Judging Amys

Two nurses fighting Kafkaesque efforts to deny them their working credentials

Amy Gallagher is a nurse in London. Eileen Hamm is a nurse in British Columbia. They may not know each other, but these two young women share more than their given names and their chosen profession. Both voiced opinions considered “unacceptable” for nurses to hold. Both have endured disciplinary proceedings by healthcare organizations that can only be described as Kafkaesque. And both decided to fight back.

In Gallagher’s case, the academic institution where she was studying to become a psychotherapist banned her from the clinical work necessary to complete her program after she defended the “colour-blind” approach to race during an “ant-racism” seminar. Hamm’s situation is equally dire: The professional licensing body for nurses in B.C. threatens to take away her license to practice because of her gender critical views.

Amy Gallagher

Amy Gallagher is a Christian mental health nurse who was working in London in 2020 when she signed up for a 2-year program to become a psychotherapist. In addition to clinical work, the program required that she take a course in forensic psychology given by the Tavistock and Portman NHS Trust. (As it happens, this is the same organization that was forced to shutter its gender identity development services clinic – the only gender identity clinic in the U.K. at the time -- after an extremely critical review concluded it was unsafe for children with gender identity issues.)

Gallagher’s ordeal began in the fall of 2020 during a course lecture entitled “Whiteness, a problem of our time.” In that class, students were told, among other things, that “Christianity is responsible for racism because it’s European.” When she challenged these views, and stated that her idea of anti-racism is the colour-blind approach championed by Martin Luther King, she was told that view was “outdated,” that she “lacked maturity,” and that she was creating a “traumatizing environment.”

One course lecturer contacted the Nurse and Midwifery Council in an attempt to get her nursing license revoked because she had “inflicted race based harm and as a result was unfit to work with diverse persons.” The complaint was dismissed by the Nurse and Midwifery Council, which defended her right to her own views (not an opinion shared by B.C.’s nurse licensing body, see Amy Hamm, below).

However, Gallagher was banned from clinical work in her program pending an investigation, even though she would be unable to qualify as a psychotherapist without completing her clinical work.

She was accused by someone on the program’s management team of racial harassment and of having a Twitter (now X) account – called StandUpToWoke -- that made this person feel “unsafe” because of the supposed “hate speech” it contained. She says she was also prohibited by the head of the faculty from entering the building’s main reception area because the sight of her might retraumatize those individuals offended by her views.

Analyzing her situation through the prism of psychotherapy, Gallagher believes that “[woke] ideology itself is  hysterical, it catastrophizes, it jumps to conclusions [and] assumes what is going on in [another] person’s mind, it’s very all or nothing black or white thinking … there’s baddies and there’s goodies…These are all psychological mechanisms that I’m generally trying to help people move away from…It’s like they’ve embraced neuroticism and they’re advocating for it…Critical race theory and woke ideology is negative thinking, essentially.”

Gallagher says the people responsible for her ordeal are “out of control, believing themselves to be above the law and above institutional procedure.” So in 2022 she sued Tavistock, citing racial and religious discrimination, breach of contract, harassment, bullying, and abuse of power.

“What the Tavistock describes as anti-racism is racism. What they describe as diversity is conformity and orthodoxy. What they describe as tolerance is an intolerance of anyone who thinks differently to them. Left unchallenged such institutional bullying will only be emboldened.”

Note: Amy Gallagher’s lawsuit against Tavistock and the disciplinary proceedings against her were unresolved at the time of writing.

Amy Eileen Hamm

Amy Eileen Hamm is a registered nurse living in New Westminister, B.C., a Vancouver suburb. Her  travails began shortly after she co-sponsored the erection of an “I [heart] JK Rowling” billboard in downtown Vancouver in September 2020. The billboard was taken down a day later following two complaints, and from that point on she had a target on her back put there by her own professional licensing body, the B.C. College of Nurses and Midwives (BCCNM).

In November 2020, BCCNM told Hamm that her off-duty conduct was being investigated, and in June 2022, Hamm received a citation ordering her to appear before a tribunal to “inquire into her conduct.” The citation specifically noted that “between approximately July 2018 and March 2021, [Hamm] made discriminatory and derogatory statements regarding transgender people, while identifying [her]self as a nurse or nurse educator.”

Disciplinary hearings began in the fall of 2022, continued through 2023 and into 2024. If the BCCNM rules against her, she could lose her nursing license and her livelihood, despite her 10 years as a nurse with no patient complaints.

To say that Hamm has not rolled over quietly would be a gross understatement.

A former journalism student, she has become an important voice in Canada’s gender-critical movement, writing articles and online comments lambasting not only the BCCNM, but also Canada’s abandonment of women and girls in support of a transactivist agenda that includes placing biological men in women’s prisons, allowing biological men to compete in women’s (and girls!) sports, and eliminating sex-based spaces for women, such as changing rooms and bathrooms, which impacts negatively on women’s privacy, dignity and safety.

Despite the strain and stress her ordeal has caused, Hamm has doubled down on her gender critical activism. She co-founded Canadian Women's Sex-Based Rights (caWsbar), to demand that Canadian women's sex-based rights under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms be upheld uniformly and consistently. Its motto is “Woman: fact, not feeling.

At her most recent BCCNM hearing to determine whether she could keep her nursing license Hamm stated that she wasn’t transphobic, but called gender identity “metaphysical nonsense.”  She notes that she has treated many transgender patients without incident and while working uses an individual’s preferred pronouns. Hamm says she has rejected an offered settlement whereby she would receive a two-week license suspension and social media training.

“Twenty years ago, no one would have batted an eye if a health care professional said that only women can give birth, or that women do not have penises,” she says. “Today? You’ll get hauled into a disciplinary tribunal for daring to say so. And just because I’ve insisted on loudly repeating these facts — it’s obvious that human males don’t birth offspring, whatever gender-obsessed “queer” activists think — I am called divisive, by detractors and supporters alike. That’s wrong. What’s divisive is our culture, with its increasingly pathological aversion to basic truths.”

Hamm’s ongoing struggle with her licensing body and her willingness to be outspoken in articles critical of trangenderism and other social justice issues has made her a well-known figure within Canada’s burgeoning opposition to so-called “social justice” priorities that place feelings and “lived experience” ahead of science and objective truth. and to the politicians, administrators and media informed by these ideas.

Her fierce comments on X (formerly Twitter) have received praise from other gender critical personalities such as Jordan Peterson, who recently underwent a similar ordeal and lost his legal battle with his professional organization, the Ontario College of Psychologists, over similar issues.

As for Amy Gallagher, she has parlayed her fight with Tavistock into a promising political career. She is currently a candidate in London’s mayoralty election, and although  it’s unlikely she’ll win – she’s a candidate for the Social Democratic Party, which isn’t one of the three major parties (Labour, Conservative & Liberal Democrat) -- she’s been making the rounds and doing interviews with the same determination she’s shown in her efforts to retain her place in the psychotherapy program and not be intimidated.

Pandering politicians, ideologically captured journalists and jelly-spined administrators could learn a lot from these two indomitable women.

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