Amy Hamm and the Undefined Notion Of "Sex-Based Rights"

 So, Ms. Hamm is appealing her disciplinary ruling to the BC Supreme Court.  Okay, in itself, I think of that as mostly a "nothing burger" moment.  Like every other anti-transgender advocate, Ms. Hamm loves to think of herself as being a martyr for the cause - whatever. 

However, of interest here is her advocacy for so-called "sex-based rights".  What exactly does this phrase actually encompass?  Like a lot of such phrases, it implies much, but without clear definition it tends to mean "whatever a person wants it to mean when they want it to mean that".  In other words, it's often a "catch bucket" used to contain arbitrary fears and anxieties which simply aren't the case in any objective sense.  

If, for example, the term "sex-based rights" was being put forth in a context where it was intended to reinforce the idea that women have absolute autonomy over their bodies and the right to access medical care specific to their bodies, I would have no problem with the phrase.  However, that's already covered in The Charter of Rights and Freedoms (The Charter) under sections 7 and 15, as has been made clear by the Morgentaler decisions (and a handful of other cases).  

So, just what could Ms. Hamm be talking about?  Well, it turns out that the 2026 UCP AGM Policy Resolutions provides a clue:

Now, this is perhaps more interesting than Ms. Hamm's rather simplistic arguments, because it gives us a chance to interrogate the concept, and what advocates for it may be attempting to use it as a wedge for.  

First is part 2 of the rationale which reads as follows: 

According to the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, there is a meaningful distinction between biological sex and gender:

“Sex refers to a set of biological attributes including chromosomes, gene expression, hormone levels and function, and reproductive/sexual anatomy, usually categorized as male or female."

"Gender refers to the socially constructed roles, behaviors, expressions and identities of girls, women, boys, men, and gender-diverse people.”

Now, from a purely clinical perspective, the above makes a reasonable amount of sense.  Except it implicitly draws a line which many transgender people find is actually quite fuzzy.  When does it become fuzzy?  Well, consider a transgender person who has been on Hormone Replacement Therapy for years.  That person may well have characteristics which are consistent with both sexes (yes, medical interventions do things like that ...).  Someone who has undergone Male to Female Gender Reassignment Surgery (GRS) actually has the same primary sex characteristics as a cisgender female.  

Then we move on to part 3 of the rationale, and here is where things get down to the nitty-gritty: 

Recognizing biological sex as its own protected ground would allow for the legal and policy clarity needed to uphold fairness and privacy in sex-specific spaces, such as washrooms, showers and changerooms. It would also support parents, institutions, and service providers in maintaining appropriate boundaries in sensitive settings, particularly for minors.

Ah, there we are - it's all about excluding transgender people from such messy situations as ... you know ... using a washroom in a public setting, or *gasp* a changing room at their local gym.  Now, here's where the whole business gets plain ridiculous:  

Where is the actual line?  The hardliners like Ms. Hamm no doubt think that the presence of any person who is transgender in a public washroom is utterly unacceptable.  But reality and law are seldom "cut-and-dried" like that.  Are we going to ban transgender women who have been transitioned medically from using the women's washroom on the basis of "they aren't woman enough"?   

Perhaps more concerning is the idea that transgender women (and let's face it, this is about transgender women) somehow present a "danger" to minors.  This is a monumental leap of logic.  Suddenly we are declaring an entire class of people "a danger" when there is no evidence which substantiates such a claim (and before you come into the comments and point out individual cases, recognize that those cases do not exist in sufficient numbers to draw any kind of generalization about the character of transgender people - I've looked).  

I suspect that when challenged in court, the notion of "sex-based rights" would quickly be subsumed under the broader rubric of "sex".  Further, laws written based on the assumptions implicit in the above (namely that transgender women somehow present a gross violation of women's rights, dignity, and autonomy) would quickly collapse under the weight of existing laws that would apply to inappropriate conduct in those contexts (e.g. indecent exposure, voyeurism, etc). 

In other words, we already have a legal infrastructure in place that substantially protects women in these contexts, and misplaced paranoia about someone being transgender is not justification for arbitrarily restricting their movement through society.