Don't Squander Your Chance to Do the Right Thing

Don't be like the women on the panel at Amy Hamm's hearing

The decision in the hearing of B.C. nurse—and my good friend—Amy Hamm has finally been released, and the news isn’t good. A disciplinary panel of the B.C. College of Nurses and Midwives has decided that she made “discriminatory and derogatory statements” about transgender people which constitute “unprofessional conduct.” What actually happened here was a politically motivated witch hunt that ended in the panel members opting to side with the zealots who chose to make an example out of Amy in order to scare anyone else from speaking out.

You can accuse me of bias, sure. But I have confidence that any moderately intelligent individual who takes a look at what happened with an open mind will come to the same conclusion. The panel had access to a variety of experts on both sides and chose to side with the vapid witnesses brought forward by the College. And let’s not forget that lead counsel for the College, Barbara Findlay, is an avowed activist who set out to savage Amy’s reputation and assassinate her character simply because she doesn’t agree with her that people can change sex.

Don’t believe me? Read about how Findlay colluded with CBC in a coordinated attack on Amy just before the hearing resumed in October 2023. Not only did Amy’s defense have to fight tooth and nail to introduce any witnesses on her behalf at all, but Findlay and CBC tried to paint one of her witnesses, Dr. James Cantor, as unqualified and only in it for the money.

Meanwhile, the two main witnesses for the College, Elizabeth Saewyc and Greta Bauer, avowedly deny that humans come in two sexes and like to play embarrassing word games to try to defend their reality-denying position. A highlight from Saewyc’s testimony was her apparent inability to understand that lesbians are females exclusively attracted to other females. In fact, if a lesbian were to voice this preference, she would be “transphobic.” Not to be outdone, Bauer informed the panel that there are three types of gametes: sperm, eggs, and none. Later, when shown a picture of the infamous Oakville, Ontario high school shop teacher who wore gigantic prosthetic breasts to school, Bauer affirmed that the man was a woman if he identified as one.

These are the people that the panel deferred to when making their decision.

You can read the full decision on the BCCNM website. I have pulled some sections that I believe summarize the panel’s view and show how they have opted to embrace an anti-intellectual cult ideology over any semblance of truth or desire to do the right thing.

Let’s start with the section that describes how damaging, apparently, Amy’s off-duty statements are to the profession and the public interest.

First, you know you are dealing with ideologically captured people when they start talking about how the very existence of transgender individuals is being denied. This is hyperbolic framing meant to paint Amy’s words and opinions as violent. What activists—and the activist panel—are upset about is that Amy knows people can’t change sex and she has the audacity to say it. So, they seek to punish her by ascribing her genocidal intent.

Accusing Amy of “conflating sex and gender” also showcases how the panel had no idea what they were witnessing over the long and many days of the hearing. Amy is the one who knows that humans can’t change sex regardless of whatever their inner feelings about their “gender” may be. Trans activists, on the other hand, use the avenue of “gender” and “gender identity” to argue that people can indeed change sex, sometimes merely through declaration. If the panel thinks that it is wrong to conflate sex and gender, then they have just found a large proportion of trans activists guilty of professional misconduct.

Finally, when they accuse Amy of advocating “for the legal denial of protections for transgender women,” the panel is referring to the fact that Amy knows human rights protections for “gender,” “gender identity,” and “gender expression” regularly conflict with the rights of women based on sex. If men can claim protections for “gender” in order to access spaces and sports reserved for women based on sex, then protections for sex are rendered moot. This is not a difficult point to grasp. Perhaps the panel can think that it is a good thing for women to have no sex-based protections—and that is exactly what they seem to think—but they cannot deny that there is a conflict here.

Note the sleight of hand in the passage above. The panel writes that Amy made certain statements about a group of people. They of course have it wrong. Amy has never targeted trans-identified people as a group. Regardless, they begin by talking about her views about a group and suddenly switch to talking about how it goes against her obligation to treat individuals with respect and dignity. This is a disgusting bait and switch. Amy has never had a patient complaint and testified that she has had no trouble interacting with patients who identified as trans. What she thinks about the actions and demands of trans activists has no bearing on how she treats individuals, and to act like it does is the height of dishonesty.

Let me illustrate this with my own story. I recently went looking for a new doctor for myself and my baby daughter. The only one I could find who was accepting patients nearby is a man who comes from a very homophobic country. I couldn’t find anything else about him online except for a brief quote praising “God Almighty.” I have no personal problem with this, but all of these factors combined made me worried that this doctor might not exactly approve of my being married to and having babies with another woman. But I didn’t want to let my assumptions stop me from at least meeting him and doing a meet and greet.

And you know what? I found him to be perfectly pleasant. He didn’t seem to have any issues with my wife and me, nor how we conceived our daughter. I think it is highly likely that if you asked this religious man whether he thinks homosexuality is a sin and gay marriage is wrong, he would answer (if he was being honest) in the affirmative. But he treated us, as individuals, with respect and dignity, and that’s all that matters to me.

Amy’s views are even more benign. They are not based on identity characteristics. The views and opinions that she is being punished for are directed toward activists, most of whom are not even trans-identified, who are making radical demands that directly harm women, children, and other vulnerable people.

Again, we get the hyperbolic and untrue claims that Amy is challenging “the existence” of transgender women and arguing for less constitutional protections for them. All I have to add to what I already said is that, one day, the panel members will encounter a situation where a man who is obviously playing out a fetish will force himself into a space with themselves or a loved one and make them very uncomfortable, if not downright fearful. They will likely have a female family member lose out on a spot or even a podium finish in a sport that she loves due to a male. They will feel the pang of unfairness, but they will continue to pat themselves on the back over what they have done to Amy Hamm, and they will never make the connection.

Indeed, it’s hard not to accuse the panel members of brain damage because that the only thing that could explain paragraph 262, where they claim that the caWsbar position statement contains statements that are “not true” or “an oversimplification of the science of sex and gender.” Read the position statement yourself and marvel at how it was possible for the panel to come to this conclusion. Ask yourself how a disciplinary panel for a nursing college can disagree with the fact that sex is a material, biological reality, that there are only two sexes, and that humans can’t change sex. It is in denying the truth of these statements that the panel is bringing disrepute to the nursing profession.

And can I just point out one last thing—the very first point of the position statement says:

Sex -- as distinct from gender -- is a material, biological reality.

If you recall, the panel accused Amy of conflating sex and gender. Yet in the very first assertion of the group she helped found we have the exact opposite sentiment. So, which is it? It is wrong to conflate sex and gender, or is it wrong to separate them as caWsbar has done? Unfortunately, the panel members have the intellectual depth of a bottle cap and the integrity to match, so I’m sure this discrepancy means nothing to them.

This is all just a very cursory glance at the contradictions and lies found in the decision against Amy, and there is so much more science and reality denialism packed into the 115 pages. As I said above, the decision is a politically driven character assassination, nothing more. The women on the panel do not believe any more than Amy does that men can become women. They are ideological zealots who must parrot the doctrine of the cult that they have now strengthened lest it try to destroy them too.

The truly sad thing? Amy is probably more genuinely kind to the people they think they are defending than they ever would be. During her testimony, she spoke about her time doing outreach nursing in the Downtown East Side and about one trans-identified man in particular that she grew very fond of. I have no doubt she treated him with respect and compassion because that's the kind of person she is. That's the kind of person she continues to be as she has continued to interact with trans-identified people through her activism.

There are those who harbor hatred for trans-identified people. I would argue that this is more broadly a hatred for gender non-conformity. But Amy is not one of them. The idea that she requires sex stereotypical behavior from others in order to treat them with respect is absurd. She is a patient and tolerant person in the true sense. She does not need to agree with someone's metaphysical beliefs to get along with them. This can not be said for trans activists nor, apparently, for the activist members of the panel.

The panel members had a chance to show true tolerance. They had a chance to show they understood that refusing to accept a lie doesn't equate to hatred. They had a chance to do the right thing, and they squandered it because they would rather look good to the current cultural overlords in Canada than actually do good. One day, this will affect them personally. But they’ve doubled down so hard on gender ideology that they will have to try to ignore it and pretend they had no hand in it. That's enough for me. I think that such wilful and dangerously stupid ignorance is its own punishment.

It will be harder to be satisfied that Amy gets proper justice for all of this, but I believe that she will, too. Good people like her who stand for the truth are ultimately vindicated in the end, at least among those who matter. Let those who live by lies continue to hate and misrepresent her. Anyone of consequence is long done being cowed into silence by unfounded accusations of bigotry. The women on the panel are the coward’s idea of good people. They probably identify as such—but Amy is the real deal.