Discussion Item 5A4 FIDE transgender female ban from FIDE women's events

[Richard Bowes]

I disagree with the CFC response. A male shouldn't be permitted to play on the women's team. The fact that one "identifies" as female doesn't make one a female and the women's team was formed for females only, and not for those who "identify" as female. If one male can play on the women's team then all CFC male members should be eligible to apply for it. If the chess world is to accommodate gender dysphoria then FIDE should create two new categories of teams, one for transgendered females and one for transgendered males.

[Vladimir Drkulec]

I disagree with the CFC response. A male shouldn't be permitted to play on the women's team. The fact that one "identifies" as female doesn't make one a female and the women's team was formed for females only, and not for those who "identify" as female. If one male can play on the women's team then all CFC male members should be eligible to apply for it. If the chess world is to accommodate gender dysphoria then FIDE should create two new categories of teams, one for transgendered females and one for transgendered males.

Thank you for your thoughts. The problem with sending four teams instead of two is that it would likely be cost prohibitive as you would double the cost of the Olympiad. In the last Olympiad, it would have been impossible to get four teams visas to India and our expenses would have approached $100k which was certainly more than all of our revenues during Covid.

Under the rules in place at the last Olympiad, all CFC male members who had changed their legal gender to female and had that change recorded into their government documentation such as passports were eligible. The Olympiad in India was problematic in several respects. Not many players wanted to go to India with Covid still raging and India didn't seem to want Canadians to attend until FIDE and likely top Indian officials read the riot act to embassy/consulate staff.

On the open team often popularly referred to as the men's team we had an easier time because several of the players and the captain had non-Canadian passports. At one point we seriously considered folding the women's team into the men's team because we didn't have enough players for a complete team a week or so before our planes were to take off. Miraculously everything fell into place five days before the planes were to leave and most of our players got their visas though one of the women's team members did not.

In deciding our course of action we always have to consider what is fair to our Canadian players (including our one and only strong transgender woman player) and what is best for the CFC. The CFC has to operate within the laws that exist in Canada. We cannot break the law including Canadian human rights laws. It is above our pay grade to argue with those laws. We don't have the resources to challenge those laws and even if we did, we would not get involved in such a fight. Our fiduciary duty to the CFC would preclude it. Our conscience precludes it. We made history last year with the participation of Morgen Mills in the Olympiad and the Continental. Morgen did not bump any woman in either of those tournaments. In the Continental we had two places but were only able to find one taker for the two women's spots and that was Morgen. Morgen is a worthy person to be our first transgender female to represent Canada at such a high level event. Morgen is a genuinely nice person. My personal faith and belief is that God loves Morgen Mills just like God loves you and me.

I have to personalize this situation because it is not an abstract, theoretical argument. It is a concrete situation affecting a real person, a nice person, a person who represented Canada and the CFC, a teammate.

The FIDE ban is not particularly well written as a quick reading could imply that Morgen is not covered as her reassigned gender occurred in the past. It also violates due process as you have taken a right away that was in place the day before the policy changed. The usual sequence is to study and then implement. Here they are implementing and then studying for a final determination.

It is a strange year when I talk to national media outlets and one of the points of contention is whether Hans Neiman used a sex toy transmitting Morse code to cheat at over the board chess (he didn't) and where the FIDE ban on transgender women is the biggest chess story at the moment.

[Roger Langen]

Of all the sports, chess should have the least difficulty accommodating transgender players. While the debate concerning rating differences between women and men remains interestingly unsettled, the principle that chess is essentially gender-blind is not really up for debate. The fact that FIDE creates a "Women's" category distinct from "Open" events is more or less reflective of the main debate. If women players objected to transgender players, wouldn't that mean they were ceding the argument? Even less attractive is that "male" players should offer rescue where rescue is not needed. If I were a female player, I would welcome the transgender player as an opportunity to continue to show my worth as a chess player, and to welcome that player as a comrade, as another female spirit.

[Lyle Craver]

My personal view is that if someone is dedicated enough to their new identity to actually go through the surgical process required then we should be supportive. I do NOT support the fakers who would have us think that merely dressing as the opposite sex or feeling an 'affinity' qualifies.

The important thing as far as CHESS is concerned (as opposed to weightlifting or wrestling - and I do have a niece who in her day was a champion wrestler, she is now a high school teacher - or pole vaulting) that Chess has been sexually integrated from the very early days. Certainly well before anybody reading this was born.

The argument against transgender athletes is that there definitely is a difference between physical abilities based on the original gender - but that affects different sports very differently. In some sports this effect is huge, in some it's minimal or totally non-existent. I argue that for Chess we're in the latter category.

I saw the Botez children growing up and (at least until their brother decided he preferred soccer to chess) there was no difference between their dedication and training routines. I've seen plenty of other kids male and female up + coming siblings of whom I could say the same.

Again while I acknowledge there may be innate differences that are material to other sports, I don't believe such differences apply to Chess and I thought Vlad's public statement on this subject was both balanced and represented our federation well.