The International Chess Federation’s announcement makes empirical sense
Chess is the latest discipline to protect women’s competitions. FIDE — the International Chess Federation — has announced that:
In the event that the gender was changed from a male to a female the player has no right to participate in official FIDE events for women until further FIDE’s decision is made. Such decision should be based on further analysis and shall be taken by the FIDE Council at the earliest possible time, but not longer than within 2 (two) years period. There are no restrictions to play in the open section for a person who has changed the gender.
FIDE
This is welcome news, and I say that as a transgender chess player.
Most chess is mixed-sex. Men and women play alongside each other and against each other. Hou Yifan — currently the highest ranked woman in chess — is a Grandmaster. She earned that title by beating men in open competitions and, although my experience of chess is at a far lower level, every event I have ever entered was open to both sexes. My transition 11 years ago had no impact on my ability to move my chess pieces.
Why, then, are there chess competitions organised just for women? Unlike physical sport, neither our muscles nor our skeletons are the issue; chess is a mind game. But the fact remains that there are 149 men ranked above Hou Yifan, including at least two 17-year-old boys. At the level of chess I am familiar with — recreational club chess — similar patterns emerge. Men tend to dominate the room and take most of the prizes, and without separate female competitions, women might win very little. So, from purely empirical reasoning, women’s competitions make sense.
But why are women under-represented in chess? It’s hardly the fault of society if the same pattern emerges consistently across the world. Hou Yifan is the tenth best Chinese player. Koneru Humpy — the highest ranked woman from India — is 28th overall. Meanwhile, Irina Krush is the best female chess player from the US, with 116 American men ranking above her.
The truth is that human beings are part of nature. Men and women evolved different bodies and we have also evolved different psychologies. It’s possible that evolution has left men with an innate advantage in chess.
According to Dr Carole Hooven, Harvard evolutionary biologist and author of Testosterone: The Story of the Hormone that Dominates Us and Divides Us, “males have a large advantage over females in spatial ability and, to the extent that spatial ability contributes to chess performance, this would help to explain the male advantage (on average) in chess.” Speaking to UnHerd, Hooven added: “Of course, social factors matter too, but we should not rule out the possibility that males’ inherited biology contributes to the male advantage.”
But whatever the reason, transwomen share our evolutionary history with men. In the womb, we developed in the same way when our XY chromosomes caused our bodies to develop along the male pathway. Transwomen might have an unsual psychological condition — the compulsion to be perceived as the opposite sex — but that does not make us women. As such, we need to stay out of women’s sport and out of women’s chess.
Debbie Hayton
* This article was first published by Unherd on 17 August 2023: Why I support the trans ban in women’s chess.
Debbie Hayton 
5 replies on “Why I support the trans ban in women’s chess”
The same thing is true for the American game show Jeopardy. A trans woman named Amy Schneider posted the second-best scores on that show in early 2022, and she was lauded as being the best woman competitor. But of course, she is not a woman. Wikipedia refers to her as both a “woman” and a “trans woman” (which is an improvement over their usual practice), but they should only refer to her as a “trans woman”.
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Yes. Whilst not “out”, I think I could never truly call myself “female” even whilst in my soul I believe that is what I am. For better or worse, my biology is “male”, even if I present as female… For instance, I think that Transwomen should not try to compete in anything other than “Open” events – but in my case, I would rather try to “stay under the radar”, as I am sure that however good I may feel I look, instinct among many can tell, and I would rather avoid confrontation – even to the extent of asking for a pass to the “Disabled” Rest Room. I lost all vestiges of competitiveness when I realised that my Gender Dysphoria was real and cannot be erased. Although I have not transitioned, I know what I am, and I support those who have, with the proviso that they should be more discreet for their self-protection’s sake. Survival is all. The World is just not ready for us yet.
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Well, Lewcee, what I would say is that the world is not ready for trans people who believe that they are real men and real women by virtue of their feelings about themselves, which is really all that “gender identity” means. If, like Debbie, you feel more comfortable living your life in the guise of the opposite sex, that does no harm to anyone. The harm comes when trans people want things that don’t belong to them — like influence over the development of children, or entry into women’s single-sex spaces, or the right to shame anyone who doesn’t share their point of view. I would have no problem with a world in which all trans people were like Debbie — honest, modest and not selfish. I see so much egotism in trans people, and that is the problem. Trying to derail the career of anyone who doesn’t agree with them is not the way for the world’s smallest minority group to behave. You don’t seem to be like that. That being the case, I’d be glad to know you.
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Thank You. The ecstacy of realising that you really are “Trans”, but the World is still not ready for you, is sad, but time will tell the disbelievers that we are “Not making it up”, and many like me, are prepared to declare in safety and hope that one day, one day, we can all live in harmony and joy for the gift of life as that we feel we have, not what a birther says you are, before you have lived. To love life itself is the first gift – even before we can feel love for another, the second gift… That is so profound, but it is in the future for us, I hope.
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My point of view is a metaphysical one. I believe in reincarnation. I also believe that every soul must experience being a male and female before they are finished. According to the source I believe in, occasionally a soul chooses the wrong sex before birth. A soul which needs to experience womanhood may choose to be a man again because women really do have a harder life in this world. Once that soul is born a man, he is drawn to being a woman because that is what his soul needs for its development. Another possibility is that the soul may need to experience being a social outcast (not that all trans people are social outcasts, of course). Such a soul may have ridiculed other people who were “different”, and now he/she needs to experience being different in order develop sympathy.
What’s happening now is complicated by the fact that being trans has become a fad for young people. Girls in particular, when they hit puberty, realize that life is easier for boys. They may not like the changes to their bodies (menstruation, breasts, developing wide hips), and so they decide they are trans. But that isn’t true gender dysphoria. I would say that probably a majority of young people who are claiming to be trans do not have that intense feeling that comes from inside, that feeling that makes for a genuine trans person.
When I was young, I met Walter/Wendy Carlos, the man/woman who was famous for making music on a Moog Synthesizer. What he went through during his transition was ridiculous. He would present as a woman when he could, but then he would have to run home and slap on fake sideburns for a business meeting. His/her experience helped me to realize that for genuine trans people, the feeling goes very deep.
But I continue to have problems with the trans activists who are trying to redefine what “gender” means for the whole human race, and whose behavior seems to be very selfish. They are not helping themselves.
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