Badly reported article, though to be fair this has happened on so many levels that it's not surprising it trickled down here. On some levels this kind of demonstrates the problems with the liberal bias in gaming journalism and how it causes problems.
My source on this one is people who are apparently in the tournament and also play MMOS and such who have been going on about what a mess this has become, and how it should never have been an issue to begin with, but now that it has been one and a big gaming tournament has backed down for all the wrong reasons, pro-gaming might have just been hurt as a whole.
The bottom line here is this. Boys and girls are wired differently in ways that go beyond who you have sex with, guys tend to be far more aggressive, more resilient, and even to have better competitive reflexes. Competitions tend to separate the genders based on different abilities, especially at a professional level, in some sports men and women even wind up competing in radically different types of events. In Gymnastics for example men and women tend to perform very differently and to be fair tend to be rated for different things.
Just because you emotionally or sexually identify with the other gender does NOT mean you suddenly lose or gain genetic gifts or potential. Oddly a point the LGBT community makes itself in saying more often or not that you shouldn't treat anyone differently. Of course recently it's turned into a case where liberalism has turned it to arguments that people should be treated according to whatever gender definition benefits them most at the time. Oddly when applied to competition this means one could argue a bunch of gay men should all be allowed to play in women's leagues if they actually identify as female... we should say ignore some 6'4" boy going aggressively against girls half his size if he insists his soul's name is Lucy.
Now, I am quite aware we are talking E-sports here and the first reflex for many is to say "well, this is online so none of those kinds of arguments are especially relevant". Actually they are. Gaming has already made it quite clear women can't seriously compete with guys when it gets serious. One of the big "issues" of gaming today is the "hostility" women face especially in competitive games where people trash talk them, and trash talking means using everything, including someone's gender, to get any kind of edge you can by ruffling or distracting them. Indeed intimidation is PART of competition of pretty much every sort, a champion doesn't just need the relevant tools to play, but the aggressive mindset and thick skin to play the other people involved. A lot of the greatest athletes and competitors of all time got there by their mindset and being able to screw with their opponents. Perhaps the greatest example of this being Ali's "Rope A Dope" on Foreman (who otherwise probably would have beaten it) combined with how George's mind was arguably destroyed by being outplayed by Ali. Speaking of which professional fighters are infamous for all the crap they say about each other all the time in general. George, especially vintage George, was NOT a nice man. The point is that all of this is part of the game. Women however simply cannot take it, especially when their gender is attacked then tend to usually not be very thin skinned about it. Tell some dude your going to rape him and he's going to laugh at you and fire back, tell that to a girl and she's likely to get freaked out and go crying to the admins or the liberal media. It's not that sexual assault is a "good" thing by any means but it's an equal threat to either, what's different is the reaction and how seriously it's taken. Given that a "killer instinct" and this kind of mind gaming is part of competition it's easier to separate the girls from the guys into their own leagues... if you've ever wondered what all the "courage" (no fear, fear nothing, etc...) stuff in sports goods advertising is from, it's because of the attitude needed to be a serious competitor, you need to be iron within as well as without... if all you have to do is imply you might rape a girl to totally throw her off her game, obviously she's lacking the iron within since she's scared of you on some level. Some dude tells another dude online that he's going to rape and dominate him what happens? Not much the guy on the receiving end either ignores it, or makes some nasty comment back.
Basically you can't have all these "gamer grrls" organizations and women only tournaments and organizations for multiplayer (Gamerchix, etc...) and take it seriously if your going to say it doesn't matter.
At any rate in this context, some dude who thinks of himself as girl is still a dude, he has all his dude parts, he has his dude strength, his dude size, and his dude brain and biochemistry as many people will point out (often in pro-gay defenses) identifying as a girl makes him no less of a man so to speak. As a result when he goes to town with the intimidation the person on the other side sees at as a guy. What's more he's still going to be a lot more aggressive, especially if interested in competition and playing to full capacity (which can peak out higher) than any real girl would.
The way this was explained to me when I heard people going on about it is that this is about women, who have in many cases gone to great lengths to establish their own competitive circuits to get away from guys and the above issues, not wanting to have guys involved. Some girl implies she's going to hunt you down and beat you up after the game to another girl and it's fair game. Some dude born "Steve" with arms the size of tree trunks says the same thing it tends to mean a lot more even if he insists his soul's name is "Sally".
What's more as an aside purely from me, on the occasions when I've looked into such things the bottom line is that girls tend to be far less proficient on the competitive circuits than guys, especially when you start looking at all girl teams trying to compete in a general sense. The last time I looked into it was a while back we had a team of girls called "Team Siren" running around harassing other players (beyond competitive intimidation) and racking up truly massive numbers of complaints which were never addressed because they kept playing the "Grrls" card while male and mixed teams were getting serious sanctions without anywhere near the same level of behavior or complaints. In looking into things it turned out "Team Siren" while one of the better known/infamous girl teams wasn't even all that highly ranked (which kind of made it funny that they were getting defenders claiming there was some kind of sexist conspiracy to keep them down).
My basic attitude right now is that if people want to hold all-girl, or all-guy tournaments more power to them, and continue to define gender by what kind of body you occupy, that's fine. In my opinion if the LGBT community doesn't like the way things are they should do exactly what the ladies did and try and get the support for their own leagues. Needless to say those pushing for female-exclusive leagues who seem to be at the root of this don't like being forced to accept people they don't want, and were not fighting for, and who like it or not have all the traits they wanted to get away from.
Of course those sponsoring this tournament in the Philippines have the right to set their own rules, but I anticipate this is going to backfire when and if the gamer girls choose to stop supporting the event in the future. Whether that will happen or not, remains to be seen.
Also perhaps some of the ladies here might be able to answer the question but how to organizations like "Da Valkyries" (if they are still around), or that X-box based "Gamer Chicks" thing for women to be able to game exclusively with other women deal with this? Do they accept male members if they claim to identify with the other gender? If some dude say shows up for Gamerchicks night as a really obvious dude but identifies as "Shevaun" saying he's a girl inside and the name makes him feel pretty, and then awkwardly talks about how girly he is (perhaps going into some disturbing stuff about how much he wishes he could have a period and asking others to describe it or whatever) what's the reaction? Does the fiery wrath of the admins fall upon "Shevaun" or is this accepted as long as this guy claims he's a dude inside and acts sufficiently girly (however you might want to define that). Given that it is women's gamer organizations who have pushed for there to be tournaments like the one in question, at the end of the day those are the people that will need to be convinced.
While it's not likely to happen IMO as one person in an STO chat put it "Brace for impact captain, the GLBT community and the feminists are about to open fire on each other, it's going to be one hell of a shockwave"... I think we might be heading there soon given the way this has been explained to me (with the reasoning I mentioned above) and just as interestingly for "Gamersgate" watchers it does seem the liberal gaming media might be setting a pecking order of priorities where LGBT come before women in terms of what cause to prioritize.
Probably not one of my more popular posts, but this is my (rambling) thoughts and how things have been explained to me. In part I'm writing to correct the responses saying that "no reason has been given for this" or that the whole "competitive advantage" thing sounds like a weak excuse. Apparently there was quite a bit said around it and some clear reasoning. At the end of the day it's pretty much women wanting to keep something women only, as opposed to a bunch of generally anti-gay sorts attacking this because they dislike or oppose gays for whatever reason. It's not one of those kinds of battles.
. 
