Canadian Powerlifting Union allows men to take top awards from women

The Canadian Powerlifting Union (CPU) has been ordered to cease allowing men to self-identify as female in women’s competitions.

According to The Daily Mail, the International Powerlifting Federation has told the CPU it must require competitors to declare their ‘gender identity’ with Government identification and report their testosterone levels. For competition purposes, these records would be valid for at least four years.

The intervention comes after the male powerlifter, known as Anne Andres, took first place in the women’s division at CPU’s 2023 Western Canadian Championship. His total powerlifting score (the combined weights across three disciplines) was 597.5kg, over 200kg more than second-placed SuJan Gill.

‘Unethical’

Female powerlifter April Hutchinson said: “Andres has been allowed to compete, take the podium in place of a biological woman and set national records that may never be broken. Everyone knows this is unethical. But the federation has been too cowardly to do anything”.

Criticising CPU’s gender self-identification policy, she stated: “Anyone could walk up. A man could walk in tomorrow, identify ‘as a girl’, and then just powerlift and then go back to being a man. No testosterone monitoring.”

In 2021, an outcry followed the selection of male weightlifter Laurel Hubbard to compete in the women’s super-heavyweight 87kg category at the 2020 Summer Olympics. Hubbard, who was formerly known as Gavin and competed in men’s weightlifting before living as a woman, became the first transgender Olympian.

Scotland

Writing in The Herald, football writer Alison McConnell has urged the Scottish Football Association to uphold women’s safety in its review of transgender guidelines.

Currently, the Association allows men who identify as women to compete in the women’s category on the basis of testosterone levels.

But McConnell said: “Studies show that after male puberty, men are taller, heavier, have wider shoulders, bigger hands and feet, more substantial muscle mass. They have greater lung capacity, narrower hips and firmer tendons.

“The reduction of hormones cannot influence or reduce these pivotal changes. Aside from the advantage this offers, it underpins the very real question of physical safety in a contact sport.”