International Chess Org: Trans Women Have "No Right To Participate" In Women's Chess
www.erininthemorning.com
International Chess Federation, FIDE, has released new guidelines targeting transgender players. The guidelines would strip trans men's titles, and potentially bar trans women from playing.

With these new rules, FIDE has managed to

  1. Imply the mental inferiority of women
  2. Validate the existence of transgender men
  3. Destroy the integrity of awards record-keeping
  4. Call transgender women men

Very nice, FIDE, incredible mental gymnastics performance! 👏 Add them to the ever lengthening sports federation shitlist.

  • Stoneykins [any]@mander.xyz
    ·
    11 months ago

    Oops, you gave it away! Turns out if you make this move you either admit:

    1. That you think people who are biologically male have an advantage in mental only competition

    2. 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.

    • RobotToaster@infosec.pub
      ·
      11 months ago

      That you think people who are biologically male have an advantage in mental only competition

      Doesn't supporting gender/sex separated leagues existing at all imply exactly the same thing?

      • ImOnADiet@lemmygrad.ml
        ·
        11 months ago

        no, it's a tool used to combat the overwhelming misogyny that makes it extremely unappealing for women to participate in. It's only effective when these orgs actually use other policies to work alongside it, which of course they never do.

      • bitsplease@lemmy.ml
        ·
        11 months ago

        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

      • Stoneykins [any]@mander.xyz
        ·
        11 months ago

        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.

        • AOCapitulator [they/them]
          ·
          11 months ago

          "the transphobia is because we gave the women their own space, that was our mistake"

          No, it was because of transphobia

          • Stoneykins [any]@mander.xyz
            ·
            11 months ago

            That isn't what I'm saying, I agree the transphobia is just transphobia.

            I'm trying to talk about why this issue confuses so many people, and why people that aren't well educated on gender often fall for the transphobes bullshit when it comes to the "fairness" in sport shit, as well as guess at a possible way to recontextualize this "debate" in a way that benefits trans people.

            Skill and talent aren't cleanly split along gender lines just because that is a convenient way to split the leagues. If these transphobes are so concerned about "fairness" then we should have more leagues for all sports delineated by something besides gender, I recommend weight class. Or, if the point was for women to have a space, then it should be a space for all women, and trans women should be allowed to participate. That second option is the one I would pick.