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.
In recent months, the discussion surrounding transgender participation in sports has intensified. Several sports organizations have ruled that transgender women cannot participate in their competitions. This trend has expanded beyond traditional sports like swimming, touching even disc golf and billiards, based on perceived “advantages” of transgender athletes. The reaction to trans people in competition has grown to include non-sporting contests like beauty pageants and Jeopardy! after seeing transgender success. Now, FIDE, the world’s foremost international chess organization, has introduced guidelines that would revoke titles from transgender men and bar many transgender women from competing, asserting that trans women "have no right to participate.”
The regulations, reported online by French transgender FIDE master, Yosha Iglesias, spell out a list of policy changes that apply to transgender competition in chess. Among the policy changes:
Transgender men must relinquish their women-category titles after transitioning.
Transgender women can keep their previous titles.
Transgender women have “no right to compete” in the women’s division.
Transgender women will be “evaluated” by the FIDE Council on if they will be allowed to compete in a process that may take up to 2 years.
FIDE can mark transgender players as “transgender” in their files.
Gender changes must be “comply with the player’s national laws” and may include birth certificate documents (despite many nations refusing to change transgender birth certificates)
See the main page on transgender participation from the organization:
The unveiling of these regulations drew widespread ridicule, with numerous individuals challenging the notion that transgender women possess a “natural advantage” in chess. According to the chess news site Chessbase, the women’s category in chess exists to encourage increased participation among women, not because women inherently perform at a lower level in the game. Thus, the typical arguments against transgender women competing don’t hold water, as it’s implausible to claim that transgender women have an unfair advantage.
This isn’t the first instance of scrutiny regarding transgender participation in non-physical competitions. In 2022, transgender Jeopardy champion Amy Schneider set the record as the highest-winning woman in Jeopardy history. Following her success, several anti-trans voices online claimed she unfairly took the title from “real women,” suggesting that transgender women possess an inherent advantage in trivia over cisgender women.
The regulations are harmful and discriminatory towards transgender individuals. The logic behind revoking titles from transgender men transitioning from the women’s category is not explained anywhere in the document. Additionally, these rules would delay transgender women from competing for up to two years while their gender is examined, and could even prohibit them indefinitely. Given that the usual “unfair advantage” argument doesn’t logically apply in this context, these regulations appear to unfairly target transgender individuals while sidestepping even the usual arguments against trans competition.
The enforcement of these policies remains unclear. Iglesias took to Twitter, asking, “Am I woman enough?” She listed the FIDE council members, sharing photos that depict the majority as older cisgender men, adding, “these people will decide.” The documents don’t specify how decisions regarding a transgender member’s participation will be made. Until further clarity, transgender international chess players face uncertainty about their continued involvement in the sport.
Transgender men must relinquish their women-category titles after transitioning.
Transgender women have “no right to compete” in the women’s division.
they really buried the lede here. ALL trans people are banned from participation in the women’s league.
mfw chess is more transphobic than fucking starcraft. they’ve managed to outdo the gamers.
edit: oh the other bit is even more infuriating. trans women aren’t allowed to compete at all until the people who wrote these horrific rules approve their transition progress by verifying fucking birth certificates.
no that’s my point. not only is she allowed to compete, the same orgs list her as the best female starcraft player. there’s the occasional bigot who can’t shut up about her but they get shouted down by the other
The hard truth:
Studies have shown that being good at chess doesn’t mean you’re highly intelligent, it just means you really like chess.
Chess players are very easy to outsmart. They never expect a pawn to move diagonally 4 spaces and punch them in the face.
chess players really are the highest stage of international rules-based order dweebs
Ever see a smug user compare something (from international politics to lobbying to warfare to “DRUMPF is in for it now” non-news) to chess? Same people, usually.
They also sometimes unironically end a post with “checkmate.”
My pawn activates his Rage and charges the queen with his Greataxe. He gets advantage against nobility.
Someone tried teaching me but tbh I don’t really have the attention span for lame and boring things. Games like Catan are way more fun.
Wouldn’t this mean the FIDE thinks that AMAB brains are “superior” to AFAB brains? Isn’t that extremely fucked up?
yes, they’re not even being TERFS here, just flat out going full mask off with the misogyny alongside the transphobia.
idk at least the normal TERF shit has the slightest veneer of concern for women if you don’t think about it seriously and do a little bit of reading for like 5 minutes, but I feel like even normies could look and see the blatant misogyny here ya know?
No, this goes further than brains. It’s pure essentialism.
These people believe that there is some man-essence that is created during conception and is then projected to onto your body, defining who you are.
Even if you show them brain scans for transpeople that refutes everything they say, it doesn’t matter. This goes all the way back to the idea of immutability of the soul and such nonsense.
Well except for saying transmen aren’t allowed their titles anymore retroactively unless they detransition. I guess cause people would get mad seeing Kai McMichaels listed as a Woman’s Cup Champ in 2016 or something.
the majority of chess players are middle aged white men with no life and an alcohol problem who actually unironically think that
Why the fuck is there gender segregation in a fucking board game in the first place
Basically, Chess began as a nobleperson’s game, and both genders were highly rated. In the 17th and 18th century these filted down to the upper-middle classes via the Coffee Shops and Salons (one mostly male, the other gender neutral but mostly female-led) where it became the preferred game of the failson, and from there percolated into the closed gentleman’s clubs of the regency.
After the reaction of the Congress of Vienna, the Salons and Coffee shops were suppressed. Women’s rights, already under attack by wrong-headed “Natural Law” Bourgois Liberals, were sharply curtailed and even reversed due to the politically radical nature of these salons. With Coverture restored and implied property rights sharply curtailed, the upper and upper middle class women who previously led active social lives were removed, save for courtesans.
So chess stopped being a game women played in public, while in the Gentleman’s clubs and the men-only restaurants it became the prime pastime of men with no day job. Chess institutions were formed by men-only institutions, allowed only men to train, and allowed only men to compete. Women eventually formed their own associations as society liberalised in the 1870s/80s, and championships in the late 1920s but these were segregated, underfunded, and regarded as an occasional pastime rather than a full time pursuit.
It wasn’t until the 1960s and women liberation that the idea that women could play Chess competitively even occurred to people, at least outside the Soviet Union. There were legal cases and everything to allow Women to play open tournaments.
Okay, can we stop pretending this is about men having an unfair advantage now
