American Samoa Weightlifting Federation Moves to Discourage Transgender Contestants

As I have always said, the moment of breath-taking sanity which will snap our culture out of its PC-induced coma and help to halt the decay of Western society, will come from American Samoa. Well, not quite, but at this point we’ll take what we can get.

The American Samoa Weight Lifting Federation has moved to discourage a biological male who identifies as a woman, from competing as a  female weightlifting contests citing the inherent unfairness of the situation.

The federation thinks that it just isn’t fair to allow contestants who are biological males to compete against biological women and the group is taking its concerns to the International Weightlifting Federation, Radio New Zealand reported.

The federation’s concerns were highlighted in March after New Zealand competitor Laurel Hubbard won the over 90kg division at the Australian International match in Melbourne.

Hubbard was able to lift just over 40 pounds more than the next closest competitors, silver medalist Iuniarra Sipaia of Samoa, the latter a biologically female competitor.

Jerry Wallwork, president of the Samoa organization, said the whole thing just wasn’t fair.

“I really don’t think it’s fair. I’ve seen it up in front, in person, and especially when you’ve got someone who was a champions male lifter and now competing with the women, against the women,” Wallwork said in March.

“I think it’s really unfair – I could probably almost class it as taking drugs,” the weightlifting official continued.

“You meet the testosterone levels, and you get it down to a certain level, but you’ve still got the muscles and the bones of a man, and of course you’ve still got the strength there – it doesn’t matter how low you go,” he concluded.

Wallwork denied that his protest was based on the fact that a member of his group lost the event.

Reiterating that the situation just isn’t fair, Wallwork vowed to take his concerns all the way to the top.

“There’s a big advantage there to that side, and I’m prepared to take it all the way up to the International Weightlifting Federation, and I will raise it with them and argue with them that something [has to change],” he said.

Wallwork made one final point. He said that some biologically female lifters are asking why they should bother competing at all if a man claiming to be a woman can swoop in and blow them out of the water every time.

The Samoa sports official said he would abide by the final decision of the IWF Congress, but he feels the matter needs to be addressed.

The International Olympic Committee recently considered the matter, as well. But the IOC came down in favor of transgender competitors by insisting that there will be no rules to exclude them from the 2018 Winter Games.

Follow Warner Todd Huston on Twitter @warnerthuston.