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.

  • Cethin
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    11 months ago

    Minorities like trans people? A place where everyone can thrive?

    It’s fucking chess. I understand men may have more typical interest, but there shouldn’t be divisions based on sex or gender. Maybe divisions for some neurodivergent people, but I’d bet on many of the great chess players being neurodivergent in some way.

    • shapis@lemmy.ml
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      11 months 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.

      • Cethin
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        11 months 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
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          11 months 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.

      • EsheLynn@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        11 months 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.

    • barsoap@lemm.ee
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      11 months ago

      If the gender ratio was something like 1:4 or less, you’d have an argument that everyone should just get along. But there’s like 16 times more men in chess than women and separate tournaments means the gals won’t have to learn chest thumping to deal with the asshole faction they can simply be catty which they already know how to do.

      • EsheLynn@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        11 months ago

        My apologies. I still don’t understand. Are you suggesting that women are too fragile to deal with men’s posturing, or what? It’s fucking chess. Unless someone is arguing there are blatant skill discrepancies between men an women, it still doesn’t makes sense why there are divided tournaments. Is the argument women are less strategically minded, or what?

      • Cethin
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        11 months ago

        What the fuck is this sexist shit? Women are inharently catty and men are inharently aggressive?

        If there’s an issue with men being aggressive, there needs to be rules to prevent it. If the ratio is a problem, there needs to be tools created to address that. The solution isn’t “women are catty and sensitive, so they need to be seperate.”

          • Cethin
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            11 months ago

            Ok, why did you say men do chest thumping and women are catty?

            • barsoap@lemm.ee
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              11 months ago

              Because the sexes tend to display aggression, status competition etc. in different ways. Are there catty men and chest-thumping women sure but bimodal distribution. Just like e.g. height.

              • Cethin
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                11 months ago

                I’m not going to argue with it being correct because it doesn’t matter. If the issue is aggression then it’s aggression, so just say aggression. Catty is also an insulting term. The league should have sportsmanship requirements and it shouldn’t matter how your aggression is presented or what gender you are when you are aggressive.

                • barsoap@lemm.ee
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                  11 months ago

                  Catty is just as insulting as chest thumping. I’m very much equal opportunity when it comes to dunking on the sexes.

                  …and sportsmanship is a nice sentiment but people actually have to agree on sticking to it. Basically only Judo comes to mind when it comes to sports which will disqualify you for taunts and stuff and refusing to shake hands and, well, chess isn’t dominated by Japanese.