Think politics and science aren’t intertwined with gaming? Tell that to Italian e-sports gamer Sly Buehl Rigilio, whose team’s application to the ESL’s CS:GO 5on5 Female Open Summer 2017 in Munich was effectively rejected because she and her teammates couldn’t prove they were transgender.
“No males are allowed,” Munich Finest Gaming told Rigilio in a curt rejection email obtained by BuzzFeed. “Please take care fake your gender can be penalized.” Reportedly, in a follow-up exchange the organization demanded passports to prove the players are female, which ESL claims is in accordance with German law and the tournament’s rules.
“I know some of the girls in the group have yet to go through the trouble of getting their info changed on [their passports], so we are out of luck,” Rigilio told BuzzFeed.
Kotaku writes that ESL is considering a “revisit [of] the tournament rules” in the future, but apparently there’s been no apology for the crude rebuff and no immediate recourse for the team.
In case you’re headed to the comments right now to point out that we shouldn’t even need woman-centric leagues in the first place, yeah, in a perfect world, women, trans people, and other minority gamers would be treated well and gaming would be a completely desegregated and welcoming hobby. That would be so awesome. Let me know when we get there.
