Does Chess Need to Be ‘Trans-Inclusive’?

A boy recently won Germany’s under-18 girls’ chess championship, sparking yet another controversy about single-sex competitions. The head of the German commission for women’s chess, Nadja Jussupow, frustratedly told The Times that the competitor hasn’t undergone any medicalized treatments and merely “declared” himself to be a woman. “If someone really wants to live permanently as a woman and even undergo a sex change, then I don’t see any problems at all,” said Jussupow, without explaining what it means to “live . . . as a woman.” But she added that “we should prevent men from changing their gender just to win a title or get attractive prize money advertised for women,” in part because “then the other women are simply being discriminated against.” However, the German Chess Federation has refused to ban males from the women’s division, with its president Ingrid Lauterbach declaring, “We’re an inclusive sport and want to be so.” (In 2023, the International Chess Federation released guidelines to prevent transgender-identifying males from competing in the women’s division, which faced disapproval from the English Chess Federation, the French Chess Federation, the United States Chess Federation, and the German Chess Federation.)

Lauterbach is correct that chess is inclusive because there are essentially no financial barriers to playing the game, and it can be done pretty much anywhere. It isn’t expensive to buy a board, it can be played for free on a range of websites, and there are plenty of YouTube videos explaining the rules for novices. Indeed, good players have come from even the most dire circumstances, such as the Woman Candidate Master Phiona Mutesi from Uganda, who grew up in a crumbling shack. But assuming that there are both women’s and men’s divisions, banning participation with respect to self-declared “gender identity” just requires people to compete in a particular category; it doesn’t prevent them from competing. Ultimately, the only barrier to “inclusion” is whether a chess competition limits entrants by a fee and a minimum rating.

Precisely that — a performance threshold — brings up potentially uncomfortable statistics that are employed as justifications for a women’s division and are further cited in supposedly “misogynistic” claims that “men are smarter.” The data prove that men are better chess players at the elite level, and the governing bodies of chess acknowledge these discrepancies, since the women’s grandmaster title has lower rating thresholds than that of grandmaster. Women can still qualify for the grandmaster title, although very few do: In 2019, there were 37 female grandmasters, compared with 1,643 males. Yifan Hou, currently listed by the International Chess Federation as the No. 1 female player, has a rating of 2633 but is only No. 96 — and the only woman — on the current overall top-100 list, where the top rating of 2839 goes to Norway’s Magnus Carlsen. The worst rating on the overall top-100 ranking is 2630, whereas the lowest rating among the top-100 female players is 2342. In other words, even the very best female players are no match for the lower end of elite male competitors, and there would be very few women formally recognized for their abilities in the absence of an entirely different set of evaluating standards. None of this should be construed as some damning condemnation of women as the inferior sex; it just means men excel more in this particular game.

But why? Different theories exist, and the answer might not be reducible to single factor. Men seemingly have cognitive advantages in chess because they are better and faster at rotating objects in 3-D space than women are, and that’s a skill relevant in the game. Jussupow suggested in an interview that biology broadly, not cognitive abilities specifically, contributes to men’s success because they have more stamina, and that aids them in long matches. Eva Repková, an international master and a women’s grandmaster, thought the discrepancies could be tied to personality differences, saying that “there are factors such as fighting spirit” and “you want to crush the other person,” which are “instincts” she says are “stronger in men,” whereas women are more “prone to nurturing.” (But this theory of male aggression as an advantage doesn’t hold in some other intellectual arenas, such as the Scripps Spelling Bee.) Other accomplished female chess players have cited sociocultural factors: Nine-time British Women’s Chess Champion Jovanka Houska points to a lack of confidence in girls. (To make this claim successfully, I think, you’d have to show that every single culture has something that discourages or prevents girls from being successful chess players in the elite realm, because the discrepancies are seemingly universal and the rankings draw from a global population.)

It is easy to make the argument that men should be categorically barred from women’s divisions with respect to physical sports, especially those with combative elements, because of differences in strength. When it comes to chess, the “trans-inclusive” sex-blind arguments fail because the discrepancies are obvious even if we don’t understand the causes. But here’s the thing: The disparate outcomes aren’t relevant. You can defend the need for a women’s division on the grounds that there are nearly zero women on the overall rankings, or because young girls should be encouraged to pursue the game, or because a women-only space facilitates valuable mentorships, or because sexism exists, or something else. But the recent controversy in Germany is not about why there should be a women’s division. Instead, it centers on whether the women’s division should be limited to women — and it should, because anything contrary would be to indulge delusions of “gender identity.”

In recent years, conservatives and feminists alike have made the long-winded (albeit convincing) argument that we must maintain single-sex competitions because of downstream consequences, such as compromised privacy in locker rooms or opponent-inflicted injuries. These are wholly irrelevant in chess, and yet “trans-inclusive” policies remain immoral, illogical, and unethical. We should maintain the integrity of single-sex anything (sports teams, spas, whatever) because failing to do so is accepting the false premise that men and women are fungible. Consider this thought experiment: If you could control for every single negative outcome (stolen awards, denied scholarships, devastating injuries, violated privacy in changing rooms, and so on) that affects female competitors and is due to the presence of a male athlete in a women’s division, it would still be wrong to allow male participation because the absence of harm doesn’t warrant the suspension of disbelief. If William “Lia” Thomas were to swim with the women’s team during competitions under the conditions that he couldn’t access the women’s lockers and couldn’t receive any awards, there would still be a moral error in affirming his erroneous self-concept.

Ultimately, the argument against “trans-inclusive” policies relies on the undeniable knowledge — not a disputable belief — that sex is an immutable biological category isolated from self-evaluation; denying as much is to endorse falsity, and that’s wrong independent of whether female competitors are physically, emotionally, or psychologically injured. We should defend truth, even if falsehood appears to have zero observable consequences.