April Hutchinson is suspended for calling a biological male a biological male, scores policy change anyway

"It’s not harassment—you have to be able to talk truthfully about biological sex to talk about fairness for women."

Canadian powerlifter April Hutchinson was handed a two-year suspension by the Canadian Powerlifting Union (CPU) for “misgendering” transgender lifter Anne Andres, who is male but competes in the female category. Hutchinson has been critical of the CPU’s policy that allowed anyone to simply self-ID into the female category, and has been an outspoken advocate for fairness in women’s sports. In the most recent of three appearances on Piers Morgan’s show Uncensored, Hutchinson used the terms “biological male” and “trans-identified male” to describe Andres. This, the CPU said, constituted harassment, and issued the two-year suspension. Hutchinson appealed, and on January 3rd, an independent arbitrator reduced her suspension to one year, saying that while the term biological male broadly met the definition of harassment, the punishment was “procedurally imperfect.” In other words, the punishment did not fit the crime.

I caught up with Hutchinson by phone from her home in Toronto. These are excerpts from our conversation.

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The Female Category: In looking at the CPU’s reaction to your advocating for fairness, it seems like they couldn’t answer to the fairness—they knew it was unfair—so they tried to restrict free speech.

April Hutchinson: Yeah, they’ve used the suspension to silence me. There are plenty of other ways they can discipline people—an apology, a small fine, having to volunteer. But they went to guns and blazes. Which actually backfired on them.

Do you think this will have a chilling effect on others who might be thinking of speaking up?

It’s definitely had that effect. I know for a fact there are tons of people who agree with me. They’ll message me behind the scenes, but I don’t see them publicly posting about it. They’re too scared to speak up.

Other people have used the terms biological male and trans-identified male before without repercussion. Why was your use of them deemed harassment?

I think I was targeted. This board member (below) has a queer child.

This is Vicky Taylor-Hood, the Chair of Ethics

A lifter in my federation has a trans grandchild. All of these people were involved with my suspension. They never gave me a fair trial. They went behind closed doors and just said, Let’s make up our own rules.

That reminds me of something Helen Joyce talked about, how someone with a trans child will paralyze an entire organization, and then no one can speak the truth. They’ve turned the organization upside down. It sounds like that’s what has happened at the CPU.

I was not misgendering, by the way. I’m talking about biology. When we’re talking about sports, we have to talk about biological sex. It’s not harassment—you have to be able to talk truthfully about biological sex to talk about fairness for women.

It’s almost too bad sports don’t use cheek swabs any more. That would establish who is a biological female and who is a biological male. It would be more clear that this is about fairness, not harassment.

I would love to have cheek swabs! We would all love to have cheek swabs! Actually, at one point, Anne suggested he wanted cheek swabs, but you can’t really go by what he says from one day to the next. When things don’t go his way he says he’s suicidal. He’s into a lot of manipulation. Did I ever say to the CPU that if I didn’t get my way, I’m going to relapse and start drinking again? It’s ridiculous.

I watched Andre’s video post [which has since been taken down] in which Andres wondered aloud why women’s bench press was so bad, why women were so weak. I then read the CPU’s Code of Conduct and Ethics which strictly prohibited denigrating another athlete’s athletic ability. Why was Andres not hit with a suspension forthat clear violation?

That’s the question we all want answered. Anne has called me a cancer that needs to be cut out, a bigot, that women were weak and bad at bench. Not once was he disciplined.  As I said, I was targeted. They wanted to get rid of me. The CPU got in too deep. Trans activists are loud and violent, and they were more afraid of the trans community than me. They thought there would be more legal repercussions if they didn’t let let Anne lift than if they suspended me. As it turned out, the backlash from my suspension has been worse. It’s worldwide. The CPU is forever tainted because of how they acted. Even transgenders have said this is stupid. Transgender Buck Angel put out a video saying if you’re a biological man in women’s sports and one person doesn’t agree with your being there, you need to quit because you’re making transgender people look bad.

Have you considered suing the CPU?

We don’t know what we’re going to do. In a couple weeks, my lawyer and I are going to go over our legal options. Rebel News has been crowd funding my legal fees. They’ve been very supportive.

So what would you like to see happen in the CPU?

I think biological males should compete in a separate category or men’s. Actually, it should be the men’s division. It’s funny because, in a way, that’s what has happened. Anne was supposed to go to the Western Region Championships, but the CPU decided he can go and lift for fun, kind of exhibition, but no podium spot, no award, no records. That’s all I was asking for all this time. I was like, did you have to suspend me to come to this simple fix? At the the end of the day, all I wanted was for the policy to protect women. This is a victory for me. You know, I never cried over my suspension. It angered me, but because of the suspension, I got this topic on news worldwide. If this hadn’t happened the policy wouldn’t have changed. I’m happy and the policy protects women now. 

At the grassroots level [in CPU] people can still self ID, but anything higher than that—like provincials, or going for records—they have to compete using the International Powerlifting Federation policies which are pretty strict. They require medical records, psychological records. A lot of trans lifters say they don’t have them, or that it’s a violation of their human rights or that it’s private information. Funny, they never think about women’s human rights, or the mental anguish women face having to unfairly compete against a biological male. It’s so selfish, it drives me crazy. It’s such a one-way street. No one’s considering the damage to women who have to compete against a man.

What are you up to now? I think you get to come back in November of this year?

I’m still training. I have some speaking engagements on International Women’s Day. I was filming a series on gender ideology in London [England] which is coming out at the end of January. That was pretty cool. I try to help other women who are speaking up. Oh, and I started boxing, the day before the Boxing Association made that insane decision [to allow biological males to compete with females]!