- cross-posted to:
- news@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- news@lemmy.world
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.
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I didn’t even realize chess had separated mens/womens events. I figured maybe a U18 and an open tournament. Is this par for normal? Or do most grandmasters etc compete at open tournaments?
Open and women, not men and women. The reason why there’s separate women competitions is so they have a space where they can compete without some men being disrespectful towards them as happens every time there’s mixed gender competitions.
People keep saying that, but its really more because there are currently no women at the highest levels. So if they didnt have their own tournaments their would be no women pro players.
Why are the categories women and open then instead of women and men?
What do you mean? They are Women’s and Open BECAUSE there arent women at top level. It being Women and Open is defacto Womens and mens because there are currently no top level women competitors.
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You’re exactly the kind of man that justify them having their own scene.
Plenty of enlightened gents hitting the thread here to rubbish the need for a women’s category whilst simultaneously demonstrating the need for a women’s category
can you explain this a bit more? I’m not seeing it
Double_A Nerdy men playing a board game are intidimating? How do women even get anything in life done of they are this fragile? WTF? Do you also want separate women-only schools, and women-only companies?
Rbmellor Tf are they in separate groups for? Don’t girls know how sexy they look playing cheers?
System_glitch And the real reason is because women don’t do well against men. They get dominated except for a very small minority. So I orde for women to have more parity, they have women’s chess A biological man competing with them is, statistically, a huge advantage.
Two others I recall have been since been removed
Etc
This place feels more like Reddit every day. Incidentally I notice also that Lemmy has inherited Reddit’s rule that every commenter is assumed male until proven otherwise. For a few days this place seemed like it might turn out different. Oh well.
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Only if your metrics are completely broken. This is just plain old fashioned transphobia and culture war copium - nothing straight about it.
Transphobia, sexism and nft’s being sold on their official site? Chess really deserves something better than FIDE.
your meds schizo, take them.
this makes sense because cis women have such small bones they can’t reach past the centre board, giving most trans women and tall cis women an inherent advantage. /s
what the fuck chess this is just blatant transphobia
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average @mtgzone user
It’s transphobia and misogyny. Because it implies that men are smarter than women.
I’m still wondering why there is even gender based play in Chess.
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Arbitrarianism, “everythng else is gendered, so…”
Strangely, in chess, there is almost never a man category. There is everybody and there is women. wikipedia . See also motivations why and arguments against. It’s tricky.
I’ve always heard that it’s to encourage visibility of women players and encourage women to take up the game, but this ban goes against that idea and just makes it sound like women aren’t as good at the game. Just like ol’ Bobby would want, I guess.
That’s the kind of decision that makes me wish there was a capital question mark so I could just send that as a response.
#?
Of all the sports where someone’s biological sex would matter, chess is not one of them.
You have never been suplexed by someone you beat
There is an open division where everyone can compete.
Why is chess even seperated by gender? Its a completely non physical.
Because it’s already a sausage fest
There is usually an open section (what I guess you think is the men’s division), that is dominated by the top players who are almost if not all men. Why the top players are all men is not an easy answer.
Here is a post discussing it some. https://www.chess.com/forum/view/general/why-are-there-only-few-female-chess-players-at-the-top-level
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Bait
The environment around men favors them to be stronger than women. If there were no women’s category, there would only be men playing chess and very very few women and that would sucks.
I think it’s to give the top women a platform, for young girls to see people like them on the TV and make them believe they can do it too. If enough young girls start playing and keep playing, there should be plenty of female players that can compete with the best men in short order. There are also women’s titles that have lower requirements than men’s. It’s a pretty controversial thing; some women refuse to take the “lesser” WGM title over the open IM title.
I’m not saying this works or I agree with it, but that’s the thinking.
To be honest, the girl’s category may not be as useful as it used to be but in certain country, it definitely is still very useful.
If transwomen wants to compete, compete in open. In my opinion, this has nothing to do whether or not a transwomen is a women but with the environment a person is growing in.
I knew professional chess was blatantly sexist, but transphobic now too? Not surprised just dissappointed
I knew professional chess was blatantly sexist
How?
Why is there a division between sexes in chess? Why is a “chess master” different from a “woman chess master”?
From what I have seen in chess forums, many old-school male chess players think there is a difference in analytical vs emotional mind or something in that vein which is just a thinly veiled version of sexism
It’s not helping to disprove that thinking if you need to create a separate protected league for women… Also what does it matter what other people think? It’s not a team based game… Also even if the clubs are separated by gender to create a nicer atmosphere during training or whatever, why should tournaments be?
Exactly, they shouldn’t be separated.
I recently heard the argument that no men would mentally survive loosing to a women in chess, especially grandmasters.
ngl I wonder if this contains more then a kernel of truth
Ah yes, the sexist take that men are fragile and are to be protected from women beating them in chess.
I’m sure some are. I’m also sure most aren’t
That’s not the issue.
There are events for women, and there are events for everyone.
Women are underrepresented in chess, hence they have their own exclusive events.
Lol, literally the only game where physical size, bone density, lung capacity and muscle strength does not matter is keeping men and women separate! Haha… In chess there should be no separate category for women, unless… Unless… Unless we believe that women are less smarter than men.
Sorry to be contrarian here, but at the high competitive level chess is a cardiovascular challenge. If you listen to serious chess players talk about playing it’s not just a simple mental exercise.
High performing chess players have a higher HRV. Chess grandmasters might be sitting still but their body is undergoing a high degree of stress. https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2019-14359-001
Men statistically have higher HRV on average, and the outliers are even more extreme. https://www.whoop.com/ca/en/thelocker/normal-hrv-range-age-gender/
So when you enter into a competitive environment it’s just nicer to know you have a MORE level playing field.
I know chess specifically is controversial with regards to gender stuff and I’m not saying it’s perfect. I’m just saying that there are real reasons to support separate brackets.
Well… this is certainly enough bullshit to make the crops grow
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Hold up. I’m not super experienced in reading studies, but I can read.
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At best this is correlation. HRV increasing for these men doesn’t mean a high HRV is required to be good at chess.
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Sample size of 16… And only male.
HRV was reduced in participants who achieved worse results. This could indicate the possibility of HRV predicting cognitive performance
If reduced HRV means lower cognitive performance and women have, on average, lower HRV, you’re saying women are less smart. At least in chess. I think that’s bullshit and this study isn’t incorporating enough/the correct data to show anything you’re stating.
But here is one: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0149763411002077 that links HRV with stress response
And another: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0149763419310292 That shows women’s HRV responds less severely to stress.
Both meta-analysis, not a single data point.
So maybe men are just shit at dealing with stress and that’s why their brains go haywire during competition. But it’s so gracious of you being so kind to women and giving them a space where they can play among equals on a “MORE level playing field.”
By your logic, they should just be testing people’s HRV and ranking them that way so they all are on even ground. Give those dummy men a MORE level playing field.
Heh, TIL chess is cardio.
But as a person whos heart rate also increases while playing competitive board games, I can say the heart rate increase is usually due to adrenalin because I was blindsighted and I am in danger of not getting my ‘easy win’ or a toddler like rage at my predictions going wrong. YMMV.
Remember the chess player accused of cheating via anal dildo?
Also remember Petrosian? He spawned a whole bot over on AnarchyChess.
Pretty sure those two’s heart rates had nothing to do with increased bloodflow to the brain to make calculated decisions.
Having my ass handed to me in chess (amateur level) by women a couple of times makes me think that maybe the segregation is to protect men, rather than women. Or I might just be a bad chess player.
Why, if Petrosian had gone berserk on women instead of men, he probably would have had a huge reputation hit. With a bot quoting him for all internet eternity or some stuff like that. Oh, wait.
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Pretty typical for here to see a post with actual sources and instead of people doing their own research they instead want to downvote and dog-pile. You can be upset with the outcome but there are reasons behind it (and it’s not just them jumping on the trans bashing bandwagon, they outlined exactly why it was done and how it works for male-female transitions and vice versa)
It’s not an “actual source”, it’s a shit source. N=16, really? Barely qualifies as a study.
Providing a source doesn’t make a statement unchallengeable, especially if the source is deeply flawed.
Wow. Looks like people can’t handle facts huh.
Women traditionally have been discouraged from competitions, including chess. To speak in broad strokes, even in progressive locations around the world, there are still those who believe that traditional gender roles mean women should but compete. Men have a generational head start. We are at the stage where, in order to be equitable and fair, we should be creating extra opportunities for women. If we didn’t, tradition and systemic practices would continue to discourage women.
Chess has no male category. There’s open, and female. This allows an extra space for women to compete against each other, feel safe, and make connections and friendships with other women in the minority. While still allowing them to compete in the coed category on a level playing field.
We will most likely continue to be at this stage for generations.
Chess got an open class and a female class. The latter is there to provide a safer environment for girls and hopefully encourage more to try out the sport.
Why do girls need a safe environment when playing with boys?
Because they want one? Why are there woman only gyms?
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You seem hurt
Because as we’ve proven times and times again when in presence of women, we’re a bunch of morons that can’t treat them with the respect they deserve.
Because without it very very few women will feel comfortable playing chess in a club.
And that is not a political statement or my opinion, just my observation from every single chess club I ever saw.
If I was a woman, I wouldn’t go there either.Men can be nasty and intimidating towards women as history have shown a million times. Add in the fact you have a lot of “old fashioned” men in the sport that may not be up to date on how you should behave in the third millennium. If you want to grow the sport, you need to facilitate a safe and welcoming environment for everyone. Tournaments exclusive to girls is one way build towards that.
Set a code of conduct and ban people who misbehave. Might lose some top players, but it’d be better for everyone else.
I mean, the real answer is that chess is full of toxic people who’ve made it to the top to run the organization. The fact that this behavior wasn’t curtailed already shows that. Its just an accepted part of it. If the ones who would make the decision to ban those players don’t already see an issue they’re not going to start now to make the space better for women.
Nerdy men playing a board game are intidimating? How do women even get anything in life done of they are this fragile? WTF? Do you also want separate women-only schools, and women-only companies?
Holy fuck. Stereotype often?
Playing a board game isn’t problematic, but being crass and abusive about it like this is.
What is abusive about saying that women are strong and should play with men without issues?
Morphing the actual event and using softer language to describe the behavior is certainly one way to abuse people by gaslighting them. He didn’t say women are strong he accused the ones participating in this of being weak. Take your doublespeak elsewhere.
If you want to grow the sport, you need to facilitate a safe and welcoming environment for everyone.
Hm. In addition to a welcoming environment it might be fun to have a ‘cutthroat’ class with an opposite approach where intimidation, bullying, and over-the-top shit-talking is encouraged. They could have competitors come out in like pro-wrestling gear or something and have a stare-down at the beginning of the match.
This is the first comment that made me understand why separate competitions are requires. Thank you.
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The vast majority of times when men’s and women’s sports are separated it isn’t for the benefit of the men. It is because it would be a blow-out if the two sexes were together.
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Football? American Football has no restrictions on gender, it’s just that no woman can compete after puberty truly sets in. What that guys says is true about physical sports. Women can’t compete and never could. I can’t think of a single sport where a woman could outcompete a man in a physical sense. Even something like gymnastics, I think men still overcome the natural female advantage that comes from being small.
Chess from what I recall created a woman’s division because of the systematic biases and pressures girls faced. However, if I’m recalling correctly, it’s not particularly weird for a woman to complete in the open division. It’s just not a welcoming place for woman, so beginners often start in the women’s division. With that in mind I don’t see why transpeople shouldn’t be allowed. They wouldn’t be welcome much either in the open division, but also I’m not sure they’d be welcome in the women’s division either, so it’s kind of a wash.
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If being good at Chess meant being smart, then a Raspberry Pi is smarter than every human on earth.
True, but we play chess differently than a computer. We play chess mostly by pattern recognition or planning. Computers typically play chess by brute forcing all options to find the one with the most highly successful results. The later is good with a lot of very stable memory, which humans don’t have.
I’ve got news for you…
Are…are you a Raspberri Pi?
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This just in: throughout all of history women were never involved in politics; somehow relates to them being bad at chesd
Women often ruled capably (Nefertiti, Boudica, Catherine, Elizabeth, etc) were politically involved throughout history ,and were likely some decision-makers in early societies, as temporary habits were likely determined by foragability.
They are not bad at chess. There are biased circumstances both social and epistemological that have prevented their involvement with the evolution of Chess. I think these chess people are more afraid of someone insulting Chess and in the process insulted a lot of people.
Yeah dude this was sarcasm, ain’t there a whole era named after a female ruler?
If you want my personal chess opinion they statistically do worse cause chess is nothing but a game of emotions now, and the old masters made sure they had less competition by making women an easy target. Idk why the whole tourney isnt done online if they want an actual representation of chess skill, not just the bachlorette type drama we got going on
I agree. I just think it’s detrimental to just shout that something is wrong as though it’s common sense without analysis or reasoning.
You could just say “I’m a fucking moron” and save yourself some time
This dude channeling his inner Radovid
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Why are men like this?
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No, I’m saying chess has been biased from the start and the games greatest players have been neurodivergent for a long time. Gender injustice is happening here, but it also has complex layers worth investigating, too. Like, how much of Chess’ DNA and evolution has been balanced based almost exclusively to satisfy traditionally male interests (domination, competition). How did the pieces and board change to fit the boys’ game.
Is it helpful the WNBA ball is smaller? I’d say yes, but not just in the obvious ways, but also in service of the meta game and to put the best product forward. There are extenuating circumstances. I was trying to say: the exclusion is so deeply entrenched in the historical male worldview that it might just need to have these debates and growing pains to become what it should be: fair and fun.
Being a minority in any social setting brings difficulties that others just don’t otherwise face.
Having a women’s category for chess is a way of creating a safe environment for everyone to thrive.
Nah, wait, why the hell is there a separate women’s category in fucking chess in the first place? Those in charge of this decision are 100% misogynists AND transphobes. There isn’t a single good reason for this.
For the same reason why we need quotas for businesses
Having a role model is hugely important for people picking up something.
If some girl plays chess and looks at the professional players and big tournaments there are no women there. So she likely will not pursue that path professionally. If there is a women’s league then there the guarantee that there will be visibility for the winners which then creates more idols for young people and over the years increases the level of play until they are equal enough.
Not to mention the chess-clubs favouring boys on their training since they have a bigger chance to make it big and shine a spotlight on that club that produced this talent. With female only tournaments it’s easier to create a name for yourself if you treat both genders equal and create the same talent for both sides there are so many fewer players.
Sure sounds dumb on paper but it’s actually really necessary in order to create a pathway to more professional female players
Having a role model is hugely important for people picking up something.
Maybe society should start teaching kids to just do what they want instead of waiting for some random person that shares arbitrary X-trait to “inspire and empower” them. Be your own person.
There’s what society says and what society does. Society in many countries already says what you propose, again and again. But it doesn’t actually react favourably when people do it, especially women.
I have a really, really hard time believing treating both genders equal and empowering accessibility + diversity is best achieved by segration.
And yet, it sometimes is.
Sad that people can’t see the good of having a safe space for women to compete in chess… WTF.
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Look at how well Japonese Americans did after we segregated them in internment camps.
Having a women’s category for chess is a way of creating a safe environment for everyone to thrive.
I’m going to assume you aren’t trolling.
Women traditionally have been discouraged from competitions, including chess. We are at the stage where we should be creating extra opportunities for women to be involved in these competitions. If we didn’t, tradition and systemic practices would continue to discourage women.
Chess has no male category. There’s co-ed, and female. This allows an extra space for women to compete against each other, feel safe, and make connections and friendships with other women in the minority. While still allowing them to compete in the coed category on a level playing field.
We will most likely continue to be at this stage for generations.
Minorities like trans people? A place where everyone can thrive?
It’s fucking chess. I understand men may have more typical interest, but there shouldn’t be divisions based on sex or gender. Maybe divisions for some neurodivergent people, but I’d bet on many of the great chess players being neurodivergent in some way.
If the gender ratio was something like 1:4 or less, you’d have an argument that everyone should just get along. But there’s like 16 times more men in chess than women and separate tournaments means the gals won’t have to learn chest thumping to deal with the asshole faction they can simply be catty which they already know how to do.
My apologies. I still don’t understand. Are you suggesting that women are too fragile to deal with men’s posturing, or what? It’s fucking chess. Unless someone is arguing there are blatant skill discrepancies between men an women, it still doesn’t makes sense why there are divided tournaments. Is the argument women are less strategically minded, or what?
What the fuck is this sexist shit? Women are inharently catty and men are inharently aggressive?
If there’s an issue with men being aggressive, there needs to be rules to prevent it. If the ratio is a problem, there needs to be tools created to address that. The solution isn’t “women are catty and sensitive, so they need to be seperate.”
Erm, no. Both are aggressive. Cattiness is aggression.
Ok, why did you say men do chest thumping and women are catty?
Because the sexes tend to display aggression, status competition etc. in different ways. Are there catty men and chest-thumping women sure but bimodal distribution. Just like e.g. height.
I’m not going to argue with it being correct because it doesn’t matter. If the issue is aggression then it’s aggression, so just say aggression. Catty is also an insulting term. The league should have sportsmanship requirements and it shouldn’t matter how your aggression is presented or what gender you are when you are aggressive.
Only counter argument I can give you is have a bit of empathy.
Imagine that you were a young girl and saw this game. Chess. And you wanted to learn how to play.
The first person you asked was your mother and she told you oh that’s a boys game. But you still wanted to learn.
So you decide to just read up on the rules. You don’t really know anyone that plays. So you just kinda play vs yourself and redo. Old GM matches you found in old magazines. None of them are like you btw. They all seem like old men that live on the opposite side of the world.
You really like the game tho. And eventually you realize oh. There are actual clubs/tourneys near here I can go and play with actual people!
You go. And there’s not a single girl there. Because of all the hurdles you had to jump. Most others that would have been interested just quit.
So you get there. You are obviously underprepared because you didn’t have the support system that made learning it easy. Because of that you just get wrecked.
In addition to that you probably will have to hear some dumb jokes. That if you didn’t have such a rough patch to get there in the first place they might have been funny to you. But they aren’t. They just felt like you were being punched down.
Having exclusive tournaments and leagues is a very minor way of rectifying awful historical disparities. It’s not perfect and it’s not a solution by itself. But it’s absolutely needed.
Only counter argument I can give you is have a bit of empathy.
Trans people are people too. If women need protection, trans people need it even more. They’re an even smaller minority that are mistreated even more often. I could write the same made up sad story as you but about a trans person.
If exclusive tournaments are a way to fix historic disparities, women should be kicked out of the league before trans people. I don’t totally disagree with the sentiment, but we can’t have a league for literally every small group we think of. Maybe there should be the main league and the “historically disparaged” league or something, but trans people should not be being removed from this league.
Entirely agree with everything you said. I never implied otherwise.
My entire comment was replying to this:
but there shouldn’t be divisions based on sex or gender.
There absolutely should. Reasoning: in my previous comment above.
If you are going to chess tournaments, you are past the point of getting your ass kicked in chess club. I said it on another thread, but if people are being demeaning and unsportsmanlike, they can get kicked out just as you would any other game. They do it for MTG, YGO and Pokemon TCG tournaments. Bullshittery about trans people aside, this is more of a systemic issue than anything else.
To be clear, the head of FIDE (the chess federation) is close to the Russian fascist state. This is the Russian state showing off anti-trans hate as a culture-war move.
To be clear, the head of FIDE is this guy with close ties to the Russian fascist state.
No wonder the “gender change” wording of their new rules is so similar to the new Russian law that essentially bans transitioning.
One can imagine that every oligarch who wants to suck the milk of Mr. Putin is required to demonstrate loyalty periodically by pissing in the eyes of one of Mr. Putin’s designated targets. LGBTQ+ is just one of those.
And the CEO is Emil Sutovsky, who recently made a twitter poll, basically asking, let’s be honest, does anyone actually care to watch this women’s tournament? When he never made a similar poll for any other tournament.
The chess world really needs to outgrow the sexist and transphobic FIDE
