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World chess federation bars transgender women from competing in women's events (apnews.com)

submitted 1 year ago by MicroWave@lemmy.world to c/world@lemmy.world

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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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[-] shapis@lemmy.ml 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

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.

[-] EsheLynn@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 points 1 year ago

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.

[-] Cethin@lemmy.zip 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

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.

[-] shapis@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

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.

this post was submitted on 17 Aug 2023

523 points (95.2% liked)

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