I have, and never will, understand how the fuck being trans gives you any sort of advantage in chess. Only thing I have ever rationalized about this is that the people saying it surely must be sexist cave people.
this post was submitted on 02 Jul 2025
206 points (100.0% liked)
LGBTQ+
3750 readers
350 users here now
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
Just that everybody is aware about the scope/cultural relevance of this story. Apollo News, the original German source, is not a respectable news outlet.
It's an online publication more similar to a blog in many ways. The founders call themselves 'an alternative to the leftwing mainstream' and are not afraid to show their allegiance to the far right, regulary disseminating actual fake news or using slurs against immigrants and lgbt people. For american readers, I'd compare this to Breitbart.
When googling stuff along the lines of "chess trans-athlete championship" in German, this story does not come up at all. The German mainstream is gladly not (yet) interested in this culture war.
they prob cry over a trans person winning uno
Trans elder's bingo win in local nursing home prompts backlash
cisgender women players were considering quitting, fearing unfair competition
An unfair competition... in a damn chess game?! WHAT?!
I'm tired boss
Chess “is diverse and inclusive,” the German Chess Federation said
Lol, lmao even. It's one of the more sexist sports there are in terms of organization, often marginalizing women and most of these marginalizing structures are still there to this day. This isn't to excuse anti-LGBT rhetoric, but pretending like everything is fine with chess probably doesn't help.
Why should it prompt backlash? Did they celebrate the win by knocking over their opponent's king with their cock?
These pearl clutchers make me want to force said pearls down their throat until they shit out every single bead or I can grab one end of the necklace and rip it out like a fucking BeyBlade!
TIL men and women don’t play int the same chess tournaments. Why? ELI5
There are open tournaments and women's tournaments. The open tournaments are for anyone. Women have competed in them but at the top level it is somewhat rare.
The women's tournaments are intended to provide an environment that encourages more women to play chess. There's considerable sexism among men (not only in the chess world, hah) which is not always very welcoming.
Because back in the day when blatant sexism was the norm, women were excluded. Women-only tournaments were an attempt to correct that.
In a perfect world, everybody would play in the same tournaments and all genders would feel equally welcome to them, but that's not the world we live in.
back in the day
I have some bad news about the present day
The men’s tournaments are open to everyone and women have and do compete in them.
Just when the world couldn't get stupider…
The Times reports that she claimed some cisgender women players were considering quitting, fearing unfair competition
At least with the more physical sports there's a (spurious) argument about bone structure or whatever. There really isn't that same argument wrt Chess, even if it be a bit physically taxing.
yeah, but a BiOlOgIcAl man has a huge body advantge during chess!!!!!!!11111
What's the excuse here? "Afab players are too stupid to face trans opponents"?
Beat me to it.
Internationally, the World Chess Federation imposed a temporary ban in 2023, preventing trans women from women’s tournaments pending further review — a rule Germany opposes, pointing out that a trans woman had already claimed a national women’s title in the early 2000s, Apollo News reports.
I think this just completely took effect and was not temporary.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transgender_people_in_chess
https://www.bbc.com/sport/67127168
The whole thing is a shitshow, because if you are MTF , FIDE does not think you are a woman, thus can't have women's titles, but also, if you're FTM , you are ALSO not a woman, so you can't keep your women's titles (Womens' grandmaster, Womens' International Master,etc).
Good on the German Chess Federation to not bow to pressure.
The German Chess Federation has rejected any ban
meh.
if they really cared, there would not be any official 'gendered' tournaments. but there are, because they want that for some reason.
Gendered chess tournaments make a certain amount of sense. The main issues are that women are less likely to play chess due to societal and cultural factors and without their own division would have even more societal and cultural roadblocks to joining the game. This isn't touching on how getting certain titles requires winning specific events that would prove even more difficult for those same reasons.
Basically without gendered tournaments there would be even less women in chess and it would be even more of a "boys club" than it already is.
It's also why the anti-trans argument makes absolutely no sense in chess. Like, in sports there's some room for nuance because cis men do have a huge advantage in most sports of cis women, and depending on the sport and the stage of transition, that can carry forward to trans women. It's fucking hard to have that nuanced conversation because 95% of the time it gets drowned out by transphobes, but there's still something to talk about.
But in chess? Nobody is arguing there's any inherent biological advantage. The only reason for gendered tournaments is to create a safer space for non-men to compete in a male-dominated pastime. The only argument for excluding trans women from the Women's category in chess is transphobia. It's a real "mask off" moment for all the TERFs claiming it's about "integrity in sport" (Jesus fuck, writing that out made me realise how similar this all is to gamergate and the birth of the alt right).
A lot of tournaments in HEMA (historical European martial arts—think fencing, but with bigger, older styles of swords than what they use at the Olympics) around where I lived have started using an "Underrepresented Genders" (URG) category alongside the Open category, instead of Women's. It's functionally not much different from having a Women's category that also accepts trans people (important possible difference: it accepts trans men as well as trans women, and enbies), but the name helps make it clearer. I quite like that as a concept.
100% this if people want you get angry at the FIDE they should do it for the right reasons.
I mean, easy fix there right? Just have a women's tournament and an everybody tournament. Women can then choose which to enter.
That's what we already do?
Oh gotcha. Sorry I'm not the most familiar with the chess world.
No because there are men only tournaments too, what the poster is saying is to remove men only and only have women or everybody we think.
What chess tournament is men's only, I haven't heard of a single one?
Okay, seems you were correct. Thanks for the correction, genuinely!
Maybe not officially, we aren't sure (we will look this up). But there are some men who refuse to play with women.
If you are paired against an opponent and choose not to play against them then you get an uncontested match loss and will tank your ELO pretty quickly. This is also anecdotal but I've never met a player who would refuse an opponent of roughly equal ELO
Awesome, thanks for the correction!
That specific scenario wouldn't make the tournament a "men's only" tournament, it'd just mean that a bunch of sensitive weirdos are throwing a strop because a woman is in the vicinity lol
That's so mad though, are there really men who refuse to play chess with women???
Hmm, we could have sworn we saw something a while ago but we aren't finding anything now. Oh well shrugs.
The system only functions the way it does because the people prop it up. Any system.
So instead of having a welcoming space for a historically and actively marginalized group while allowing them to still complete in every other tournament we should just what? Close women's divisions, revoke all their titles, and tell them to play "real chess" instead?
Like getting rid of women's tournaments is only a bad thing that would make the game stagnant even further to being the "boys club" game a lot of people already think it is when chess should be for everybody.
I'm not fond of self-marginalizing. So maybe some of us are uncomfortable. Some men will be, too. Maybe individuals are capable of self-regulating if empowered to do that. I'm sure some chuds will throw a tantrum. Block and parry, so to speak.
Then play in an open tournament?
Sure
I'm being genially serious, find a local club and give it a try, you might find you enjoy it. Or you could try playing on chess.com for an even easier entry they also have computer opponents of various skill levels if you feel intimidated by having a human opponent to begin
Officially there's women's and open tournaments. There isn't anything stopping the top female player, Hou Yifan from going to a tourney and potentially playing the top (general and specifically male) player Magnus Carlsen.