During Wednesday’s videotaped announcement of policies targeting Alberta’s trans community, Premier Danielle Smith said one of those policies would prohibit trans women from competing in womens’ sports.

Smith suggested a trans athlete has “advantages” over their cisgender counterparts.

“There are obvious biological realities that give transgender female athletes a massive competitive advantage over women and girls,” Smith said Wednesday.

The scientific literature disagrees, even with the existence of high-profile cases.

Caster Semenya of South Africa was questioned about her athletic performance and her higher testosterone levels. Semenya has an intersex condition where normal male internal structures are not fully developed while an embryo, resulting in external genitalia that appear female or ambiguous at birth.

At 18, Semenya set personal, national and championship records in the 800-metre race, including at the 2009 IAAF Athletics World Championships, wins that brought up questions about her sex. World Athletics, the body formerly known as the IAAF, asked her to take a sex verification test.

She was denied the ability to race for nearly a year while the test results were being analyzed.

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Global News
February 2, 2024