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.
Why are cheese tournaments even gendered to begin with?
How is gender even relevant in chess?
it isn’t. the main league and FIDE scoring have no such restrictions. the women’s scoring and events were created separately because chess is heavily dominated by men for whatever reason. i think trans women can compete in the main events which are not gender restricted, just as non-trans women are welcome to.
Oof. Fucking FIDE. Trans women should be able to compete in the women’s sections.
About the gender gap - the gender gap in performance is a statistical relic of the participation gap. Control for participation and the performance gap vanishes.
Women’s sections exist to help promote participation and competition in that cohort. Its the same reason junior sections for kids exist, senior sections for older adults exist, and ratings limited sections like U1200 and U1500 exist.
Unlike other sports, a trans person would have no physiological advantage or disadvantage competing across gendered sections.
So what’s their plan when someone accuses their opponent of being AMAB to try to get them DQ’d?
The fact that this is a stupid thing to do aside, what does “assessment of gender change” even mean? Like, are they gonna go hand you a quiz to find out how “wOmAnLiKe” you are or something
