The international chess federation known as FIDE has published new rules that state that a person whose “gender was changed from a male to a female the player has no right to participate in official FIDE events for women until further FIDE’s decision is made”.
The new rules introduce the following changes:
- Trans women cannot participate in the women’s category unless they are explicitly allowed in a case-by-case process that can take up to two years.
- Trans men will be stripped of their titles achieved before their transition while trans women will retain their titles achieved before their transition.
- In case a trans person is allowed to participate, their trans condition will be added to their files and communicated to events organizers.
The estrogen treatment regimens used in transgender women aim to lower testosterone levels to within the female range (<1 nmol/L) [52]. However, hormone therapy alone has met limited success in suppressing testosterone levels, with many transgender women failing to achieve the desired level. In recent studies of transgender women, one quartile failed to achieve any significant suppression [53] and one-third failed to suppress testosterone levels despite achieving desired estradiol levels [54]. Another study reported that only 49% of transgender women showed suppressed testosterone concentrations after 6 months or more of estrogen with the addition of antiandrogen therapy [55]. Notably, Jarin and colleagues show that testosterone levels in transgender women decreased significantly from former male levels, however nearly all participants maintained their testosterone levels above the female range [56]. Whether elite transwoman athletes experience the same difficulties in suppressing testosterone levels with estrogen therapy has not been reported.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9331831/
No, I’m really not making things up. This is actual scientific fact.