But yes, the chess world is full of misogynistic thinking, that is true. And now it’s clear it’s also full of transphobic thinking.
The west very much has it’s own problem with transphobia right now. This is not a problem we can blame the Russians for, I’m afraid.
That’s precisely what many men in chess believe. And it’s wrong. Men are not inherently better than women at chess. Girls absolutely do get driven out of competitive chess by misogyny, and the way that the system runs is due to how men want to run it, as they’ve dominated chess for a long time now. Rampant misogyny and transphobia is the problem here, not some inferiority on the part of women.
Trans women are women.
You know those emotional creatures can’t logic their way out of a paper bag… /s
Many do, because it’s a far more pleasant experience than competing against a bunch of men who condescend to you, and then have a full on meltdown (and this is ADULT men) when they lose. I have a friend who is a chess coach and she talks about how the women who play in open tournaments get treated, no matter how good they are. Again - according to my friend, girls get driven out at a very young age by the treatment they get from chess coaches, which skew heavily towards older men. She does what she can to counter that, and to counter misgynistic thinking in young boys, including by discussing the history of women in chess to her classes, but the reality is that she’s just one person in one city with a few students. competitive chess is dominated by men who are indeed misogynist.
From my armchair, far far from the fandom of the sport or the labs, I’d tend to agree with you that the difference between the sexes is one of societal bullshit.
Until the fed can work out if it’s biology or societal bullshit, they’ve made this rulling. I’d prefer they chose the trans women are women rule in the interim, as I do not believe there’s that great a difference between men and womens’ brains.
Hopefully in the near future they work out that it’s societal bullshit, and welcome transwomen back into the womens’ division.
Though that opens another can - until transition a transman has been treated as a woman. Does the same societal bullshit rules apply?
Allow me to don my MD hat for just a moment. One of the very undersold medical facts here is that there are actual, identifiable physical differences between male and female brains. These can be seen on MRI scans if you know what you are looking for. Now, here’s the kicker. If I scan a trans woman’s brain, you know what I find? A female brain. If I scan a trans man’s brain, what do I find? A male brain. This is well documented. It is not a theory, it is a fact. Trans women are women. In every way that matters. And this ruling is utter bullshit.
As someone commented on another board; words to the effect that since female brains are now considered to be inferior to male brains, are ya happy now, TERFS?
There’s also this thing that happens. I don’t know what it is exactly but sometimes people who see themselves as “helping” a group of people is doing so with this sort of idea that they’re helping the “lesser” in the sense of, like, the poor pitiful girls need all the help they can get.
I have known women in real life who carry this way of thinking and literally do not see how it is disempowering for years, often about people they consider less fortunate than themselves.
It’s perceived as supportive I guess?
But that kind of attitude I think sometimes comes up in women’s spaces when they talk about girls.
In reality these attitudes just add up to hurting trans people and and then justifying it by parroting what often amount to shockingly sexist sentiments and straight-up terrible right wing extremist propaganda. I have to admit it’s left me really disillusioned with a lot of “feminist” groups.
Like if that doesn’t stand out as abusive and toxic then idk how to deal with it. Feminism should not be a gateway to bigotry.
I do appreciate the irony of a group that regularly touts itself as a conclave of mental giants making such a profoundly and undeniably stupid decision.
Thanks, I knew there were some differences, but I thought that the differences within a sex were greater than the differences between sexes. Like how men tend to be taller, but if I tell you I’m thinking of someone who is 5’10’’ they could easily be a man or a woman.
It is very much a bell curve, nothing that is exclusively binary (nothing in the natural world is exclusively binary, everything is a spectrum. See my “clouds and boxes” analogy), and there is some overlap. But the differences are there and notable, and the identification of trans female as female is well established.
Also, one thing that the differences in brains do not mean is that women are bad at chess. Plenty of women (trans or cis) are plenty good at chess, they just get treated like shit in competitive chess, and who wants to deal with that all the time.
Of course. Trans men are men. And it’s bullshit that they are having titles earned per the rules at the time before they transitioned taken away from them. It’s all bullshit. All of it.
No, that’s not their job. We know this is societal bullshit, and we know it’s not biology. The science is quite clear on this.
