I don’t see a big difference between trans people in chess vs swimming or basketball
I mean, there clearly are big differences between chess and basketball.
it’s this argument they put forward to justify banning trans people.
Right, I think I get what you’re saying on this level, the bigots out there have gotten more traction with dumbass centrist types when they attack trans people participating in sports than they have had with other things and it would be good to have an effective rejoinder to that whole line of attack.
But that’s exactly what I’m doing here. I’m not ignoring their arguments, I’m saying they’re fucking stupid, they’re made only as a pretext to hurt trans people, and they’re going to lead to policies that make women’s chess worse for everyone. You don’t need to know the first thing about gender affirming healthcare or to have ever met a trans person to understand that, but the moment we start needlessly saying untrue stuff like “the people making these arguments make some good points” or “the people making these arguments aren’t just hateful scum” we start making this issue more complicated and confusing than it should be for the persuadable ones, and the bigots are just going to say “See, we were right about that, and we’re also right about [more transphobia] and we need to [more repressive policies targeting trans people].”