International Chess Org: Trans Women Have "No Right To Participate" In Women's Chess
www.erininthemorning.com
International Chess Federation, FIDE, has released new guidelines targeting transgender players. The guidelines would strip trans men's titles, and potentially bar trans women from playing.

With these new rules, FIDE has managed to

  1. Imply the mental inferiority of women
  2. Validate the existence of transgender men
  3. Destroy the integrity of awards record-keeping
  4. Call transgender women men

Very nice, FIDE, incredible mental gymnastics performance! 👏 Add them to the ever lengthening sports federation shitlist.

  • solrize@lemmy.ml
    1·
    1 year ago

    IDK, if the cis women opposing trans inclusion are really radical (the R in TERF, i.e. a fringe minority) that’s one thing, but if it’s the other way that’s another. As a cis guy, if I accept the concept of women-only spaces at all (which I do), I have to also accept that I have no say in what happens in them. I would tend to not care what other cis guys think either. The views of women (cis or trans) matter much more. I like to be trans accepting in my own life (socially, at work, etc.) but that’s partly because I’m not in the marginalized group on either measure, and those places are not supposed to be gender segregated to begin with. A women’s tournament is more like a lesbian bar where men aren’t allowed (it’s not about who you play against or drink with, it’s about the absence of men in the entire space). What are the fine points of that? I don’t know, it’s none of my business.

    Keep in mind also that FIDE is the WORLD chess federation and US players are a small minority in it. There is a separate US federation with its own rules. Trying to impose US rules on the rest of the world is a familiar type of cultural chauvinism, resulting in phrases like “ugly American” and “Yankee go home”. The top 100 FIDE women players are listed here, only six of them play for the US, and of the six, at least three (Krush, Zatonskih, and Tokhirjonova) weren’t originally from the US. The other three are ethnic Chinese but I don’t know where they were born. I’m pretty sure the country with the largest representation in FIDE is Russia, since chess has always been important there. FIDE has to cater to the players that make up its membership, and those are mostly not US players.

    If you’re a cis guy like me and you want to march into a women’s tournament in China or Uzbekhistan and dicksplain to the organizers how to run their event, well, all I can do is smile. You might also stop by some Iranian events, where women players are required to wear hijabs, another source of conflict. That is an area where lots of chess people are legitimately upset, so if you can fix it, we will all be grateful.