Our Campaigns: Making the Law Work for Lesbians

Lesbians aim to intervene in Hamm v BC College of Nurses and Midwives

In the last week of July 2026, when Vancouver was festooned with Pride paraphernalia, the Vancouver Lesbian Collective made application to the BC Supreme Court to act as an intervenor in the case of Hamm V BCCNM. 

You can read in detail about Amy Hamm in her own words and the judgment brought against her by the BCCNM Panel. In a nutshell, Amy Hamm, a registered nurse in BC, put up a billboard that read I heart JK Rowling and posted about it on X. Based on public complaints, one of which remains anonymous, the BCCNM launched an investigation under code of conduct grounds. They hired an external security company to troll through Hamm’s online activity – over 300 posts. After the longest disciplinary hearing in the BCCNM’s history, the Panel found Hamm’s online conduct constituted discriminatory and derogatory treatment toward transgender individuals. 

On the face of it, this looks like a narrow, if unfair, matter: regulation of a professional’s conduct.

Vancouver Lesbian Collective sees the BC College of Nurses and Midwives decision as a much bigger threat. 

Throughout the hearing and in the multi-hundred-page judgment that resulted, the BCCNM and its experts redefined terms that have major social and legal impact, including biological sex, gender, gender identity, transgenderism, and the nature of discriminatory treatment. While they focused their judgment on a select subset of Hamm’s online activity, they used all 300 posts as “evidence” of her discriminatory conduct. They argued that:

  • Hamm’s intent to defend the rights and well-being of women and children doesn’t matter to the interpretation of her professional conduct;

  • That there is such a thing as a “cis” woman;

  • That gender or gender identity is a deeply held individual internal belief that should also dictate how others see and treat individuals;

  • That stating that there are only two sexes or that biological sex is immutable is discriminatory; and

  • That stating that females have a right to exclude all males from our spaces is derogatory toward trans-identifying males and constitutes a denial of their existence and a breach of their right to access healthcare. 

Through the courts, this unfair non-logic risks becoming a fact against which nurses, other professionals and other employees are judged. Already, the College of Physicians and Surgeons is weighing in in support of the BCCNM and seeking to expand the capacity of professional regulatory bodies to judge off duty conduct.

More threatening still, West Coast LEAF, now an approved intervenor, will argue that where the term and concept “sex” is written in law this should be read to include gender and gender identity. This risks eliminating sex-based protections in law disproportionately impacting women because we experience the brunt of sex discrimination and require the majority of sex-based accommodations in order to participate fully in society. 

And, Egale, also now an accepted intervenor, will bring arguments that the Supreme Court has already accepted that transgender people are especially vulnerable in health care settings. Whose evidence did the Supreme Court rely on for this judgment? None other than that of Egale. 

In other words, in every instance where the facts and significance of biological sex are challenged, disingenuous actors take the opportunity to wedge the anti-lesbian, anti-woman, and anti-feminist dogma of gender identity further into our lives. 

By contrast, the Vancouver Lesbian Collective was denied the opportunity to intervene in this case on the grounds that the rights and interests of lesbians are not engaged.

Now, its true that a professional regulatory body should have a relatively narrow purview. They should not, for example, be able to redefine biologically, socially, or legally consequential terms by fiat. 

And, while no member of our group is a nurse, lesbians can be and are nurses. Some of them have come to us very concerned. Further, one member of our group was removed from work duties for her involvement with VLC under conflict-of-interest provisions. This is not so different to the “code of conduct” provision under which Amy Hamm’s online activity was tested. Both are broad provisions open to interpretation and used malleably to satisfy a regulator’s or employer’s desire for control over an employee’s lawful, truthful, and pro-social conduct in a time of heightened activism attempting to replace biological sex with gender identity. Most employed lesbians we speak with know exactly the kind of threat this brings into their workplace: defend women-only toilets or go against the rules of the ever expanding rainbow employees club and risk subtle and not so subtle retaliation.

When employers can threaten the reputation, security, and employment of lesbians and other women for being vocal about what it means to be a lesbian or about the significance of biological sex in our lives, we have a big problem. 

Women have only had full access to the work world for a few decades. Many women are still relegated to under paid and undervalued work with even less power vis-à-vis their employers than women in professional and higher waged roles. The power of the employer is large enough. Threatening livelihoods because lesbians, feminists and others state basic biological facts, form single sex associations for the advancement of equality (a right protected in our Constitution), or push back against misogyny is too much employer power. 

And, lets not pretend this power is limited to the employment realm. After all, work = survival for most people. 

Do we have equality if lesbians and other women are worried they might lose their jobs if they are associated with a lesbian-only or women-only group? Do we have freedom of association if public and many private spaces require that users sign an agreement that their lesbian-only or women-only activities be inclusive of men? Do we have freedom of expression when people can’t describe the significance of biological sex in law and in life? Do we have feminism if women can’t tell the truth about our lives and defend our own interests? 

In each case, VLC’s answer is no. So, while the BCCNM doesn’t control what we do and they have no power to regulate our activities, the ideology they are propagating does. And, it will impact not just us or other lesbians and feminists. If this decision stands and is advanced, it will further set the terms on which anyone, especially those who rely on employment income, can participate in political or public life. 

We are calling on you to 

  • Stand up for sex-based protections in law, in the workplace, and in society at large. They are necessary to protect the rights of girls and women, gays and lesbians, and the well being of kids.

  • Write your MP, MLA, and city councillors and ask for a meeting about your concerns. Each level of government has a role to play.

  • Question the funding of non-profit organizations that claim to represent one group, but in fact undermine them. Should they receive tax breaks and government grants to lie to the public?

  • Write to your favourite media outlets and tell them you expect them to cover this hearing and other stories related to the undermining of sex-based protections in law and practice.

  • Support us with a donation

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Lesbians and feminists oppose Liberal Bill C-4 on Conversion therapy

2021

As lesbians, we condemn organized attempts to coerce or force lesbian women and gay men to alter their sexual orientation. However, we don’t support Bill C-4: An act to amend the criminal code - conversion therapy.

Why?

The proposed Bill C-4 links sexual orientation to gender identity and expression. Sexual orientation is premised on biological sex whereas gender identity and expression is premised on gender (social role + sex stereotypes) regardless of biological sex. Conflating sexual orientation and gender identity leads to the erasure of lesbian and gay reality and the undermining of women’s sex-based rights.

The wording of the Bill C-4 is over-broad and acts as though matters of open public debate are settled when they are not. The definition of conversion therapy supposes that the existence of a category of people called “cis-gender” is widely accepted and its definition fixed when feminists, lesbians, and others reject the imposition of this ill-defined category.

Bill C-4 on Conversion Therapy sets aside evidence of increasing resistance to and desistence from affirmative gender transition services. In Canada, there is broad institutional support for an approach to treating gender dysphoria and associated mental health issues as though the patient’s self-perception is always realistic and positive, regardless of any evidence to the contrary.

By criminalizing an individual or group for “promoting or advertising an offer to provide conversion therapy” this bill leaves open the possibility that pro-lesbian and other feminist political organizations challenging gender identity ideology will be criminalized.

  • As lesbians, we don’t want to see organized attempts to coerce or force lesbian women and gay men to alter their sexual orientation. However, we don’t support Bill C-4 for the following reasons:

    Bill C4 links sexual orientation to gender identity and expression.

    Sexual orientation and gender identity and expression are fundamentally different. Sexual orientation is premised on biological sex whereas gender identity and expression is premised on gender (social role + sex stereotypes) regardless of biological sex. Conflating sexual orientation and gender identity leads to the erasure of lesbian and gay reality and the undermining of women’s sex-based rights. As a result of this ideology, lesbians experience increased societal pressure to give over our sexual and political boundaries in favour of men who refer to themselves as women/lesbians.

    Girls and women, many of them actual or future lesbians, are also increasingly pressured to redefine themselves as men/trans if they do not conform to feminine stereotypes. There is a kind of “cultural conversion therapy” going on as these pressures interfere with our right to self-determination, individually and politically, as same-sex attracted women. The Vancouver Lesbian Collective has experienced this pressure at the Vancouver Dyke March, at Vancouver Pride, and in our personal lives.

    Institutions, organizations, and events that previously supported same-sex attracted people to be out, demonstrate our pride, and protest discrimination now treat us as though being exclusively an organization for same sex attracted natal women is a form of bigotry. This makes it difficult to express pride in our lesbianism and is contributing to a culture in which lesbians in general find it harder to assert our sexual and political boundaries.

    The wording of Bill C-4 is over-broad and acts as though matters of open public debate are settled when they are not.

    For example, in Bill C-4, conversion therapy means a practice, treatment or service designed to change a person’s sexual orientation to heterosexual, to change a person’s gender identity or gender expression to cisgender or to repress or reduce non-heterosexual attraction or sexual behaviour or non-cisgender gender expression. Such a definition supposes that the existence of a category of people called “cis-gender” is widely accepted and its definition fixed when feminists, lesbians, and others reject the imposition of this ill-defined category. The Vancouver Lesbian Collective does not accept the label “cis”, and we do not accept that gender is inborn. We follow a long herstory of lesbians and feminists who both take pride in our womanhood and challenge the imposition of femininity on women.

    Bill C-4 sets aside evidence of increasing resistance to and desistence from affirmative gender transition services.

    In Canada, there is broad institutional support for an approach to treating gender dysphoria and associated mental health issues as though the patient’s self-perception is always realistic and positive, regardless of any evidence to the contrary. This mode of treating gender dysphoria is harmful to girls, women, and lesbians (along with gay men) on a personal and political level as is evidenced by the growing number of women who are detransitioning.

    As Keira Bell, a detransitioned lesbian in the UK, said “We are told these days that when someone presents with gender dysphoria, this reflects a person’s “real” or “true” self, that the desire to change genders is set. But this was not the case for me. As I matured, I recognized that gender dysphoria was a symptom of my overall misery, not its cause.” Challenging the affirmation-only approach neither prevents us from caring for gender dysphoric individuals nor from treating adults who feel that transition is the best option for them supportively and without discrimination.

    As Detrans Canada notes, passing Bill C-4 may worsen care for gender dysphoric individuals by criminalizing therapists and other carers who use their professional judgment to treat gender dysphoria as the complex mental health issue it is, including providing care for detransitioners.

    The Vancouver Lesbian Collective supports all people to live their best lives, including those lesbians and others who have come forward publicly to describe and protest the lack of care they received within gender affirming transition services. 

    Bill C-4 risks criminalizing feminists and limiting our political speech

    By criminalizing an individual or group for “promoting or advertising an offer to provide conversion therapy” this Bill C-4 leaves open the possibility that pro-lesbian and other feminist political organizations challenging gender identity ideology will be criminalized.

    Coercing or forcing feminists to change their political mandates, alter their group membership, redefine foundational concepts (such as the definitions of woman and lesbian), and limit their political speech to the point where it does not accurately or fully reflect the lived experience of women, girls, and lesbians in Canada undermines our fundamental freedoms as protected in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The proposed Bill C-4 also undermines our ability to defend the equality of girls, women, and lesbians guaranteed in the Charter on the basis of sex.

    No law in Canada should undermine these rights.