But then, on the same Monday that the story was published in The telegraphFIDE comes with a decision that transgender women from Monday 21 August Women’s tournaments are no longer allowed (Chess has an open class and a class for women.) One passing chess player affected by the decision was Yosha Iglesias, who was also one of the authors of the Fourteen Letters. On Tuesday, she was one of the first to take notice of the decision, tweeting in confusion that she no longer knew whether she would be allowed to participate in the French Championship which was due to start at the weekend. The Chess Federation forces people to “choose between moving or chess”, thus Iglesias.
It wasn’t just transgender people who reacted angrily to the decision. American teacher Jennifer Shehadeh, who has also been subjected to constant sexual harassment in her career, spoke about “Ominous timingShe is offended that FIDE is doing this now, only now that there is finally more attention paid to misogyny and its connection to transphobia in sports. AmericanAnd GermanAnd English in French Bonds are just as angry. See the world of chess through the design of FIDE.
wrong move
In other sports, the exclusion of trans women from the women’s category has been celebrated in transphobic columns and on social media. This seems less true on the chessboard: many people wonder whether the chess federation would find women inherently less intelligent, because “men” should be banned from their class, something about which the federation has made no hard claims. It was meant to be about women as little as possible, it seems. Just about these “transformer” strangers. This seems to have worked: If you Google “chess,” you won’t find sexual harassment, but rather transphobia, which is becoming more acceptable in 2023.
