Trans women banned from high-level women’s chess events
As anyone who has ever played the game knows, chess pieces are deceptively heavy. Enormous hand strength and lung capacity are required to move even a tiny pawn across a board. Shifting a rook or a queen? That can exhaust a delicate lady’s fingers for weeks on end. And don’t get me started on the spatial intelligence and mental acuity required for chess. Even thinking about the game makes my poor little woman brain hurt.
Obviously, this is all nonsense. And yet men have long been keen to push the idea that they’re somehow innately better at chess than women. “[Women] are terrible chess players,” Bobby Fischer proclaimed in 1963. “I guess they’re just not so smart … I don’t think they should mess into intellectual affairs, they should keep strictly to the home.”
As recently as 2015 Nigel Short, then vice-president of the world chess federation Fide, claimed that “men are hardwired to be better chess players than women”, adding: “You have to gracefully accept that.” The English grandmaster went on to explain it was clear men and women’s brains are different because he helps his wife get the car out of the garage and she has more emotional intelligence than him.
Fide still seems to believe that cis women are born lacking some sort of chess gene. How else does one explain their recent decision that transgender women cannot compete in its official events for females until a review of the situation – which may take up to two years – is made by its officials. Certainly, Fide hasn’t made it clear what sort of innate advantage they think trans women may have.
There have, of course, already been several defenses of Fide’s decision. But rather than being based on any firm evidence, they seem to be constructed out of sexist assumption and shaky science. Debbie Hayton, a trans woman who writes frequently for conservative outlets, wrote in UnHerd: “It’s possible that evolution has left men with an innate advantage in chess.” Hayton backed that up with a quote from a (female) Harvard biologist about males having a large advantage over females in spatial ability. But that’s not entirely true. While you can certainly cherrypick lots of studies that show men’s spatial abilities are superior, there are also lots of recent studies that refute this. A 2020 study in Nature Scientific Reports, for example, found no difference between male and female spatial abilities. Any differences previously found, a lot of research suggests, may be down to testing methodologies.
It is true, of course, that men dominate the upper echelons of chess. But why do you think that is? Do you really think it’s because men are brainier? Do you really think it’s because men and women’s brains are hardwired differently? Or do you think it’s because structural sexism stops a lot of young girls from getting into chess? Sexist assumptions seep into us from a very young age: a disturbing 2017 study found that girls as young as six believe that brilliance is a male trait. This social conditioning affects everything from career choices to hobbies.
Forget trans women for a moment, should there be separate women and men’s categories at all in chess? That’s a little tricky. Because far fewer women go into chess than men there’s certainly a strong case for keeping some separate men and women’s categories for the moment. But the idea that you wouldn’t ever see women win if the categories were mixed-sex is misguided. Nigel Short has certainly been beaten by a woman: Judit Polgar, who was ranked as high as No 8 in the world, has a winning record against him.
Perhaps men like Short are so keen on a separation of the sexes because they’re worried about their own performance. Look at air rifle shooting, for example, a sport where men and women are evenly matched. “Shooting wasn’t always split by gender,” air rifle coach Heinz Reinkemeier told ESPN in a 2021 article. “In the 1976 Olympics, the American Margaret Murdock won a silver medal in the free shooting event … after that the men decided to split shooting up into men and women because they didn’t like to be overtaken by the girls.”
Again, I think the question of whether men and women should play in separate categories in high-level chess is tricky. However, I can’t see any case for stopping trans women from competing in the women’s category. Ultimately women’s chess isn’t helped by gatekeeping definitions of women. It’s not helped by excluding trans women; it’s helped by encouraging more women to get into chess and dismantling gender stereotypes. If your argument for excluding trans women is that women have inferior brains than men then you are no feminist, you are a pawn of the patriarchy.
Trump-appointed judge said he supports banning abortion pills because people like looking at babies
Fifth circuit judge James Ho argued: “It’s well established that, if a plaintiff has ‘concrete plans’ to visit an animal’s habitat and view that animal, that plaintiff suffers aesthetic injury when an agency has approved a project that threatens the animal … Doctors delight in working with their unborn patients – and experience an aesthetic injury when they are aborted.” Yes, you read that right, a judge just compared women’s bodies to wildlife habitats. If you are wondering what on earth is going on with the fight over abortion pills in the US, the Guardian has a good explainer here.
A quick reminder: LinkedIn is not a dating app
Up to 91% of US women who use the professional networking site regularly have received romantic messages from other users, according to a recent survey.
Texas jury orders man to pay ex-girlfriend $1.2bn in image-based sexual abuse case
The woman, who went by “DL” in court documents, is obviously unlikely to recover anywhere near that amount – getting her harasser to pay anything at all isn’t straightforward and may require another lawsuit – but the verdict sends a strong message. “While a judgment in this case is unlikely to be recovered, the compensatory verdict gives DL back her good name,” the woman’s attorney said in a statement. Will the harasser, who shared intimate pictures of DL with multiple people, uploaded them on to porn sites and relentlessly taunted DL about the imagery, face any real consequences? Not anytime soon. According to the Washington Post, DL chose to go to civil court “after making multiple attempts to report her ex-boyfriend’s harassment to law enforcement without receiving assistance”.
India’s supreme court issues handbook urging judges to be less misogynistic
The handbook advises judges to avoid words like seductress, spinster and harlot when talking about women. It also counsels judges not to ask alleged rapists if they will marry their victim: “Marriage is not a remedy to the violence of rape.”
The week in pawtriarchy
You rarely read any good news about Gaza, which has been under blockade by Israel and Egypt since 2007 and is often described as an “open-air prison”. Four out of five children in the regularly bombed enclave are traumatized and live with depression. Enter the Meow cafe, a new cat cafe designed to be a cozy and calm haven. “I have spent my life raising cats, and they’re a source of joy and quiet,” the owner told the Associated Press. They’re a “global anti-depressant”.
