This girls team was winning because the boys haven't gone through puberty yet. Not saying it was ok to ban them, but it's false to claim that differences in bone mass and muscle density are imaginary. It just doesn't happen until after puberty.

And chess isn't exactly segregated by gender. The women's league exists to make women in chess more visible, to make it easier to pursue sponsorships, and to encourage more women to join the game. But women are free to compete in the "men's" category (which is actually called the "open" category), and often do. The reasons women haven't gotten to the top of it yet are cultural; women are discouraged from starting to play the game at a young age as all the top players do, and so far fewer women attempt the climb in the first place. But it will happen eventually.

Now if you want to talk about how transphobic FIDE is, there's some real merit in those accusations. Their rules around people who are transitioning are nonsensical, punishing people for absolutely no reason. But the women's league itself exists for good reasons.

Howdy queue -

From where does your belief arise?

I asked (in a left-leaning space) whether sports segregation was sexist, and it was explained to me it was necessary.

Just like it’s hard to argue men aren’t massively bigger murderers than women, I thought there was no contest in the majority of sports too.

I see claims like “no woman in the world is competitive with any top-rated male athlete in any sport except shooting.” redditors add equestrian sports and a few others to the mix (SafeReddit source).

Everyone deserves visibility, and segregation apparently helps.

From Wiki:

In tennis, "Battle of the Sexes" describes various exhibition matches played between a man and a woman, or a doubles match between two men and two women in one case. The term is most famously used for an internationally televised match in 1973 held at the Houston Astrodome between 55-year-old Bobby Riggs and 29-year-old Billie Jean King, which King won in three sets. The match was viewed by an estimated fifty million people in the United States and ninety million worldwide. King's win is considered a milestone in public acceptance of women's tennis.

For example, Judit Polgar. Chess grandmaster, and excellent player, her highest rank in unsegregated rankings, like maybe top 100 right? Yeah, by age 12 she was 55th. Peak she was 8th in the world. Not 8th among women, among men and women.

It's unsettling how she was regarded by some, and this was in the 90s. If I remember right, even Kasparov was less than kind. He might have turned around in his later years.

I noticed a long time ago that there is "basketball" and "women's basketball" and have considered so much of sports machismo being about male fragility ever since.

For some sports yes. Chess is bullshit, as is shooting and a couple of others.

Most sports are based on physical strength though, and men would dominate them.