The international chess federation known as FIDE has published new rules that state that a person whose “gender was changed from a male to a female the player has no right to participate in official FIDE events for women until further FIDE’s decision is made”.

The new rules introduce the following changes:

  • Trans women cannot participate in the women’s category unless they are explicitly allowed in a case-by-case process that can take up to two years.
  • Trans men will be stripped of their titles achieved before their transition while trans women will retain their titles achieved before their transition.
  • In case a trans person is allowed to participate, their trans condition will be added to their files and communicated to events organizers.
  • AnarchoYeasty@beehaw.org
    27·
    1 year ago

    See, I can see the arguments for this for like physical sports. And to be clear I fully support trans people but I can understand how being born male can give you certain advantages in physical sports that make it unfair towards women who were born female. I don’t know the right answer for how to handle it, but I can see how the complaints make sense.

    But fucking chess? Come on what the hell advantage do people amab have over cis women in chess? This is bigotry pure and simple.

    • sarsaparilyptus@beehaw.org
      16·
      1 year ago

      Their motivation essentially boils down to “We have to separate them to protect women from the terrifying power of the superior male intellect”.

      • Arin@kbin.social
        3·
        1 year ago

        might as well just open the female only tournament to all genders, fuck bi genderization

    • bermuda@beehaw.org
      15·
      1 year ago

      The idea (and I’m not defending it here necessarily, just stating FIDE’s reasoning) is to offer a safe space for women to compete professionally at the game. There’s a huge “boy’s club” problem in chess and many of some of the best male players in the world are notoriously sexist. Women who have participated in the mainline tournaments in the past have complained of sexism. Garry Kasparov even notoriously claimed one woman was cheating after she bested him.

      Chess isn’t also gendered both ways. There’s women’s tournaments and women’s titles, but not a men’s tournament. Men participate in an “everybody” tournament that women are welcome to join.

      Think of it like the women’s only carriages in trains in some countries. Only women can go in those carriages, but women can go in the other carriages if they want to.

        • AdaAEnglish
          9·
          1 year ago

          It’s not like being in swimming where having gone through puberty as a male gives you an unfair advantage.

          Except for the bit where it doesn’t (assuming you are on feminising HRT)…

            • AdaAEnglish
              8·
              1 year ago

              blatantly lying

              You may want to take another look at beehaw’s FAQ, specifically the bit on the spirit of the rules…

            • LucyLastic@beehaw.orgEnglish
              3·
              1 year ago

              Trans women have less testosterone than cis women, to the point where if they want to have some in their system they have to take progesterone.

              So, basically, you’re just making stuff up.

              • AnarchoYeasty@beehaw.orgEnglish
                5·
                1 year ago

                The estrogen treatment regimens used in transgender women aim to lower testosterone levels to within the female range (<1 nmol/L) [52]. However, hormone therapy alone has met limited success in suppressing testosterone levels, with many transgender women failing to achieve the desired level. In recent studies of transgender women, one quartile failed to achieve any significant suppression [53] and one-third failed to suppress testosterone levels despite achieving desired estradiol levels [54]. Another study reported that only 49% of transgender women showed suppressed testosterone concentrations after 6 months or more of estrogen with the addition of antiandrogen therapy [55]. Notably, Jarin and colleagues show that testosterone levels in transgender women decreased significantly from former male levels, however nearly all participants maintained their testosterone levels above the female range [56]. Whether elite transwoman athletes experience the same difficulties in suppressing testosterone levels with estrogen therapy has not been reported.

                https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9331831/

                No, I’m really not making things up. This is actual scientific fact.

                • Gaywallet (they/it)@beehaw.orgMEnglish
                  7·
                  1 year ago

                  Just going to leave a comment here because it’s the highest up comment chain where you’re cherry picking a single scientific article and ignoring the complexity of the problem. There’s a few issues with what you’re doing and I don’t really have time to write up an entire guide as to why this isn’t nice, but I’m just going to leave the following points:

                  • This is the LGBTQ+ community, please chill with the antagonism. If you want to make a point about whether testosterone provides an advantage to individuals, you’re welcome to do so, however it needs to be done with caution if you’re not a medical professional capable of examining a complicated question and exert good faith to fully investigate the issue at hand.
                  • To articulate this point, a cursory google of the issue at hand here ‘trans women in sports’ revealed the following 4 top results from vaguely reputable/scientific resources: 1 2 3 4. All four of these articles touch on a lot more than just testosterone levels contributing to performance in sports.
                  • A cursory review of the regulating bodies themselves would reveal poor control over who is allowed to compete. There’s no discussion about this present in your point.
                  • A cursory review of the effects of testosterone on performance in athletes would might reveal any of the following studies: 1 2 3 4. The idea that testosterone is correlated with a positive performance from male athletes is a simplistic and flawed one. Young boys pre-puberty outperform young girls showing a more complicated story than just testosterone and pointing us towards more likely important factors, such as the social and environmental ones. Additionally, while testosterone may contribute to performance in some sports, it definitively does not for certain sports (especially since we’re in a topic about chess). Reducing a complicated topic to a single dimension generally doesn’t work and isn’t a good basis for argument.
                  • With all that being said, you’re right that for some trans women their testosterone levels may not be fully suppressed with just estrogen treatment, but nearly no regulatory bodies care about that - they care about whether the testosterone levels that they test are above a certain threshold. If they are not, they aren’t allowed to compete. It’s ridiculous to be quoting this study at all, because if someone were at that level and wanting to compete they’d have to be on testosterone blockers or post-op so as to drop their levels to an acceptable range.
                  • I cannot stress enough how bad it looks for someone to be coming in here and challenging the people directly effected by this issue with such a one-sided and shallow point. In general if you’re going to come in and challenge a minority on something, you need to be extremely cautious about how you do so. Ask yourself, are you an expert on the topic? If not, what could you be missing? Should you seek out education before providing your opinion and attempting to provide “scientific” reasoning for your stance? Ask yourself whether others have likely shared the same opinion as you are sharing- are you bringing anything new or useful to the table? Might minorities already be inundated with people sharing the same opinion, in a scientific manner or not, and might you be contributing to their emotional and educational burdens?
                • LucyLastic@beehaw.orgEnglish
                  3·
                  1 year ago

                  In pre-op trans women. In post-op trans women the testosterone drops to zero … the IOC requires women to be post-op in order to compete, for example.

                  So your “actual scientific fact” is a nicely cherry-picked piece of BS.

            • mrpants@midwest.socialEnglish
              2·
              1 year ago

              Go look up the performance of MtF swimmers before and after their transition rather than spouting pseudoscience.

            • threegnomes@beehaw.orgEnglish
              2·
              1 year ago

              My last testosterone reading was 14 (ng/dL) which is less than cis women. What you are saying is demonstrably false.

            • Zander@pawb.socialEnglish
              2·
              1 year ago

              This argument is irrelevant in the end because trans women are women. Even if it were true that some trans women have a net advantage due to having gone through a male puberty, It’s okay to have biological advantages in sports. That’s kind of the point of sports, no? As long as they’re taking hrt to get rid of the bulk of the advantages a male body brings I don’t see what the issue is.

              The second you exclude trans women, it is no longer a women’s division.

        • bermuda@beehaw.org
          6·
          1 year ago

          I’m not really trying to comment on the trans part of the post even though that’s the main thing. I just wanted to provide clarity on why the gender “separation” exists within FIDE rules. A lot of people seem to automatically think that FIDE is assuming there’s a clear gender advantage when it’s really just making space for women to play without judgment.

    • fuzzywolf23@beehaw.org
      7·
      1 year ago

      The reason for gendered distinctions in chess is entirely social, ostensibly because boys are pushed toward chess more than girls. This ruling is entirely bizarre, imo