The world’s top chess federation has ruled that transgender women cannot compete in its official events for females until an assessment of gender change is made by its officials.
Because the whole idea of gendered leagues in games that ultimately don’t matter at all is about segregation and control, not physiology.
Bring on the down votes from the “but muh sports 'tegridy!” clowns.
Edit: some of yall need a class on statistics lol
I don’t really follow. Do you mean only non/minimally physical competitions or all competitive sports/games/activities?
For things like chess, fishing, and spelling bees gender segregation doesn’t make sense. But for things like martial arts or weight lifting I think it makes sense.
It at least makes sense if the goal is competition between roughly similar groups of participants, and not just a single open class dominated by a particular physiology.
The only concession I can think of is things like crossfit games or Olympic weight lifting, where raw strength is the one and only point, or so central to the point that it’d be pointless to have men and women competing against one another. But things that require strategy or finesse like most sports, and definitely martial arts, women could absolutely be top contenders.
As humans we have hunted mammoths together, gone to the moon together, created computers together, etc. I think we can handle throwing and catching the balls together too.
TLDR there are many more aspects to most sports than raw physical strength, which is the only physiological “advantage” men have over women.
I think you’re right that there’s a spectrum, where one end is bound by raw physical strength and the other end is bound by technique. However, I’d draw the line for segregation closer to the strength end than you, I think. Granted, this is ultimately all just subjective.
I think for many sports the physical advantage men have (on average) would outweigh any technique advantage a woman may have. Especially if we consider professional sports, where the skill (technique) of all participants is already exceptionally high.
I’m not a martial arts expert, but I would argue that the existence of weight classes in most martial arts is evidence that raw strength is a factor that can’t be ignored. It’s a fact that for an athletic man and an athletic woman of equal weight, the man will be stronger.
I definitely disagree with the martial arts point. If it’s simple point sparring where technique is most important like in karate or taekwondo then yes, men and women can compete. If it’s MMA or any kind of grappling then no, men will dominate at the higher levels.
This will be true of any sport where strength, endurance or speed of the human body is a deciding factor. Which is, unfortunately, most sports.
Why not set up divisions, among sports where the physiological differences do matter, based on the actual weight, strength etc of the individual participants, whatever traits are relevant to that sport, rather than by gender? Even if the average woman and the average man have, say, a strength difference, there are still going to be some women who are evenly matched with some subset of men, after all. I feel like such a system, if done well, could make things more competitive than simply sorting by gender, because it enables sports where the people who are not on the stronger end of what their gender is capable of to still face equivalent opponents, and would remove the whole reason for debate regarding trans athletes, because they could get put into the same categories as anyone else without their identity being invalidated or having any relevance to their performance.
Fair point. If your argument is that physiological factors matter, but gender is an insufficient variable to segregate on then I don’t disagree.
I think it comes down to a matter of practicality. In most cases is gender a good enough heuristic? Maybe, or maybe not. I don’t really know, but it’s probably one of the simplest variables to consider. Perhaps it would be better if a more complete (but complex and harder to measure) set of factors were considered.
Anyone know what the highest rated trans male and trans female chess players are? Would be interesting to know if this rule is even currently necessary.
