She’s a Good Sport! On Transphobia in Chess

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I am told that there is nothing more frightening in chess than a queen. Where the kings have grown immobile from centuries of disuse, the queen has become the most powerful of all the pieces, moving farther and with more freedom than any of the men. This is a curious fact about what has historically been a male dominated game. It would appear that the male chess player is always in a state of emasculation: Not only does he have to identify himself as someone who plays chess, a sport requiring less athleticism than other borderline cases like League of Legends, he is also implicitly forced to acknowledge the superior capabilities of a woman.

This is all to say that I wasn't really surprised when I learned that the International Chess Federation would be barring trans women from competing in women's events for a two year waiting period while regulations are decided upon. I understand that if you're a man playing professional chess, it would probably be an ego boost if people saw it as a real sport. And if all the cool sports are doing transphobia right now, how is anybody supposed to take you seriously if you aren't trying to stop the transgenders from destroying women's sports?

For the past year or so, the news has been littered with talk of tall skeletons, fast-twitch muscle fibres, and the irreversible, lifelong effects of testosterone exposure. Of course, most of this "debate" about trans sports stems from the transphobic belief that trans women are not women and are no different from men, which leads to conclusions that are entirely divorced from reality. The general public doesn't seem to understand that hormones, not surgery, are the primary component of medical transition, and those hormones are actually wildly effective and have drastic effects on a person's muscle mass, fat distribution, appearance, psychosexual functioning, and general physical capacity.

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You could write a whole book attacking the arguments that transphobes make to try to ban trans women from sports, but we should remember in this case that chess requires literally no physical ability whatsoever. Keeping this in mind, let's think about what assumptions might lead someone to suggest this kind of a ban, and what conclusions they might lead us to. In most physically demanding sports, governments and regulatory bodies across the globe have been discriminating against trans people with the hopes of "protecting women". 

The logic here goes something like this: if a hypermasculine, testosterone fueled "light heavyweight" alpha male athlete like Andrew Tate were to enter a women's kickboxing competition, his superior height, weight, and power would obviously overpower all of the women.

Knowing this, the now misogynistic Tate could simply choose to start calling himself a woman and then go around collecting women's titles with little or no skill. This would be dangerous to women's sports altogether, as men would use their "natural" advantages to unfairly win every competition and steal every opportunity away from women.

This of course operates within an absurd imaginary where cis men everywhere are ready and willing to experience the greatest shame which can befall them: being seen as a woman. But when this same flawed logic is applied to something like chess, it tells us a lot about how transphobes view not just trans women, but cis women as well. By claiming that cis women need to be protected from men in chess, transphobes indirectly claim that cis women are naturally less capable of playing the game at a high level. Since chess is a purely intellectual game where physical advantages are not possible, the assumption that we uncover here is that cis women are simply less intelligent than men, which we all know by now is false.

Women in chess do not need to be protected from the supposedly superior abilities and intelligence of men. Women are not underrepresented in chess because of a lack of skill. Women end up leaving the game because of its misogynistic culture. As Jennifer Shahade, the two-time U.S. women’s chess champion, wrote in a recent piece on the ban: "There are still far too many bad actors who harass, belittle and even abuse women and girls in chess. A single scary incident could be enough for some girls to leave permanently, before they fully experience the joy and triumph of the game." 

Shahade continues, doubling down that protecting and supporting women in chess would mean creating "a safe space and engaging community for women and gender minorities." One that is free from harassment, instead of belittling their intelligence by implying cis women are not capable of the highest level of play. Attempting to bar trans women from play is a purposeful diversion to distract from the need to focus on women’s real issues with men in chess, and sports, and more generally in life too.

“We need to further reflect on how transphobia utilises misogynistic assumptions even when employed by self-proclaimed feminists. The absurdity of the chess ban demonstrates to us how attempts to protect women operate on the belief that women are naturally inferior.”

I don’t think it’s necessary to again debunk the transphobic belief that trans women compromise the safety and sanctity of women's spaces. Instead, we need to further reflect on how transphobia utilises misogynistic assumptions even when employed by self-proclaimed feminists. The absurdity of the chess ban demonstrates to us how attempts to protect women operate on the belief that women are naturally inferior. When TERFs claim that women are a "biologically oppressed class", they reduce Womanhood to a fixed state of biological and metaphysical inferiority. What kind of positive political project could come from this? If we as feminists believe that women are by essence inferior, does that not justify the misogynistic beliefs which uphold patriarchy? Transphobia does not and cannot have liberatory ends for cis women, and I hope that the absurdity of this ban might help dubious cis women realise that transphobes, in TERFs clothing or other, are not their allies. 

And to my fellow trans people, we should be alarmed by the brazenness and absurdity of these new attempts at discriminating against us. Transphobes are no longer disguising their bigotry as being rooted in science and reason, but are instead testing the limits of their abilities to exclude us from public life. I am not overly concerned with our right to play high level chess, but rather with how we are slowly watching our rights be taken away from us, piece by piece.

Words: Cyrana Martin