Note: I would really like this thread not to devolve into the usual trans arguments. Also note: I have tried very hard to get the terminology correct, as I understand it, and I am relying on the NPR report for the correctness of these facts. If I made a mistake, please feel free to point it out, and perhaps a mod can correct it.
The Federation, known as FIDE, has issued some rules changes regarding trans people. I can’t really make sense of them, but I’m not a world-class (or even a this-house-class) chess player. A summary (if I have this correct):
Trans women may no longer play in women-only competitions.
Players who won in women’s categories and later transitioned to male (i.e. trans men) will have some (or possibly all, reportage is unclear) of their women’s titles removed or downgraded.
Trans men will also have some (or all) of their titles removed or downgraded from when they competed as men.
Trans women can keep any titles they won before they transitioned to become women (i.e. as cis men).
Trans players will only be allowed to compete in “open” categories, where men and women both compete against each other.
My interpretations of these rules (i.e. these are the implications of the rules, not my beliefs):
Cis men have some built-in advantage over cis women in playing chess, and that advantage does not go away with a gender transition to female.
One cis woman winning against another cis woman doesn’t count if the winner later transitions to male. This seems a direct contradiction to #1.
If a trans man wins against a cis man, it must be unfair to the cis man somehow.
The opposite of #2: one cis man against another cis man does count, even if the winner later transitions to female.
See interpretation for #1.
These rules are supposed to be temporary, while they study the issue for up to two years.
I’m not even completely sure what the best solution is for trans people in physical sports, but this decision is even worse than what I had heard about it. As long as the self-identified trans person is not completely and blatantly identifying as the other gender when not playing, then I don’t see any harm at all in just letting everyone identify as who they say they are and keeping their titles.
The article and the FIDE statements have a lot of ‘some’ and ‘in certain cases’, so it’s tough to make absolute judgements right now.
My guesses are that (for example) a person holding a Woman’s Grand Master title will not be able to automatically upgrade it to a generic Grand Master title if the person transitions to a male. That makes sense; it’s a more demanding title with tougher qualifications.
I also approve of transitioned females only competing in the Open categories, rather than women’s categories.
This is absolutely nuts. I can understand the general desire to keep people who went through puberty as a male out of women’s sports. But chess? Really? I thought if women are less represented in high level chess it’s because fewer are interested in putting in the effort, not because they’re less capable. I’m surprised there are even gender-segregated tournaments in chess. Such things feel like they’d be equivalent to skin color or religion segregated tournaments in terms of the participants actually being worse at the game than the general population. Hey, let’s make a chess tournament for people whose name begins with an L. Because you know, they’re Losers. But no one who changed their name as an adult to start with such a letter can participate, because they didn’t actually experience the pain of being a Loser.
The article doesn’t seem to support that guess. It says (some or all) titles will be deleted or downgraded. It doesn’t say titles will not be upgraded, it doesn’t say that anyone expects that a title would be upgraded just because someone changed gender.
Can you explain why? Is it genuinely true, or supposed to be true, that men have an innate advantage over women when it comes to playing chess? Is there any evidence of that? (I ask sincerely, not as a gotcha. If there is evidence, I’d like to see it. Ideally, it would be evidence that isn’t “how many men have beat women at chess,” but something about what might be behind such a putative advantage.)
Chess?? How does being trans or not have any relevance on playing chess. You sit and move little pieces on a board. There’s no physical strength or body type required.
This rule blows me away. But I think it has been shown that men are more spatial thinkers than women.
I’m actually a GIS Applications Engineer. GIS is maps, and spatial analysis.
Chess is a VERY spatial game. My job involves spatial thinking. My Wife and I play about a dozen games of chess a week. I do usually win (not last night).
But, shit, that’s what I do. I look at things from a spatial viewpoint. Where everything is and how it relates to each other.
Look at the world as a database. Databases need some sort of relationships with the tables within it. Phone number, name, address whatever.
But if you look at things spatially I can create a relationship between the pen on my desk and the cheese in the refrigerator.
Now, to turn this around, my wifes work is in numbers. We play a lot of cribbage as well. Not a spatial game at all. It’s numbers (and of course some luck). My Wife wins more than I do.
IANA spokesperson for FIDE, but I’m not sure you have this correct. As we’ve been discussing in the concurrent but less suitable for this topic Pit thread, the new rules seem to be trying to formalize FIDE procedures for recognizing gender identity changes. The rules in question are here.
The two-year limit applies AFAICT not to the overall validity of the new rules, which are not in fact being proposed as “temporary”, but to the time that FIDE may require to verify the official status of the player’s gender-identity change.
I don’t think the two-tiered chess competition system is attempting to conform to any speculative theories about innate inferiority of women in chess skills or anything like that. As I said in the other thread, “AFAICT there are ‘open’ competitions and ‘women’s’ competitions. The idea seems to be, as in women’s poker tournaments and similar, that the massive underrepresentation of female players at competitive levels makes it more attractive for female players to have women-only events.” In chess in particular, it seems to be a historical legacy from the days when women had almost zero representation in chess competition.
As for the asymmetry in what happens to pre-transition competition titles for a transgender players, quoting myself again, “the assumption is apparently that one’s transgender identity is considered to apply retroactively, and thus a transgender man shouldn’t have been competing in women’s events in the first place.” But a transgender woman keeps any titles that she won in the open competition categories while identified as male, because anybody’s allowed to compete in the open categories.
This is from the comments in an article I read a few days ago:
The vast majority of chess tournaments are open to all participants regardless of gender. Only a few are restricted to women. Women tournaments exist because women are a minority of chess players (because of society viewing chess as a men’s game) so these tournaments try to counter this problem. The aim being to provide a space for women to gain higher visibility and encourage more female participants. Now that’s why there are separate women’s cathergories, I have no idea how trans exclusion fits into anything,
The ruling amounts to “Trans men count as men, and as having always been men. Trans women also count as men, and as having always been men.”
Accepting the notion of transgender leads you to the first. Rejecting the notion of transgender leads you to the second. But what principle leads you to both?
I do think that my job that makes me think of things spatially, and the data that gets related to that space works well in chess.
When I’m away from home, my Wife and I play chess online. It’s great fun and a way to stay connected.
We give each other ‘Mulligans’ though (do you really want to do that?). This is for fun and staying connected. It’s also a great way to keep that old brain working.
What is crazy, is, after… about 2500 games of chess with my wife (~10 games a week 5 years). Not one of them has been the same.
Have a beer, classic rock and chess. A perfect evening.
@Kimstu thank you for the background. I don’t follow chess competitions at all, and from the article I assumed that there were three types of competition – men only, women only, and open. If there is no men-only competition, then the new rules are at least marginally less nuts. Point #3 seems likely to need re-wording.
Sorry I didn’t see this had already been touched on in the Pit. Since this doesn’t seem political I didn’t think to check there.
This is the part I don’t get, and I wonder if anyone has asked cis-female chess players how they feel about this distinction. I can’t imagine a woman, having lost at some point to another woman in the woman-only category of play, feeling cheated in retrospect because that woman later transitions to male.
I also wonder what the Federation proposes to do with new competitive players – are they going to insist on a chromosome check (or a genital inspection) before allowing them to play in the women-only competitions?
I don’t think it’s true in the US, but it’s true in many countries, that quite a lot more money is put into seeking, identifying, nurturing, and training male chess players. This gives men in those countries a great, but not inherent, advantage.
I can see these rules as an attempt to account for this, as it says, temporarily, while the issue is studied.
They probably shouldn’t strip people of titles if there is a chance they will be reinstated. Better to just have an asterisk, and see what happens.
I think this is the key point. If a woman earns the title of “Woman Grandmaster”, and then transitions to male, clearly they shouldn’t still be called “Woman Grandmaster”, as they’re not a woman. However, it would also be wrong to call them “Grandmaster”, as this is a higher, separate designation with more stringent requirements. I think that’s what FIDE means about someone losing their title.
Conversely, if a man achieves the Grandmaster title and then transitions to female, of course they may keep the title, as they were eligible to qualify for it in the same way had they been female from birth.
Regardless of if there is a gender difference in ability, there is a societal gender bias in chess as there is in most competitive activities. A boy will generally be introduced to more competitive activities at a young age from his family, friends, and society at a level which doesn’t happen with a girl. A boy will likely be introduced to chess from other boys or adults more often than a girl. A boy wanting to go to chess camp will get more encouragement than a girl will. Even if a girl does attend chess camp, the camps are often overwhelmingly male–sometimes 10:1. Not all girls feel comfortable in that kind of environment, which discourages girls from going to chess camp. And even if they go to camp, they may just play against the small set of other girls. The boys are able to play against a larger talent pool. Coaches and teachers may favor teaching boys. All of this combines to make it much easier for boys and harder for girls. Girls have less access to training opportunities and more barriers to overcome. These difficulties will cause some girls to not get as many quality hours of training or just give up chess completely.
I think a valid concern is that a trans woman who identified as male for their first 20 years is going to generally be better at chess than a 20-years-old cis woman just from the simple fact that when they were male, they had access to a better level of competition and training and it was easier for them to get better. The 20-year-old cis woman chess player had a stiffer headwind, and likely will be at a lower level because she had a harder time progressing. Because of gender bias, the best way to become a top-level woman’s chess player would be to identify as male until skill level plateaued and then identify as a woman. She would be able to compete as a woman with having received the benefit of getting the better male training that the cis women typically don’t have access to. I’m not implying that someone would do that fraudulently just to win at chess, but rather to point out the reality that due to gender biases, a person will generally get better training by identifying as a male rather than as a female. The Chess Federation may be taking this aspect into consideration to ensure a level of fair competition.
Then think of another way to express this. Call them “Qualified Grandmasters,” “Minor Grandmasters,” “Limited Grandmasters,” or for all I care, “Transmasters.”