Transgender chess players

[Djuna Tree]

I have never proposed either guessing or misogynistically scrutinising, in fact it seems your answers line up perfectly with mine.

On the contrary, you've mentioned many examples of people who are not women and do not identify as women, and who would not be eligible for women's tournaments (nor would they enter them).

[Chris Goodall]

I have never proposed either guessing or misogynistically scrutinising, in fact it seems your answers line up perfectly with mine.

On the contrary, you've mentioned many examples of people who are not women and do not identify as women, and who would not be eligible for women's tournaments (nor would they enter them).

You mean the ones where I answered "no" to whether I would accept them into a women's tournament?

[NickFaulks]

[*]Toby, a bearded gravel-voiced man who is openly attempting to troll the tournament organisers by identifying as a woman for the duration of the tournament, and recording the resulting awkwardness for his YouTube show (no)

Toby, aka Avi Silverberg, would be (yes) in Canada, because that has been tested in weightlifting.

https://nypost.com/2023/03/30/male-powe ... ks-record/

That was five months ago, and as at 1st August his official record for Alberta women stands.

http://www.powerliftingab.com/uploads/2 ... lassic.pdf

You couldn't make it up, except of course South Park did, back in 2019

https://www.google.com/search?client=av ... Rz-RYEOaig

[Paolo Casaschi]

[*]Toby, a bearded gravel-voiced man who is openly attempting to troll the tournament organisers by identifying as a woman for the duration of the tournament, and recording the resulting awkwardness for his YouTube show (no)

Toby, aka Avi Silverberg, would be (yes) in Canada, because that has been tested in weightlifting.

https://nypost.com/2023/03/30/male-powe ... ks-record/

That was five months ago, and as at 1st August his official record for Alberta women stands.

http://www.powerliftingab.com/uploads/2 ... lassic.pdf

You couldn't make it up, except of course South Park did, back in 2019

https://www.google.com/search?client=av ... Rz-RYEOaig

At the cost of sounding repetitive, the IOC document I quoted a few times already also includes:

4.1 When sport organizations elect to issue eligibility criteria for men's and women's categories for a given competition, they should do so with a view to ... preventing athletes to claim a gender identity different from the one consistently and persistently used, with a view of entering a competition in a given category.

I understand it might be more convenient for FIDE to simply ban a minority, but it should be possible to think of mechanisms for dealing with the above. FIDE has powers to discourage players from taking action that will bring the game of chess into disrepute, what about adding this to the list?

[Chris Goodall]

I think you misunderstand 'non-binary', i.e. someone who doesn't identify as a man or a woman, and as such would enter the Open section.

To enter the Women's section would be to choose the very binary option of identifying as a woman.

No, I understood non-binary in the way my close non-binary friends and relatives understand it and Stonewall understands it: as an umbrella that encompasses various identities that don't fit into either of two boxes. Some of which could be characterised usefully as "neither" male nor female, others as "both".

(Whether this amounts to replacing a restrictive two-box system with a slightly less restrictive three-box system, reasonable minds may differ.)

[NickFaulks]

At the cost of sounding repetitive, the IOC document I quoted a few times already also includes:

4.1 When sport organizations elect to issue eligibility criteria for men's and women's categories for a given competition, they should do so with a view to ... preventing athletes to claim a gender identity different from the one consistently and persistently used, with a view of entering a competition in a given category.

Yes! Canada appears to be in breach of that, so you seem to be in agreement with me that FIDE needs to draw up is own rules that do not necessarily mirror those of individual federations. That is a start.

FIDE has powers to discourage players from taking action that will bring the game of chess into disrepute

Do they? You only really find out when you test it, and the generality of the wording is bound to offend some people.

[Martin Crichton]

where do you draw the line?

This "woman" (lol) just broke the Canadian weight lifting record by a huge amount

Andres, a 6’2 athlete, lifted 1,327lbs, calculated from the combined weight of squat, bench and deadlift.

The 40-year-old beat her closest competition by a staggering 470lbs and achieved the second highest deadlift in women’s weightlifting history in the process.

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/sport/other/c ... 233d&ei=21

I do think on this thread the real women in chess should be making themselves heard because after all the issue effects them and not the open teams.

eg the 4NCL might be a nice test case.....I understand that the 4NCL teams must have at least one female player so what happens when a team plays with 7 men and a person (born male) identifying as a woman as the eight player? chew on that one!

[Chris Goodall]

where do you draw the line?

Yes, that's the thing we've been discussing.

This "woman" (lol) just broke the Canadian weight lifting record by a huge amount

Andres, a 6’2 athlete, lifted 1,327lbs, calculated from the combined weight of squat, bench and deadlift.

We weren't talking about Andres, we were talking about Ari Silverberg, a different person who broke Ms. Andres's records. Andres's case turns on physical participation criteria that have no relevance to chess.

[Thomas Rendle]

eg the 4NCL might be a nice test case.....I understand that the 4NCL teams must have at least one female player so what happens when a team plays with 7 men and a person (born male) identifying as a woman as the eight player? chew on that one!

Everyone plays as normal and then we head to dinner / go home depending on the day.

[Paolo Casaschi]

Yes! Canada appears to be in breach of that, so you seem to be in agreement with me that FIDE needs to draw up is own rules that do not necessarily mirror those of individual federations. That is a start.

Well, happy to see you are concerned about Canada breaching the IOC recommendations. Hopefully you'll share the same concern about the many shortcomings of the FIDE policy when compared to the IOC document.

FIDE has powers to discourage players from taking action that will bring the game of chess into disrepute

Do they? You only really find out when you test it, and the generality of the wording is bound to offend some people.

That applies to every policy. Should then FIDE ignore calls to ban people sanctioned (by their federations) of sexual misconduct, just because it might be challenged and someone might be offended by the wording?

Besides, while a number of people found the FIDE trans-gender policy offensive (or worse), this has not stopped FIDE.

[Tim Spanton]

ChessBase coverage: https://en.chessbase.com/post/fide-bans ... men-events

[Geoff Chandler]

The offensive practice of refusing to play Israelis is not a protected right. If I refused to play someone I would expect to forfeit at best and be disqualified at worst.

Hi Djuna,

Speaking about individual events what the organisers do at the moment is draw around the Israeli player so any player's government who forbids them to play an Israeli is kept apart. In most cases it is not the players fault so they rarely get defaulted. If they had to do this to include transgender objections from other governments it would start to get out of hand. (Hopefully my extreme hypothetical case won't be an issue.)

I was thinking more in terms of political reasons but regarding religious reasons for boycotting I thought that might be a issue but It is not as bad as I feared. As Countries and their prime religions became more educated and tolerable most have gone along with the flow and accepted transgender people. (and why not? does your soul have a gender?)

This made quite interesting and enlightening reading.

'Transgender people and religion' https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transgend ... eligion

[Roger de Coverly]

Speaking about individual events what the organisers do at the moment is draw around the Israeli player so any player's government who forbids them to play an Israeli is kept apart.

FIDE did attempt to stop that practice by outlawing tampering with the machine calculated pairings. It was something of an anti-Iran policy as being the most likely to both play internationally and feel obliged to default.

Now that it could also apply to Ukranian players facing FID (RUS or BLR) they may may have back-pedalled a bit.

[Tim Spanton]

Speaking about individual events what the organisers do at the moment is draw around the Israeli player so any player's government who forbids them to play an Israeli is kept apart.

FIDE did attempt to stop that practice by outlawing tampering with the machine calculated pairings. It was something of an anti-Iran policy as being the most likely to both play internationally and feel obliged to default.

Now that it could also apply to Ukranian players facing FID (RUS or BLR) they may may have back-pedalled a bit.

Where does that leave many English tournaments?

[IM Jack Rudd]

Non-norm tournaments can do what they like. Norm tournaments have to stick to their published pairing rules or the norms may be invalidated.