The international chess federation known as FIDE has published new rules that state that a person whose “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”.
The new rules introduce the following changes:
- Trans women cannot participate in the women’s category unless they are explicitly allowed in a case-by-case process that can take up to two years.
- Trans men will be stripped of their titles achieved before their transition while trans women will retain their titles achieved before their transition.
- In case a trans person is allowed to participate, their trans condition will be added to their files and communicated to events organizers.
Right, so the transphobic fear the FIDE has is that men might try to exploit a loophole by “posing” as trans. So they have these severe restrictions on who might be considered transitioned, why they will “alert” tournaments that someone is trans, why they require legal proof of transitioning before giving in and why they’re stripping trans men of their titles (so that if a cis man manages circumvent all these protection by successfully posing as a trans woman and having won all these titles transitions back, he no longer has them).
It’s the same trans-panic as in so many other sport federations. Severe legislation hurting trans people trying to pre-empt a completely made up cheating scenario.
edit: (hopefully) clarified the wording