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.
Its almost like it was never about "biological competitive advantage" huh?
Trans women should not be barred from playing women's chess, nor should there be some ephemeral 2 year requirement, nor should trans men lose their titles after transition.
You (and Erin) are reading it wrongly: "If a player holds any of the women titles, but the gender has been changed to a man, the women titles are to be abolished."
This only applies to "women titles". Women can hold "general titles" as well - so you could be a "Woman Grandmaster", but you could also be a "Grandmaster". (Woman Grandmaster is nowhere near as good a player as Grandmaster).
Players can't resign titles, so if a trans man had won "Woman Grandmaster" before transition, then he would lose that title (and get the lower-ranked "FIDE Master" title instead).
What is objectionable is that, for a trans woman, she can't count any games she won before FIDE's official acknowledgement of them as a woman towards winning a woman-only title, so she can't start the process of winning WGM or WIM until all of the legal paperwork is complete (which would, given how bad most jurisdictions are about changing legal paperwork, likely be several years after she came out). That process tends to take several years, which is why this is so outrageous - she could play excellent chess for years after coming out, while facing all of the discrimination that trans women face, and all of that chess would get no acknowledgement at all.
I think trans men should be allowed to resign the titles (titles can't normally be resigned) in that circumstance, rather than being forced to abandon them, but it's one of the least objectionable bits of this. I'm instinctively uncomfortable with the women-only titles, but as a cis man, I recognise that it's clearly none of my business, and the vast majority of women eligible for one have got one (which costs a lot of money, normally about $1000) and most are in favour of their continued existence.
FIDE clearly can't impose a global policy on all federations to acknowledge trans people who have not changed their legal gender - CFR (Russia) would certainly resist that, and would be supported by a lot of other national federations, including many of those with the best players. But they could have formalised the (effective) policy they used to have of allowing each federation to come up with their own rules and just accepting whatever gender marker the federation the player is registered with provides them.
USCF (USA)'s policy is pretty reasonable:
"Allow a person to identify as they choose, and allow each person one change to their gender identification. If an individual attempts a second change to gender identification, at that time the individual must provide US Chess a birth certificate, and the birth gender indicated on the birth certificate will be used to determine gender for US Chess purposes."
Why is there a separate competition for men and women in *chess* out of all competitions? I can see a reason in physical sports, but there's no reason whatsoever to have any gender separation in Chess, where it doesn't apply. This is just transmisia and transmisogyny in the most extreme. I feel like I want to go super-saiyan with all these bans of trans women.
I was going to write a comment, but I like the way you said it. Nothing about this gives trans women an advantage. This is phobe territory and it's self-evidently so.
These rules are transparent bigotry, but there's a tiny silver lining hiding in there. Decent, reasonable human beings can look at sports bans and think maybe they're okay while still feeling fair-minded and inclusive. Nobody can look at these ridiculous rules and think they're okay. Especially cis women.
This kind of overstep puts the real agenda out in the open and forces everyone to look at it, and to look at themselves in the mirror afterwards. Either you're okay with blatant discrimination or you're not. And then the next time a sports ban comes up, maybe everyone will think a little harder about what's reasonable and what's just bigotry.
So men have an advantage over women in contests of intellect? That’s what they’re saying. Idiot TERFs will go along not caring they’re saying they are inferior. Why do people care? What is the point? Sounds like hatred for its own sake
Ok people, it’s one thing to fight trans humans playing sports where strength could be an advantage (mind you there are many cis-gendered women who flat out beat men in several sports). This goes beyond ridiculous. Are they really stating that the trans brain is more superior than a cis brain? They have lost their damn minds.
The competition has (sadly) been fierce, but congrats to FIDE for setting a new standard for transphobic nonsense, with a healthy dose of sexism to boot.
So basically "trans men aren't women anymore so and they have to revok their women's titles but trans women are men too and they can't compete in the women's" such bigotry nonsense
Hey! It's been a long time since is was in competitive chess ( long enough that the name Nona Gaprindashvili has meaning) and was never all that good (my USCF rating topped at around 1950) but geez, I'd like to think I'm not a bad person!
Can you clarify "Transgender women can keep their male titles." There is no "male titles" in chess. If you're referring to non-women titles, they're for anyone who elects to use it (many women choose to not take a women title because they don't believe in the gendered structure of the titles)
I think "Transgender men must relinquish their titles after transitioning." is misinterpreted or at least far too vague, they must revoke their women- title, I'd assume they qualify for open titles, but without clarification, this just seems like more rushed anti-trans nonsense...
As for this in whole, it's so disheartening banning trans women from women events. FIDE has always seen women as lesser in skill than men, in my opinion, as we can see in the women titles you can qualify with hundreds of elo points less for women titles than open ones (which goes back to women not electing to take them). I think they inaccurately see trans women as men so they don't want to treat them as lesser, or something. It's so stupid. Very disappointing to be a chess player right now.
Yes, this is misogyny and ridiculous as far as any sports argument goes. But that's not really what this is about. This is about saying that transgender are "them" and have no right to exist. They are at war with us and want us eradicated. They will claim we have an ideology (which we don't) that is a threat to the fabric of society (or chess, or insert brain fart here). We are a threat only to ourselves from relentless right wing persecution and the dysphoria which is a common burden. This is another instance of dehumanizing evil.
okay, if folks want to bar transgender women from beauty pageants I think they also have to ban anyone who has any cosmetic surgery of any kind from pagents (no nose jobs, no boob jobs, etc.).
And why the fuck is there gender in chess at all?????
They should just come out and admit that they don’t think *any* transgender person is deserving of respect . . . or to have their basic humanity acknowledged! They want to relegate us to pariah status!
What FIDE have done is bad, but some of the badness isn't new trans-specific badness, it's their decades-old misogyny being noticed by people outside of chess.
The old FIDE approach was to pretend trans people (and non-binary people) didn't exist. Every player was registered as M or F, and changes were described as "correcting an error in the original registration" (also, some people would transition before registering with FIDE and their registrations were just right in the first place). Only a few federations (the name for national chess organisations) would change registrations for trans people.
There are eight titles that FIDE award for playing chess (they also hand out titles to "arbiters", which is what chess calls referees/umpires, and to coaches, event organisers, chess composers, correspondence chess players, etc). Four of those titles are open to everyone: Grandmaster (GM), International Master (IM), FIDE Master (FM) and Candidate Master (CM). There are another four titles that are only open to players who are registered as F, which are Woman Grandmaster (WGM), Woman International Master (WIM), Woman FIDE Master (WFM) and Woman Candidate Master (WCM).
Just to emphasise this point: women are eligible for the open titles.
The titles rank as follows (a player is only ever referred to by their highest-ranked title, even if they hold all eight): GM, IM, WGM, FM, WIM, CM, WFM, WCM. This is also the ranking of how difficult they are to get; anyone eligible for one title is eligible for all lower titles (except, obviously, men can't get women's titles). Players don't generally bother with collecting all titles; FIDE charges very substantial fees (four figures) for each title, so a young player who is rapidly improving and can reasonably expect to get a higher title in the near future doesn't bother registering their lower one(s).
Most chess competitions are open to both men and women, and award prizes to the top placing players and then additional prizes to the top-placing women (and often also the top placed seniors, the top placed juniors and the top placed players from the country where the event is taking place). In a typical event with a field of 100-200, there will be prizes for around the top 20 players plus the top 5 women. Women are still eligible to win the open prizes (and the best woman usually will score highly enough to also win an open prize).
There are a small number of women-only events; these are generally just national and continental championships, the World Championships, and the three events that determine who will challenge the world champion (the Grand Swiss, the World Cup and the Candidates' Tournament).
All of these events run in parallel to an open event (so there will be a Bulgarian national championship and a Bulgarian women's national championship held at the same time; women can opt out of the women's and contest the open championship if they choose to, and I chose Bulgaria because their #1 woman decided to enter the open championship this year because she wanted competition closer to her level - she came second).
The official reason for the separate women's events and women's titles is that there are far fewer women who play chess than men and male-dominated open events tend to be very sexist and put a lot of women off playing; the purpose is to have women who succeed and can be role models. There is a lot of disagreement within chess as to how well this works; the best woman ever to play chess (Judit Polgar) refused to take any woman-only title and refused to play in any women-only event. Other top women players - who, like Polgar, hold the open GM title and have no especial need of the career assistance themselves - disagree and think the woman-only titles and events are useful.
What they are proposing for trans men is that they will cease to hold women-only titles once they are officially registered as men: ie a trans man who previously competed with an F in the gender box on their FIDE registration would cease to hold the WGM title. If he held a higher open title (ie IM or GM), he'd retain that; if not, then he'd be awarded the FM title (which he would always have been eligible for, but likely would not have bothered to pay to register if he had held the higher WGM title). They won't be eligible to play in women-only events or to win women-only prizes in open events once they have reregistered as men. This is probably fair enough: titles can't normally be revoked, and I doubt many trans men would want to be introduced as "Woman Grandmaster".
The requirements for evidence that your gender change has been approved by your national government (yes, that's what it amounts to) are, I guess inevitable, but that doesn't make them unobjectionable. It means that trans players may have to change their registration to a country that isn't grossly transphobic to be able to transition within chess. But I suspect that players from a transphobic country like Russia would have to get out of the country in any case.
It's what they are proposing for trans women that is really objectionable:
The two year consideration period (with the option of denying entry) for trans women is just the purest transphobia. Either they accept the documents from the national government registering the change, or they don't. Having a delay makes sense in physical sports where there are biological advantages, but makes none in chess. Trans women will face at least as much discrimination as cis women (let's be honest: they face far more), and the whole point of women's titles and women's competition is to help out people who have faced that discrimination.
Its almost like it was never about "biological competitive advantage" huh?
Trans women should not be barred from playing women's chess, nor should there be some ephemeral 2 year requirement, nor should trans men lose their titles after transition.
This is just misogyny and transphobia.
I agree wholeheartedly!
Also, is this a new form of misogyny? If I read it right, they're saying (their words):
* Transition from woman -> man = abolish all titles
* Transitions from a man -> woman = all titles remain eligible
I don't even know what to do with that, on top of the gross invasion of privacy they're demanding and everything else.
You (and Erin) are reading it wrongly: "If a player holds any of the women titles, but the gender has been changed to a man, the women titles are to be abolished."
This only applies to "women titles". Women can hold "general titles" as well - so you could be a "Woman Grandmaster", but you could also be a "Grandmaster". (Woman Grandmaster is nowhere near as good a player as Grandmaster).
Players can't resign titles, so if a trans man had won "Woman Grandmaster" before transition, then he would lose that title (and get the lower-ranked "FIDE Master" title instead).
What is objectionable is that, for a trans woman, she can't count any games she won before FIDE's official acknowledgement of them as a woman towards winning a woman-only title, so she can't start the process of winning WGM or WIM until all of the legal paperwork is complete (which would, given how bad most jurisdictions are about changing legal paperwork, likely be several years after she came out). That process tends to take several years, which is why this is so outrageous - she could play excellent chess for years after coming out, while facing all of the discrimination that trans women face, and all of that chess would get no acknowledgement at all.
I actually edited the “men’s titles” part, but I still think it’s wrong that trans men have to lose their previous titles.
And everything else wrong with this decision still stands, especially making them change their legal gender when such is increasingly impossible.
I think trans men should be allowed to resign the titles (titles can't normally be resigned) in that circumstance, rather than being forced to abandon them, but it's one of the least objectionable bits of this. I'm instinctively uncomfortable with the women-only titles, but as a cis man, I recognise that it's clearly none of my business, and the vast majority of women eligible for one have got one (which costs a lot of money, normally about $1000) and most are in favour of their continued existence.
FIDE clearly can't impose a global policy on all federations to acknowledge trans people who have not changed their legal gender - CFR (Russia) would certainly resist that, and would be supported by a lot of other national federations, including many of those with the best players. But they could have formalised the (effective) policy they used to have of allowing each federation to come up with their own rules and just accepting whatever gender marker the federation the player is registered with provides them.
USCF (USA)'s policy is pretty reasonable:
"Allow a person to identify as they choose, and allow each person one change to their gender identification. If an individual attempts a second change to gender identification, at that time the individual must provide US Chess a birth certificate, and the birth gender indicated on the birth certificate will be used to determine gender for US Chess purposes."
https://new.uschess.org/news/us-chess-transgender-policy
I see. Thank you for the clarification.
Why is there a separate competition for men and women in *chess* out of all competitions? I can see a reason in physical sports, but there's no reason whatsoever to have any gender separation in Chess, where it doesn't apply. This is just transmisia and transmisogyny in the most extreme. I feel like I want to go super-saiyan with all these bans of trans women.
Wow this is both transphobic AF and sexist AF against cis women well. 🥴 We all knew their “protecting women” argument was just thinly veiled misogyny.
Very much. It's like they just rolled all the patriarchy stuff together.
I was going to write a comment, but I like the way you said it. Nothing about this gives trans women an advantage. This is phobe territory and it's self-evidently so.
These rules are transparent bigotry, but there's a tiny silver lining hiding in there. Decent, reasonable human beings can look at sports bans and think maybe they're okay while still feeling fair-minded and inclusive. Nobody can look at these ridiculous rules and think they're okay. Especially cis women.
This kind of overstep puts the real agenda out in the open and forces everyone to look at it, and to look at themselves in the mirror afterwards. Either you're okay with blatant discrimination or you're not. And then the next time a sports ban comes up, maybe everyone will think a little harder about what's reasonable and what's just bigotry.
I really really hope you are right.
It’s very infantile too.
So men have an advantage over women in contests of intellect? That’s what they’re saying. Idiot TERFs will go along not caring they’re saying they are inferior. Why do people care? What is the point? Sounds like hatred for its own sake
So is chess now considered a full contact sport? This is beyond crazy.
Wouldn't want my "bigger hand size" to hurt a dainty biological woman.... -_-
Ok people, it’s one thing to fight trans humans playing sports where strength could be an advantage (mind you there are many cis-gendered women who flat out beat men in several sports). This goes beyond ridiculous. Are they really stating that the trans brain is more superior than a cis brain? They have lost their damn minds.
Wait I’m so confused. Where the supposed “bIoLoGiCaL AdVaNtAgE”?
Well, there isn’t one. There isn’t one period. This just full on segregationist bigotry.
I’m so tired of this CRAP. All this bigotry is such nonsense.
FULL INCLUSION IN ALL SPORTS NOW!!!!
The competition has (sadly) been fierce, but congrats to FIDE for setting a new standard for transphobic nonsense, with a healthy dose of sexism to boot.
So basically "trans men aren't women anymore so and they have to revok their women's titles but trans women are men too and they can't compete in the women's" such bigotry nonsense
Wait. So now it's *not* about a supposed physical advantage, but an intellectual one? Jump on the anti-trans bandwagon much?
Chess people are generally... bad
Hey! It's been a long time since is was in competitive chess ( long enough that the name Nona Gaprindashvili has meaning) and was never all that good (my USCF rating topped at around 1950) but geez, I'd like to think I'm not a bad person!
Lmao, I was talking about all the chess nazis!
Aah, well in that case.... :-)
TIL: Chess is segregated by gender. Chess. Chess? Lol, why waste an opportunity to insult both women and trans people. Chess??
Can you clarify "Transgender women can keep their male titles." There is no "male titles" in chess. If you're referring to non-women titles, they're for anyone who elects to use it (many women choose to not take a women title because they don't believe in the gendered structure of the titles)
I think "Transgender men must relinquish their titles after transitioning." is misinterpreted or at least far too vague, they must revoke their women- title, I'd assume they qualify for open titles, but without clarification, this just seems like more rushed anti-trans nonsense...
As for this in whole, it's so disheartening banning trans women from women events. FIDE has always seen women as lesser in skill than men, in my opinion, as we can see in the women titles you can qualify with hundreds of elo points less for women titles than open ones (which goes back to women not electing to take them). I think they inaccurately see trans women as men so they don't want to treat them as lesser, or something. It's so stupid. Very disappointing to be a chess player right now.
Yes, this is misogyny and ridiculous as far as any sports argument goes. But that's not really what this is about. This is about saying that transgender are "them" and have no right to exist. They are at war with us and want us eradicated. They will claim we have an ideology (which we don't) that is a threat to the fabric of society (or chess, or insert brain fart here). We are a threat only to ourselves from relentless right wing persecution and the dysphoria which is a common burden. This is another instance of dehumanizing evil.
okay, if folks want to bar transgender women from beauty pageants I think they also have to ban anyone who has any cosmetic surgery of any kind from pagents (no nose jobs, no boob jobs, etc.).
And why the fuck is there gender in chess at all?????
They should just come out and admit that they don’t think *any* transgender person is deserving of respect . . . or to have their basic humanity acknowledged! They want to relegate us to pariah status!
What FIDE have done is bad, but some of the badness isn't new trans-specific badness, it's their decades-old misogyny being noticed by people outside of chess.
The old FIDE approach was to pretend trans people (and non-binary people) didn't exist. Every player was registered as M or F, and changes were described as "correcting an error in the original registration" (also, some people would transition before registering with FIDE and their registrations were just right in the first place). Only a few federations (the name for national chess organisations) would change registrations for trans people.
There are eight titles that FIDE award for playing chess (they also hand out titles to "arbiters", which is what chess calls referees/umpires, and to coaches, event organisers, chess composers, correspondence chess players, etc). Four of those titles are open to everyone: Grandmaster (GM), International Master (IM), FIDE Master (FM) and Candidate Master (CM). There are another four titles that are only open to players who are registered as F, which are Woman Grandmaster (WGM), Woman International Master (WIM), Woman FIDE Master (WFM) and Woman Candidate Master (WCM).
Just to emphasise this point: women are eligible for the open titles.
The titles rank as follows (a player is only ever referred to by their highest-ranked title, even if they hold all eight): GM, IM, WGM, FM, WIM, CM, WFM, WCM. This is also the ranking of how difficult they are to get; anyone eligible for one title is eligible for all lower titles (except, obviously, men can't get women's titles). Players don't generally bother with collecting all titles; FIDE charges very substantial fees (four figures) for each title, so a young player who is rapidly improving and can reasonably expect to get a higher title in the near future doesn't bother registering their lower one(s).
Most chess competitions are open to both men and women, and award prizes to the top placing players and then additional prizes to the top-placing women (and often also the top placed seniors, the top placed juniors and the top placed players from the country where the event is taking place). In a typical event with a field of 100-200, there will be prizes for around the top 20 players plus the top 5 women. Women are still eligible to win the open prizes (and the best woman usually will score highly enough to also win an open prize).
There are a small number of women-only events; these are generally just national and continental championships, the World Championships, and the three events that determine who will challenge the world champion (the Grand Swiss, the World Cup and the Candidates' Tournament).
All of these events run in parallel to an open event (so there will be a Bulgarian national championship and a Bulgarian women's national championship held at the same time; women can opt out of the women's and contest the open championship if they choose to, and I chose Bulgaria because their #1 woman decided to enter the open championship this year because she wanted competition closer to her level - she came second).
The official reason for the separate women's events and women's titles is that there are far fewer women who play chess than men and male-dominated open events tend to be very sexist and put a lot of women off playing; the purpose is to have women who succeed and can be role models. There is a lot of disagreement within chess as to how well this works; the best woman ever to play chess (Judit Polgar) refused to take any woman-only title and refused to play in any women-only event. Other top women players - who, like Polgar, hold the open GM title and have no especial need of the career assistance themselves - disagree and think the woman-only titles and events are useful.
What they are proposing for trans men is that they will cease to hold women-only titles once they are officially registered as men: ie a trans man who previously competed with an F in the gender box on their FIDE registration would cease to hold the WGM title. If he held a higher open title (ie IM or GM), he'd retain that; if not, then he'd be awarded the FM title (which he would always have been eligible for, but likely would not have bothered to pay to register if he had held the higher WGM title). They won't be eligible to play in women-only events or to win women-only prizes in open events once they have reregistered as men. This is probably fair enough: titles can't normally be revoked, and I doubt many trans men would want to be introduced as "Woman Grandmaster".
The requirements for evidence that your gender change has been approved by your national government (yes, that's what it amounts to) are, I guess inevitable, but that doesn't make them unobjectionable. It means that trans players may have to change their registration to a country that isn't grossly transphobic to be able to transition within chess. But I suspect that players from a transphobic country like Russia would have to get out of the country in any case.
It's what they are proposing for trans women that is really objectionable:
The two year consideration period (with the option of denying entry) for trans women is just the purest transphobia. Either they accept the documents from the national government registering the change, or they don't. Having a delay makes sense in physical sports where there are biological advantages, but makes none in chess. Trans women will face at least as much discrimination as cis women (let's be honest: they face far more), and the whole point of women's titles and women's competition is to help out people who have faced that discrimination.