The BBC Found One (1) Trans Woman Impacted by Trans Ban in Chess

Yosha Iglesias is the only trans woman currently playing competitive chess.

by Evan Urquhart

Remember when the International Chess Federation (abbreviated FIDE) banned trans women from women’s chess tournaments? Turns out the ban is only impacting a single player, Yosha Iglesias of France, according to reporting by the BBC. “Sometimes I feel like I have this weight on my shoulders because these laws are made for all trans players, but I am the only one,” Iglesias told the BBC. Iglesias is the only trans woman ranked as a master, at 5,425th place in the world. (For comparison, the highest ranked cisgender woman is Grandmaster Hou Yifan who is currently ranked 118 and peaked at 55th worldwide.)

Bans on trans women’s in sports often wind up impacting just a few people, and there’s precedent for a state ban impacting only a single girl. In Utah, the ban on trans girls in K-12 sports affected just one girl.

screenshot from NPR

Iglesias is in a similar situation in chess, with an international ban that only actually winds up banning her. According to the BBC’s story, she was on a plane flying to an international chess tournament in Albania when she first heard about the ban, which she was given to understand had come about after a letter was written that specifically targeted her.

screenshot from the BBC

The new FIDE rules include a two year period of limbo while officials review a players decision to transition and decide whether or not to allow them to change gender in the sport, and a policy reserving the right to out players who change gender as trans when they compete. They have been welcomed by Russia, who the BBC story implies may have played a role in lobbying for the ban, and opposed by national chess associations of England, the U. S., Iglesias’ home country of France, among others.