Trans teen’s chess win in Germany prompts backlash
Chess "is diverse and inclusive," the German Chess Federation said in rejecting calls for a ban on trans competitors.
Chess "is diverse and inclusive," the German Chess Federation said in rejecting calls for a ban on trans competitors.
I have, and never will, understand how the fuck being trans gives you any sort of advantage in chess. Only thing I have ever rationalized about this is that the people saying it surely must be sexist cave people.
they prob cry over a trans person winning uno
Trans elder's bingo win in local nursing home prompts backlash
Just that everybody is aware about the scope/cultural relevance of this story. Apollo News, the original German source, is not a respectable news outlet.
It's an online publication more similar to a blog in many ways. The founders call themselves 'an alternative to the leftwing mainstream' and are not afraid to show their allegiance to the far right, regulary disseminating actual fake news or using slurs against immigrants and lgbt people. For american readers, I'd compare this to Breitbart.
When googling stuff along the lines of "chess trans-athlete championship" in German, this story does not come up at all. The German mainstream is gladly not (yet) interested in this culture war.
Why should it prompt backlash? Did they celebrate the win by knocking over their opponent's king with their cock?
These pearl clutchers make me want to force said pearls down their throat until they shit out every single bead or I can grab one end of the necklace and rip it out like a fucking BeyBlade!
TIL men and women don’t play int the same chess tournaments. Why? ELI5
Because back in the day when blatant sexism was the norm, women were excluded. Women-only tournaments were an attempt to correct that.
In a perfect world, everybody would play in the same tournaments and all genders would feel equally welcome to them, but that's not the world we live in.
back in the day
I have some bad news about the present day
There are open tournaments and women's tournaments. The open tournaments are for anyone. Women have competed in them but at the top level it is somewhat rare.
The women's tournaments are intended to provide an environment that encourages more women to play chess. There's considerable sexism among men (not only in the chess world, hah) which is not always very welcoming.
The men’s tournaments are open to everyone and women have and do compete in them.
cisgender women players were considering quitting, fearing unfair competition
An unfair competition... in a damn chess game?! WHAT?!
The Times reports that she claimed some cisgender women players were considering quitting, fearing unfair competition
At least with the more physical sports there's a (spurious) argument about bone structure or whatever. There really isn't that same argument wrt Chess, even if it be a bit physically taxing.
What's the excuse here? "Afab players are too stupid to face trans opponents"?
Beat me to it.
Internationally, the World Chess Federation imposed a temporary ban in 2023, preventing trans women from women’s tournaments pending further review — a rule Germany opposes, pointing out that a trans woman had already claimed a national women’s title in the early 2000s, Apollo News reports.
I think this just completely took effect and was not temporary.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transgender_people_in_chess
https://www.bbc.com/sport/67127168
The whole thing is a shitshow, because if you are MTF , FIDE does not think you are a woman, thus can't have women's titles, but also, if you're FTM , you are ALSO not a woman, so you can't keep your women's titles (Womens' grandmaster, Womens' International Master,etc).
The German Chess Federation has rejected any ban
meh.
if they really cared, there would not be any official 'gendered' tournaments. but there are, because they want that for some reason.
Gendered chess tournaments make a certain amount of sense. The main issues are that women are less likely to play chess due to societal and cultural factors and without their own division would have even more societal and cultural roadblocks to joining the game. This isn't touching on how getting certain titles requires winning specific events that would prove even more difficult for those same reasons.
Basically without gendered tournaments there would be even less women in chess and it would be even more of a "boys club" than it already is.
It's also why the anti-trans argument makes absolutely no sense in chess. Like, in sports there's some room for nuance because cis men do have a huge advantage in most sports of cis women, and depending on the sport and the stage of transition, that can carry forward to trans women. It's fucking hard to have that nuanced conversation because 95% of the time it gets drowned out by transphobes, but there's still something to talk about.
But in chess? Nobody is arguing there's any inherent biological advantage. The only reason for gendered tournaments is to create a safer space for non-men to compete in a male-dominated pastime. The only argument for excluding trans women from the Women's category in chess is transphobia. It's a real "mask off" moment for all the TERFs claiming it's about "integrity in sport" (Jesus fuck, writing that out made me realise how similar this all is to gamergate and the birth of the alt right).
A lot of tournaments in HEMA (historical European martial arts—think fencing, but with bigger, older styles of swords than what they use at the Olympics) around where I lived have started using an "Underrepresented Genders" (URG) category alongside the Open category, instead of Women's. It's functionally not much different from having a Women's category that also accepts trans people (important possible difference: it accepts trans men as well as trans women, and enbies), but the name helps make it clearer. I quite like that as a concept.
Officially there's women's and open tournaments. There isn't anything stopping the top female player, Hou Yifan from going to a tourney and potentially playing the top (general and specifically male) player Magnus Carlsen.
Good on the German Chess Federation to not bow to pressure.
Just when the world couldn't get stupider…
Chess “is diverse and inclusive,” the German Chess Federation said
Lol, lmao even. It's one of the more sexist sports there are in terms of organization, often marginalizing women and most of these marginalizing structures are still there to this day. This isn't to excuse anti-LGBT rhetoric, but pretending like everything is fine with chess probably doesn't help.
I'm tired boss
yeah, but a BiOlOgIcAl man has a huge body advantge during chess!!!!!!!11111
