at least there you could argue that it's a historical relic.
I don't think anyone could reasonably argue that the attitude that men are smarter than women (or at least, better at chess) didn't exist previously, and that's why they leagues are setup this way. But it's one thing to not change existing policies rooted in sexism, and another entirely to create new policies rooted in sexism.
The former happens literally all the time, because large institutions are slow to change, and even though blatant sexism is no longer socially acceptable, it's still prevalent in peoples' heads. When the latter happens, it understandably causes more uproar, because it's an active move towards more sexist policies.
Don't get me wrong, we should absolutely get rid of gender based leagues IMO and switch to having leagues based on ability (whatever the critical ability might be for the competition in question) and call it a day - that would solve both the sexism issue and the trans issue, as there would no longer be any "unfair advantages". What genitals a person was born with - whether they kept them or not - shouldn't impact how you're allowed to compete especially in an activity like chess that has no reasonable basis for gender separation in the first place
IMO you've hit the nail on the head.
These conflicts and confusions are the consequences of gendered leagues, but because the issues come up in the context of transgender people, it makes it seem like an issue with transgender people.
Buuut then there is the issue of the representation of women in (most) popular professional sports is much lower, and would be worse without this delineation along gender lines.
So what we need is to make up our mind if we want either:
All sports to be as fair at all times as physically possible
Or
If we want to see all genders fairly represented in popular professional sports
If it is the first, we should ungender the leagues. If it is the second, we should stop worrying about it and let transgender people compete wherever they want.
They do. There are two types of chess competition: open and women only. Women don't do well in the open competition which is why they added the women only competition.
But it's not because men on average have an advantage. It's because men have a greater spread of chess ability so the very top men tend to do better than the top women.
Something to keep in mind with studies are outside social factors such as less women playing chess and less women being exposed to chess at a young age. There are fewer women in chess and fewer girls learning chess, for probably centuries. This will have a factor when comparing two demographics.
Well, sometimes it is a physical competition. You can break your leg if you do a hard enough move!