Transwomen in bridge

[femmwench]

"So I and a group of friends who are decent county players but not international stars in the mens game decide to start identifying as female and turning up at womens events."

 

And this is male privilege at its worst. As someone who numbers transgendered people as dear friends, I cannot tell you how horrifying this is to me. If you're willing to have sexual reassignment surgery, and lose that male privilege, then feel free to play in the women's games. The fact that you make it a joke speaks volumes about you and your friends.

[mikestar13]

There is always the possibility in bridge of doing away with gendered events entirely. This would end the possibility of a born male identifying as female solely for the purpose of entering a womens event. I know of no cases where this has actually happened, however. The player cited above may well identify as female in other/most/all areas of life besides bridge., is there any evidence this is not the case?

[Trinidad]

So I and a group of friends who are decent county players but not international stars in the mens game decide to start identifying as female and turning up at womens events.

 

Sad.

 

Rik

[PeterAlan]

femmwench (et al), I completely understand your horrified reaction. Cyberyeti can speak for himself, but giving him the benefit of the doubt I had read it as no more than a clumsily-worded attempt to pose an entirely hypothetical scenario, by way of introducing the question that followed; ie as:

 

[suppose that] I and a group of friends who are decent county players but not international stars in the mens game decide to start identifying as female and turning up at womens events.

 

Is there a policy on this at world level ? and have various ROs considered it ?

[nige1]

off-topic:The one thing that I'd change about bridge is stopping or reducing mixed events. I haven't played a lot of mixed events, but from what I saw and heard, they seem to bring out an inordinate amount of misogyny and general ugliness. I could make an argument for it (women are underrepresented in top bridge so these events help them get more experience/exposure, and they will generally be able to find better partners than themselves), but I'm not convinced....

Gwnn is right that problems would be much reduced if all Bridge events were open. But I've played in lots of mixed events and they seem more sociable, friendly, and relaxed than segregated events.

[gwnn]

Gwnn is right that problems would be much reduced if all Bridge events were open. But I find mixed events more sociable, friendly, and relaxed than segregated events.

gwnn didn't say any of that. gwnn is strongly in favour of women's events (and women choosing between those and open ones), but mostly against mixed events. I have it on good authority that gwnn doesn't appreciate you misquoting him.

[hrothgar]

The player cited above may well identify as female in other/most/all areas of life besides bridge., is there any evidence this is not the case?

 

I think that the framing of Cyberyeti's questions strongly implies that this is not th case

 

(Initially) there was no discussion about how players or members of the team identified.

 

Rather, Cyberyeti framed this as "Here's a group of players that aren't good enough to win Open evens who are now considering entering Women's events instead"

Perhaps this is simply poorly worded, but this strikes me as off

 

A much less loaded way to frame this question would have been

 

"Should a woman who transitioned from male to female now be allowed to compete in women's events?"

[Vampyr]

Gwnn is right that problems would be much reduced if all Bridge events were open. But I've played in lots of mixed events and they seem more sociable, friendly, and relaxed than segregated events.

 

I enjoy mixed events too. I don’t particularly like the European model of mixed teams though, where you must have a mixed pair at each table.

[pescetom]

gwnn is strongly in favour of women's events

can gwnn tell us why?

[hrothgar]

can gwnn tell us why?

 

I am not gwnn, however, from my perspective the salient issue is not the existence of women's events per se, but rather whether Women's events are drawing enough participation to continue to support.

 

My impression is that at the International level these events remain popular.

I believe that cancelling these events would mean less high level bridge would get played.

I would like to see them continue.

 

It's unclear to me whether this is true for the ACBL Nationals.

[gwnn]

can gwnn tell us why?

For the same reasons as his support of women's chess events. Despite the fact that at club level, there is approximate gender parity, women are underrepresented in high-level bridge. Having an extra event for them can incentivise them taking up high-level bridge, which ultimately makes the field larger and the sport stronger.

 

As I sketched in my first post, a similar case can be made for mixed events, but due to practical issues* and the associations created, I am against them. Again, there are lots of people who like them, so my opinion obviously shouldn't be the final say (not that it would be without this sentence).

 

* I'm talking about things like men hand-hogging, the men sitting NE ganging up on the two female SW's, men doing postmortems together making sexist jokes, ... Maybe my impression on how often this happens is off. I'm very open to that possibility as well.

[Vampyr]

 

* I'm talking about things like men hand-hogging, the men sitting NE ganging up on the two female SW's, men doing postmortems together making sexist jokes, ... Maybe my impression on how often this happens is off. I'm very open to that possibility as well.

 

I am surprised by this; my experience is different to yours.

[barmar]

I'm sure you're right about the early days and tradition. But if that really is all there is to it and men have no advantage, then it is a disgrace that male-male / female-female / mixed categories exist at all, and surprising that women (at least) put up with it, let alone participate in female-only events.

In ACBL, the women's events have been having trouble for years getting players to play in them, and they've been getting phased out (the Wagar Teams was converted to Pairs a year or two ago). As I understand it, the only reason we still have them is because there are still international women's events, and we use the national events as part of our selection process.

[barmar]

I enjoy mixed events too. I don’t particularly like the European model of mixed teams though, where you must have a mixed pair at each table.

I think ACBL also requires this.

 

It makes sense given my idea above about forcing players who are mostly biased towards partnering with players of the same sex to expand their horizons. Otherwise you'll just get a male partnership and a female partnership.

 

And if there are lots of teams set up like this, I think you'll run into teams arranging their seating to pit the men against men and women against women. The whole social aspect of mixing up the sexes is gone -- you kind of end up with Open Room = male, Closed Room = female.

[pescetom]

For the same reasons as his support of women's chess events. Despite the fact that at club level, there is approximate gender parity, women are underrepresented in high-level bridge. Having an extra event for them can incentivise them taking up high-level bridge, which ultimately makes the field larger and the sport stronger.

 

As I sketched in my first post, a similar case can be made for mixed events, but due to practical issues* and the associations created, I am against them.

 

Thanks.

Could you tell us more about how this all works out in chess, an individual mind game? Is it accepted that men have an advantage and if so, is there any kind of evidence? Do they have absolute / mixed / mens events as well as womens?

[pescetom]

I am surprised by this; my experience is different to yours.

 

Mine is different too. Mixed pairs and open competition don't bring up any particular problems here, either as a player or a director. But maybe it's because at club and regional level most competition is open and men and women are equally represented, so playing with and against the other sex is just normal.

I just did a quick count of the regular partnerships and recent results at my club and found that male-male, male-female and female-female each represent one third of total, with the first two being equally represented on the podium and female-female doing less well.

At a social level, the female-female pairs are maybe a bit more likely to squabble with opponents and the male-male pairs to squabble with each other. Male-female are better than either, so long as not married to each other B-)

[mikeh]

I expect that gender issues will be debated for as long as tournament bridge is played, although how long that will be is another issue entirely.

 

Go back 40+ years and the Bridge World had lots of content on the then-hot topic of male-female stereotypes. One article, that may have extended over more than one issue, posited that Paul Soloway, arguably the best player in the world at that time, and certainly the most prominent tournament pro, woke up one morning as a woman, named Paula. The article explored what the author presumably thought might be the reaction of Paul's peers and clients. It was both funny and sad, since I remember thinking that the author was probably largely correct. 'Paula' was treated with condescension and found clients and other pros begging off playing with 'her', even though the basis of the story was that 'her' bridge playing skills were as great as ever.

 

Then there was the old 'nature v nuture' debate about whether the factual reality that most of the best players (by titles, mps, etc) were male was caused by genetics or cultural conditioning.

 

By contrast, even as little as a decade or so earlier, the gender stories in the BW were all chauvinistic, with the female players portrayed as very lucky: the 'funny' stories were all about some hapless female, sometimes even the wife of the editor, Moyse, stumbling into good results. Not only that, but in the ACBL bulletins and the BW, successful women players were often identified as 'Mrs. Frank Williams' or 'Mr. Thomas Smith', etc, as if their only role in life was to be, as my wife calls it, 'she of he'.

 

Now we add in the cultural awareness of trans-identification on top of the unresolved gender questions between cis-male and cis-female, and we have a ready made controversy. However, note that the old stereotypes underlie this tempest in a teapot. If we did not at least partially buy into this 'males are inherently superior to females at bridge' notion, who would care about the 'distorting' effect of a genetic male identifying as and playing as a female?

 

I lack the expertise to have an meaningful opinion as to whether there is any real genetic difference. What little I know of neuroscience suggests that the data is debatable at best. Meanwhile, it is pretty much impossible to live in a western society such as Canada, or to be exposed to mostly US entertainment, and not recognize that gender conditioning is omnipresent.

 

Things change, but slowly. In our firm we finally hired a male legal assistant. A comparable firm to ours, which was founded more than 100 years ago, finally had their first ever female lawyer last year! I still find it odd the very rare time when I phone another lawfirm and find the telephone answered by a male receptionist: I appreciate that says as much about me as it does about the culture.

 

I hope, but doubt, that bridge will still be relatively popular 50 years from now, and that culturally we continue on our current path (but have my doubts about that as well). It would be interesting to see then how relatively successful women, whether cis or trans, are, and maybe then the old debates, usually fueled by stereotypes and prejudice, have played out. However, I won't be around to find out.

[PhilG007]

I'm involved in a discussion on a cricket FB group about this and it occurred to me that I didn't know how bridge handled it.

 

So I and a group of friends who are decent county players but not international stars in the mens game decide to start identifying as female and turning up at womens events.

 

Is there a policy on this at world level ? and have various ROs considered it ?

 

Cricket in the UK allows anybody who identifies as female to play domestically but there are testosterone tests in the international game. I guess that will last until a 6 foot 9 extremely fast bowler turns up in the domestic game.

 

What gender you are is defined by your birth certificate. Even if you change your name by deed poll or undergo transexual surgery or take gender transforming drugs,

in the eyes of the law,you are what you were registered at birth as. Your birth certificate cannot be changed or altered and it is a criminal offence to do so.

[gwnn]

Thanks.

Could you tell us more about how this all works out in chess, an individual mind game? Is it accepted that men have an advantage and if so, is there any kind of evidence? Do they have absolute / mixed / mens events as well as womens?

Ummm... Did you read my post? Anyway, here it is about chess:

 

Women are underrepresented in high-level bridge chess. Having an extra event for them can incentivise them taking up high-level bridge chess, which ultimately makes the field larger and the sport stronger.

 

None of that is contingent on men having an advantage, just about a difference in interest/participation. And there are open and women's events. I'm sure there are some mixed events somewhere (there are team tournaments and leagues with 4-8 players per team), but they are not common.

[mikeh]

What gender you are is defined by your birth certificate. Even if you change your name by deed poll or undergo transexual surgery or take gender transforming drugs,

in the eyes of the law,you are what you were registered at birth as. Your birth certificate cannot be changed or altered and it is a criminal offence to do so.

You might want to be careful making generalized statements like that. Your assertion is definitely not true in all jurisdictions. Well, I accept that it may well be widely illegal to make unauthorized changes to a legal document such as a birth certificate, but that is hardly the same as your general proposition, which I can assure you is false in at least some parts of the world.

[hrothgar]

What gender you are is defined by your birth certificate. Even if you change your name by deed poll or undergo transexual surgery or take gender transforming drugs,

in the eyes of the law,you are what you were registered at birth as. Your birth certificate cannot be changed or altered and it is a criminal offence to do so.

 

What a remarkably ignorant statement...

 

Based on you sig, it looks like you're a resident of the United Kingdom, so let's do a quick google search wrt to the transgender rights in the UK

 

Well, let's see. It looks as if the UK passed something called "The Gender Recognition Act of 2004"

And, as part of this law, it permits people to get a birth certificate showing their recognized legal sex.

 

So, thanks for playing

Better luck next time!

Don't let the door hit you on the way out...

[jmuncie]

I guess this may seem silly but what does gender have to do with BBO bridge?

[gwnn]

I just did a quick count of the regular partnerships and recent results at my club and found that male-male, male-female and female-female each represent one third of total, with the first two being equally represented on the podium and female-female doing less well.

1/3 actually shows that the distribution is not random. If there were no bias (in the data, not personally - the bias could come from a number of sources), it should be 25% MM, 50% MF/FM, 25% FF.

 

A 33-33-33 distribution could be (for example) due to about 1/3 of men and 1/3 of women only choosing partners of their own gender and the rest choosing randomly.

 

I am just posting this in reply as a curiosity - no particular point to make.

[gordontd]

What gender you are is defined by your birth certificate. Even if you change your name by deed poll or undergo transexual surgery or take gender transforming drugs,

in the eyes of the law,you are what you were registered at birth as. Your birth certificate cannot be changed or altered and it is a criminal offence to do so.

 

It seems that your incorrect assertions are not limited to the subject of bridge.

[Zelandakh]

What gender you are is defined by your birth certificate. Even if you change your name by deed poll or undergo transexual surgery or take gender transforming drugs,

in the eyes of the law,you are what you were registered at birth as. Your birth certificate cannot be changed or altered and it is a criminal offence to do so.

Quite aside from the issue of gender reassignment, there are many documented cases of hospitals registering an incorrect gender on birth certificates. Your assertion would deny those people the opportunity to have that corrected. It is also completely ignorant and thoughtless.