More and more sports organisations decide to ban transgender athletes from sporting events. In March, World Athletics announced new rules, excluding transgender women.

Now the International Chess Federation has decided to do the same. It has announced that transgender women are now not allowed to participate in women's chess events. Is FIDE afraid of intelligent transgender women?

The International Chess Federation, an organisation that brings together international chess associations from around the world, has just decided to officially ban transgender women from chess competitions and tournaments until further notice. Earlier this month, it approved a new policy that will come into force on 21 August.

The new guidelines state that any transgender men who won their titles in pre-transition period in a women’s tournament will be stripped of those achievements, Independent reports. However, transgender women who won titles in men's events can keep the titles in full.

FIDE did not in any way justify the policy change or give a reason for the exclusion of transgender female players from chess tournaments. In a statement to CNN, the governing body said "the policy was created in order to better define the processes involved when a player changes gender".

The decision to exclude transgender women in chess tournaments did not please those in the community or activists. According to many, the new rules are simply absurd. French chess coach Yosha Iglesias described the International Chess Federation's regulations as "anti-trans".

"So FIDE just published (yesterday) a list of anti-trans regulations, like it was ‘the biggest threat of women in chess’," wrote the coach on Twitter (X).

And Ana Valens, a transgender journalist, wonders why transgender players are so threatening to cis women in chess tournaments. Does FIDE think that they are perhaps more intelligent than cis women?

"Why are trans women being banned from women’s chess? What’s the point? Are trans women innately better at chess? Are we too smart to play with cis women?" she asks on The Mary Sue website.

In most sports transgender women were excluded from competitions due to concerns about their physical superiority. It should be noted, however, that in the context of chess tournaments such arguments seem absurd.

Nevertheless, chess has thus become another transphobic sport. And FIDE joined World Athletics and the International Swimming Federation, which in 2022 announced that only transgender women who had completed their gender correction before the age of 12 could compete.

Source: Independent, CNN