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.

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.

  • jet@hackertalks.comEnglish
    2224·
    1 year ago

    Silly question, why does chess, a mental activity, need gendered leagues?

    • jsveiga@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      1309·
      1 year ago

      Chess at pro level is brutal. One can get mentally mauled if the adversary has a superior, trained for cruel psychological warfare, mind.

      Men just don’t stand a chance.

    • _wintermute@lemmy.worldEnglish
      8530·
      1 year ago

      Because the whole idea of gendered leagues in games that ultimately don’t matter at all is about segregation and control, not physiology.

      Bring on the down votes from the “but muh sports 'tegridy!” clowns.

      Edit: some of yall need a class on statistics lol

      • neuromancer@lemmy.worldEnglish
        304·
        1 year ago

        I think the highest rated woman is 2628, she wouldn’t even be in the top 100 which would require a rating of 2644.

        With current rating, not a single women would have a chance to play in international tournaments, if there only was one league.

          • neuromancer@lemmy.worldEnglish
            184·
            1 year ago

            No, at least not in the sense that they are stupid.

            Boys tend to be more interested in chess at a younger age, unless you start playing chess professionally at a very young age you are probably never going to a top 100 player.

            It’s similar to why very few women become top tier in e-sport, they don’t typically have that interest at a very young age.

            • _wintermute@lemmy.worldEnglish
              147·
              1 year ago

              What you have just said is that there is a cultural difference and I agree with that. Dont confuse that with a difference based on sex, or physiology, in other words.

              Obviously, men and women on a 1:1 basis have equal potential to excel at chess, based on their sex, right?

        • ShakeThatYam@lemmy.worldEnglish
          33·
          1 year ago

          Anyone know what the highest rated trans male and trans female chess players are? Would be interesting to know if this rule is even currently necessary.

      • maino82@lemmy.caEnglish
        24·
        1 year ago

        All of the pieces. On both sides of the board. Mentally it’s much more taxing keeping track of which pieces are yours. We guys have it really easy with the whole black/white pieces.

        • Quokka@quokk.auEnglish
          3·
          1 year ago

          Actually women are just better at seeing colour and for them what looks like the same pink to us is actually 17 different shades.

      • crowsby@lemmy.mlEnglish
        123·
        1 year ago

        And on average, they only start out with 80% of the pieces of the men’s set.

    • deegeese@sopuli.xyzEnglish
      395·
      1 year ago

      Have you met chess bros?

      I can see why women would want their own league.

    • Deestan@lemmy.worldEnglish
      237·
      1 year ago

      It doesn’t in principle, and it’s not really either.

      There is the main league, which is open for everyone, and an extra league for women only to offset the male dominance of the main league.

      Why they feel the need to exclude trans women from that I have no idea. Even many of the physical sports allow trans women under certain conditions and only to prevent any unfair advantage due to increased muscle growth during puberty.

    • superkret@feddit.deEnglish
      172·
      1 year ago

      Because otherwise women couldn’t currently compete beyond the local level. But I don’t have an explanation for the difference in playing levels beyond the fact that much fewer women seem to be interested in playing Chess competitively.

        • superkret@feddit.deEnglish
          212·
          1 year ago

          No. First of all Chess has nothing to do with being smart in any sense I would use the word.
          Otherwise a Raspberry Pi would outsmart all of humanity.

          Secondly, it’s much more similar to why the Faroe Islands can’t compete in soccer with France.
          Nothing suggests they have less natural talent for soccer (and it’s quite popular there), but there’s just 1/1000 the number of players to draw from.

          • _wintermute@lemmy.worldEnglish
            112·
            1 year ago

            Whoa, watch out with that logical thinking around here. As has been demonstrated by votes in a comment chain of mine further up the thread, the number of women at the top of the chess scene is totally indicative of womens’ intrinsic ability to play chess. It has nothing to do with the amount of women who play chess vs the amount of men who play chess! /s

            But yeah, it’s simple shit. If men outnumber women 100:1 in the competitive chess scene then obviously we expect women to be extremely under represented at the top. But misogynists gonna misogyny.

        • DrRatso@lemmy.mlEnglish
          51·
          1 year ago

          There is an open bracket (where anyone can play) and a womens bracket, currently women do not perform well enough to play internationally in the open bracket. What they are stating are merely facts. And really were it not for the existence of the womens bracket it is possible that women would perform even worse.

    • who8mydamnoreos@lemmy.worldEnglish
      126·
      1 year ago

      So women can play chess without the added mental burdens that come along with being a women in a male dominated space.

    • ex_redditor@lemmy.worldEnglish
      43·
      1 year ago

      It’s not gendered. If there is a female super GM she will be invited to the most prestigious tournaments. But there isn’t any… and that’s a whole other debate

    • whataboutshutup@discuss.onlineEnglish
      47·
      1 year ago

      Women gated off their league because every their move is commented on as a female one. They can’t fail for it’s deepens the stereotype of women=stupid and they can’t win for it’s just man wasn’t paying attention or played easy for her. The lack of women chess clubs and championships, the stereotype of it being not a sport for women is why there aren’t many high ELO players in this isolated and weird situation.

      One of the last strongholds of a fragile male nerd supremacy, that’s all.