Not that there's anything good about this, but hearing that both Steven Pinker and Richard Dawkins "resigned" from whatever honorary positions they had with the FFRF rather made my heart sink.

I was a linguistics student for a time, and Pinker's books always had a sociolinguistic aspect to them, but I never saw transphobia. It was admittedly a while back, so it really wasn't yet settling into the national consciousness.

I also admired Dawkins' writing style; again, I saw nothing transphobic.

So for both of these guys to be like "nope, you should have totally kept a piece up that says transwomen should have fewer rights and options" is, maybe, the final insult of 2024.

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[–] xilliah@beehaw.org 3 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (2 children)

Wait, so, you're telling me men feel pain? 🤔

All joking aside I feel so naive sometimes. Women's chess? Like what the actual 🦆

[–] jansk@beehaw.org 1 points 3 days ago

VerticaGG is misrepresenting how this actually works. The main FIDE chess league is open to anyone, men or women or whatever. But because women tend to do worse in chess (for whatever reason, you can discuss why until the cows come home but it isn't the point) exclusive women-only titles and tournaments were created in order to encourage more women to take part.

For example there is the Woman Grand Master title which is significantly easier to achieve than regular Grand Master, but women can and have achieved both.

It seems to have worked, too. The top women players today are fantastic, and have dramatically reduced the gap in the top rankings. We could yet see a woman as world champion for the first time.

[–] VerticaGG@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 points 5 days ago

Yuuup. It'd be funny if it weren't so harmful 🙃