International Chess Federation (FIDE) to ban and punish transgender players

Just gonna paste an old comment I made about trans athletes. TL;DR: athletic advantages/disadvantages diminish after ~2 years of HRT. There's no good reason to exclude trans people from elite sports. Athletes already undergo testing to make sure their hormones levels are within pre-determined limits.

British Journal of Sports Medicine states 2 years after receiving gender affirming hormones, athletic advantages disappeared with an exception to running, in which trans- women had 9% faster lap times. Trans-men were on par with their biological male counterparts after just 1 year of hormone therapy.

Medscape has an interview with Joanna Harper, and advisor to the I0C on gender and sports about this very topic. In the interview she mentions a study out of Brazil that indicates a further decrease in strength in trans-women (MtF) athletes after 36 months, further diminishing any potential physiological advantage in these athletes.

There's also something to be said about who these arguments are targeting. There are very few elite trans athletes and they already have to conform to strict guidelines on blood hormone levels and other doping tactics, just like everyone else at that level. The arguments are largely against high schoolers (children) who just want to participate in something. No one is taking puberty blockers and gender affirming hormones just to take a trophy home in high school. It's a ridiculous argument through and through. A thinly veiled attempt to further marginalize and discriminate against a vulnerable population

Responded to a comment above yours with sources etc. There's no good reason to exclude trans athletes from sports. Benefits diminish to a negligible point after ~2 years of hormone therapy. I do agree with you that the chess thing is ridiculous though

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Yeah, non-trans women don't enjoy being forever 2nd because they weren't born men in physically competitive sport

Some sports just have totally dominant competitors. I don't think all the men who lost to Michael Phelps enjoyed losing to him because they didn't get to be born complete genetic freaks that look like they were engineered in a lab to win at swimming. In many women's sports, the top (cis) competitors tend to have really beneficial genetics, including really high levels of testosterone compared to average. Losing to someone because their genetics help them be faster/stronger/taller is just how it goes in competitive sports. Losing to a trans woman is no different than losing to a cis woman who hit the genetic lottery.

Yeah, non-trans women don’t enjoy being forever 2nd because they weren’t born men in physically competitive sport lol.

The way you start your post is very telling. You'd have been better off leaving out the first two paragraphs.

It doesn’t take years long studies to understand a woman who transitioned well into or after puberty is still built more physiologically man than women.

Appeal to common sense. Also, why default to exclusion/discrimination rather than starting from a point of inclusion and make adjustments from there?

When a man transitions into being a woman then wipes the floor with every one of her peers, there’s something wrong.

That is not something that has been shown to happen to any significant degree. Seems like another appeal to common sense. Are trans women not allowed to win?

I'm sure you're just a concerned citizen who wants what's best for all involved. 🙄

Does what cis women think about playing trans women really matter? You wouldn't give a racist a time of day for saying they don't want to play a black person, why should we care what TERFs think?

Great comment, very insightful.

Also, censor bot? Where is there a censor bot?

I think the point is that the field should be left alone. Let players of both genders rank wherever they do. Seems odd to separate the genders for a non-physical sport.

The men can only move 1 square in any direction, while women can move anywhere on their row/column/diagonal. Clearly this biological difference is why they have separate men's and women's chess tournaments. Also, I hear trans people can double jump.

The king also is a queen so that's not fair

Men automatically get a +10 masculity buff. It's widely considered an overpowred stat in chess.

Chess has long had different leagues for men and women

no, it's a tool used to combat the overwhelming misogyny that makes it extremely unappealing for women to participate in. It's only effective when these orgs actually use other policies to work alongside it, which of course they never do.

Im not too familiar with Chess, but is there gendered leagues with Chess? Cause if so that seems really weird.

Like physical sports I understand a seperation and understand the need to regulate transgendered individuals due to physical difference between genders.

But for a mental cognitive sport that seems ludicrous to do

yes - but at least there you could argue that it's a historical relic.

I don't think anyone could reasonably argue that the attitude that men are smarter than women (or at least, better at chess) didn't exist previously, and that's why they leagues are setup this way. But it's one thing to not change existing policies rooted in sexism, and another entirely to create new policies rooted in sexism.

The former happens literally all the time, because large institutions are slow to change, and even though blatant sexism is no longer socially acceptable, it's still prevalent in peoples' heads. When the latter happens, it understandably causes more uproar, because it's an active move towards more sexist policies.

Don't get me wrong, we should absolutely get rid of gender based leagues IMO and switch to having leagues based on ability (whatever the critical ability might be for the competition in question) and call it a day - that would solve both the sexism issue and the trans issue, as there would no longer be any "unfair advantages". What genitals a person was born with - whether they kept them or not - shouldn't impact how you're allowed to compete especially in an activity like chess that has no reasonable basis for gender separation in the first place

IMO you've hit the nail on the head.

These conflicts and confusions are the consequences of gendered leagues, but because the issues come up in the context of transgender people, it makes it seem like an issue with transgender people.

Buuut then there is the issue of the representation of women in (most) popular professional sports is much lower, and would be worse without this delineation along gender lines.

So what we need is to make up our mind if we want either:

All sports to be as fair at all times as physically possible

Or

If we want to see all genders fairly represented in popular professional sports

If it is the first, we should ungender the leagues. If it is the second, we should stop worrying about it and let transgender people compete wherever they want.

Something to keep in mind with studies are outside social factors such as less women playing chess and less women being exposed to chess at a young age. There are fewer women in chess and fewer girls learning chess, for probably centuries. This will have a factor when comparing two demographics.

He's a hard-core insider in Russian Politics. He was the Deputy Prim Minister under Dmitry Medvedev for years. He's been heavily involved in Moscow politics for years.

Maybe if they played together instead of separately things would change, considering how it is played and what the logic employed entails. You might not know how to deal with en passant if you've never seen it used.

Girls are made to feel unwelcome in chess environments at a very young age. Of course once many drop out because of cultural pressure, the remaining small sample size will have less spread than the larger population of men who have been made welcome in chess environments their whole lives.

But let me call myself a women so i can stop being 10th place and take 1st in women league

Thank you.

Yeah I feel like it's mostly a cultural thing. In the past, women were discouraged (and at a certain point not allowed) from playing chess, so it's always been a male dominated hobby

In general, women tend to be reluctant to get into male dominated interests and occupations when there isn't a welcoming, large enough space for them (e.g. depending on gender roles and expectations, some countries have mostly male doctors, some have an equal amount of male/female doctors, and some have mostly female doctors). So there isn't exactly a large enough pool of women who care enough to really get into chess and make achievements in it. it's also just, kind of a boring hobby to get into imo

Maybe there needs to be just a women's and open category to recognise the strength handicap that cis women have for certain activities and allow anyone to compete in open, but then there's the challenge of prize money, viewers etc etc between the two that also needs to be managed appropriately.

I'm fairly certain that this is already the case, and what's being done here as well. Specifically that there isn't a "men's" category, there's open, and there's women's. In chess specifically it's a strange situation. My understanding is that the existence of "women's chess" isn't due to any inferiority of play (though there's undoubtedly some sexism in its origin) but rather as a way to entice women to play and grow the sport. There's no restrictions on a woman being granted the grandmaster title, but a man can't hold a Women's Grandmaster title.

Not keeping your women specific titles as a trans man at least tracks for that. As to not being able to compete as a trans woman I don't really see the point. I could see an argument for resetting your ELO because there is a lower ELO pool in women's chess (due to population, nothing enforced) and your ELO could be unduly skewed, but idk. That's kinda getting beyond my competitive chess knowledge

Tldr; this is probably dumb and misguided, but maybe not as hostile as the headline first looked to me

Hang on a sec...

I can recognise that mf after puberty gives someone a strength advantage

This is the sort of thing that is said in these conversations, as if it is simply fact. A common sense truth that we all agree on.

But it's not. Transgender women might retain some advantage after transition, but they also might not. That is something that is intensely studied, and hotly debated. Results have been found to support either hypothesis, and may differ from sport to sport. It's not cut-and-dry in the slightest.

In most sports the men's group is technically open. Most women just don't succeed because of the sheer difference in physicality.

It might help you to understand that there has been a lot of study in many sports (for the very reason of your uncertainty).

Apparently, testosterone level (not birth gender) is the effective indicator of expected performance. In all women's sports that allow trans competitors, trans individuals need to test **lower ** testosterone levels than are naturally allowable in cis women.

The issue is this. For someone trans to be willing and able to power through all the bullshit, they need to be uniquely dedicated and talented (or they'd just not do it). What that means is that unsurprisingly some trans individuals are absolutely phenomenal at a given sport.

Ultimately, there's the problem. "We" seem to think a m>f individual doesn't have an unfair advantage ONLY if they lose. So we're not looking for the average or variance of skill, only the fact that there exists a trans individual that shines. It's hard not to look at a trans woman winning and say "see, that's what happens when someone born male competes with a woman in this sport". But it's also unscientific, as the science says trans women compete with comparative attributes to cis women.

Chess? Banning trans competitors is fucking idiotic and the chess federation can fuck right off with that implied notion of women being less capable.

Yeah, there's no real defense to the two being separated in any league.

The solution is easy, just open more categories ciswomen, transwomen and anyone who identifies with the female gender. Same for men. Done.

I just don't think there's a blanket answer, that doesn't involve invasive poking and prodding. There's always going to be somebody unhappy.

Any pro-trans decision, like just opening it up and having ability ranked categories is in danger of sidelining women's sports. But... they are anyway...

England have just reached the women's World Cup final in Australia. I look out the window right now, and I don't see a single England flag. For the men's tournament last year there was so many flags about you'd think we'd just crowned a new king on St George's Day. People were playing "Three Lions" for the 13th major tournament in a row. And we did fucking rubbish in that compared to the ladies.

It's strange the these people "protecting women's sports" are completely absent when it comes to supporting them.