International Chess Federation
Alan Cresswell
Admin, 8th Day Host
in Epiphanies
Potentially one of the most unexpected subjects for a Hell thread.
That was until the International Chess Federation (FIDE) decided to ban trans women from competing in women's chess tournaments. Presumably because being born male gives players a physique so they can outcompete women in the intense physical challenge of playing chess.
I can't see any rationale for such a decision except a display of overt transphobia.
That was until the International Chess Federation (FIDE) decided to ban trans women from competing in women's chess tournaments. Presumably because being born male gives players a physique so they can outcompete women in the intense physical challenge of playing chess.
I can't see any rationale for such a decision except a display of overt transphobia.
Comments
What I find most egregious is this aspect of the situation: (scratch that thought, everything about this is egregious.) As Goddess of Chess, I apologize for the behaviour of these mortal minions.
I thought chess was supposed to be logical. 🤬
Chess? Sure.
Bigots? Not so much.
Doublethink, Admin
And to give context in case it's helpful, here's an excellent trans writer who I follow on the issue: https://charlotteclymer.substack.com/p/banning-trans-women-from-chess-tournaments
Jigsaw and scrabble tournaments are not divided into gender categories. Surely they need as much stamina as chess. The chess decision seems based on outdated stereotypes that men naturally are better with spatial skills, logic and reasoning than men.
The Chess Federation of Canada disagrees with and is disappointed by the FIDE decision to ban transgender women from competing in women's chess events. We disagree with the way it was implemented, involving the banning of transgender women and subsequently studying the issue to arrive at a final decision. This decision came as a surprise, with no prior discussion or indication that this action was being considered. There were no exigent circumstances that we are aware of that would require such a drastic action.
We are aware of only one transgender Canadian woman with the skill level to qualify for events like the Olympiad or a Continental women's championship, and that is Morgen Mills. She represented the CFC at the Olympiad in Chennai, India in 2022 and also at the last women's continental championship in the same year. Due to a combination of COVID-related challenges, a complex Indian visa process for Canadians, and personal circumstances, we faced significant difficulties in sending teams to the Olympiad, particularly the women's team. Without Morgen Mills' participation, we would not have been able to field a complete women's team for the Olympiad. In fact, our fifth player, Rachel Chen, was unable to attend due to complications with the Indian visa process. The remaining four players, including Morgen, Maili-Jade Ouellet, Veronica Guo, and Svitlana Demchenko, had to compete without a substitute. In my role as the head of delegation for the Canadian contingent at the Olympiad and the FIDE meetings in 2022, I was deeply involved in the visa process for Chennai. I was truly impressed and inspired by Morgen's positive and optimistic demeanor in the face of bureaucratic challenges that threatened the Canadian teams' participation in the Olympiad.
Morgen represented the CFC at the 2022 Women's Continental on short notice, as we often receive information about such events only a few weeks before their commencement. Although we were entitled to send two players to the women's continental championship, Morgen was the only player able to participate given the limited notice.
The Chess Federation of Canada values Morgen Mills' contributions and participation in women's chess events. We wish to emphasize to FIDE the importance of open communication, thoughtful consideration, and fair policies when making decisions that impact the chess community. We cannot agree with this decision and urge FIDE to reconsider the actions taken.
Sincerely,
Vladimir Drkulec President, Chess Federation of Canada
But maybe there ought to be gender categories in Scrabble? As it is, Scrabble tournaments are dominated by men. This link about female Scrabble players describes situations like "only woman in her twenties out of over a thousand players" and "most famous female Scrabble player in the world... finished 49th in World Scrabble Championship".
Oft I am given to wonder, in the light of the existence of organisations like the LGB Alliance and the sorts of links between TERF groups and unsavoury right wing allies, whether there is any cause so left wing one cannot get the authoritarian rigbt to feign support for it if it can somehow be framed as anti-trans. It's amazing how many bigoted toads are nailing their colours to the masts of feminism and gay rights as long as the feminism and gay rights activism in question is transphobic. Sorry, "gender critical".
I wonder if the ostensibly progressive people willing to sup with whatever length spoon fully appreciate how, to mix a metaphor, the face eating leopards will return to eating their faces if ever they succeed in suppressing trans people sufficiently to make feeding on their faces slim pickings?
To put it another way, if actual Nazis are turning up to cheer you on, you've fucked up. I'm reminded of Mitcbell and Webb:
https://youtu.be/ToKcmnrE5oY
This is a really good piece (as most of Charlotte Clymer's essays are; I've learned so much about trans issues from her writing) and it does a good job of answering the question of why gendered chess categories exist in the first place.
Is there a thread specifically about this? Couldn't find one, which surprised me. Maybe I didn't look hard enough.
I'm tempted to give my five pennyworth here, but if anyone can guide me to an appropriate existing thread, that would be better.
Good grief - I had no idea that sexual harassment was such a big issue in the chess world. I had (stupidly) imagined that chess was all very civilised and well mannered. Sounds like that's the real problem that wants sorting.
I doubt that the following will be very welcome, but it’s a considered view that comes from a place of genuine concern both for the trans and ‘assigned’ sexes (or genders if you prefer)…
I do have very strong doubts about allowing transwomen into women’s sport generally. In some cases, like swimming and cycling, it’s a matter of fairness; in contact sports - boxing and rugby, say - there’s also an obvious issue of safety.
(I also object to transwomen being given licence to enter women’s lavatories, changing rooms and prison estates on the basis only of self-declaration. But that’s another story.)
Generally, though, I cannot see why women should not have competitions - or other activity - just for themselves as people born female. As far as I understand it, chess operates open and women’s tournaments. Nobody is excluded from open tournaments. So why should women in women’s tournaments be obliged to compete against players who were once men?
As to the argument that transwomen are and always were women, I take Professor Robert Winston’s publicly stated position: it is biologically impossible to change sex; every single cell in our bodies is coded with the biological information that we are male or female.
Lest there be any doubt about my view on trans rights, I regard it as abhorrent that any person should suffer at the hands of another because of their wish/need to live as a person of a sex different to that of their birth. Policies of different treatment should be the absolute least possible. Trans rights should only yield where they collide with others’ rights. Which is a principle of law that affects all of us in many different ways: it is not discriminatory.
Except that's not what you're saying. You're advocating for restricting trans rights in areas that impact other people not at all. No-one is impacted by trans women using the toilets that have a picture of a person in a dress on them. Claiming that doing so infringes on the rights of cis women collapses under scrutiny, because unless you conduct genital inspections and/or genetic testing at the bathroom door how the fuck are you going to police it? You know whose rights are impacted by this shit? Non gender-conforming women who get repeatedly harassed by bigots when they go for a pee.
Physical imbalances in rugby are a safety issue regardless of chromosomes, which is why weight categories are the solution, not the arbitrary exclusion of trans women. There are questions at elite level in some sports but the current approach is targeting cis women with DSD more than trans women, and in any case the elite level is largely a red herring to the normal, day to day participation in sport. In the average local football league the fact that a woman went through male puberty is going to be lost among the huge variations between people anyway.
Sex is the biological traits of the body.
Gender is the social, cultural, and psychological traits and roles that people live by. Current thinking is that most children identify with one or other gender between two or three - something in their head makes the connection. Trans-people as I understand it made the connection with a gender that does not match up to their biological sex.
The point is we don't think of ourselves as men or women (or neither) because we remember the last time we checked our genitals. We think of ourselves as men or women because when we were just out of infancy we identified ourselves with people who dressed or behaved in ways that we thought were like us.
Or so I understand it.
That's one of the ironies about toilets and so on, that more masculine looking women, who are not trans, get harassed. But this shows that trying to police sex/gender is idiotic, and is a sop to bigotry .
I have read plenty about gender and sex. It’s very thought provoking. But it doesn’t overcome the biological truths. If one of the world’s foremost experts on reproductive science and medicine states the position explicitly, that a man cannot become a woman biologically, I take notice.
As for bigotry…sorry but I think you have that exactly the wrong way round, Arethosemyfeet. If biological women wish to use lavatories or be housed in prisons, away from biological men, I’d suggest it’s bigotry to deny them that right.
I certainly don’t think access to lavatories is a major issue - plenty are unisex anyway. But if women want sex differentiation I - male - respect that.
The bigotry issue, again, I just can’t agree with.
Women spend their lives in unnecessary disadvantage socially. Listening to women and respecting their preferences seems like a sensible and decent thing to me.
I think that’s rather the point. Identifying as being of one or other sex doesn’t make it so.
I repeat: people should be free to live as they wish unless what they want treads on others’ rights. There’s nothing controversial in that.
So I require a third party to tell me what my identity is. Well, no.
If by “identity” you mean your being legally a man or a woman, well, yes. We all do. It’s recorded (by a third party) at birth or legally changed (by a third party) under certain criteria.
We can live how we wish. But that’s not the same thing.
People have a right to be safe; they don't have a right to dictate what categories of people they share communal space with. Risk assessment is the issue here, not biology, and it applies to the right of trans people to be safe in toilets or in prison just as much as cis people. Segregation of men from women in prisons is a safety precaution, but it doesn't preclude risk assessments that place an individual in one estate or the other, or segregate them from others. Sex offenders shouldn't be locked up with people who match their target demographic, but that applies to cis female offenders who prey on women, or cis male offenders who prey on men, as it does trans offenders. Risk assessment is the key.
And you still haven't shared your plan for policing who is allowed to use which toilet.
“…they don't have a right to dictate what categories of people they share communal space with.”
If a space is one-sex it’s not communal, at least not in the way generally meant.
If a woman wants to join or start a female-only football club or swimming club or chess club, what’s the problem? Women - at least all those I’ve ever asked - say that they sometimes want exclusively female company and socialisation.
As for toilets, so far as I know it’s not against the law for anyone to enter any loo. They don’t need policing. It’s a matter of social convention and general wish.
I can happily agree about risk assessment in prisons, but the starting point is a presumption of risk to women from men. All inmates are at some risk from each other. That’s not an argument for increasing it by placing men around women.
We don’t provide a platform for unsubtle proxy arguments that trans people are likely to be rapists. For which reason, there will be no further discussion about toilets on this thread.
@HymnNumber466 please read the guidelines for the Epiphanies forum.
Doublethink, Admin
[/Admin]
I take umbrage at that! I was not making any such proxy argument. But of course I’ll comply.
I’ve now read the guide. I confess I wasn’t aware that this forum is intended to be so rigorously a ‘safe space’.
So I think it may be best if I bow out of here and de-Epiphanise myself.
My apologies to anyone caused upset by my views.
If you want to argue with @Doublethink , post in the Styx. You're new here, so you may not know this. But the correct place to discuss a host/admin warning is in the Styx and not here.
Gwai,
Epiphanies Host
My bowing out was in respect of this forum, not generally. I like SOF, though I mostly read and don’t post.
I wasn’t aware of the Styx etiquette, but TBH I don’t believe I was actually arguing with Doublethink at all. I was and am perfectly content to comply with what Doublethink directed. I explained how I felt - which is frankly trivial as things go - and then said I’d get my coat (from the Epiphanies cloakroom, not the site one).
I don’t agree with what is being said in the thread. My disagreement is sincere and, I hope, reasonably and carefully expressed. But I’ve no intention to cause offence, something which seems inevitable now I’ve read the guidelines and understand the forum’s purpose better, and will therefore back away.
I think they are saying that chess requires stamina, and trans women have more than cis women . Crikey.
I think for at least some early radical feminists the point of talking about gender as socially constructed was that they wanted to deconstruct it entirely.
If folk want to talk about feminism, that's a great topic and a new thread separate from sport might be better- thanks!
Louise
Epiphanies Host]