The international chess federation known as FIDE has published new rules that state that a person whose “gender was changed from a male to a female the player has no right to participate in official FIDE events for women until further FIDE’s decision is made”.
The new rules introduce the following changes:
- Trans women cannot participate in the women’s category unless they are explicitly allowed in a case-by-case process that can take up to two years.
- Trans men will be stripped of their titles achieved before their transition while trans women will retain their titles achieved before their transition.
- In case a trans person is allowed to participate, their trans condition will be added to their files and communicated to events organizers.
The idea (and I’m not defending it here necessarily, just stating FIDE’s reasoning) is to offer a safe space for women to compete professionally at the game. There’s a huge “boy’s club” problem in chess and many of some of the best male players in the world are notoriously sexist. Women who have participated in the mainline tournaments in the past have complained of sexism. Garry Kasparov even notoriously claimed one woman was cheating after she bested him.
Chess isn’t also gendered both ways. There’s women’s tournaments and women’s titles, but not a men’s tournament. Men participate in an “everybody” tournament that women are welcome to join.
Think of it like the women’s only carriages in trains in some countries. Only women can go in those carriages, but women can go in the other carriages if they want to.
Yeah but that’s dumb (I know you aren’t agreeing with it) because trans women are women. It’s not like being in swimming where having gone through puberty as a male gives you an unfair advantage.
Except for the bit where it doesn’t (assuming you are on feminising HRT)…
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This comment is being removed because it’s not by a medical professional and is either factually incorrect or is not presenting a good faith argument on the validity of inclusion for transgender athletes. For an example of a good faith scientific consensus please check out the following review: https://www.cces.ca/transgender-women-athletes-and-elite-sport-scientific-review
You may want to take another look at beehaw’s FAQ, specifically the bit on the spirit of the rules…
Be(e) nice. Don’t accuse someone of lying because they said something you don’t agree with.
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I’m just going to leave this here.
https://www.critic.co.nz/features/article/9592/how-an-otago-study-is-enabling-transphobia-in-medi
Trans women have less testosterone than cis women, to the point where if they want to have some in their system they have to take progesterone.
So, basically, you’re just making stuff up.
The estrogen treatment regimens used in transgender women aim to lower testosterone levels to within the female range (<1 nmol/L) [52]. However, hormone therapy alone has met limited success in suppressing testosterone levels, with many transgender women failing to achieve the desired level. In recent studies of transgender women, one quartile failed to achieve any significant suppression [53] and one-third failed to suppress testosterone levels despite achieving desired estradiol levels [54]. Another study reported that only 49% of transgender women showed suppressed testosterone concentrations after 6 months or more of estrogen with the addition of antiandrogen therapy [55]. Notably, Jarin and colleagues show that testosterone levels in transgender women decreased significantly from former male levels, however nearly all participants maintained their testosterone levels above the female range [56]. Whether elite transwoman athletes experience the same difficulties in suppressing testosterone levels with estrogen therapy has not been reported.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9331831/
No, I’m really not making things up. This is actual scientific fact.
Just going to leave a comment here because it’s the highest up comment chain where you’re cherry picking a single scientific article and ignoring the complexity of the problem. There’s a few issues with what you’re doing and I don’t really have time to write up an entire guide as to why this isn’t nice, but I’m just going to leave the following points:
1.) I am a member of the LGBTQ community as well. There are more letters than just T there. 2.) I did not start with any antagonism. I came in here saying that there is a valid debate about whether trans women should be allowed in physical sports, because there is, but that this ruling on chess is pure bigotry plain and simple. I did not state they should not be allowed to compete, I simply stated that there is legitimate scientific debate as to whether trans women have an unfair advantage over cis women. Ada stated that there is no advantage if you are taking feminizing HRT, and I provided scientifc evidence that this is not true. Sure, I shouldn’t have said she was blatantly lying, but there is significant evidence suggesting that even with feminizing HRT trans women still have an advantage over cis women. Others, like LucyLastic have accused me of making stuff up by changing the goal posts to only post op trans women being trans women and curiously no moderator has reminder her of following beehaws rules. 3.) I didn’t bring up problems with the regulating bodies because I wasn’t trying to start a fight over trans women not being included in physical sports, and was not making any statements for or against it, only again that there is legitimate debate about it. Because there is. The only thing I have argued is that HRT does not eliminate the effects of testosterone on the body especially if the woman undergoing HRT did so after puberty.
The entire point of the post that I made is that you are not qualified to weigh in on whether there is legitimate scientific debate. You came into this thread and made a statement in a field which you are clearly not an expert, and then replied to people by posting scientific articles as a means to give your words credit or authority. I cannot find any way to interpret this in good faith except if it is coming from a place of ignorance. The fact that you are trying to explain yourself away to me, ignoring the educational burden that I underwent to show you many ways in which your conclusion could be false doesn’t leave me with a lot of hope either. In fact, you could have completely ignored all the links and information I provided and simply replied as soon as you understood that I was contradicting what you said. You aren’t doing yourself any favor by being antagonistic after actively causing harm by cherry picking and distributing info which goes against actual scientific consensus such as the numerous articles I posted, of which one was an extremely comprehensive review commissioned by a large sports ethics organization.
Authority and scientific rigor aside, you’re making this place uncomfortable for women and transgender individuals. How do you think women and transgender individuals are made to feel by the content that you have contributed? Do you think they feel welcomed or wanted in the community? That your post makes it easier for them to sleep at night or reduces their stress or has any positive affect on their mood? This is not to say that no one can be critical or offer a counter opinion to one which a minority individual has, but that you need to be conscious about when and where it’s appropriate to do so (and whether you have the background to even provide such an opinion). In addition to simply being wrong, posting this opinion on an LGBTQ+ community does not make this place welcoming or accommodating to minorities. In short, it’s not nice behavior. So cut it out.
In pre-op trans women. In post-op trans women the testosterone drops to zero … the IOC requires women to be post-op in order to compete, for example.
So your “actual scientific fact” is a nicely cherry-picked piece of BS.
The IOC is not the only body governing inclusion in sports, and the IOC has not required surgery at all since 2015. But sure I’m the one saying bs.
This argument is irrelevant in the end because trans women are women. Even if it were true that some trans women have a net advantage due to having gone through a male puberty, It’s okay to have biological advantages in sports. That’s kind of the point of sports, no? As long as they’re taking hrt to get rid of the bulk of the advantages a male body brings I don’t see what the issue is.
The second you exclude trans women, it is no longer a women’s division.
Go look up the performance of MtF swimmers before and after their transition rather than spouting pseudoscience.
You mean like division 1 champion lia Thomas?
Yeah, that’s like, one example. Trans women aren’t exactly setting the athletic world on fire.
My last testosterone reading was 14 (ng/dL) which is less than cis women. What you are saying is demonstrably false.
I’m not really trying to comment on the trans part of the post even though that’s the main thing. I just wanted to provide clarity on why the gender “separation” exists within FIDE rules. A lot of people seem to automatically think that FIDE is assuming there’s a clear gender advantage when it’s really just making space for women to play without judgment.