International Chess Federation Temporarily Bans Transgender Women

In the latest headline that you won’t believe didn’t come from The Onion, the International Chess Federation—commonly known by its French acronym, FIDE—announced last week that they will be temporarily banning transgender women from competing in their women’s events while they determine if trans women have an unfair advantage over cis women, a process which they said could potentially take up to two years. Yes, you read that correctly: They need to determine if trans women have a physical advantage over cis women at chess.

According to NPR, under the bizarre new rules, transgender women will not be allowed to compete, and some transgender men who won titles in women’s tournaments before transitioning will be stripped of their titles. Titles can be retained if the player proves they’ve detransitioned, or the title can be transferred to a “general title of the same or lower level.” Yet, inexplicably, transgender women will be allowed to keep all of their titles from before they transitioned.

In the statement that the FIDE released explaining the changes to their rules, the organization explained that they have seen an influx of players asking to change their gender identity within the Federation. “FIDE recognizes that this is an evolving issue for chess, and that besides technical regulations on transgender regulations, further policy may need to be evolved in the future in line with research evidence,” the statement reads.

The move has been criticized widely, as many see this as insulting to both trans and cis women in insinuating that AMAB people are somehow inherently smarter than AFAB people. “It assumes that cis women couldn’t be competitive against cis men—and relies on ignorant anti-trans ideas,” U.S. group the National Center for Transgender Equality says in a statement on Twitter.

The German Chess Federation has made a similar statement on Twitter, boasting that a transgender woman has already been the German Champion and taking issue with FIDE’s new rules.  “If a person is legally recognized as a woman, it is incomprehensible to us what FIDE still wants to check and why it needs two years for this—as stipulated in the new rules.” The statement goes on to make the important point that “these regulations… are an example of how discrimination arises when those affected are not involved in any way.”