Transgender Women Banned from All-Female Chess Events
When the international group governing chess events announced that it must ban transgender competitors from participating in women’s events, it should be clear that the “reasoning” in this made-up conflict is about bias, not some perceived chromosome-fueled fairness.
It’s too arcane to be world-shaking, but the announcement by the International Chess Federation (FIDE)should prompt wonder why this is necessary. Indeed, it should prompt questions as to why there are separate men’s and women’s tournaments altogether.
Over objection of national chess commissions from the U.S. and some others, FIDE says effectively will block trans participation in women’s competitions until “further analysis” can be made — which could take up to two years. And that FIDE will remove some titles won by players who won in women’s categories and later transitioned to male. It will also remove some titles won by transgender men.
Under new guidelines, transgender people will still be allowed to compete in the “open” section of tournaments, where men and women typically compete. But many elite events that are exclusively for women will be off limits for people who changed their gender from male to female.
Now, unless you have been in a cave for the last few years, we’re all aware of questions about athletes, overwhelmingly young, and the perceived fairness of competitions where biological strengths or differences might be a factor.
Various leagues or sports overseers have weighed in when women competitors, families or politicians have seized on the occasional win in a women’s swim meet, track and field, or weightlifting contest by a transitioning athlete. Some leagues have blocked the practices, citing a need to protect cis-gender women’s rights, and others have shrugged or just treated individual instances as one-off issues.
Going well beyond the statistics or common sense, in my view, several Republican-majority state legislatures have made trans athlete rules a matter of law and a serious front in the culture wars over how much time we need to spend thinking about access to student bathrooms or body parts altogether.
Indeed, in discussions with others, I had used chess as a pointed question to distinguish what in these instances was about sports biology and what was about bias.
Reason? Bias
The international governing group for chess has now made that clear in making itself a pawn for bigotry, citing the rise of anti-trans legislation globally.
Nowhere does FIDE indicate who’s being hurt here by the now-overruled eligibility standards. What problem exactly is FIDE out to fix – and at what price for human rights?
FIDE also ruled that it has the right to make “an appropriate mark” of a gender change in a player’s profile, as well as inform tournaments of any transgender competitors. It’s too reminiscent of the Nazis marking my mother’s passport and papers as a Jew to let the idea pass.
Any titles removed this week could be renewed if a player de-transitions and can “prove the ownership of the respective FIDE ID that holds the title,” the federation said. Competitors could keep any titles they earned before they transitioned. No one knows how many titles that might include.
FIDE said it needed to make regulations on transgender players after receiving “an influx of requests for gender changes” – something we might think ought to make the federation open the question about why it has women’s events altogether.
For the record, the federation’s Ethics and Disciplinary Code for 2022 states that it does not tolerate discrimination in chess on the basis of “race, gender, ethnic origin, color, culture, religion, political opinion, marital status, sexual orientation or any unfair or other irrelevant factor, except as permitted by law.”
Morgen Mills last year became the first transgender woman to represent Canada’s women’s chess team at an international competition. In an interview, she expressed surprise, but said, “As far as I know, nobody even knew I was transgender, or if they knew they didn’t care,” she said.
In the U.S., the National Center for Transgender Equality said the new guidelines were “insulting” to all women and the game itself. No kidding.
But what FIDE, whose website shows photos of its various male-dominated rules commissions, isn’t addressing at all is the continuing drumbeat of anti-women bias.
Ability v. Gender
While women or men obviously can physically play chess equally, the number of men in competitive ranks greatly outnumber women. Just 37 of the more than 1,600 international chess grandmasters are women.
A few studies suggest that statistically, women facing male chess competitors play less aggressively than they do against women – something attributed in these few studies to cultural influences rather than biology.
According to these studies, when the players were unaware of their opponent’s gender, female players won slightly under half their games. When female players were told their opponent was male, they played less aggressively, and they won about one in four games. However, when female players were told their opponent was female, even though they were male, they were as aggressive as the male players and won about one in two games.
National championships for women have been organized in some countries since the early twentieth century, and there has been a women’s world championship since the 1920s.
But mentions of women as chess players go back to the 12th Century and a painting from the Renaissance shows women playing the game. Queen Elizabeth I was a chess fan – and, as players know, queens are the most dangerous pieces on the chess board.
The world’s top women chess competitors have said that they have encountered sexism, including belittling comments about their abilities, opponents who refused to shake hands, and online trolls questioning if girls and women belong in chess.
A popular Netflix movie, “The Queen’s Gambit” featured just such a shunned woman player who succeeds.
In a 1963 interview, Bobby Fischer was dismissive of female players, calling them “terrible” and said it was because “[women] are not so smart,” and Garry Kasparov, said in a 1989 issue of Playboy Magazine that “there is real chess and women’s chess”. Other male competitors have suggested the usual tripe about whether women are “hard-wired” for different skills, or. that chess was “maybe not for women,” or praising a woman for playing like a man.
As with tennis, top women’s champions Judit Polgár, Hou Yifan, and Ju Wenjun are ranked far lower than male competitors list among the top ten. As with soccer, women earn less from competitions.
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