They realize it's a board game, right?

Federation Internatinale d'Esches.
It's French, you're not having a stroke.

In possibly one of the most ignorant, pointless, and aggressively dumb moves ever undertaken by an international sports organization, the International Chess Federation (FIDE, no really, that's the acronym) is banning trans people from participating. Yes, in chess. The people in charge of goddamn chess, are hoping aboard the anti-trans hate train in what I can only imagine is an ill-conceived attempt to make the news and remind the world that there's such a thing as an International Chess Federation. Because why not?

Pictured: a lot of what's wrong with
everything in our world today.

And first, since this is the internet and knowledge about a subject has never peen a prerequisite for opining about it, please allow me to chime in on something that I've always thought was kind of dumb: separate divisions for sports based on sex. I'm not a sports person, so maybe there's some rationale I just don't get, but making men and women play in separate (but rarely equally-funded) sports divisions just seems outmoded and reinforces the idea that gender and sex are both the same thing, and a binary. But chess? 

Why are there men's and women's chess in the first place? With something like the Best Actor/Best Actress categories at the Oscar's there's at least some idea that men and women are offered different types of roles and therefore should be judged separately. Don't get me wrong, I think it's idiotic, but it's something like a reason. 

Above: Meryl Streep, seen here winning the Oscar for
Best Actor with a Vagina for excellence in lady acting.

If you had the International Chess Federation
weighing in on trans issues on your bingo card...

But I reiterate: chess? It involves sitting in a chair and moving little pieces around. Strategizing and skill are required sure, but what possible difference could gender identity play here? Are they suggesting that men and women have some kind of fundamentally disparate chess ability? And that a trans woman underwent transitioning for the sole purpose of playing women's chess? Because it's easier? Surely that can't be the case right? 

Except no, it's exactly the case. The organization went even further, stripping titles away from trans men who've previously competed in the women's division, and trans men. So I think we all can agree that Le FIDE can fuck all the way off? 

"I'm sorry, could you show me your genitals again? That move seemed a
little, you know, assigned female at birth if you know what I mean."

-Literally no one in the history of chess