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The Canadian association that regulates the sport will no longer allow gender-affirming hormone therapy, citing American rules.

Jen St. Denis TodayThe Tyee

Jen St. Denis is a senior editor with The Tyee.

Jules Sherred started lifting weights as a way to combat the effects of a disability: he has a spinal tumour that affects one leg and causes unpredictable falls.

“I got back into weightlifting to kind of retrain the muscles around the ones that that are no longer working, to help me keep feel safe during falls,” the Duncan, B.C.-based cookbook author told The Tyee.

“And I just fell in love [with weightlifting] because it’s very rhythmic — it just calms my autism and anxiety.”

In early 2025, Sherred took training to the next level. He started competing in bodybuilding competitions and became a member of the organization that governs the sport in Canada, the Canadian Physique Association. Bodybuilding competitions gave him a goal to work towards and motivation to keep training. He wrote about how he “fell in love” with the sport for Xtra.

“The thing about lifting weights is that you have to breathe, you have to pay attention to your muscles. You have to pay attention to the way your body’s moving,” Sherred said.

“And I have spent so many decades of my life disconnecting from my body because of [gender] dysphoria. I’m now participating in this sport that forces me to be present in my body, forces me to appreciate it.”

In his piece for Xtra, Sherred also acknowledged that he didn’t, initially, disclose that he was trans to his cis male trainer.

Neither did Sherred feel comfortable letting his fellow bodybuilding competitors know that he was trans. While not all of his fellow competitors are transphobic, Sherred says he’s regularly overheard “wildy transphobic” comments at bodybuilding competitions, and there’s always a discomfort around whether other bodybuilders will suspect he’s trans.

“I have met some really nice quiet fellow introverted ‘soft’ men, but there’s also a lot of hyper-masculine, macho [men who] have that violent toxic masculinity talk amongst themselves,” Sherred said.

Sherred recently learned that he’ll no longer be able to compete in CPA events — a decision he connects to an intense pushback against the participation of trans people in sports.

Bodybuilding competitions run by the CPA have a number of rules prohibiting a variety of performance-enhancing substances, and the competitions Sherred takes part in do not allow hormone replacement therapy, or HRT — a treatment many people who are aging start taking as their natural hormone levels drop off. Even though Sherred was previously able to get an exemption to be able to use gender-affirming hormone therapy, the CPA will no longer allow it under the policy that bars the use of HRT.

Sherred said his gender-affirming hormone treatment is carefully monitored by a doctor and is usually not more than 100 mg of testosterone per week. He takes only enough testosterone to replicate normal hormone levels, not enough to enhance performance, he says.

There are no other options for treatment, and discontinuing the treatment can lead to serious mental health issues for transgender people.

“If you were to take away the testosterone, that actually can lead to death and suicide,” Sherred said.

Sherred said there are many misperceptions about taking testosterone — including among trans men — but the small amount he takes does not translate to bulging biceps. Those are the result of many hours of training, he said.

Guidelines for gender-affirming care in sports

The Canadian Centre for Ethics in Sport lists “transgender athletes” as one of the health conditions that can be considered for an exemption from prohibited substance rules. The World Anti-Doping Agency has guidelines for granting exemptions to transgender athletes, although the organization notes that the decision to grant a “therapeutic use exemption” for specific conditions is up to individual sports bodies. The World Anti-Doping Agency’s guidelines note that gender-affirming hormone therapy aims to replicate normal testosterone levels, not exceed them to provide a competitive advantage (estrogen is not considered to be performance-enhancing).

Sherred said he was initially approved for a one-year therapeutic use exemption and was able to compete alongside other men in several CPA bodybuilding competitions in 2025. The exemption application process involved providing extensive medical documentation to the CPA.

But Sherred has now been told by CPA staff that he won’t be able to get another exemption when his current exemption expires in December. That means, Sherred said, that he’ll no longer be able to participate in Canadian Physique Alliance competitions — a decision he says effectively shuts him out of the regulated sport in Canada.

Ron Hache, a spokesperson for the Canadian Physique Alliance, says the decision is not directed at transgender people. In an email response to The Tyee, Hache said the CPA is aligning its policies to match with an American organization, the IFBB Pro League, which does not allow hormone-replacement therapy.

The IFBB guidelines on therapeutic use exemptions only describe hormone replacement therapy, and don’t mention transgender athletes or gender-affirming hormone therapy specifically.

Sherred says conflating gender-affirming hormone therapy and HRT amounts to discrimination against transgender athletes.

“They can’t offer a service with an accommodation and then take it away without proper reason,” he told The Tyee in a follow-up email. “An American body[’s policies] isn’t a proper reason. The BC Human Rights Tribunal lists doing so as a form of discrimination.”

Cracking down on trans participation in sport

Travers, a sociology professor at Simon Fraser University who studies transgender people’s experiences, said there has been an intense political focus on preventing trans women and girls from participating in sports. The backlash has been particularly intense in the United States: since 2020, nearly 30 states have passed laws banning transgender youth from participating in sports.

The effort has been supercharged since the re-election of President Donald Trump in 2024, who has signed a number of executive orders aimed at reducing transgender rights and healthcare, including withholding federal funding from organizations that allow trans girls and women to participate in organized sports.

Anti-trans rhetoric and policies have also ramped up in Canada: earlier this year, the government of Alberta introduced a new law that requires girls as young as 12 to sign a declaration that their sex assigned at birth is female before they can participate in single-sex sports leagues. If a complaint about a player’s suspected identity is made to the sport’s governing body, the athlete will have to provide birth registration documentation. The law only applies to women and girls, not to men and boys.

In September, the Edmonton Journal reported lower participation in girls’ soccer leagues because of the changes.

Joe Schilling, the president of the Alberta Teachers’ Association, told the Edmonton Journal that trans youth are “just not participating in sports.”

While the creators of these kinds of laws often say they are aiming to “protect” women and girls, Travers told The Tyee they have the opposite effect: cisgender women and girls who don’t fit perceived feminine characteristics can be targets of abuse, like the 2023 case of a nine-year-old girl in Kelowna who was accused of being a boy by an adult man because she had short hair.

“It’s also obviously having a collateral effect on trans and non-binary participants, whose gender-affirming healthcare simply puts them in the same general area as their cisgender counterparts,” Travers said.

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