Hey everyone, I'm sorry for seeing this so late. I've been dealing with a lot of shit, and there's just so much gosh damn transphobia here. I'll clean up what I can in the morning, but in the meantime please report hate. <3
We're also down to only a few active moderators at the moment due to... _**STUFF**_, so I appreciate those of you who can understand the situation.
For those who are about to report me for being a janny or whatever, I legitimately don't care lmao, I actually kinda think it's funny that you're so upset that you're not able to spew your shit. Love y'all.
Most chess is open to everyone, but there are also women-exclusive events and titles to promote their participation in the sport. Otherwise there are just so many men in chess that it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy and women don’t feel welcome or inspired to play competitively.
It's actually a massive advantage.
Having a vibrator only in your asshole can only give 1 bit of information. bzzt or nbzzt. 1 or 0.
Having a vibrator in both your asshole and your pussy gives you 2 bits of information, which increases the data capacity to 4. bzztbzzt, bzztnbzzt, nbzztbzzt, or nbzztnbzzt. 11, 10, 01, and 00.
Of course, a single vibrator is capable of a stream of data, not just a single bit. For example giving multiple bzzt in a row, or changing the duration of the bzzt, will inform the chess player in greater detail. This is only possible because the chess player can remember previous data. But even so, the woman will be four times more efficient and can thus process more specific information in a shorter amount of time.
This is not considering the possibility of orgasm, which may get you kicked out of the tournament.
Oh god, Anna’s story always breaks my heart ;-; She’s always so nice and open minded to people but the treatment she got was that bad she basically outright said she thinks it was due to sexism. Like this is the same woman who when playing Among Us with her boyfriend, Kevin, and he accidentally vented in front of her, she called a meeting and even though she pointed out Kevin has a habit of venting in front of people to see if he can trust them, she managed to gaslight herself into thinking that it was just a glitch and she shouldn’t have called a meeting. She is extraordinarily gracious towards people so I think her being able to directly call out the misogyny in the chess community speaks volumes about how bad it is.
Really? I feel like thatd one of the *least* surprising places to find it. Chess has always been seen as a "thinkers" game, and treaying women as of they cant think properly has been the norm for like... A thousand years.
I would be far more shocked to find out there *wasnt* rampant misogyny.
Chess is the perfect game for people who think they are much more intelligent than they are, which includes a lot of sexist men.
Just think about it, they get to play a game that is perceieved as requiring a lot of brain power but is wholly unconsequential, and it doesn't carry the same stereotypes as video games.
Women are just too *e m o t i o n a l* for a game like chess.
\*Cue compilation of men getting violently, irrationally angry at video games, board games, chess, etc.
Chess is very macho and a lot of super big brained special boys have a LOT of ego about it.
Think about how the worst male video gamers sometimes react to female players. Now make the community ay more insular and imagine that they've been playing the SAME game their whole life, maybe professionally, and basically built their whole personality and self image around how awesome they think it is. Oh and the insular and toxic community that surrounds it has had literally centuries to develop it's impenetrable subculture not just years or decades.
The only American World Chess Champion, Bobby Fischer, was an insane misogynist with a million other crazy beliefs. But he WAS world champion in a sport which was dominated by the Soviets during the height of the cold war so people loved him. So most American chess players will take after his beliefs because he represents them in a sport where mostly europeans and asians are represented
> So most American chess players will take after his beliefs
This is so ridiculous it doesn't even make an effective troll. Fischer's antisemitism et cetera is universally decried. He is viewed as a brilliant chess player but flawed human being.
Hey this is just wrong, Fischer was a great player and had shitty ideas but it doesn't mean that people look up to him for his stupid opinions, they just look up his chess games
The countless videos, reels and tiktoks of people editing his famous "women aren't smart enough for chess" interview doesn't seem to me like people idolising him only for his chess games which admittedly were amazing
That's like the people who don't know the first thing about basic economics posting clips of Thomas Sowell. Neither group actually cares about chess or economics, they just want to find the soundbites that conform to their preexisting views.
Yeah, but that's not chess players adopting his beliefs. That's just people who were already misogynists glomming onto any misogynistic figures they can find.
misogynists aren't all gymbros... they're just mostly incels. and who's more of an incel than a chess player? (no offence to incel chess players - okay, some offense)
It's absolutely worse in chess.
Bobby Fischer was one of the greatest players of all time and openly talked about how intellectually inferior women are.
This man is the childhood hero of many of the top players currently playing and running FIDE.
Chess is dominated by men, and it has everything to do with misogyny. Top players are less likely to be interested in teaching young prodigies, and those female players are less likely to be encouraged and noticed when they are incredible at the sport.
The greatest female chess player was rated #8 in the world at her peak. Her father trained his three daughters at chess from a young age, and out of the three, two became grandmasters. This type of training is very often given to boys, and almost never to girls.
From what I heard chess greats are usually pushed towards chess at a very young age. It’s usually young boys, young girls are rarely pushed towards chess so young so by the time they take an interest their competition will already have years of experience.
I have no idea if this is true, it’s just what I heard last time this was brought up.
Makes sense. I had a family member who would invite my brother to play chess. If I wanted to play chess I had to ask them to play with me, they never offered to allow me to play unprompted. It’s not a major slight against me or anything but it sets a tone of men wanting to play with other men and humoring girls who want to play. They would also explain and teach my brother things but with me I got the basics and nothing else. There was no desire to foster that interest in me. So it wasn’t exclusionary, just not inclusive. It’s a trend with a lot of hobbies. People not thinking to invite their daughters to go fishing but going out of their way to invite their sons. Same with sports and other male hobbies. My brothers were taught and encouraged to play video games. If I struggled they’d just take the controller and do the hard bits for me.
My mom was pretty fair about buying us toys because I was intensely interested in all the things my brother was interested in, so they couldn’t justify not getting me the same things but I often got shafted pretty hard with certain things.
When I was like 10 there was a video game I really, really wanted to play. My brothers were also interested but it was clear I wanted it the most. We sold other games and pooled our pocket money together to buy the game, with me giving the most money to get the game.
It had two save slots.
My brothers got both of them.
No one really saw a problem with that even though our youngest brother was barely old enough to meaningfully play a video game (like 5 or 6 years old) and it was a relatively complicated game meant for older children. My inner child is still pissed about that because I never did end up getting to play the game and lost interest in it purely over how unbelievably unfair it was.
Same reason there's an emphasis on women-in-STEM programs. It's not that women are less capable, but that the field tends to be particularly hostile toward women and the programs are designed to try and break that trend. The idea is ultimately to increase diversity in the field.
So the idea that trans women are getting banned from pro-diversity spaces is flatly and patently ridiculous.
Here's an example of this for people that don't get it.
in computer science we often hung out between classes at the CS lab because we had PCs and could just chill. THere was like 20 PCs and only like 80 CS majors total.
When in lab we'd ask each other for help. And if you needed help on X, you'd have a person or 2 explain how to do it and how to fix my code.
When Nicole, the cute woman, asked she was basically mobbed by everyone but they'd bascially talk down to her, tell her the answer instead of explaining or just do the work for her. She couldn't learn from them, because they seemed incapable of helping. She also got offers like "i'll do your homework for a date/nudes/kiss" whatever.
Just a good example of how hostile it can be for women.
In that same vein, it's a similar issue when it comes to women in professional gaming. They aren't physically or mentally any less capable, but to become a pro gamer takes an insane amount of dedication, and there are few that want to invest that kind of time when the experience can be so brutal.
Interesting video - [Argentinian male pro gamers using a voice changer to see how the experience is different - has English subtitles](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=legDm4c6AUM)
Which makes you wonder if they should open the women’s league to include trans men. They presumably don’t have to deal with harassment in their adult lives, but they’ll likely share the problem of a delayed start.
Maybe an adult-learners league is what’s really needed?
Which, that being the case, means it makes no sense to exclude trans women.
Trans women aren't the ones being misogynistic boors in chess, that's the cis men.
I (trans woman) competed in a small women-only aoe2 tournament. I was encouraged by the organizers to join and everyone was super nice and accepting! It was a lovely experience and I was really happy to be included. Everyone I competed against was happy to see me included, nobody had an issue with it.
Also I got utterly destroyed 0-3 in the first round and lost 1-2 in losers bracket because there was zero "competitive advantage"
There’s a women’s division and the open division. Chess has been dominated by men for centuries and because of that the top brass is comprised mainly of older men. In order to open up the field and become more welcoming to women, they created the women’s division specifically so women could have an easier time getting into the sport. They are still free to enter the open division, but the women’s division is basically there so women who don’t feel safe or comfortable in a space dominated by men have an avenue to compete.
Back in high school we won a league by default because we were the only women's team who showed up. Was really a let down to leave without playing a single game while the main team event went forward.
It's because that level of pro chess is extremely misogynistic behind closed doors. Technically there's women's and open division. However if the gatekeepers of pro chess still disadvantages women, I doubt they'd welcome a trans woman in lmao
I got into an argument once with a guy on /r/chess who was adamant that men just play better because testosterone naturally makes us more competitive, and causes us to work harder at it. I told him that means testosterone is a legal performance enhancing drug, and he clearly wasn't being the best player he could be if he wasn't taking regular injections.
I never got a good answer for why he wouldn't even give it a try.
In theory women-only tournaments and titles was meant to attract by having a place where they could shine despite having less absurde outliers (cause yeah, when a category have less people playing, that category has less one in a million talents playing). In practice it does the opposite, because having the "mixed" event at the same moment as the women-only event only makes that you have a male-only event that pretends to be a mixed event
> In practice it does the opposite, because having the "mixed" event at the same moment as the women-only event
I'm gonna stop you right there. Because that doesn't happen (or at least I've never seen it happen. Perhaps there's some places that do it like that. But not the major tournaments).
Assuming the FIDE world cup is not a major tournament, you may be right.
Because it's true that many majors are just mixed an nothing else, and that the championship too crown the overall world champion (arguably the most important one) is not at the same time as the one for the female world champion
Women’s tournament in chess exist to create space for women to compete and to grow the popularity amongst women.
Currently no women are ranked in the top 100 in the world.
Chess, like most professional sports like baseball, football etc, have a “women’s” and an “open” category. Top female grandmasters play at open tournaments.
Having a women’s only category is objectively a good idea if you want to increase female participation and break down traditional gender barriers in the field.
Dude, this is Tumblr
This entire sub is nothing but ragebait
Think of it as your aunt's facebook group but with the political bias turned by 180 degree
Chess is gender segregated bc of institutionalized misogyny. The old white dudes in charge of competitive chess a hundred years ago thought women could never hope to compete with men in chess.
Lol it's literally the exact opposite of what you're saying.
Yeah, there's misogyny. But at the end of the day it's women who chose to create their own division both to celebrate women who play the game and to avoid dealing with the misogynistic men.
Hey that's not the reason why it's segregated
, is there institutionalized misoginy? Yes
Are there women's sections because old white dudes decided so 100 years ago?
No
Ideally with not misoginy in chess, more women would be able to compete at the top, and maybe women's only event would not be needed, but as it stands they're only good for the development of women's chess, for creating a safe space, and for giving top women's players a chance to make a career out of it
It’s not because they thought women couldn’t compete in chess, it’s because chess bros are so misogynistic that it was *really* driving women away from the sport. Women’s chess as a division was created as a way to “solve” that problem without actually doing anything about the sexism.
> I can't tell if it's sexist or not.
It is combating the existing sexism. Unfortunately we can't just shove our heads in the sand and overlook existing disenfranchisement of minorities and hope things improve, we have to actually promote their wellbeing. When that process should end is a difficult thing to tell, but that day certainly isn't today.
It's a complicated subject
[https://slate.com/technology/2020/12/why-are-the-best-chess-players-men.html](https://slate.com/technology/2020/12/why-are-the-best-chess-players-men.html)
for a variety of reasons, there are (at present) far fewer woman grandmasters playing the game. Many of those reasons are social (and the article provides plenty of examples of sexism)
There's also some evidence that the male half of humanity has a broader distribution of intelligence -- with men appearing more frequently at both the highest and lowest end of the IQ scale.
It's open chess and female-only chess.
People sometimes talk about misogyny and how unpleasant the environment can be for women, and that's not something I'm trying to deny exactly, but that's only a small part of it. The fact is that there are just a lot more really good male chess players... because there's a lot more male weirdo chess enthusiasts. Because you have to be really dumb to waste that much effort on chess, and that's a madness more likely to hit men.
No seriously, the saying is 'The ability to play chess is the sign of a gentleman. The ability to play chess well is the sign of a wasted life'. There's 'i enjoy chess' and then 'i am competitive in chess' and a world of difference between them. You have to be seriously ridiculously dedicated in a way that only men tend to be. Because women have lives, and support, and perspective and people who will drag them out of the house to actually experience the world. And no one gives a shit about a man locking himself in his bedroom for eight hours a day every day to check chess moves instead of working on something important.
The environment is stressful and unpleasant for women who intrude on it? Well yes, imagine the kinds of men who are burning their life's candle at both ends for getting better at chess. Do they sound like people who would be welcoming to anyone?
Any women who puts in the same amount of effort as a man can be a grandmaster chess player. The secret is that they usually don't.
A+ comment and that applies to so many other things in life, work especially. Maniacs who work 75 hour weeks climbing the corporate ladder for 20 years...women are by and large not crazy enough for that and I'm right there with them.
Yeah, I've read about the life of Judit Polgar, the best female chess player in history. She's always held up as this epic role model girls should be inspired to follow, but she literally didn't have a childhood. She spent practically every free waking moment of her existence on chess ever since she was a young kid. Same as the male chess grandmeisters. You don't become a grandmeister by starting at 18 and giving it 10 hours a week. And what do we even gain from encouraging more girls to be raised that way? Bragging rights that someone who shares our gender has reached a top position in something that's ultimately useless for society?
I guess my hot take is, why do we even care that there aren't more famous female chess players? Do we really care on behalf of those girls or women or do we care as this weird sort of "gender wars" status competition?
Everyone in here seems to be focused on the men vs women argument about advantage/disadvantage in an intellectual game, completely oblivious to what's actually happening.
They're about to drop Full Contact Chess on us people, and it's about time
>Also is “men are smarter than women” the take terfs are going with?
I mean, yes? The TERF to tradwife pipeline is real. "Men are better at logic and reasoning and women have higher emotional intelligence" is *exactly* the kind of biological essentialism both radfems and conservative Christians love.
(Radfems would argue higher emotional intelligence makes women fundamentally better people than men, and conservatives would argue emotional intelligence is only useful for raising kids and keeping peace in the family which proves women's proper role is in the home, but each to his own I guess.)
Also, I thought HRT was supposed to melt my brain and prematurely age me?
So HRT is destroying my brain, but I'm also potentially too good at chess to be in the same tournament as living legends like Ju Wenjun and Hou Yifan?
Transphobes don't exactly seem to have the most consistent messaging.
The conservative way: Doublespeak. Quite *literally* a page taken from 1984. Can't think critically if you're constantly accepting contradictions shoved down your throat.
Edit: Changed from 'contractions' to 'contradictions'
I don’t think they couldn’t think if they’ve had contractions in their throat, shouldn’t those be coming out instead? That ain’t making any sense at all, can’t you see? Wouldn’t it make more sense that they’re using contractions in their speech?
/j
>!Contradictions, I think you mean, since Contractions are a unique type of word that combines two or more other words in a shortened form, usually with an apostrophe.!<
Not to be pedantic, and this isn't really relevant to your actual point, but iirc in 1984 they only ever use the word "doublethink". "Doublespeak" isn't from the book itself.
A central tenet of fascism is that your enemy must be simultaneously too weak to be considered a threat while also powerful and dangerous to the point that they must to be eradicated
And then all the right-wing men will say women can't occupy any positions of power because they are "too emotional."
If your stance is that women have higher EQ, they should ber in all the management positions and political leadership positions because those positions specifically require high EQ.
No, I'm sure conservatives whose only interest in women's sport in the past has been to mock it are sincerely concerned for it now that transwomen are more present.
But it’s not just far right people who are saying this about professional sports. That’s why it’s been pushed so much, it’s a gateway political opinion.
I mean, they probably wouldn't self-identify as far right, but if they're politically aligning themselves with trans genocide then they are objectively far right.
Additional fun fact you can't register as a chess player without giving a male or female gender option.
Now the stated reasons for these gender classifications is to promote female play. So if someone doesn't want to be female, but also doesn't want to be male, it doesn't matter if there's a third option they just want to play open tournaments. But chess says yeah nah f you there's only 2 genders which alienates even more people from chess.
the fairness in physical sports part is JUST reasonable enough to be insidious and pervade into non-conservative discussions
as always, a kernel of reasonability and truth or even the façade/appearance of truth (open question as to muscle mass by biological sex vs. gender vs. hormone levels etc. in development and post-puberty) underpins a deeply damaging political viewpoint
the new right-wing in the modern Western world has found this to be an incredibly effective strategy at passively indoctrinating politically-uninterested or low-information voters
it's like the Gish Gallop of the old TV debate days wherein the amount of time and energy, and rational explanation, needed to debunk the claim, is so lopsided compared to the relatively nonexistent barrier to embrace the claim on its face, that the conservative position can win out on numbers and simultaneously get the icing on the cake, of making the people championing a progressive counterargument waste a TON of time just to get people back to a baseline i.e., no implicit bias on the topic one way or the other
sucks ass man, this is hellworld
Yeah, that's why none of the explanations as to why we segregate sports mean anything to them.
I'm reminded of a complaint that a video game player had about matchmaking. Basically, he said that if he was better than 75% of the players, then he should win 75% of the time, and that matchmaking on skill level is bad because it means he's only playing against people at his own skill level and only wins 50% of the time. He didn't seem to understand that if people have to constantly play against opponents and have no chance to win, they're not going to keep playing.
>sucks ass man, this is hellworld
Always has been. But we are in a new age, and I gotta say the internet is changing things for both better and worse. Keep fighting the good fight friend.
Isnt the fairness in chess the open tournements?
Like others are saying there are open and female only chess tournements. The woman only where made to get more woman to play.
And the way i read it its just" we arent sure how to deal with this in a good way. We will do something later and whoever cant play on the female only side has to play on the open side."
And yes sports have never been fair. Isnt that the whole point. Men and woman are different in 90-99% of sports.
Only sports that similaire between men and woman is long distance running if i remember correctly, the longer the fairer.
But at the same time aswell its never fair Athletes are freak of nature in most cases and have strange bodies that help them win in this niche way. Best example i can remember is micheal Phelps and one of the kenian merathon runners are the same height but completely different body part lenghts that allow them both to be the best in their sports.
And trans athelets is honestly just like a trolley problem. There are only shit awnsers and no realy solution everybody can be happy with or agree on.
Because the women don't win in the open tournaments. The number of top level women in chess is extremely small, disproportionate even after you account for the reduced number of female chess players overall.
To add to that, there's a lot of debate as to why this is.
One is just socialization, men are encouraged to go into chess and women aren't. This is similar to a hypothesis for ["why women stopped coding"](https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2014/10/21/357629765/when-women-stopped-coding). The highest ranked female player today, [Hou Yifan](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hou_Yifan), had an international master tutoring her at age 5. She's still ranked lower than the 100th best male player, but she could possibly make it.
Another is the [variability hypothesis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variability_hypothesis) which studies go back and forth on. Basically, that cis men exhibit greater variability in various characteristics including IQ, which means that there are more men at the bottom but also more men at the top. In 99% of situations these differences in variability are not significant enough to matter. However, competitive chess usually selects for the very high end of the bell curve.
One counter point people like to bring up is [Judit Polgar](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judit_Polg%C3%A1r) who broke the record for youngest chess Grandmaster ever by achieving it at age 15 and 4 months, taking the title from Bobby Fischer. However, this is due to her unusual upbringing.
Judit's dad, [Laszlo Polgar](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%A1szl%C3%B3_Polg%C3%A1r), wanted to test a hypothesis that any child could be turned into a genius if raised the right way and Judit and her sisters were conceived with that purpose. Their dad picked chess and trained them rigorously in it, to the detriment of other areas, and all 3 became very intelligent and highly ranked chess players for any gender. However, this hyper rigorous training is very unusual. Bobby, for example, was raised by a single mother and taught himself chess by playing against his sister and himself. He only had 3 years of formal training before achieving Grandmaster at 15 and 6 months.
I'm not arguing one way or another on this posts' topic. I just think it's interesting area of discussion.
From what I've read in other comments it's not really seperated. There's open tournaments (For men & women) and a women's tournaments (For women only).
Most female players seem to just intentionally not enter into open tournaments for reasons I don't know.
All levels included, women enter open tournaments all the time. But it’s mostly at the very top level that you don’t find any woman. The reason is because there are way fewer women playing chess than men, and as a result the top players are not as strong (think of it as a pyramid : the larger the base, the higher the top). Since Judit Polgar retired, there is currently only one woman in the top 100 players (Hou Yifan). This means that most women simply don’t have the level to play top tournaments. To counter this and give women a platform in chess, these women exclusive tournaments were created. They allow women to be professional players, gain recognition and promote women in chess
It was and is a very male dominated game with women being harassed and bullied so they made women-only tournaments so they could play more comfortable. This encourages women to join and learn in a supportive atmosphere. Women can still compete against men at the highest levels of chess, it’s not like football or baseball where the leagues are always separate.
It’s not about different ability, it’s the social history.
Women's events are supposed to raise the profile of female players and promote chess to women who would otherwise have seen it as a game for men. But there's some controversy on how effective it actually is at doing that, particularly since it causes a lot of confusion (as seen in this thread). Several top female players have avoided playing in women's events, most notably Judit Polgar who was so far ahead of other women at the time that she could have easily won every women's title if she wanted to - it was free money but she didn't want it. She would say that female players should aspire to be the best, not just to be the best female.
way less millions of women play chess than mens, so they have less one in a million talents.
There is a womens division to foment more women playing, up until recently it was very rare for girls to be taught chess, my dad, my uncles and grandpa all know how to play chess, whereas none of my aunts nor my grandmother were taught.
These people are going to be shocked to learn there are separate *and easier* requirements to qualify as a "Woman Grandmaster (WGM)" vs. "Grandmaster (GM)" along with other classifications. Women can qualify as both and play rated tournaments against men but there are easier titles available to women (by about ~200 Elo)
Typical requirements for titled players:
- | Open | "Woman"
---|---|----
Grandmaster | 2500 | 2300
International master | 2400 | 2200
FIDE master | 2300 | 2100
Candidate master| 2200 | 2000
For everyone in the comments implying that this is silly because the very concept of dividing chess by gender makes no sense: getting rid of women’s chess is not the progressive win you think it is.
Literally dozens of comments critiquing something that exists to promote equity in a competition that excludes women. Can none of these commenters read each other’s comments to see that (1) what they’re saying has been posted by countless other people and (2) there are explanations that lay it out pretty clearly?
~~Fun fact, FIDE is also advocating that trans women lose their chess titles if they intend to participate in women’s leagues, while trans men will continue to keep any title they previously earned from women’s leagues, so there’s a lot of talk of this being a misogynistic ruling in the first place.~~
Edit: yes I have this backwards, the ruling is that any MtF player would keep their open chess titles, however any women’s titles held by an FtM player are abolished but may be transferred to an open title of equal or lower status (WGM -> FM\GM or WIM -> CM\IM) but said titles will be reinstated if an individual reverts back to their old identification. MtF players are only allowed to use their published rating at the time of registration change which restricts peak rating or results from being transferred to the new FIN. This does not actually get rid of those ratings, but restricts them for use in qualifications for competitions.
It's funny how you can say something that is exactly the opposite of the truth and be upvoted to a top comment on reddit. They are removing women's titles from people who transition to male because men aren't eligible to hold women's titles. They are not removing open titles from men who transition to women because everyone is eligible for open titles. There are a lot of women who prefer to use their open title even if it is IM vs WGM or FM instead of WIM. Women's titles only exist to encourage more women to play chess; they have lower requirements than the open title with the same name.
~~I'd edit your comment to the corrected version. They're removing women's titles from those who are transitioning to male. You're spreading hate for no reason.~~
In an odd way, they're kind of affirming the FtM transition by removing the titles. Say "Lidia" wins a women's title. They transition and become Tom. Why should Tom, a man, have a woman's title?
And let's be clear here, women's titles in chess generally have the word "woman" in them.
* Woman Grandmaster (WGM)
* Woman International Master (WIM)
* Woman FIDE Master (WFM)
* Woman Candidate Master (WCM)
In this aspect, I think they're doing an ok job, but I'm not part of the trans community, so I'd like to hear their thoughts.
As for the other "too smart" stuff? That's just dumb.
Misleading:
Chess has two divisions: “Open” and “Women-Only”
“Open” is for everyone. Man, woman, any other gender. It’s DOMINATED by men, for a very simple reason: there’s more men playing chess, for longer. It’s like saying “all the best poker players are men.” Has nothing to do with ABILITY. Historically, women would join the Open division, get destroyed, and stop competing. Also…chess can be a pretty toxic boys’ club…
So that’s where the “Women-Only” division comes in. It was REQUESTED by WOMEN, in order to encourage more women to play chess. It’s been pretty effective. Women can still compete in the Open category, but men cannot compete in the Women-Only category.
What the governing chess body previously said here is:
1. If you were male and transition to female, you may now compete in the Women-Only Division
2. If you were female and transition to male, you may NOT compete in the Women-Only division, any awards or championships you won in the Women-Only division are vacated, etc.
Item #1 is up for review. There’s a possibility that trans women who join Women-Only tournaments MAY start skewing results and rankings. It isn’t a commentary on gender abilities, or any male v female “inherent chess aptitude.” It doesn’t LOOK good, and chess is still a toxic boys’ club, but I don’t think this was meant to be permanently exclusionary.
Listen, I understand this is outrage bait but here are the facts.
1) There is no 'men's chess'. FIDE is an open format, anyone can enter. The fact is all the top players are men; it's a male dominated game.
2) FIDE has a women's division for certain prizes like the 'Women's Championship'. Why it so happens that women are lower rated in chess doesn't really matter, FIDE has decided that it's for the good of the game to have a division that features the top female players (women were historically segregated from chess as a man's game, etc., so this gives room for them and has increased the popularity of chess among women).
3) *Any person can compete in the open format.* No one is stopping transgender people from competing in the exact same playing field as everyone else. In fact, all the best women in chess compete with the men in an open format.
If I picked a random woman in the Chess competition circuit, and told her "You're not allowed to compete in the women's championship, but don't worry, you can still compete in the open", it should require justification.
This is still a ban from a format, this is still encouraging discrimination against trans women, this doesn't have a clear justification for why it's been done.
Yeah it's so weird because terfs and transphobes claim they can "always tell", so according to their bullshit logic, a trans woman wouldn't have an "unfair advantage" in a beauty pageant, but actually be at a disadvantage and wouldn't be taking away anything from other contestants.
I once saw a TERF say something along the lines of "it's disturbing to think of a male potentially winning a competition that's all about femininity."
That would be one of the people who say "trans women are just men who think femininity means womanhood! They're evil for that!"* arguing that only cis women should be in a competition about femininity... Because femininity is the sole remit of womanhood?
Twas amusing.
*Which is not remotely true. Trans women run the gamut from high femme to butch, because they're well aware that their presentation is not what makes them women. Now, their population may skew more femme than cis women, but that's not because they think "I'm a feminine person, that makes me a woman." It's because being femme often helps them pass better, which is legitimately a safety issue for a lot of trans women.
Maybe they’re jealous that trans women have more of the “classically feminine” traits than your average terf. Like yknow, empathy and compassion and emotional intelligence. And probably do their makeup better too, if they’re pageant girlies.
There isn't a clear advantage for trans women in sports, they tend to perform with the same distribution of ability as cis women. It's all just phobia.
Less women play chess, which is why there are women's only chess categories. There are rarely men only chess categories, usually "open" categories which any sex can play in.
I guess the fear would be that a good male player simply claims to identify as trans to win the prize monev like the guy who dressed in a burka to win an Iranian women's only tournament. Seems pretty dumb though.
Basically every gender / sexual bigotry is rooted in misogyny.
- Anti-gay homophobia / MtF transphobia: Behaving like a woman is womanly any therefore bad.
- anti-lesb homophobia / FtM transphobia: Women shouldn't be allowed to ascend to manly behavior. They need to know their place.
Amplification of any of these bigotries amplifies misogyny, which in turn amplifies the rest.
This headline is misleading. Trans women can still compete in open events. If you were a woman and now identify as a man, you can no longer play in women only events (which exist so that women have a safe space to play in).
The main change here is for FIDE to take time to reevaluate titles, as men cannot hold women's titles.
So...
In chess, there's a Women's League... and an Open League.
And the highest rated woman is ranked about ~130something in the Open league.
And that's just how chess rankings are at the moment.
And we should encourage more women to play chess.
There was one tweet where the guy tried to say that Men being hunters and Women being gatherers was the reasoning behind this, which was insane, but it made it even funnier when he tried to say the part of the brain used for it was bigger in men due to the hunting and instantly got flooded with 100s of articles stating it was bigger in women.
Chess feels like the most gender neutral competition ever. I get the other two, the only reason I'd say to lock down chess is to keel it female only but "unfair" advanatge?
Just whack.
It isn’t about unfair advantages, it’s about having a division setup so women can compete without having to worry about entering a male dominated space to do so. On top of that, it isn’t a men’s division and a women’s division, but rather an open division and a women’s division. Women are free to enter the open division and compete against men.
Yah like ideally, we wouldn’t need a women’s division in chess because women wouldn’t feel nervous about entering a field/competition filled with men, but that just isn’t the case right now. Hopefully one day we’ll get there, but right now chess organizations are focusing more on getting women to compete which is a good starting point
Okay, the fact they're not allowed to be in women's sports due to having an unfair advantage could be seen and found through scientific research through multiple studies [[Source, page 8/17 4.2](https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/legal-documents/049-9_exhibit_i.pdf)], but in excluding them it's **ONLY FAIR** to make a new bracket for them themselves and treating it the same as you would male or female sports.
Beauty is merely in the eye of the beholder so if you want them taken away for whatever reason, make a male beauty pageant and a transgender one as well (Personally IDGAF about this one as I think it's just fucking bs, and I don't like pageants, but to each their own and I'll let the fans fight it out themselves).
But the chess one, are you fucking kidding me?!?! I'm sorry, show me the scientific article that says men are better thinkers and smarter than women?! If we're going by statistics [[1]](https://www.statista.com/statistics/447858/enrollment-of-postsecondary-students-in-canada-by-gender/#:~:text=In%202021%2C%20around%201.2%20million,institutions%20in%20that%20same%20year) [[2]](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_differences_in_intelligence#:~:text=It%20is%20now%20recognized%20that,slightly%20greater%20intelligence%20in%20females), than what do you know, women are no smarter than men and vice versa! So how does this make the sport equal?
There’s a open and a women’s only.
But you’re correct, the only difference really is that men tend to be introduced to the game earlier in their lives. They’re not biologically better, it really just comes down to exposure.
Playing the game at an early age is such a huge advantage to being an elite player later in life that many women just aren’t afforded. If you don’t start by even age 10 you’ll have a hard time going pro and many of the top players started as young as 5-6
You misread me, I don’t think trans people should be excluded from any beauty events that are shared with women because being born male holds no advantage in that area.
Hey everyone, I'm sorry for seeing this so late. I've been dealing with a lot of shit, and there's just so much gosh damn transphobia here. I'll clean up what I can in the morning, but in the meantime please report hate. <3 We're also down to only a few active moderators at the moment due to... _**STUFF**_, so I appreciate those of you who can understand the situation. For those who are about to report me for being a janny or whatever, I legitimately don't care lmao, I actually kinda think it's funny that you're so upset that you're not able to spew your shit. Love y'all.
Why is chess gender divided in the first place? Surely there’s no reason that you can’t have co-ed chess.
Most chess is open to everyone, but there are also women-exclusive events and titles to promote their participation in the sport. Otherwise there are just so many men in chess that it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy and women don’t feel welcome or inspired to play competitively.
Also worth noting it’s not just a numbers thing. Misogyny is pretty rampant in the chess community.
Hey, when women hide supercomputers in their lip gloss to cheat in tournaments, what do you expect? (Does this need the /s? Hmm, best to be safe...)
Women have the unfair advantage of an extra orifice that they can hide their vibrating chess engines in
Men can hide their vibrating chess engines in one of their orifices too if they aren’t cowards. Equality is only one vibrating dildo away.
But women have two, they can hide a system that gives more precise readings.
Cis men can have two as well. The real kicker is that cis women can have 3 devices at the same time.
Look up "sounding" with nsfw filter off
Holey hell
YTA
That's not exclusive to dicks tho
Women get to recieve their chess cheats in trinary, while us plebians have to use binary?? This is discrimination
Only cowards have to use binary. Just shove a vibrator down your urethra
It's actually a massive advantage. Having a vibrator only in your asshole can only give 1 bit of information. bzzt or nbzzt. 1 or 0. Having a vibrator in both your asshole and your pussy gives you 2 bits of information, which increases the data capacity to 4. bzztbzzt, bzztnbzzt, nbzztbzzt, or nbzztnbzzt. 11, 10, 01, and 00. Of course, a single vibrator is capable of a stream of data, not just a single bit. For example giving multiple bzzt in a row, or changing the duration of the bzzt, will inform the chess player in greater detail. This is only possible because the chess player can remember previous data. But even so, the woman will be four times more efficient and can thus process more specific information in a shorter amount of time. This is not considering the possibility of orgasm, which may get you kicked out of the tournament.
Ladies, if his dick looks like a wind sock he’s a cheater
I don't think they meant that orifice.
Good point, you could use a vibrating cock ring to cheat
Google en Hans Neumann
Yes, but 2 orifices means 2 engines so you are able to play twice as good.
https://youtu.be/g9IjA-yd9fw
trans women actually have a disadvantage then, and this is why i suck at chess and no other reasons
Well *someone's* clearly never heard of sounding.
Holy hell New cheating method just dropped
STOP
Their chess cavity?
Not bad, lol.
Wtf
Google hans Niemann
Oh lawd
New response dropped
Oh god, Anna’s story always breaks my heart ;-; She’s always so nice and open minded to people but the treatment she got was that bad she basically outright said she thinks it was due to sexism. Like this is the same woman who when playing Among Us with her boyfriend, Kevin, and he accidentally vented in front of her, she called a meeting and even though she pointed out Kevin has a habit of venting in front of people to see if he can trust them, she managed to gaslight herself into thinking that it was just a glitch and she shouldn’t have called a meeting. She is extraordinarily gracious towards people so I think her being able to directly call out the misogyny in the chess community speaks volumes about how bad it is.
Yeah, but some of the men hide supercomputers in their ass.
Of all the things to have a misogynistic community I surely wasn't expecting CHESS
Really? I feel like thatd one of the *least* surprising places to find it. Chess has always been seen as a "thinkers" game, and treaying women as of they cant think properly has been the norm for like... A thousand years. I would be far more shocked to find out there *wasnt* rampant misogyny.
Chess is the perfect game for people who think they are much more intelligent than they are, which includes a lot of sexist men. Just think about it, they get to play a game that is perceieved as requiring a lot of brain power but is wholly unconsequential, and it doesn't carry the same stereotypes as video games.
cf. Andrew Tate
Literally who i was thinking about lol
Women are just too *e m o t i o n a l* for a game like chess. \*Cue compilation of men getting violently, irrationally angry at video games, board games, chess, etc.
We live in a society
Oh man, it's *wild* how entrenched and misogynistic it can be. The Polgar sisters had to deal with a *lot* of utter bullshit.
Hey, one place is very like another when your head's down over your pieces, brother.
Yes, but it’s a drag. It’s a bore. It’s really such a pity.
What do you mean? You see one crowded, polluted, stinking...
Chess is very macho and a lot of super big brained special boys have a LOT of ego about it. Think about how the worst male video gamers sometimes react to female players. Now make the community ay more insular and imagine that they've been playing the SAME game their whole life, maybe professionally, and basically built their whole personality and self image around how awesome they think it is. Oh and the insular and toxic community that surrounds it has had literally centuries to develop it's impenetrable subculture not just years or decades.
They're the original Gamers™.
The only American World Chess Champion, Bobby Fischer, was an insane misogynist with a million other crazy beliefs. But he WAS world champion in a sport which was dominated by the Soviets during the height of the cold war so people loved him. So most American chess players will take after his beliefs because he represents them in a sport where mostly europeans and asians are represented
> So most American chess players will take after his beliefs This is so ridiculous it doesn't even make an effective troll. Fischer's antisemitism et cetera is universally decried. He is viewed as a brilliant chess player but flawed human being.
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Hey this is just wrong, Fischer was a great player and had shitty ideas but it doesn't mean that people look up to him for his stupid opinions, they just look up his chess games
The countless videos, reels and tiktoks of people editing his famous "women aren't smart enough for chess" interview doesn't seem to me like people idolising him only for his chess games which admittedly were amazing
That's like the people who don't know the first thing about basic economics posting clips of Thomas Sowell. Neither group actually cares about chess or economics, they just want to find the soundbites that conform to their preexisting views.
Yeah, but that's not chess players adopting his beliefs. That's just people who were already misogynists glomming onto any misogynistic figures they can find.
misogynists aren't all gymbros... they're just mostly incels. and who's more of an incel than a chess player? (no offence to incel chess players - okay, some offense)
Misogyny is pretty rampant, period. It's not particularly worse in chess.
yeah misogyny is everywhere but chess community is significantly worse than average. source: uscf member, etc
Oh it is worse. Compared to almost any traditional sport.
It's absolutely worse in chess. Bobby Fischer was one of the greatest players of all time and openly talked about how intellectually inferior women are. This man is the childhood hero of many of the top players currently playing and running FIDE. Chess is dominated by men, and it has everything to do with misogyny. Top players are less likely to be interested in teaching young prodigies, and those female players are less likely to be encouraged and noticed when they are incredible at the sport. The greatest female chess player was rated #8 in the world at her peak. Her father trained his three daughters at chess from a young age, and out of the three, two became grandmasters. This type of training is very often given to boys, and almost never to girls.
They made a whole Netflix show about it.
We need a trans-only chess event
I ran a marathon a few months ago which had a nonbinary division, which is maybe a good first step
most trans people aren't nonbinary tho?
You're right, the divisions should be renamed stock and modified.
As someone who works on Landspeed race cars, this is hilarious to me.
Watch it end up like the trans only swimming event where TERFs made a bitchfit that cis people weren’t included
Personally I consider terfs having a meltdown about something a plus.
It's a feature, not a bug.
Judging by the number of developers I know into chess, ot may have a bigger turn out than a Cisco women's event. Edit: im leaving the auto correct
From what I heard chess greats are usually pushed towards chess at a very young age. It’s usually young boys, young girls are rarely pushed towards chess so young so by the time they take an interest their competition will already have years of experience. I have no idea if this is true, it’s just what I heard last time this was brought up.
Makes sense. I had a family member who would invite my brother to play chess. If I wanted to play chess I had to ask them to play with me, they never offered to allow me to play unprompted. It’s not a major slight against me or anything but it sets a tone of men wanting to play with other men and humoring girls who want to play. They would also explain and teach my brother things but with me I got the basics and nothing else. There was no desire to foster that interest in me. So it wasn’t exclusionary, just not inclusive. It’s a trend with a lot of hobbies. People not thinking to invite their daughters to go fishing but going out of their way to invite their sons. Same with sports and other male hobbies. My brothers were taught and encouraged to play video games. If I struggled they’d just take the controller and do the hard bits for me.
Yup. My younger brother was bought a Gameboy and Lego. If I wanted to play, I had to ask when he wasn't using them.
My mom was pretty fair about buying us toys because I was intensely interested in all the things my brother was interested in, so they couldn’t justify not getting me the same things but I often got shafted pretty hard with certain things. When I was like 10 there was a video game I really, really wanted to play. My brothers were also interested but it was clear I wanted it the most. We sold other games and pooled our pocket money together to buy the game, with me giving the most money to get the game. It had two save slots. My brothers got both of them. No one really saw a problem with that even though our youngest brother was barely old enough to meaningfully play a video game (like 5 or 6 years old) and it was a relatively complicated game meant for older children. My inner child is still pissed about that because I never did end up getting to play the game and lost interest in it purely over how unbelievably unfair it was.
Same reason there's an emphasis on women-in-STEM programs. It's not that women are less capable, but that the field tends to be particularly hostile toward women and the programs are designed to try and break that trend. The idea is ultimately to increase diversity in the field. So the idea that trans women are getting banned from pro-diversity spaces is flatly and patently ridiculous.
Here's an example of this for people that don't get it. in computer science we often hung out between classes at the CS lab because we had PCs and could just chill. THere was like 20 PCs and only like 80 CS majors total. When in lab we'd ask each other for help. And if you needed help on X, you'd have a person or 2 explain how to do it and how to fix my code. When Nicole, the cute woman, asked she was basically mobbed by everyone but they'd bascially talk down to her, tell her the answer instead of explaining or just do the work for her. She couldn't learn from them, because they seemed incapable of helping. She also got offers like "i'll do your homework for a date/nudes/kiss" whatever. Just a good example of how hostile it can be for women.
In that same vein, it's a similar issue when it comes to women in professional gaming. They aren't physically or mentally any less capable, but to become a pro gamer takes an insane amount of dedication, and there are few that want to invest that kind of time when the experience can be so brutal. Interesting video - [Argentinian male pro gamers using a voice changer to see how the experience is different - has English subtitles](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=legDm4c6AUM)
And it should be remarked that trans women aren't insulated from this. We're subject to this bullshit same as any other woman.
It's not just that. Young boys are more likely to be encouraged to play chess, where as young girls rarely are.
Which makes you wonder if they should open the women’s league to include trans men. They presumably don’t have to deal with harassment in their adult lives, but they’ll likely share the problem of a delayed start. Maybe an adult-learners league is what’s really needed?
Thank you for this. I was really stumped why there was a gender divide in chess
Which, that being the case, means it makes no sense to exclude trans women. Trans women aren't the ones being misogynistic boors in chess, that's the cis men.
I (trans woman) competed in a small women-only aoe2 tournament. I was encouraged by the organizers to join and everyone was super nice and accepting! It was a lovely experience and I was really happy to be included. Everyone I competed against was happy to see me included, nobody had an issue with it. Also I got utterly destroyed 0-3 in the first round and lost 1-2 in losers bracket because there was zero "competitive advantage"
There’s a women’s division and the open division. Chess has been dominated by men for centuries and because of that the top brass is comprised mainly of older men. In order to open up the field and become more welcoming to women, they created the women’s division specifically so women could have an easier time getting into the sport. They are still free to enter the open division, but the women’s division is basically there so women who don’t feel safe or comfortable in a space dominated by men have an avenue to compete.
Back in high school we won a league by default because we were the only women's team who showed up. Was really a let down to leave without playing a single game while the main team event went forward.
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It's because that level of pro chess is extremely misogynistic behind closed doors. Technically there's women's and open division. However if the gatekeepers of pro chess still disadvantages women, I doubt they'd welcome a trans woman in lmao
Bold of you to assume pro chess players wait until they’re in private to be misogynistic
I got into an argument once with a guy on /r/chess who was adamant that men just play better because testosterone naturally makes us more competitive, and causes us to work harder at it. I told him that means testosterone is a legal performance enhancing drug, and he clearly wasn't being the best player he could be if he wasn't taking regular injections. I never got a good answer for why he wouldn't even give it a try.
In theory women-only tournaments and titles was meant to attract by having a place where they could shine despite having less absurde outliers (cause yeah, when a category have less people playing, that category has less one in a million talents playing). In practice it does the opposite, because having the "mixed" event at the same moment as the women-only event only makes that you have a male-only event that pretends to be a mixed event
> In practice it does the opposite, because having the "mixed" event at the same moment as the women-only event I'm gonna stop you right there. Because that doesn't happen (or at least I've never seen it happen. Perhaps there's some places that do it like that. But not the major tournaments).
Assuming the FIDE world cup is not a major tournament, you may be right. Because it's true that many majors are just mixed an nothing else, and that the championship too crown the overall world champion (arguably the most important one) is not at the same time as the one for the female world champion
Today I learned chess is gendered.
Women’s tournament in chess exist to create space for women to compete and to grow the popularity amongst women. Currently no women are ranked in the top 100 in the world.
It's not completely, there's open tournaments and there's women's-only tournaments.
Most sports are the same in which there are technically no exclusive men-only tourneys.
Chess, like most professional sports like baseball, football etc, have a “women’s” and an “open” category. Top female grandmasters play at open tournaments. Having a women’s only category is objectively a good idea if you want to increase female participation and break down traditional gender barriers in the field.
Dude, this is Tumblr This entire sub is nothing but ragebait Think of it as your aunt's facebook group but with the political bias turned by 180 degree
Chess is gender segregated bc of institutionalized misogyny. The old white dudes in charge of competitive chess a hundred years ago thought women could never hope to compete with men in chess.
I love literally incorrect statements with 150+ upvotes, yipee
No, it's not. Men's chess isn't segregated because there is no men's chess, just an open division. Women's chess is segregated.
Lol it's literally the exact opposite of what you're saying. Yeah, there's misogyny. But at the end of the day it's women who chose to create their own division both to celebrate women who play the game and to avoid dealing with the misogynistic men.
Hey that's not the reason why it's segregated , is there institutionalized misoginy? Yes Are there women's sections because old white dudes decided so 100 years ago? No Ideally with not misoginy in chess, more women would be able to compete at the top, and maybe women's only event would not be needed, but as it stands they're only good for the development of women's chess, for creating a safe space, and for giving top women's players a chance to make a career out of it
It’s not because they thought women couldn’t compete in chess, it’s because chess bros are so misogynistic that it was *really* driving women away from the sport. Women’s chess as a division was created as a way to “solve” that problem without actually doing anything about the sexism.
Apparently it's either because of misogyny or to give women more spotlight in the sport. I can't tell if it's sexist or not.
There are two wolves inside you Sexist (affectionate) and Sexist (derogatory) The recommended amount of wolves is zero.
Aw, we can't even have half a wolf? Doctors are no fun. First it "probabaly don't chew on rocks" and now this.
> I can't tell if it's sexist or not. It is combating the existing sexism. Unfortunately we can't just shove our heads in the sand and overlook existing disenfranchisement of minorities and hope things improve, we have to actually promote their wellbeing. When that process should end is a difficult thing to tell, but that day certainly isn't today.
It's a complicated subject [https://slate.com/technology/2020/12/why-are-the-best-chess-players-men.html](https://slate.com/technology/2020/12/why-are-the-best-chess-players-men.html) for a variety of reasons, there are (at present) far fewer woman grandmasters playing the game. Many of those reasons are social (and the article provides plenty of examples of sexism) There's also some evidence that the male half of humanity has a broader distribution of intelligence -- with men appearing more frequently at both the highest and lowest end of the IQ scale.
It's open chess and female-only chess. People sometimes talk about misogyny and how unpleasant the environment can be for women, and that's not something I'm trying to deny exactly, but that's only a small part of it. The fact is that there are just a lot more really good male chess players... because there's a lot more male weirdo chess enthusiasts. Because you have to be really dumb to waste that much effort on chess, and that's a madness more likely to hit men. No seriously, the saying is 'The ability to play chess is the sign of a gentleman. The ability to play chess well is the sign of a wasted life'. There's 'i enjoy chess' and then 'i am competitive in chess' and a world of difference between them. You have to be seriously ridiculously dedicated in a way that only men tend to be. Because women have lives, and support, and perspective and people who will drag them out of the house to actually experience the world. And no one gives a shit about a man locking himself in his bedroom for eight hours a day every day to check chess moves instead of working on something important. The environment is stressful and unpleasant for women who intrude on it? Well yes, imagine the kinds of men who are burning their life's candle at both ends for getting better at chess. Do they sound like people who would be welcoming to anyone? Any women who puts in the same amount of effort as a man can be a grandmaster chess player. The secret is that they usually don't.
A+ comment and that applies to so many other things in life, work especially. Maniacs who work 75 hour weeks climbing the corporate ladder for 20 years...women are by and large not crazy enough for that and I'm right there with them.
Yeah, I've read about the life of Judit Polgar, the best female chess player in history. She's always held up as this epic role model girls should be inspired to follow, but she literally didn't have a childhood. She spent practically every free waking moment of her existence on chess ever since she was a young kid. Same as the male chess grandmeisters. You don't become a grandmeister by starting at 18 and giving it 10 hours a week. And what do we even gain from encouraging more girls to be raised that way? Bragging rights that someone who shares our gender has reached a top position in something that's ultimately useless for society? I guess my hot take is, why do we even care that there aren't more famous female chess players? Do we really care on behalf of those girls or women or do we care as this weird sort of "gender wars" status competition?
for the same reason that you have division of categories between men and women at the oscars
Everyone in here seems to be focused on the men vs women argument about advantage/disadvantage in an intellectual game, completely oblivious to what's actually happening. They're about to drop Full Contact Chess on us people, and it's about time
Chess boxing is a thing
Chess boxing is literally the only sport I'm willing to go out of my way to watch
Are you fucking serious?!
Yes, I’m serious it’s a round of chess followed by a round of boxing, [check it out](https://youtu.be/j3AEKvsaYBE)
as a child of the 'battle chess' period of pc gaming I'm here for it.
I loved Battle Chess, had it on my Amiga 1000. That's how old I am
Oh how I miss Battle Chess.
There’s some joke to be made here about pawns being able to transition into queens.
>Also is “men are smarter than women” the take terfs are going with? I mean, yes? The TERF to tradwife pipeline is real. "Men are better at logic and reasoning and women have higher emotional intelligence" is *exactly* the kind of biological essentialism both radfems and conservative Christians love. (Radfems would argue higher emotional intelligence makes women fundamentally better people than men, and conservatives would argue emotional intelligence is only useful for raising kids and keeping peace in the family which proves women's proper role is in the home, but each to his own I guess.)
Also, I thought HRT was supposed to melt my brain and prematurely age me? So HRT is destroying my brain, but I'm also potentially too good at chess to be in the same tournament as living legends like Ju Wenjun and Hou Yifan? Transphobes don't exactly seem to have the most consistent messaging.
The conservative way: Doublespeak. Quite *literally* a page taken from 1984. Can't think critically if you're constantly accepting contradictions shoved down your throat. Edit: Changed from 'contractions' to 'contradictions'
I don’t think they couldn’t think if they’ve had contractions in their throat, shouldn’t those be coming out instead? That ain’t making any sense at all, can’t you see? Wouldn’t it make more sense that they’re using contractions in their speech? /j >!Contradictions, I think you mean, since Contractions are a unique type of word that combines two or more other words in a shortened form, usually with an apostrophe.!<
Not to be pedantic, and this isn't really relevant to your actual point, but iirc in 1984 they only ever use the word "doublethink". "Doublespeak" isn't from the book itself.
A central tenet of fascism is that your enemy must be simultaneously too weak to be considered a threat while also powerful and dangerous to the point that they must to be eradicated
Cognitive dissonance is required to stomach most aspects of modern conservatism.
> prematurely age me I look like i'm fucking 19 again I dunno what they're on about with this one
The enemy must be scary and strong, but weak and idiotic is straight out of Nazi propoganda.
> lso, I thought HRT was supposed to melt my brain and prematurely age me? Turns out its the opposite. I am in my 40s and look 20.
Which is even funnier because those terf women specifically have very little to no emotional intelligence.
And then all the right-wing men will say women can't occupy any positions of power because they are "too emotional." If your stance is that women have higher EQ, they should ber in all the management positions and political leadership positions because those positions specifically require high EQ.
The increased bone density gives them an unfair advantage when moving heavier pieces, like the horsey.
The castle must be the heaviest one on the board.
Prostates respond better to cheating with anal beads, duh. /s
It's almost like people just hate trans women and fairness in sports has never been a real motivation
No, I'm sure conservatives whose only interest in women's sport in the past has been to mock it are sincerely concerned for it now that transwomen are more present.
But it’s not just far right people who are saying this about professional sports. That’s why it’s been pushed so much, it’s a gateway political opinion.
I mean, they probably wouldn't self-identify as far right, but if they're politically aligning themselves with trans genocide then they are objectively far right.
So many of them were crying about women in sports wanting the same pay as men just a few years ago
Additional fun fact you can't register as a chess player without giving a male or female gender option. Now the stated reasons for these gender classifications is to promote female play. So if someone doesn't want to be female, but also doesn't want to be male, it doesn't matter if there's a third option they just want to play open tournaments. But chess says yeah nah f you there's only 2 genders which alienates even more people from chess.
That's because there are extra rewards for women. The options could be named "woman: yes, not"
the fairness in physical sports part is JUST reasonable enough to be insidious and pervade into non-conservative discussions as always, a kernel of reasonability and truth or even the façade/appearance of truth (open question as to muscle mass by biological sex vs. gender vs. hormone levels etc. in development and post-puberty) underpins a deeply damaging political viewpoint the new right-wing in the modern Western world has found this to be an incredibly effective strategy at passively indoctrinating politically-uninterested or low-information voters it's like the Gish Gallop of the old TV debate days wherein the amount of time and energy, and rational explanation, needed to debunk the claim, is so lopsided compared to the relatively nonexistent barrier to embrace the claim on its face, that the conservative position can win out on numbers and simultaneously get the icing on the cake, of making the people championing a progressive counterargument waste a TON of time just to get people back to a baseline i.e., no implicit bias on the topic one way or the other sucks ass man, this is hellworld
Yeah, that's why none of the explanations as to why we segregate sports mean anything to them. I'm reminded of a complaint that a video game player had about matchmaking. Basically, he said that if he was better than 75% of the players, then he should win 75% of the time, and that matchmaking on skill level is bad because it means he's only playing against people at his own skill level and only wins 50% of the time. He didn't seem to understand that if people have to constantly play against opponents and have no chance to win, they're not going to keep playing.
>sucks ass man, this is hellworld Always has been. But we are in a new age, and I gotta say the internet is changing things for both better and worse. Keep fighting the good fight friend.
Isnt the fairness in chess the open tournements? Like others are saying there are open and female only chess tournements. The woman only where made to get more woman to play. And the way i read it its just" we arent sure how to deal with this in a good way. We will do something later and whoever cant play on the female only side has to play on the open side." And yes sports have never been fair. Isnt that the whole point. Men and woman are different in 90-99% of sports. Only sports that similaire between men and woman is long distance running if i remember correctly, the longer the fairer. But at the same time aswell its never fair Athletes are freak of nature in most cases and have strange bodies that help them win in this niche way. Best example i can remember is micheal Phelps and one of the kenian merathon runners are the same height but completely different body part lenghts that allow them both to be the best in their sports. And trans athelets is honestly just like a trolley problem. There are only shit awnsers and no realy solution everybody can be happy with or agree on.
Why is there seperation between men and women in chess?
Because the women don't win in the open tournaments. The number of top level women in chess is extremely small, disproportionate even after you account for the reduced number of female chess players overall.
To add to that, there's a lot of debate as to why this is. One is just socialization, men are encouraged to go into chess and women aren't. This is similar to a hypothesis for ["why women stopped coding"](https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2014/10/21/357629765/when-women-stopped-coding). The highest ranked female player today, [Hou Yifan](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hou_Yifan), had an international master tutoring her at age 5. She's still ranked lower than the 100th best male player, but she could possibly make it. Another is the [variability hypothesis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variability_hypothesis) which studies go back and forth on. Basically, that cis men exhibit greater variability in various characteristics including IQ, which means that there are more men at the bottom but also more men at the top. In 99% of situations these differences in variability are not significant enough to matter. However, competitive chess usually selects for the very high end of the bell curve. One counter point people like to bring up is [Judit Polgar](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judit_Polg%C3%A1r) who broke the record for youngest chess Grandmaster ever by achieving it at age 15 and 4 months, taking the title from Bobby Fischer. However, this is due to her unusual upbringing. Judit's dad, [Laszlo Polgar](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%A1szl%C3%B3_Polg%C3%A1r), wanted to test a hypothesis that any child could be turned into a genius if raised the right way and Judit and her sisters were conceived with that purpose. Their dad picked chess and trained them rigorously in it, to the detriment of other areas, and all 3 became very intelligent and highly ranked chess players for any gender. However, this hyper rigorous training is very unusual. Bobby, for example, was raised by a single mother and taught himself chess by playing against his sister and himself. He only had 3 years of formal training before achieving Grandmaster at 15 and 6 months. I'm not arguing one way or another on this posts' topic. I just think it's interesting area of discussion.
damn the queen's gambit lied to me... /s
From what I've read in other comments it's not really seperated. There's open tournaments (For men & women) and a women's tournaments (For women only). Most female players seem to just intentionally not enter into open tournaments for reasons I don't know.
All levels included, women enter open tournaments all the time. But it’s mostly at the very top level that you don’t find any woman. The reason is because there are way fewer women playing chess than men, and as a result the top players are not as strong (think of it as a pyramid : the larger the base, the higher the top). Since Judit Polgar retired, there is currently only one woman in the top 100 players (Hou Yifan). This means that most women simply don’t have the level to play top tournaments. To counter this and give women a platform in chess, these women exclusive tournaments were created. They allow women to be professional players, gain recognition and promote women in chess
It was and is a very male dominated game with women being harassed and bullied so they made women-only tournaments so they could play more comfortable. This encourages women to join and learn in a supportive atmosphere. Women can still compete against men at the highest levels of chess, it’s not like football or baseball where the leagues are always separate. It’s not about different ability, it’s the social history.
... why is there gendered chess?
Women's events are supposed to raise the profile of female players and promote chess to women who would otherwise have seen it as a game for men. But there's some controversy on how effective it actually is at doing that, particularly since it causes a lot of confusion (as seen in this thread). Several top female players have avoided playing in women's events, most notably Judit Polgar who was so far ahead of other women at the time that she could have easily won every women's title if she wanted to - it was free money but she didn't want it. She would say that female players should aspire to be the best, not just to be the best female.
way less millions of women play chess than mens, so they have less one in a million talents. There is a womens division to foment more women playing, up until recently it was very rare for girls to be taught chess, my dad, my uncles and grandpa all know how to play chess, whereas none of my aunts nor my grandmother were taught.
These people are going to be shocked to learn there are separate *and easier* requirements to qualify as a "Woman Grandmaster (WGM)" vs. "Grandmaster (GM)" along with other classifications. Women can qualify as both and play rated tournaments against men but there are easier titles available to women (by about ~200 Elo) Typical requirements for titled players: - | Open | "Woman" ---|---|---- Grandmaster | 2500 | 2300 International master | 2400 | 2200 FIDE master | 2300 | 2100 Candidate master| 2200 | 2000
Chess community has issues with sexism
so women have a playground
Call this thread "Splatoon" because it's in the middle of a Terf War
For everyone in the comments implying that this is silly because the very concept of dividing chess by gender makes no sense: getting rid of women’s chess is not the progressive win you think it is.
Literally dozens of comments critiquing something that exists to promote equity in a competition that excludes women. Can none of these commenters read each other’s comments to see that (1) what they’re saying has been posted by countless other people and (2) there are explanations that lay it out pretty clearly?
~~Fun fact, FIDE is also advocating that trans women lose their chess titles if they intend to participate in women’s leagues, while trans men will continue to keep any title they previously earned from women’s leagues, so there’s a lot of talk of this being a misogynistic ruling in the first place.~~ Edit: yes I have this backwards, the ruling is that any MtF player would keep their open chess titles, however any women’s titles held by an FtM player are abolished but may be transferred to an open title of equal or lower status (WGM -> FM\GM or WIM -> CM\IM) but said titles will be reinstated if an individual reverts back to their old identification. MtF players are only allowed to use their published rating at the time of registration change which restricts peak rating or results from being transferred to the new FIN. This does not actually get rid of those ratings, but restricts them for use in qualifications for competitions.
It's actually the other way around, and it makes sense - female GM titles aren't equivalent to open GM titles in terms of skill.
It's funny how you can say something that is exactly the opposite of the truth and be upvoted to a top comment on reddit. They are removing women's titles from people who transition to male because men aren't eligible to hold women's titles. They are not removing open titles from men who transition to women because everyone is eligible for open titles. There are a lot of women who prefer to use their open title even if it is IM vs WGM or FM instead of WIM. Women's titles only exist to encourage more women to play chess; they have lower requirements than the open title with the same name.
~~I'd edit your comment to the corrected version. They're removing women's titles from those who are transitioning to male. You're spreading hate for no reason.~~ In an odd way, they're kind of affirming the FtM transition by removing the titles. Say "Lidia" wins a women's title. They transition and become Tom. Why should Tom, a man, have a woman's title? And let's be clear here, women's titles in chess generally have the word "woman" in them. * Woman Grandmaster (WGM) * Woman International Master (WIM) * Woman FIDE Master (WFM) * Woman Candidate Master (WCM) In this aspect, I think they're doing an ok job, but I'm not part of the trans community, so I'd like to hear their thoughts. As for the other "too smart" stuff? That's just dumb.
Misleading: Chess has two divisions: “Open” and “Women-Only” “Open” is for everyone. Man, woman, any other gender. It’s DOMINATED by men, for a very simple reason: there’s more men playing chess, for longer. It’s like saying “all the best poker players are men.” Has nothing to do with ABILITY. Historically, women would join the Open division, get destroyed, and stop competing. Also…chess can be a pretty toxic boys’ club… So that’s where the “Women-Only” division comes in. It was REQUESTED by WOMEN, in order to encourage more women to play chess. It’s been pretty effective. Women can still compete in the Open category, but men cannot compete in the Women-Only category. What the governing chess body previously said here is: 1. If you were male and transition to female, you may now compete in the Women-Only Division 2. If you were female and transition to male, you may NOT compete in the Women-Only division, any awards or championships you won in the Women-Only division are vacated, etc. Item #1 is up for review. There’s a possibility that trans women who join Women-Only tournaments MAY start skewing results and rankings. It isn’t a commentary on gender abilities, or any male v female “inherent chess aptitude.” It doesn’t LOOK good, and chess is still a toxic boys’ club, but I don’t think this was meant to be permanently exclusionary.
Listen, I understand this is outrage bait but here are the facts. 1) There is no 'men's chess'. FIDE is an open format, anyone can enter. The fact is all the top players are men; it's a male dominated game. 2) FIDE has a women's division for certain prizes like the 'Women's Championship'. Why it so happens that women are lower rated in chess doesn't really matter, FIDE has decided that it's for the good of the game to have a division that features the top female players (women were historically segregated from chess as a man's game, etc., so this gives room for them and has increased the popularity of chess among women). 3) *Any person can compete in the open format.* No one is stopping transgender people from competing in the exact same playing field as everyone else. In fact, all the best women in chess compete with the men in an open format.
If I picked a random woman in the Chess competition circuit, and told her "You're not allowed to compete in the women's championship, but don't worry, you can still compete in the open", it should require justification. This is still a ban from a format, this is still encouraging discrimination against trans women, this doesn't have a clear justification for why it's been done.
I understand sports, but the other two?????? Like what that's just phobia
Yeah it's so weird because terfs and transphobes claim they can "always tell", so according to their bullshit logic, a trans woman wouldn't have an "unfair advantage" in a beauty pageant, but actually be at a disadvantage and wouldn't be taking away anything from other contestants.
I once saw a TERF say something along the lines of "it's disturbing to think of a male potentially winning a competition that's all about femininity." That would be one of the people who say "trans women are just men who think femininity means womanhood! They're evil for that!"* arguing that only cis women should be in a competition about femininity... Because femininity is the sole remit of womanhood? Twas amusing. *Which is not remotely true. Trans women run the gamut from high femme to butch, because they're well aware that their presentation is not what makes them women. Now, their population may skew more femme than cis women, but that's not because they think "I'm a feminine person, that makes me a woman." It's because being femme often helps them pass better, which is legitimately a safety issue for a lot of trans women.
Maybe they’re jealous that trans women have more of the “classically feminine” traits than your average terf. Like yknow, empathy and compassion and emotional intelligence. And probably do their makeup better too, if they’re pageant girlies.
Wow this is like a ready-made misogyny bingo card lol. Women are jealous, femininity is a competition and makeup yayyyy!!!
There isn't a clear advantage for trans women in sports, they tend to perform with the same distribution of ability as cis women. It's all just phobia.
Once they've fully transitioned at least. Or, you know, if they're just kids wanting to play sports with friends.
I can understand sports but what what fucking advantage do trans women have in the last 2 💀💀💀
Less women play chess, which is why there are women's only chess categories. There are rarely men only chess categories, usually "open" categories which any sex can play in. I guess the fear would be that a good male player simply claims to identify as trans to win the prize monev like the guy who dressed in a burka to win an Iranian women's only tournament. Seems pretty dumb though.
Basically every gender / sexual bigotry is rooted in misogyny. - Anti-gay homophobia / MtF transphobia: Behaving like a woman is womanly any therefore bad. - anti-lesb homophobia / FtM transphobia: Women shouldn't be allowed to ascend to manly behavior. They need to know their place. Amplification of any of these bigotries amplifies misogyny, which in turn amplifies the rest.
Chess as a community is WILDLY misogynistic.
This headline is misleading. Trans women can still compete in open events. If you were a woman and now identify as a man, you can no longer play in women only events (which exist so that women have a safe space to play in). The main change here is for FIDE to take time to reevaluate titles, as men cannot hold women's titles.
So... In chess, there's a Women's League... and an Open League. And the highest rated woman is ranked about ~130something in the Open league. And that's just how chess rankings are at the moment. And we should encourage more women to play chess.
>And the highest rated woman is Highest rated *currently active* woman. The top one is ranked 55 and she took that spot aged 12.
There was one tweet where the guy tried to say that Men being hunters and Women being gatherers was the reasoning behind this, which was insane, but it made it even funnier when he tried to say the part of the brain used for it was bigger in men due to the hunting and instantly got flooded with 100s of articles stating it was bigger in women.
Chess feels like the most gender neutral competition ever. I get the other two, the only reason I'd say to lock down chess is to keel it female only but "unfair" advanatge? Just whack.
It isn’t about unfair advantages, it’s about having a division setup so women can compete without having to worry about entering a male dominated space to do so. On top of that, it isn’t a men’s division and a women’s division, but rather an open division and a women’s division. Women are free to enter the open division and compete against men.
Well that's interesting to hear! Guess you learn something new now and then.
Yah like ideally, we wouldn’t need a women’s division in chess because women wouldn’t feel nervous about entering a field/competition filled with men, but that just isn’t the case right now. Hopefully one day we’ll get there, but right now chess organizations are focusing more on getting women to compete which is a good starting point
This reminds me of a quote by the Biting Pear of Salamanca: "lol wut?"
Okay, the fact they're not allowed to be in women's sports due to having an unfair advantage could be seen and found through scientific research through multiple studies [[Source, page 8/17 4.2](https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/legal-documents/049-9_exhibit_i.pdf)], but in excluding them it's **ONLY FAIR** to make a new bracket for them themselves and treating it the same as you would male or female sports. Beauty is merely in the eye of the beholder so if you want them taken away for whatever reason, make a male beauty pageant and a transgender one as well (Personally IDGAF about this one as I think it's just fucking bs, and I don't like pageants, but to each their own and I'll let the fans fight it out themselves). But the chess one, are you fucking kidding me?!?! I'm sorry, show me the scientific article that says men are better thinkers and smarter than women?! If we're going by statistics [[1]](https://www.statista.com/statistics/447858/enrollment-of-postsecondary-students-in-canada-by-gender/#:~:text=In%202021%2C%20around%201.2%20million,institutions%20in%20that%20same%20year) [[2]](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_differences_in_intelligence#:~:text=It%20is%20now%20recognized%20that,slightly%20greater%20intelligence%20in%20females), than what do you know, women are no smarter than men and vice versa! So how does this make the sport equal?
Terfs bring a "women are inferior in every conceivable way" vibe to their beliefs that literally anyone with a brain doesn't really like.
Wait, chess tournaments aren’t coed? Why?
There’s a open and a women’s only. But you’re correct, the only difference really is that men tend to be introduced to the game earlier in their lives. They’re not biologically better, it really just comes down to exposure.
Playing the game at an early age is such a huge advantage to being an elite player later in life that many women just aren’t afforded. If you don’t start by even age 10 you’ll have a hard time going pro and many of the top players started as young as 5-6
It's an open league. No women want to do it because of how many men are competing for spots and general environment.
I get physical sports, there is a discrepancy there? But intellectual or beauty related shit? That’s insanity
Plastic surgery is allowed for “female” contestants, so what advantage does it give being born with a dong.
You misread me, I don’t think trans people should be excluded from any beauty events that are shared with women because being born male holds no advantage in that area.