World chess federation bars transgender women from competing in women's events
apnews.com
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.
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The gendered leagues exist to promote women in chess. They need to do this because women have historically been discriminated against. These new rules feel like they are asking trans women to prove they are oppressed enough to deserve to play in women's leagues.
Some of the requirements for the change in status is problematic as well.
That is a hard requirement to meet in large chunks of the world. Many countries don't legally recognize gender change so it may be quite literally impossible to comply with "national laws and regulations." There's some carve out for asylum and refugee status. But it is possible to be a trans woman in a country, not be able to legally change your gender, and not feel unsafe enough to seek asylum.
I'm reading more on the titles now. So from the actual FIDE document:
And from what [FIDE titles]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/FIDE_titles) are on Wikipedia. It seems there is an underlying misogyny in how women's titles work. It seems to me the proper solution is to get rid of the separate title requirements.
Ooh, that's clever. They ducked out of having to set their own criteria.
That definitely changes things somewhat. I was assuming the investigation would involve your doctor providing testimony, not whatever hoops your local jurisdiction may or may not have in place.
I suppose women's leagues had more value in the past than they do now, I don't see any problems with just getting rid of them at this point. But this could just be my western perspective speaking. They might still have great value in other parts of the world.
It now sounds like they just ducked the issue though, for the most part. Not setting their own criteria or using the criteria of an international medical association was a little underhanded. Just because the local laws vary from place to place shouldn't mean trans folks from some places can't win chess tournaments anymore.
Honestly that surprises me a lot less though. Chess is unusually popular with intellectual-leaning bigots for some reason, it's a bit of a refuge for racism sometimes. Makes me really glad Magnus is the top player these days, he's a bit more of a modern guy.
I think women's leagues have their place still. Or some kind of system to encourage more women into chess. There's currently 15.7k men with titles and only 4k women with titles. Until those numbers get closer I would want to see some kind of action taken.
If you want to get radical with women's league you can just have the requirement for them to declare that you are a woman. It can quite literally be a checkbox on a forum when registering. Social pressure will take care of most of the issues. The edge case of men regesterioin bad faith can be handled on a case by case basis.
We really do need some better way to catch cis folks mis-registering in bad faith. It'd resolve some issues around the whole broader battle.
We could just do blood tests. Check for a wider variety of steroids in professional sports while we're at it. Then, your hormone levels would classify you, not anything you could say or choose.
Invasive as all hell though.
No we don't and no it wouldn't, bigots are just going to come up with the next excuse for their bigotry while we're subjecting innocent people to things that are (as you aptly put it) invasive as all hell
Yeah, but otherwise they're just going to keep shutting it down with accusations of cheating. You can't just hand wave that away, it won't go away. It needs to be dealt with systematically, eventually.
Hand waving away bigoted nonsense is exactly how you make it go away, it's the only way it goes away. If you give these people an inch they're just going to crow about how that proves they were right all along about everything and why we have to give in to their next set of demands.
I disagree whole heartedly that that makes it go away. If that worked, bigoted nonsense would have gone away by now.
People's ability to create arguments that influence other, neutral parties is far more powerful than the rational truth, and needs to be addressed in some way.
I genuinely have no idea what period in history you could be basing that on
We already had that discussion and now the overwhelming majority of doctors and researchers understand trans people are people and gender affirming healthcare is good healthcare. If you're neutral at this point you're at best embarrassingly ignorant and most likely just a bigot.
I think that's a little out of touch with different American sub-cultures, which do not all share the same values. They certainly do not necessarily share our faith in modern, evidence-based methods. While that may be embarrassing to you, embarrassment is a cultural phenomenon. They clearly feel no embarrassment.
We tried to shove bigotry under the rug for huge chunks of the past century, just ignoring things like neo-Nazism in the hopes they would go away. They have strengthened instead.
The fact of the matter is the cheating argument is plausible, and that makes it compelling. It's their only one. That makes ignoring it unwise, when it could be simply dealt with.
If they don't believe in empirical evidence and the scientific method then there is less than nothing to be gained from debating them, it will set things back for people who aren't engaged in this issue to see them being taken seriously like there is any real debate here.
I feel pretty strongly that you're
ignoringforgetting the Nazi element of this right now with this insistence on taking their bullshit arguments seriouslyThe fact of the matter is that it is not plausible and
youreiterating that it is doesn't make it so.e; I'm still giving you the benefit of the doubt that you genuinely mean well here and are just mistaken, tried to adjust the language to better reflect that
So, you're saying it is not plausible for someone to claim to be trans when they suffer no dysphoria, simply to be an asshole?
In what way is it prevented?
Being an asshole isn't cheating. Plus, if we're gonna throw out every chess player who is an asshole we're gonna be throwing out a lot of them.
e; And there's no practical way to go after assholes here without harming a lot of innocent non-assholes in the process.
Also, if your goal is just to avoid any controversies and arguments, wait until someone accuses their opponent of being trans to try to get them thrown out.
It's a stupid rule that solves a non-issue while creating a lot more problems.