The world’s top chess federation is banning trans women from competing until a review is made – and the defenses are sexist assumptions and shaky science
THE GUARDIAN
Sat 19 Aug 2023
Trans women banned from high-level women’s chess events
As anyone who has ever played the game knows, chess pieces are deceptively heavy. Enormous hand strength and lung capacity are required to move even a tiny pawn across a board. Shifting a rook or a queen? That can exhaust a delicate lady’s fingers for weeks on end. And don’t get me started on the spatial intelligence and mental acuity required for chess. Even thinking about the game makes my poor little woman brain hurt.
Obviously, this is all nonsense. And yet men have long been keen to push the idea that they’re somehow innately better at chess than women. “[Women] are terrible chess players,” Bobby Fischer proclaimed in 1963. “I guess they’re just not so smart … I don’t think they should mess into intellectual affairs, they should keep strictly to the home.”
As recently as 2015 Nigel Short, then vice-president of the world chess federation Fide, claimed that “men are hardwired to be better chess players than women”, adding: “You have to gracefully accept that.” The English grandmaster went on to explain it was clear men and women’s brains are different because he helps his wife get the car out of the garage and she has more emotional intelligence than him.
Fide still seems to believe that cis women are born lacking some sort of chess gene. How else does one explain their recent decision that transgender women cannot compete in its official events for females until a review of the situation – which may take up to two years – is made by its officials. Certainly, Fide hasn’t made it clear what sort of innate advantage they think trans women may have.
There have, of course, already been several defenses of Fide’s decision. But rather than being based on any firm evidence, they seem to be constructed out of sexist assumption and shaky science. Debbie Hayton, a trans woman who writes frequently for conservative outlets, wrote in UnHerd: “It’s possible that evolution has left men with an innate advantage in chess.” Hayton backed that up with a quote from a (female) Harvard biologist about males having a large advantage over females in spatial ability. But that’s not entirely true. While you can certainly cherrypick lots of studies that show men’s spatial abilities are superior, there are also lots of recent studies that refute this. A 2020 study in Nature Scientific Reports, for example, found no difference between male and female spatial abilities. Any differences previously found, a lot of research suggests, may be down to testing methodologies.
It is true, of course, that men dominate the upper echelons of chess. But why do you think that is? Do you really think it’s because men are brainier? Do you really think it’s because men and women’s brains are hardwired differently? Or do you think it’s because structural sexism stops a lot of young girls from getting into chess? Sexist assumptions seep into us from a very young age: a disturbing 2017 study found that girls as young as six believe that brilliance is a male trait. This social conditioning affects everything from career choices to hobbies.
Forget trans women for a moment, should there be separate women and men’s categories at all in chess? That’s a little tricky. Because far fewer women go into chess than men there’s certainly a strong case for keeping some separate men and women’s categories for the moment. But the idea that you wouldn’t ever see women win if the categories were mixed-sex is misguided. Nigel Short has certainly been beaten by a woman: Judit Polgar, who was ranked as high as No 8 in the world, has a winning record against him.
Perhaps men like Short are so keen on a separation of the sexes because they’re worried about their own performance. Look at air rifle shooting, for example, a sport where men and women are evenly matched. “Shooting wasn’t always split by gender,” air rifle coach Heinz Reinkemeier told ESPN in a 2021 article. “In the 1976 Olympics, the American Margaret Murdock won a silver medal in the free shooting event … after that the men decided to split shooting up into men and women because they didn’t like to be overtaken by the girls.”
Again, I think the question of whether men and women should play in separate categories in high-level chess is tricky. However, I can’t see any case for stopping trans women from competing in the women’s category. Ultimately women’s chess isn’t helped by gatekeeping definitions of women. It’s not helped by excluding trans women; it’s helped by encouraging more women to get into chess and dismantling gender stereotypes. If your argument for excluding trans women is that women have inferior brains than men then you are no feminist, you are a pawn of the patriarchy.
Trans women banned from high-level women’s chess events
As anyone who has ever played the game knows, chess pieces are deceptively heavy. Enormous hand strength and lung capacity are required to move even a tiny pawn across a board. Shifting a rook or a queen? That can exhaust a delicate lady’s fingers for weeks on end. And don’t get me started on the spatial intelligence and mental acuity required for chess. Even thinking about the game makes my poor little woman brain hurt.
Obviously, this is all nonsense. And yet men have long been keen to push the idea that they’re somehow innately better at chess than women. “[Women] are terrible chess players,” Bobby Fischer proclaimed in 1963. “I guess they’re just not so smart … I don’t think they should mess into intellectual affairs, they should keep strictly to the home.”
As recently as 2015 Nigel Short, then vice-president of the world chess federation Fide, claimed that “men are hardwired to be better chess players than women”, adding: “You have to gracefully accept that.” The English grandmaster went on to explain it was clear men and women’s brains are different because he helps his wife get the car out of the garage and she has more emotional intelligence than him.
Fide still seems to believe that cis women are born lacking some sort of chess gene. How else does one explain their recent decision that transgender women cannot compete in its official events for females until a review of the situation – which may take up to two years – is made by its officials. Certainly, Fide hasn’t made it clear what sort of innate advantage they think trans women may have.
There have, of course, already been several defenses of Fide’s decision. But rather than being based on any firm evidence, they seem to be constructed out of sexist assumption and shaky science. Debbie Hayton, a trans woman who writes frequently for conservative outlets, wrote in UnHerd: “It’s possible that evolution has left men with an innate advantage in chess.” Hayton backed that up with a quote from a (female) Harvard biologist about males having a large advantage over females in spatial ability. But that’s not entirely true. While you can certainly cherrypick lots of studies that show men’s spatial abilities are superior, there are also lots of recent studies that refute this. A 2020 study in Nature Scientific Reports, for example, found no difference between male and female spatial abilities. Any differences previously found, a lot of research suggests, may be down to testing methodologies.
It is true, of course, that men dominate the upper echelons of chess. But why do you think that is? Do you really think it’s because men are brainier? Do you really think it’s because men and women’s brains are hardwired differently? Or do you think it’s because structural sexism stops a lot of young girls from getting into chess? Sexist assumptions seep into us from a very young age: a disturbing 2017 study found that girls as young as six believe that brilliance is a male trait. This social conditioning affects everything from career choices to hobbies.
Forget trans women for a moment, should there be separate women and men’s categories at all in chess? That’s a little tricky. Because far fewer women go into chess than men there’s certainly a strong case for keeping some separate men and women’s categories for the moment. But the idea that you wouldn’t ever see women win if the categories were mixed-sex is misguided. Nigel Short has certainly been beaten by a woman: Judit Polgar, who was ranked as high as No 8 in the world, has a winning record against him.
Perhaps men like Short are so keen on a separation of the sexes because they’re worried about their own performance. Look at air rifle shooting, for example, a sport where men and women are evenly matched. “Shooting wasn’t always split by gender,” air rifle coach Heinz Reinkemeier told ESPN in a 2021 article. “In the 1976 Olympics, the American Margaret Murdock won a silver medal in the free shooting event … after that the men decided to split shooting up into men and women because they didn’t like to be overtaken by the girls.”
Again, I think the question of whether men and women should play in separate categories in high-level chess is tricky. However, I can’t see any case for stopping trans women from competing in the women’s category. Ultimately women’s chess isn’t helped by gatekeeping definitions of women. It’s not helped by excluding trans women; it’s helped by encouraging more women to get into chess and dismantling gender stereotypes. If your argument for excluding trans women is that women have inferior brains than men then you are no feminist, you are a pawn of the patriarchy.
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