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.
I don’t think I did. Forgive some paraphrasing, but this was our exchange as I understand it,
Me: This is a dumb rule.
You: It will prevent cheating.
Me: No it won’t.
You: It will prevent a specific kind of asshole behavior.
Me: That kind of asshole behavior doesn’t constitute cheating, it’s just being an asshole and trying to prevent that causes more harm than good.
And speaking of more harm than good, blood draws for everyone that wants to participate in women’s chess is inconvenient and unpleasant enough to defeat the whole point of this league in the first place. Like, “So we wanted to be more inclusive and get more women involved in chess, yahta yahta, now let me stick you with a needle and take some of your blood. Oh, no, you wouldn’t have to do this in an open tournament, just some special hassles for your tournaments is all.” is not going to go over well is all.
So, yeah, I still think this is a stupid rule that “solves” something that’s not a problem and creates a couple of new ones.
Admittedly, I’m not thinking about just chess, but the overall argument of how to classify and allow trans folks to participate in competitive events. I don’t see a big difference between trans people in chess vs swimming or basketball.
Regardless of how you want to frame the discussion, it’s this argument they put forward to justify banning trans people. You seem to want to ignore it entirely. I really think that’s unwise, and I’m looking for some kind of potential solution to actually address it.
I think, overall, and regardless of how popular it is, this method of ignoring opposition arguments is very detrimental. 90% of the country’s land area has never seen a trans person in real life, so the arguments they read about are all they have.
I mean, there clearly are big differences between chess and basketball.
Right, I think I get what you’re saying on this level, the bigots out there have gotten more traction with dumbass centrist types when they attack trans people participating in sports than they have had with other things and it would be good to have an effective rejoinder to that whole line of attack.
But that’s exactly what I’m doing here. I’m not ignoring their arguments, I’m saying they’re fucking stupid, they’re made only as a pretext to hurt trans people, and they’re going to lead to policies that make women’s chess worse for everyone. You don’t need to know the first thing about gender affirming healthcare or to have ever met a trans person to understand that, but the moment we start needlessly saying untrue stuff like “the people making these arguments make some good points” or “the people making these arguments aren’t just hateful scum” we start making this issue more complicated and confusing than it should be for the persuadable ones, and the bigots are just going to say “See, we were right about that, and we’re also right about [more transphobia] and we need to [more repressive policies targeting trans people].”
I think you sorely underestimate the reasons other people believe the things they do. You’re approaching this from your own background, maybe, and have never been something like an evangelical christian? They’re a massive segment of the population, wielding significant power.
Calling their argument stupid, when it is 100% possible, is fundamentally foolish. You’re not actually dealing with their argument, you’re just saying its false and calling it stupid.
These are not rational rejoinders against an argument that lies within the realm of possibility.
Yes, I understand that chess and basketball are not the same. That is why I clarified that I am really thinking more generally about competitive events as a whole. This was why I mentioned steroids earlier, which are not common in chess. It’s a broader discussion, really, chess is just the latest example.
“90% of the country’s land area has never seen a trans person in real life…”
Do you have a link for this?
Anecdotal. You don’t encounter many LGBT folks in rural areas, the stigma is still too strong. You would get physically assaulted in certain situations. Trans folks are unheard of, except in media.
It’s not until you get closer to urban areas that they become a little safer and more comfortable expressing themselves.
90% is just a rough estimate of the ratio of urban to rural.