Being lonely is so hot right now.

In the past couple of months, and largely due to a young Toronto woman whose only friend in the world is her mother, the concept of “loneliness influencers” has entered our online lexicon. Several publications have run pop-culture essays on this “new” type of online influencer, including The Atlantic, with their piece titled “The Strange Appeal of the Solitude Influencer,” which ends with a musing on striking a balance between solitude and connection.

I think these essays all miss the mark.

What is a loneliness (or solitude) influencer? They are persons with few to no friends who film their mundane lives—cooking dinner, choosing pajamas before bed, going for a solo drive—and post the videos for an audience that they rarely interact with, at least directly. (Indirectly, they’re surely adjusting their content to the desires of their viewers.) These lonely persons typically remind us in each video about what they don’t have (friends, partners) as they go about their daily routines. However, they’re not plaintive and they’re not seeking support or tactile relationships—the point is that they either enjoy, or are perfectly accepting of, being alone.

And we, the public, apparently love to watch them being alone. The aforementioned Toronto woman, Lana Isa, is quickly approaching 250,000 Instagram followers, for instance.

Some of the think pieces on Isa et al. admit the obvious: by building an audience, loneliness influencers are engaging in social behaviour despite claiming to lead antisocial lives. But they dismiss this as artefact—some kind of oopsie doopsie paradox. Several authors describe the common appeal of these influencers: if your life is busy and chaotic, it feels rather meditative to observe the quiet, simple life of a lonely person (as long as their content is beautiful and calm—someone with a hoarding problem, for example, would not succeed in this niche market). A piece in The Irish Times argues that glamourizing social isolation might be unhealthy for us, disconnected as we are, already, by the trappings of our increasingly online, modern lives. That sounds a bit alarmist, to me—I think loneliness content is a symptom, rather than a cause, of widespread social isolation.

I began following Isa’s account when she had far fewer followers. (She has gained nearly 100,000 since being featured in The Atlantic.) I can’t put my finger on exactly what I find most appealing about her content. Some of her videos give me nostalgia for the period of time, before I had kids, when I lived alone while studying journalism in university. I’m introverted by nature and enjoy solitude in doses larger than some people might—but I seldom get to experience that these days. What’s more likely, however, is that I follow Isa because I have an obsession with strange corners of the internet, trendy or otherwise.

So, why do I think that these mainstream essays about loneliness influencers have gotten it all wrong?

I think everyone’s thinking too deeply about the topic: if we are being honest, loneliness influencers can be described as both boring and self-obsessed. (Nor can I be convinced that one truly enjoys their solitude if they broadcast it for the whole world.) Of all the things one could offer to the world, they’ve come up with hoping that someone will take delight in seeing the plate of frozen chicken nuggets they baked themselves for dinner. (Literally.)

Loneliness influencers are like asexual OnlyFans models—their motivations are suspect, to say the least. Loneliness influencers are also like an Andy Warhol Campbell’s Soup painting. Are we actually witnessing some brilliant social commentary art form, here—or is it just a picture of some damn soup?

Loneliness influencers are no different than any other type of influencer, at the end of the day. They want attention and have found a very low-effort method of obtaining it. I think I’m going to unfollow them—because what the hell am I really spending my precious time on, here?

**

Thank you for reading my Substack. My articles are always free, but I do greatly appreciate those who support my work with paid subscriptions. - Amy

My memories of northern BC, where I was born in the little oil and gas town of Fort St. John, are few and faint. As such, I don’t feel as though I am “from the north,” though, to non-Canadians, we are all “from the north.”

I have more memories of Edmonton, Alberta, where I lived for several years while in elementary school. At the end of summers, the grass inside of the local outdoor hockey rink was nearly as tall as I was (or is that just a trick of my memory?). I’d scale the wall and hop inside. Lying down on my back, staring up through the tall yellow blades at the endless blue sky, I could imagine I was the only person in the universe, floating through space on a flat field of grass.

That’s a stark contrast to mountainous BC, where I’ve lived most of my life. The blue and grey mountains are always caging you in, and reminding you of how far away you are from the stars. Despite seeing the ocean (or Fraser River) and mountains every day, their beauty awes me, still.

There are so many other Canadian places I love: the Cariboo, where red foxes sneak around at twilight, looking for food to steal from barbecues and patios; desertous Kamloops, its barren hills punctuated by dark pines and the mild green of sagebrush; my grandparents’ remote BC cabin where I spent happy childhood summers entirely cut off from the outside world (with the exception of a local radio station that would send weekly messages to the persons living out in the bush).

It’s easy to forget about the things that typify growing up in Canada: I’ve played ice hockey, caught rainbow trout, canoed, boated, shot a rifle, rode dirt bikes through the woods, caught snakes, frogs, and salamanders, seen black bears and grizzlies up close (in addition to deers, coyotes, and even moose), and can build a campfire with ease.

I’m so grateful for all of these experiences and for all of the natural beauty of this place. I am grateful for Canada.

There’s a lot going wrong in this country that needs fixing. In fact, it’s painful and overwhelming to think of all of these problems at once.

But today, I’d like to just remember the good parts, and wish you all a Happy Canada Day.

(Let’s get back to fixing things tomorrow.)

Amy

By now, you’ve all heard the news: Sall Grover of Australia lost her appeal in Tickle v. Giggle, the absurd case that saw transgender-identified male, “Roxanne Tickle,” sue Grover for excluding him from her female-only app, Giggle for Girls.

Grover’s appeal not only failed, but the court doubled the fine she owes to Tickle and changed the verdict from one of “indirect" discrimination to “direct” discrimination.

Sall now must pay $20,000 in damages and $100,000 in costs.

The whole ordeal is disgraceful and disgusting. As is some of the media coverage, including the below Australian Broadcasting Corporation op-ed that praises the judgement as good for women’s rights. (I can only assume that the author, Paula Gerber, also thinks that forcing dick upon lesbians is great.)

There is much to say about the laws that enable such stupid rulings, and the captured judiciaries that are all-too-happy to hand them down.

Right now, however, I’m stuck thinking of Sall. This is so much for one woman to bear.

Sall and I have been supportive of one another over the years, during our parallel fights. We both understand what it feels like to sacrifice “normal life” for a cause that simply appeared on our respective radars. None of this was planned or even desired. Sall, for instance, had no idea that Roxanne Tickle, that awful man, was going to upend her entire life because he’s a creep who wants access to female-only spaces. She had no idea, I’m sure, of what an incredible fighter she would become.

Sall has sacrificed years of her life. She’s raising a daughter who will one day see her as the hero she is.

Few people (fortunately) can fully understand the immense personal toll of taking on a fight like Sall’s. How it feels to be smeared across the country—world, even—shunned in your neighbourhood and community, and spoken about as if you’re public property, just because you stood your ground. Then there are those who claim that fighters like Sall are “grifters” who want attention or money; they refuse to acknowledge the terrible financial price of the battle, or the fact that most of the attention it brings is unbearable.

Few people could withstand the pressure Sall has been under.

I’m so sickened by this latest ruling, but so grateful for Sall. Keep going, Sall. We love you and we have your back.

One day we will win, and it will be because of women like you.

Activists, all strangers to me, people I had never met, wanted to destroy my career as a nurse. They didn’t like that I was talking and writing about gender ideology in a way that challenged the tenets of their pseudo-religious, faith-based belief system in gender identities or the “female penis.” (Barf.)

The point of this article is not to rehash the timeline or story of my cancellation. I’ve spoken and written about it extensively—and the legal battle rages on. (And I assume that most, if not all, of my Substack readers are aware of the story.)

The point of this article is to express my sincerest gratitude towards those who attempted to destroy my life. Thank you.

I wouldn’t be the woman I am today without you.

I recently wrote a National Post piece for their “What We’ve Lost” essay series. The series was a deep dive into how Canada has changed over the past decade (approximately); it was about all of the things our country has tossed aside, forgotten, or had taken from us in the woke takeover of our institutions and culture. (I highly recommend the entire essay series.)

I covered resilience. I argued that we have lost the proper attitude towards existence.

“It’s not considered brave to overcome. Today, what’s considered brave is to simply expose our soft underbellies and publicly announce each of our weaknesses. Look no further than to the social media biographies that typical woke ‘progressives’ display as an encapsulation of their very selfhood: a list of diagnosed mental or physical illnesses, membership in oppressed communities or claims of having been traumatized by life’s predictable tribulations,” I wrote.

Before my cancellation, I, too, was suffering from a crisis of meaning and a lack of resilience. I often became overwhelmed with guilt, shame, and anxiety over minor setbacks or any kind of uncertainty.

And then this happened: I announced to my family that I was going to get a divorce (with one baby and one toddler at home) the same week that I received a letter in the mail notifying me that I was under investigation by my professional regulator for my off-duty speech. The floor dropped from under me, twice, in a short period of time.

That was the start of my cancellation.

I can laugh at this, now. At the time, I was only making it through the days by enveloping myself into motherhood and practicing mindfulness in the presence of my sons. It felt like chaos and ruin were lurking in the darkness outside of my immediate awareness.

Several very difficult years ensued. Practicing mindfulness, taking care of my sons, earning an income, and keeping a household running were all necessities. There was no one to depend on except for myself.

The type of setbacks and anxieties I once felt paralyzed by became quaint, pale little things. And while I got into this whole mess because I had been outspoken about women’s sex-based rights, I found an additional source of interest and meaning: free speech absolutism.

I often think of Richard Bilkszto, a former Toronto principal who tragically committed suicide during the course of his (similar to my own) cancellation. We even shared the same lawyer! Bilkszto’s death disturbed me greatly, both because of how sad it was—and how evil the persons who harmed him are—and because it suggested that what I was going through was exactly as terrible as I feared it was.

But here I sit.

My sons are healthy and happy. I’ve got a new career. I’ve found love. I’ve got stronger friendships—with principled persons. The way I perceive hardship has changed: it gives meaning, purpose, and clarity. Hardship doesn’t need to be avoided at all costs, nor should it fill your lungs as a noxious gas.

Woke puritans and the purveyors of cancel culture are rotten people. So it’s quite funny to feel grateful towards them.But I am.

Thanks, assholes!

The latest batch release of the Epstein Files by the U.S. Department of Justice has revealed a link between pedophilia, sex abuse, and the gender transitioning of children. This came as no surprise to the persons who’ve been paying attention to pernicious gender ideology over the past decade or more.

A graphic Dec. 2018 email from evolutionary biologist Robert Trivers, addressed to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, describes Trivers’ opinion on the sexual attractiveness of “transexual women” (biological males) and goes on to suggest that toddler boys as young as three might benefit from hormonal intervention, should they not fit gender stereotypes associated with their sex.

The 2018 email was sent after Epstein had been publicly accused of running a sex-trafficking ring and abusing underage girls. (Nearly a decade earlier, Epstein pled guilty to charges of solicitation of prostitution and of solicitation of prostitution with a minor under the age of 18, and was sentenced to 18 months in prison.)

“(By the way) we are now pushing the intervention earlier—so you notice your three-year-old son has trans tendencies, so now you intervene with hormones—I would be frightened to do that—but who knows?” Trivers wrote to Epstein.

It is unclear just who Trivers means when he uses the royal “we”—but it is certainly true that those who promote the transition of minors have for years been lobbying for it to happen at younger and younger ages. For instance, the (widely condemned) World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) removed all minimum age requirements for hormones and surgeries from their 2022 standards of care recommendations.

Earlier in his email, Trivers discussed what mainstream medicine colloquially refers to as “gender affirming care” in terms of its ability (or lack thereof) to create sexually captivating prostitutes or sexual partners.

“With greater molecular control over development we are increasingly capable of producing novel phenotypes—more feminine men, by blocking testosterone receptors (or castration) and, at the same time, increasing estrogen production—the one b(l)ocks male features, the second encourages female features,” Trivers wrote, before discussing graphic sexual acts with transgender-identified males and then denigrating the attractiveness of “female to male” transgender persons. (And the vulva—which he says is an “acquired taste.”)

For the layperson, a phenotype is the outward, physical expression of given genes. Height and eye colour are examples. Trivers’ grotesque musings on new phenotypes are all about using “gender affirming care,” on children, to create customizable human beings whose only apparent value is in whether or not men will want to use them for sex.

Ultimately, what Trivers says is this: the earlier that one intervenes and provides hormones to children, the better control they have over that child’s “novel phenotypes.” Forget the human rights or social justice narratives about one’s inherent “gender identity” or of discovering one’s true self via gender exploration—for men like Trivers, gender ideology is, evidently, all about sexual gratification and fetishes. It is not about saving anyone from gender dysphoria or suicide, should they not have access to “gender affirming care.” It’s merely about satisfying carnal desire.

Again, Trivers’ unabashed and grotesque ponderings, shared with a convicted sex offender, come as no surprise to all of us who’ve been criticizing gender ideology for years.

Gender critical persons have also long argued that female transitioners—i.e. “transmen”—have been the pawns of fetish-motivated activists, used to legitimize their cause, because the (typically young) females who transition almost exclusively do not have sexual or fetishistic motivations. They provide cover for those who seek to transition minors for dubious, sexual purposes. This assessment undoubtedly jives with Trivers’ insulting comments on transmen as being “unhappy and lonely” and “the worst of both worlds.”

This is not the first time that a close link between child abuse, pedophilia and transgender ideology has revealed itself.

In 2022, Reduxx journalist Genevieve Gluck revealed that WPATH—which to this day is used by numerous Canadian healthcare authorities to guide their “gender affirming” medicine policies—had used an online community called the “Eunuch Archive” to inform the organization’s “standards of care” document, called SOC8, which added “eunuch” as a gender identity for the first time.

The problem with Eunuch Archive: it was co-founded by a convicted pedophile, and contains thousands of pages of written child sexual abuse content, much of it specifically about the castration of young boys. Gluck also revealed that another convicted pedophile was a prominent member of the online group.

Within SOC8, WPATH lauds the Eunuch Archive as an online community whose moderators “attempt to maintain both medical and historical accuracy.” WPATH speaks of the group’s international gatherings and notes that “(m)any former Eunuch Archive members have achieved their (castration) goals and no longer participate.” They fail to mention the rampant pedophilic child sexual abuse material.

Why is that?

The obvious caveat to all of this is that not everyone providing, receiving, or advocating for “gender affirming care” is doing so for explicitly nefarious reasons. And most are likely (one can hope) unaware of the heinous persons operating from behind the curtains of gender activism.

Regardless, we mustn’t ignore this problem.

It’s difficult enough to convince others that pediatric gender transition is the largest medical scandal of our era—now imagine trying to convince others that behind the scandal are evil persons with dark and ulterior motives. I get it: it sounds like lunacy.

However, if everyone could stop and contemplate the revolting email between Trivers and Epstein, it will begin to make sense.

The evidence is right before us.

Yulia Burtseva, 38, a wife and mother to an eight-year-old girl, died on January 4 while attempting to get a bigger ass.

I realize that sounds rather insensitive, but so be it. We need to have a serious conversation about our culture’s current obsession with big butts.

Burtseva—an Instagram mommy influencer aka “momfluencer”—died shortly after having a BBL (Brazilian butt lift) surgery, which is when a doctor injects fat that has been liposuctioned from one’s arms, stomach, back etc. into the buttocks area. It’s the surgery that was made famous by Kim Kardashian and which has become, it seems, as commonplace as breast implants.

Women are even having it done in a more “subtle” fashion—called the “mini” or “skinny” BBL—so that the results are not as stark as, say, the contrast between Kim’s twiggy legs and massively-protruding glutes. Think of it as akin to the women who get B-cup breast implants: not everyone goes for the double-Ds. One woman who has done this is Lily Phillips, the mega OnlyFans “star” made famous for banging 101 random men in a single day.

The BBL is the single most dangerous plastic surgery in existence. Many surgeons refuse to perform this procedure because of its inherent risks. If you ever watched the reality-TV show Botched, you’d have heard plastic surgeons Drs. Dubrow and Nassif refusing to perform or augment poorly-done BBLs. Too dangerous, they said.

What makes BBLs so dangerous is that the fat being used can be accidentally injected into a blood vessel, sending globules of fat, or “emboli,” to the lungs, brain, or elsewhere. If these emboli are large enough, they can cut off circulation and, worst case scenario, lead to death.

Several media outlets are claiming that Burtseva died of anaphylactic shock after having her procedure done at a private clinic in Russia. However, that is according to “reports” that “suggest” this is the case. Since there was a criminal investigation into the case, now with charges laid, I find myself skeptical that this was the actual cause of her death.

Anaphylaxis is easily manageable by persons with even basic medical training. What’s more likely, in my opinion, is that she died of what most people who die from BBL surgery die of: a fat embolism. Fat embolism, like anaphylactic shock, causes what’s known as systemic inflammation—so one could also understand that the two conditions might be confused because of overlapping symptoms. In any event, Burtseva is the latest tragic case of a BBL gone wrong.

Many surgeons cite the death rate of BBL surgery as high as 1 in 3,000. Surgery to get breast implants, by contrast, has a death rate around 1 in 72,000. The difference is enormous.

Do we women hate our bodies that much—that we’d gamble on a 1 in 3,000 chance of dying just so that our butts were bigger? Sadly yes.

One rather well-known plastic surgeon in Texas, who goes by Dr. Boom Boom Pow (yes, really) claims that he has seen a more than 800 percent increase in demand for BBLs since 2011. He says that BBLs can have a death rate as high as 1 in 2,351—but still offers the surgery, though he claims his skills and techniques make it much safer than that, at his clinic.

I understand, as I’m sure all women do, the amount of pressure we feel to look a certain way and the amount of hatred we can have for our healthy and normal bodies. Growing up in the 80s and 90s, I was devastated—felt cursed, even—to have hips and thighs that could never be considered “heroin chic.” My high school best friend and I used to self-deprecatingly say that we had “man legs” because we thought that it was more feminine to have stick-thin legs and no hips or butts. We joked, but I hated being in my own skin for many years after puberty.

Today, I can’t deny that I feel a sense of relief that the current and trending beauty standard is more aligned with the natural shape of my body. But that’s not, admittedly, something to be proud of. I would prefer to just not care at all. I would be lying if I said I didn’t care… a lot. To the point that I’ve thought, in recent years, that I would prefer even larger hips—the exact opposite of what I dreamed of having throughout my youth.

Women are making money (some of them a lot) in the “influencing” world after having dangerous BBL surgeries. Many of these women—who I’m sure have other talents, interests, and ideas—act as though their sole personality trait is their butt. This has even spawned a parody genre wherein women stuff cloth in their pants and make videos about some other topic—heavy machinery operation, let’s say—but spend the whole video with their rear end facing the camera, attempting to arch their backs in a way to maximize the appearance of a bubble butt.

Perhaps the craziest part in all of this is that the BBL is really just a variation of a repeating theme in history: extreme body modifications in the pursuit of beauty standards that exaggerate some feature that is all the rage in any given era or culture. It has been happening even before plastic surgery was an option—think of foot binding, or of neck elongation.

Adults should be free to do to their bodies whatever they’d like, if they are not directly harming others in the process. As for the BBL surgeons, however, I question how they can live with themselves, knowing—as they surely must—that they are in violation of their professional oath to do no harm.

It’s unfortunate that the press around Burtseva’s death is focused on medical malpractice, rather than on the danger of the procedure she was willing to undergo. Or on the sad reality that we seem to have a sort of blindness when it comes to recognizing when our culture is doing something blatantly insane.

Women: is it better to have a big juicy ass, or to be dead? Please choose wisely.

I hope that you are all finding ways to enjoy the holiday season, Christmas and (particularly) Hanukkah, in spite of the political and cultural troubles that undoubtedly defined 2025.

For many of us, I’m sure, it has become a necessity to compartmentalize our private lives, and time spent with family and friends, from our lives as citizens in a world that is careening towards madness and unrest. How else are we to stay sane?

2025 was punctuated by too many tragedies, from this week’s devastating antisemitic Bondi beach terror attack in Australia to the assassination of America’s Charlie Kirk this summer. Adding insult to injury is the failure of so many politicians and citizens to find moral clarity around these and similar events, or to understand—or admit to—the role of far-left extremism in spreading hatred and political unrest.

At the risk of coming across as melodramatic, the world feels like a dark place right now. It feels as though Western civilization is in a self-inflicted and utterly unnecessary decline.

Can the West be saved? Perhaps. If enough of us are willing to fight for it. Which brings me back to my original point: that I hope you’re taking some time away from the fight to find peace and contentment with friends and family.

My resolutions for 2026 include practicing daily gratitude, finding joy and presence via mindfulness, and leaving cancellation behind me.

On a personal level, 2025 was one of the toughest years of my life. After being found guilty by my professional regulator of “unprofessional conduct” for standing up for women’s sex-based rights, I was fired from my career of 13 years. I had never been fired from a job before. It was extremely painful and financially stressful. Months later, I was hit with the news that I owed $94,000 in costs and would receive a one-month license suspension.

Despite it all, I was uplifted and supported by a community of generous persons. (This is in addition to the pro-bono legal representation that the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms has provided for the past five years.) I was able to make it through the year, pay my mortgage, keep my kids fed, happy, and unaware of my troubles, and to give myself time to breathe when I felt like getting out of bed was a near-insurmountable task. I can’t describe the depth of my gratitude.

Currently, I am making a living via several channels: my weekly National Post column and freelance writing gigs (which I absolutely love doing); my Substack (thank you, paid subscribers); and, recently, via part-time work at a family practice clinic.

Additionally, I am seeking a nursing license in Alberta—where Premier Danielle Smith has tabled legislation to restrict regulators from doing to others what the BC College of Nurses did to me. I have the potential to get some part time, remote work with patients residing in Alberta.

I’m practicing making video content and you can also expect to see my YouTube channel develop over the next year. (Whether it will provide any income, I’m not sure.)

This combination of work is keeping me afloat, for now, and I expect that I will get more hours and more work over the next year. I share this because I want the persons who’ve supported me, financially and otherwise, to know what an unforgettable impact you’ve had on my life. Thank you.

It’s at this point that I feel unshackled from my cancellation. It has been more than five years since this legal nonsense began, and it’s far from over. But psychologically, I have moved on. Cancellation did not, and will not, break me. Nor will it define me in a negative manner.

As I posted on X earlier this year: “I won’t stop until all nurses & midwives in Canada are free to say that humans don’t change sex, men aren’t women, and women deserve their own spaces. I refuse to be used as the example of why you should shut your mouth. I insist upon being the example of why you should never.”

That said, here’s a rundown of the legal issues that are ongoing and will surely evolve in 2026:

1. The BC Human Rights Tribunal complaints I filed against both the BC College of Nurses and Vancouver Coastal Health: the BCHRT has received the complaints but has yet to accept them.

2. The appeal of my BCCNM guilty verdict for “unprofessional conduct” at the BC Supreme Court: no hearing date is set yet.

3. The $94,000 in costs and one-month suspension decision is on hold while the supreme court appeal is heard: it is unlikely either will be reversed—and so I will, I’m afraid, probably resort to a crowdfunder for the enormous amount owing. I have held off on doing so because technically I do not yet have to pay it.

4. The BC Nurses’ Union is going to tell me, hopefully soon, if they will continue to represent me after I was fired by Vancouver Coastal Health. I suspect they will drop me, rather than take my case to arbitration. If this happens, I will be in the position to hire a specialized lawyer that can initiate a “failure to represent” lawsuit against my union. This will, in all likelihood, be something I have to pay for out of pocket.

There you have it. Here’s to 2026. Please drop a comment and let me know what your resolutions are—I love hearing them.

Merry Christmas,

Amy

xo

Rowan Jette Knox, formerly Amanda Jette Knox, got a double mastectomy one month ago.

She did not have cancer. She got her breasts removed because she identifies as a man.

Yes, I am talking about the former Mommy Blogger who made it to the Big Leagues when she wrote about her child coming out as transgender, and then published a novel about her life after her husband, too, began to identify as transgender—causing her to admit that she had always secretly known she was a lesbian, which was great, for her, because now her husband was actually her wife.

This is the same woman who subsequently wrote a second book about how she became suicidal and was admitted to a psychiatric hospital because gender activists were accusing her of profiting off of their rainbow community with her advocacy work and novel sales. The book is about how her trauma does not define her.

Before the second novel was published, but after it had already been put to print, Knox announced that she was no longer a “lesbian,” but a member of the transgender community—a nonbinary “they/them.” She had to explain that her book would sell with her “deadname,” Amanda, on the front cover—even though her new, nonbinary name was Rowan.

It was a pain she had no choice but to endure. (I suppose, unless the book publisher cared more about “misgendering” Knox than they did about profits, but alas…)

At some point in this storyline, Knox’s son went from identifying as a girl to identifying as nonbinary, too. (Causing the TERF public to speculate that perhaps he was interested in detransitioning. I have no idea what this person’s identity is today, but I hope he is doing well.)

It was also at some point within this storyline that Knox and her husband—first a heterosexual couple, then a lesbian couple, and now a queer couple made of two trans people—joined a polycule with two other trangender-identifying males.

But wait, that’s not all: Knox still hadn’t achieved final form, which was to begin identifying as a man, rather than as nonbinary.

So, now, I suppose Knox is a straight man with three wives.

(Update: I found a social media post that says her and her husband separated and formed new couples with the two transwomen they had formed the polycule with, but that everyone is still friends. Okay.)

In January of this year, Knox posted to social media about the government of Canada destroying her accurate birth record: “Yesterday my name change certificate arrived. Today my birth certificate came in. The government literally destroyed all copies of my old one before issuing this new one of a baby boy born on September 1^st 1976 named Rowan. I’m so unbelievably grateful for this new life. What a gift,” wrote Knox.

If Knox was a baby boy since birth, as she now suggests, then was she ever a girl, a woman, a mommy blogger, a mother, a wife, a lesbian, or nonbinary? Or was she simply mistaken at all points in her life up until the latest revelation about being a man?

More importantly, what sort of piss poor, detached-from-reality medical and psychiatric system would first enable and then pay for this flagrantly confused, deeply traumatized woman to do this to herself?

What sort of surgeon would remove her (presumably) healthy breasts, knowing Knox’s very public history of her extreme instability and frequent identity changes? What physician would prescribe testosterone?

This is absolute madness. Sheer fucking madness.

I talk most often about the fact that pediatric “gender affirming care” is a medical scandal, but this—giving testosterone and a double mastectomy to such a mentally ill woman who has for years been in the midst of an obvious identity and mental health crisis—is nearly as terrible.

Adults, I think, should be able to do with their bodies as they please and if they are capable of consenting. (Though I don’t condone it being on the public dime.) It is highly questionable as to whether Knox can give proper consent to what was done to her.

Horrifying.

And yet we are struggling, in Canada, to move on from gender madness. Too many Canadians still believe in mystical gender souls and all that comes along with this pseudo-religion.

What the hell is wrong with us?

Singer Jann Arden, known for her advocacy around breast cancer awareness, left a comment on Knox’s Instagram post about being four weeks post operative. “What a fantastic feeling!!!!” wrote Arden.

Jann Arden: you’re an idiot.

In a video Knox posted one hour after waking up from her double mastectomy—“top surgery,” they cutely call it—she is unmistakeably female in voice and appearance.

“It’s done,” she laughed. “I just had an oatmeal cookie. Some ginger ale. I’m sitting up. I feel great. Like, a little sore in the chest. But, absolutely great. They showed me my chest. Everybody. Umm. Yeah. Wow. It’s only up from here,” said Knox.

I suspect, unfortunately, that won’t be true for her.

My son turned 9 this year. At his birthday party, one of his sweet friends, who happens to be mildly autistic, began an interrogation of me moments after my son blew out the birthday candles on his ice cream cake. In front of all the children and adults at the party.

“Hey—where’s Llewyn’s dad?” is how it started.

There were nearly a dozen questions in between, including the hilarious: “And who’s that guy?” while he pointed at my partner of several years. “An uncle? A friend?”

“That’s not something you ask adults,” is how I ended the interrogation, after he got to the question about the reason why I broke up with my son’s father.

We all managed to laugh it off, and my son appeared totally unfazed. But ever since, I’ve been left with a nagging feeling that my sons are getting to the age that I should have a conversation with them about why our family is the way it is.

I left my marriage when my sons were aged one and four. My oldest only has vague memories of his father being in our house. Because they were so young, I didn’t offer much explanation about the change at the time, other than to say that their dad is in a new home nearby.

Life feels normal. Because it is. It feels happy—again, because it is.

Leaving was the most difficult decision I ever faced, and I chose to make it because I knew that it was the best way forward. I couldn’t bear the thought of raising my sons while feeling deeply unhappy, resentful, and lonely inside of a non-functioning and unsalvageable relationship. I could neither prevent nor stop them from witnessing daily arguing and fighting—and I couldn’t do it to them any longer. It was a painful and desperate situation.

It wasn’t because of my children that I left, but it was for them.

The most common advice you find when you read about this topic—telling children about divorce—is to make sure that the kids understand that it had nothing to do with them. You don’t want to burden your children with guilt that they played some sort of role in “breaking up” a family. I suppose my problem with this advice is that I don’t see what happened as the ruination of a whole family, but as the salvation of one that was already broken. And it was only my immense love for them that allowed me to set our lives on a far better path.

It seems that my boys are happy going between homes, and spending about 60 percent of their time with me. It was, in the beginning, incredibly painful growing accustomed to not having them at home every single night. Not being able to hear their soft snores in the deep of the night. This alone made me question my decision dozens of times. The phrase “dark night of the soul” seemed to have been created to describe how those moments of questioning felt.

Despite the years that have passed, and the new lives we’ve built, there has been zero reduction in the anger that my ex displays towards me for having left. This only serves as a reminder that my decision was sound, and absolutely necessary.

I’ve spoken to several women who left marriages after having children. A common theme emerged: leaving was the right choice, but there is ongoing guilt, often related to wondering how we ended up with the “wrong person” to begin with.

There are more common themes: we tolerated things we shouldn’t have, became people we didn’t like or recognize, and falsely believed that we could “fix” or change situations that were well beyond repair. The love for our children was a catalyst for showing ourselves more love—and finally leaving. It probably wouldn’t have happened otherwise, or it would have taken many more years before we mustered the strength.

This is an embarrassing admission. What was wrong with me? Why did I live like that? (There are answers, which become clear with time, reflection, and honesty. But that’s a different subject.)

I didn’t want my sons to grow up witnessing a broken relationship and believing it to be normal, loving, or acceptable—when it was the opposite. The idea that they would end up in a marriage that mirrored my own terrified me. The idea that they could feel as miserable as I felt was panic inducing.

My sons are the best part of my life, and (obviously) wouldn’t be here if not for their father. I’m grateful to him for that. I regret nothing.

I still haven’t decided on the right time, or the correct words, to explain this all.

I am not blameless. My sons are. Their love saved me, and proved that I would endure anything for them. That’s how powerful, and how splendid, they are.

Perhaps that’s all they really need to know…

There’s an unassuming park hidden in a suburban neighbourhood of Salem, Massachusetts. A small, tree-covered hill slopes downwards towards a quiet street. Adjacent to the sidewalk is a modest memorial comprised of large, carved stones.

I’m neither a spiritual nor a religious person, but when I visited this spot, I felt something. A sort of feeling of being blanketed in quietude, while any thoughts of melancholy were pushed to the edges of my mind. It wasn’t quite eerie so much as it was depersonalizing.

It also felt important.

The spot is Proctor’s Ledge: the site where 19 persons—14 of them women—were publicly hanged in 1692, the victims of the Salem Witch Trials.

The victims were hanged with nooses attached to the trees. Some accounts say that the alleged witches were thrown in shallow pits at the site, until their families snuck the bodies out for proper burials. Others say that the ground is too rocky even for a shallow grave.

It wasn’t until 2016 that historians verified this site was indeed “Gallows Hill,” where the public executions took place. The memorial was built one year later.

The names of the dead: Bridget Bishop, George Burroughs, Martha Carrier, Mary Eastey, Sarah Good, Elizabeth Howe, George Jacobs Sr., Martha Corey, Alice Parker, Mary Parker, Rebecca Nurse, Ann Pudeator, Wilmott Redd, Sarah Wildes, John Willard, John Proctor, Elizabeth Jackson, Susannah Martin, and Mary Witheridge.

Each victim has a stone engraved with their name and illuminated by a small lightbulb, made to look like a candle, in the ground below.

The site is named after John and Elizabeth Proctor, a married couple who were both sentenced to be executed; the husband, John, after attempting to stand up for his accused-of-witchcraft wife, was met with accusations of witchcraft himself. Elizabeth, who was pregnant, was to be “spared” execution until after giving birth. (Thankfully she was acquitted before being killed.)

There were obviously no witches in 1690s Massachusetts. Much of the evidence used for convictions was called “spectral evidence,” which refers to the accusers’ lies about having been approached by a spectral version of the accused witch.

My interest in Proctor’s Ledge, and the Salem Witch Trials, has nothing to do with “witches” or paranormal phenomena—and everything to do with mobs.

What these victims were accused of matters far less than the fact that they were accused at all—accused by an angry mob that successfully weaponized the institutions of the day to punish persons with whom they disagreed and disliked.

While 19 were executed, approximately 120 persons were imprisoned, some for up to a year. It took a decade for the Massachusetts General Court to publicly declare that the witch trials had been unlawful.

The whole thing is a lesson in human—and mob—psychology.

We can look back at the Salem Witch Trials and find it all rather quaint and even silly. No one, in 2025, living in a western nation, would go on trial for witchcraft. While that much is obvious, we remain the same species of ape we were 333 years ago, when 19 persons were executed at Gallows Hill. We haven’t evolved and we haven’t moved on from embracing fantastical beliefs, or from lying, or from forming angry mobs.

We still, 333 years later, allow our institutions to be overrun by bigots, liars, and ideologues. And we are still prone to (gleefully) punish others for deviating from an approved social or religious orthodoxy.

In 1690s Salem, there was a culture of religious puritanism. Today, we have woke puritanism. And today’s mobs, by extension, are almost exclusively formed by woke zealots. Including the one that attempted to destroy my life, and succeeded in destroying my career and finances, because I challenged gender ideology. If our current cultural climate permitted the mob to hang heretics—rather than merely “cancel” them—I have zero doubt that the BC College of Nurses, Vancouver Coastal Health, and every one of my rabid, hateful accusers would merrily drag me to the gallows themselves.

Unfortunately for them, I remain among the living, practicing my craft.

It was with this thought in mind that I found my visit to Salem’s downtown tourist area to be rather amusing, in a sort of depressingly ironic fashion.

Downtown Salem is full of blue-haired woke persons and draped in progress pride flags. This is not an exaggeration. Every coffee shop and souvenir store I entered seemed to be staffed, at least in part, by women on testosterone who’d chopped their breasts off, or men who were identifying as women. The former with their unstable and deepened but squeaky pitch, the latter transparently attempting to jump up a few registers in theirs.

Many of the blue hairs wandering the tourist region were decked out not only in the standard woke regalia—danger hair, pronoun pins, pride flags, and grungy black clothing—but also in witch or occult symbols and attire. Some wore literal, pointy witch hats.

This led me to believe that these persons view themselves as the people who would have been the outcasts, accused of witchcraft, in 1690s Massachusetts. They’ve amalgamated their bespoke gender identities with the aesthetic and trappings of witchcraft.

I don’t know why this came as a surprise: of course the woke residents of Salem would do this. Of course these experts in perennial victimhood would perform cultural appropriation of the suffering and death of the heretics that came before they/them. Of course they have not the insight to understand that they—had they lived 300 years ago—would have been on the side of the religious puritans.

It would require a break from one’s constant navel-gazing for the average woke person to comprehend their role and position in the social strata of our own era, let alone to then draw historical comparisons.

At any one of the dozens of gift shops or handful of “witch” museums in Salem, one can purchase sundry variations of tacky, Halloween-looking witch memorabilia. (Confession: I got one of the T-shirts.)

One single mile away is the quietude of Proctor’s Ledge, and the 19 names engraved in stone. The trees—not the literal trees upon which the nooses and bodies hanged; the trees are not grand enough to be centuries old—stand impassively over those who visit, and who perhaps care enough to think of Salem as more than a tourist trap and a takeaway broomstick keychain.

Women were hanged from the trees of this very hill—with a public audience. We did this.

We do this.

It’s fathomable that one day, maybe 300 years from now, the west will be dotted with museums of woke: places where our tourist descendants will wander through gift shops offering “I met a pregnant man in Vancouver, Canada” T-shirts, or morbid trinkets to mimic a surgically-removed uterus sloshing around in a specimen jar.

“Can you believe that they would chemically castrate gay children?” someone might ask, pushing a “lesbian penis” keychain across the counter to a bored cashier.

Unfortunately, I can.

Did you know? July 14 is International Non-Binary People’s Day. It’s a day to celebrate everyone—because everyone is non-binary.

How could we not be? I am a woman and—as I write this—I am wearing pants. Or, perhaps more accurately: I am situated within the lived experience of inhabiting the unfeminine-gendered pantaloons of the be-penised. What more proof could you ask for?

International Non-Binary People’s Day (INBPD) was created by a Canadian (sob) named Katje van Loon, whose surname I shall not comment on. The day falls halfway between International Men and International Women’s Day. Beautiful.

Here are a couple of this year’s headlines in celebration of today:

I thought I would help my subscribers out by creating a list of signs and symptoms of being non-binary. Print it out, and keep it in your purse, or man-purse, or genderless leather pouch—it could come in handy:

• You have a penis and you have cried when sad

• You have a vagina and you own fewer than five formal dressing gowns and fewer than seven pairs of high-heeled shoes

• You got a new haircut and your beloved grandmother looked at you and said “Hmm, now that’s… interesting” instead of her usual “You look great!”

• You were born a girl but have enjoyed playing or watching sports, wearing pants, or eating your steak rare

• You were born a boy but have failed to develop the appropriate bloodlust to dream of entering an Ultimate Fighting Championship cage

In all seriousness, though: It is sexist to insist that a failure to rigidly adhere to the stereotypes associated with either biological sex excludes one from their own sex class. Be yourself. Your sex doesn’t change because of your hobbies, clothing, emotional expression, or anything else.

Our sex is male, or female. It is defined by gametes: small or large. But just because something defines your sex, this doesn’t mean that your sex has to define you. Certainly not in cultures or societies—like ours—where men and women are generally free to live lives of their choosing.

You want to defy sex stereotypes? Do it. Most of us could not care less. And none of us perfectly adhere to the stereotypes of our sex, anyways.

If anyone in the world is “non-binary”—then we are all non-binary.

So, on that note: happy INDBP everyone!

xo

Amy

“Labubu” entered my lexicon only a few weeks ago, though the character—a toy monster elf based on Nordic mythology—has been around for a decade.

It started with my sons began asking if they could get a Labubu. Shortly after this, my social media became inundated with reels of influencers unboxing the cute little things for their jealous audiences. I say “jealous” because one of the first things I learned about Labubu is that it’s exclusive—it’s nearly impossible to purchase one. Or six, for that matter: influencers often unbox an entire set of six at once, hoping that one in the set will be a rare, “secret” Labubu, which is a Labubu in a colour that appears randomly in 1/72 toys.

The toys are produced by Chinese company Pop Mart, and started to go viral last year, when K-pop star Lisa (BLACKPINK) attached one to her purse. Since then, celebrities including Rihanna, Dua Lipa, Kim Kardashian, David Beckham, and Marc Jacobs have all done the same.

At first, I was skeptical. I never fall for these trends; not for Beanie Babies, Furbys, or Tamagotchi. I figured I was immune to this sort of hype. One week later, however, I was meeting a stranger from a craigslist ad in a back alley, hoping to purchase three Exciting Macaron Labubus—one each for my sons and myself.

What the hell happened to me?

Academia and psychology offer several explanations for an obsession with viral toys.

SCARCITY, IMPULSIVITY, AND BOYS V. GIRLS

In his book, “Influence,” Robert Cialdini argued that scarcity—whether it’s a real or fabricated scarcity—drives demand for items or experiences. This certainly was the case for my sons, whose desire to own a Labubu intensified after we discovered that the entire collection sells out within minutes on Pop Mart’s website. They watched me browse for the monster dolls on my phone with a gravity well beyond the matter at hand.

“I want a Labubu so bad,” my six-year-old whispered to me as he fell asleep that night.

Interestingly, a 2022 Russian study, published in Frontiers in Psychology, found that “boys are 1.66 times more likely to prefer (a) trendy toy than girls.” The study also suggested that viral toys don’t support “full developmental potential,” because children want them not for any creative ways to play with them—but simply for the fact that they are viral. “I want it because I want it.”

Another finding in this study: that viral toys are “more often chosen by children who have difficulties in controlling impulsive cognitive reactions.” It tracks, then, that boys are more into viral toys than girls, because boys (and males, generally) are considered to have lower impulse control—with specific exceptions—than their female counterparts, in many animal and human studies.

CULTURAL CAPITAL

Obtaining a viral toy is a way to obtain “cultural capital,” a concept defined by sociologist Pierre Bourdieu. There are three types: embodied (such as a behaviour); objectified (like a cute little Labubu); and institutionalized (a type of formal recognition).

The concept of cultural capital is essentially academic-speak for having snobby and elitist taste in activities, belongings, and one’s associations.

You want a Labubu? Have you considered that you’re simply an elitist snob? I have. And you know what? I can live with that.

INFLUENCERS

We cannot talk about viral toys without talking about influencers. If you search “Labubu unboxing,” you will find hundreds of videos, with millions of views, of people ripping open packages of Labubus and screaming in excitement at each unveiling. It’s ridiculous, frankly—but my god, it sure works.

The field of research surrounding influencers is small but growing.

This year, a group of market psychology researchers listed areas of concern, and future study, regarding the social media stars who have increasing powers to shape our collective thoughts and desires: “Harmful Products, Misinformation, Unrealistic Beauty Standards, Comparison Culture, Deceptive Consumption, and Privacy Concerns.”

Out of the six areas of concern, I think “comparison culture” is the only one relevant to Labubus. We see what others have, and we want to have the same—or more.

Since I met that stranger in an alleyway to purchase three Labubus (at twice the Pop Mart retail price, for your information), I have already considered if I want to have more. My sons, bless their sweet hearts, are still ecstatic with theirs, and haven’t mentioned obtaining any other versions.

The woman I bought them from texted me this morning: “Hey Amy, I have a new, never used Coca Cola Labubu but it’s the sit down one and box has been opened by me. Just never used. (My own collection.) I’ve decided to let it go at $80. Let me know if you would like to consider before I list it.”

I passed on it. How far into this Labubu subculture am I willing to go?

On Reddit’s r/PopMartCollectors and r/labubu, you can find wild tales about couriers allegedly stealing Labubu boxes from packages, then sealing them up and delivering empty boxes to consumers. One mother posted that an adult stole a Labubu doll right from her daughter’s lap, while she was pushing her stroller through a grocery store. People are dressing their Labubus in tiny designer clothing, Gucci and Prada, and one even shared their custom “Abolish ICE” outfit for theirs.

At the park, my sons have faced huge fanfare from children at the sight of their Labubus (which they’ve been hanging off the neck of their shirts when they go to play). “OH MY GOD IT’S A LABUBU! Where did you get that?!” is the common reaction, followed by children asking me to share with their parents how I managed to buy some. One girl said nothing and immediately snatched my son’s gray Labubu right off his shirt, and he quickly snatched it back. There were no hard feelings involved—my son, it seems, immediately understood the girl’s impulsive reaction. He’s got that sweet, sweet cultural capital that all the kids want. It’s easier to play it cool from his position of elevated social standing—afforded by the possession of a 7-inch-tall monster elf with buck teeth.

“I’m the only kid in my class that has a Labubu,” he told me.

Like Marc Jacobs and Rihanna, I’ve taken to hanging my Labubu off the side of my purse.

Call it shallow, vain, silly, or anything else. You know what it also is? It’s fun. And it’s cute. And it makes us all feel good. I get a kick out of my kids’ reaction to seeing my Toffee Labubu swinging off my purse. I’m “cool” to them. I know I won’t always be perceived that way—and I’m going to enjoy it while it lasts.

I also recognize that there is a dwindling number of years—months, maybe, for my oldest—during which I will see my sons place an adorable soft toy on their pillows before going to sleep. How wholesome is that?

Thank you for reading! If you’re able, I am appreciative of your paid subscriptions. Either way, my content will remain free.

xo

Amy

Alaska: the wild and beautiful state referred to as “The Last Frontier.” By area, it’s America’s largest state, and most of it is unpopulated.

You might, like me, think of Alaskans as the tough, rugged type—masculine, independent, freewheeling and free-thinking. Fishers, hunters, miners, and surely all Republicans. (As it happens, 54.5% of Alaskan voters went for President Trump in 2024, far lower than I would have imagined—though the state has voted Republican in 15 consecutive elections.)

I had the chance to go on a free cruise trip to Alaska in June. I had never been. The stops included the cities (or towns) of Juneau, Skagway, and Ketchikan.

In each city, I lost count of the number of progress pride flags hanging from shop windows and private homes. It was no different than walking downtown in Vancouver or New Westminster, where every second shop has one of those obnoxious and overtly political flags, or stickers, on display. It was not at all what I expected to see in Alaska: The Last Frontier, but not for wokeness, apparently.

It started in Juneau, the capital city, where a woman’s brassiere shop featured a sandwich board outside that read: “Fight fascism, shop local, make good trouble.” We (myself and two other journalists) wandered inside to inquire as to how one might fight fascism while purchasing a bra or panties. The shop owner was inside. Before answering, she asked us where we came from. Canada, we told her.

“Do you even know who our president is?” she asked.

Yes, yes, we said. The conversation went downhill from there. I am still not sure how this woman believes she is fighting fascism—or if she even has a solid grasp of the definition or concept of the word. “It’s just a political statement that I wanted to put out there,” she finally admitted. There you have it.

Her sign mustn’t be good for business. The shop was empty. But I could be wrong.

Perhaps the progress pride flag is used by Alaskans to attract tourists to their businesses. Do they hope that the flag could give them a competitive edge over the many duplicate businesses that operate within the small tourist district of each city? Do they assume that “city folk” love the flag? That we will be impressed by its adoption way out in the Alaskan frontier? Or, are they genuinely on board with the political ideology—queer theory, critical theory, intersectionality—that the flag represents?

In Alaska, you can scarcely find public WiFi, the grocery shelves I saw were half empty—with their products often vastly overpriced—there are no Ubers, most locals were driving rusted out, old SUVs instead of Teslas (like in Vancouver). The progress pride flags seemed comedically out of place. Like stumbling across McDonald’s litter in some pristine wilderness. What is this trash doing here, you wonder.

I suppose that if you cannot offer most of the trappings of city life to your tourists, but wish that you were able to, then a silly flag is a low-effort stand in.

What if you could take your personal therapist with you, everywhere you went? And what if she was available to assist you at any hour of the day? Up at three a.m., crying over a breakup? Just reach over in bed and ask for help. Struck, as if by lighting, with existential dread in the middle of a grocery store run? Not to worry, your therapist is right there with you—and she is literally incapable of becoming bored over hearing about your problems on repeat.

She is, of course, an AI program.

As I discovered while browsing Reddit recently, it appears that many people have indeed begun using artificial intelligence as a stand in for a human therapist. The upsides are obvious: it’s accessible, relatively inexpensive (ChatGPT is $20 a month, a therapy session can be $150 an hour), and, for persons who have difficulty opening up to a stranger, it’s judgement and embarrassment free.

Researchers and healthcare providers are already considering AI for therapy, too.

A randomized control trial study, published this year in BMC Psychology, showed that a “Friend chatbot” can be a cost-effective stand in for a real psychotherapist in crisis situations. The study looked at “104 women diagnosed with anxiety in active war zones”; the women received either thrice a week traditional therapy, with a human, or daily chatbot therapy, with AI. Their results:

“Both groups showed significant reductions in anxiety levels. The control group receiving traditional therapy had a 45% reduction on the Hamilton scale and a 50% reduction on the Beck scale, compared to 30% and 35% reductions in the chatbot group. While the chatbot provided accessible, immediate support, traditional therapy proved more effective due to the emotional depth and adaptability provided by human therapists. The chatbot was particularly beneficial in crisis settings where access to therapists was limited, proving its value in scalability and availability. However, its emotional engagement was notably lower compared to in-person therapy.”

If we can improve AI’s ability to mimic the emotional engagement of real humans, perhaps it will become a formidable competitor in the therapy industry.

But what about its potential down sides? Will immediate access to an AI “therapist” always make us healthier? I’m not so sure. Particularly for persons with anxiety disorders, in which case I am convinced that AI therapy has potential to be destructive and harmful.

I know it would have been for me.

I was diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder when I was in my 20s. I’ve got the type of anxiety that—when I slip up and it comes out in full force—can easily withstand a double gin and tonic with a milligram of Ativan on the side. Over the years, I’ve tried just about everything to manage it. I say “manage” rather than “cure,” because I don’t believe in the possibility of not being an anxious person. Having an anxiety disorder is like having asthma (and I’m quite grateful to not suffer from the latter). So it goes. No pity required—one must take responsibility for and manage their own health.

Before I did that (took responsibility for and managed my health), the allure of an AI therapist would have been immense.

If I had to summarize “anxiety” into a single experiential description, it would be this: an intolerance for uncertainty.

The unhealthy thought patterns and behaviours that anxious people sometimes engage in are methods of coping with, eliminating, or reducing one’s intolerance for uncertainty.

Take substance abuse, which can easily be understood as a method to obliterate the intolerable emotional state that uncertainty brings to an anxious person. That’s easy.

Catastrophizing, as another example, is also what can happen when an anxious person doesn’t know what might happen in any stressful or threatening situation—which feels intolerable to them. So, they work their mind through every potentiality, then settle on the worst possible outcome. Settling on “the worst possible thing is going to happen, I just know it” might not sound like a coping strategy, but it is—because it can remove uncertainty. Or, at the very least, the anxious person believes that it might reduce their uncertainty. In that respect, it is more of an attempted, rather than a successful, coping mechanism.

In a similar fashion, anxious people sometimes use others as tools to reduce their intolerance for uncertainty. There’s a term in psychology called “reassurance seeking,” and it’s common for anxious persons to draw others into this behaviour. To obtain reassurance, an anxious person might pose the same question to their friend, spouse, or therapist dozens—even hundreds—of times. The question will be, at its core, some variation of “Is it going to be okay?” or “Can you tell me that bad thing will not happen?”

When the anxious person receives the external reassurance that they were seeking, it temporarilyrelieves their anxiety (their intolerance for an uncertainty)—and this can feel amazing in the moment. It’s a short-lived relief, however. (Even shorter than any relief offered by substance use.)

This is why I think AI could be very destructive for anxiety sufferers. A friend, partner, or therapist can only take so much repetitive questioning before they snap and tell you that they will no longer be used to fuel your reassurance-seeking behaviour. It’s perfectly reasonable for a human to refuse to say “you are going to be okay” or “I’m sure it’s not cancer” every waking hour in your presence.

An AI chatbot, however, will never tell you to stop. They will never get frustrated. And you, the reassurance seeker, will never have to feel the shame associated with your compulsive behaviour. The temporary hits of relief will keep on coming, and you will likely not spend your time on healthy and effective coping mechanisms. (I recommend cognitive behavioural therapy, or CBT.)

Reassurance seeking is destructive. And it can very quickly turn into compulsive and obnoxious behaviour.

I speak from personal experience. The first time I became aware that I had a problem with this behaviour was, again, in my 20s. Someone close to me was going through a nasty legal battle, and the person they were battling in court was attempting to smear his character by any means possible—including by sharing, in court, old text conversations with his friends and family.

I became obsessed with the idea that I must have said something incriminating and that it would ruin his court case, and by extension his entire life, and that it would solely be my fault. (Of course I hadn’t, and that scenario never came to pass.)

In the months leading up to the court proceedings, I thought about it daily, sometimes getting trapped in spirals, for hours, where I’d ask my then-partner repeatedly: “Do you think I might have said something that could be used against him in court?” He would say “no” over and over. I would feel better, for shorter and shorter amounts of time, with each firm “no.” So I would have to ask more often.

I didn’t care if the repeated questioning was bothersome, because it was temporarily calming the waves crashing through my mind. I just wanted peace and calm. The asking became a problem in and of itself, and prevented me from addressing my thought process or doing something tangible to mitigate the catastrophic scenario I couldn’t stop thinking about. (This is an embarrassing admission.)

What if artificial intelligence was available then?

How many hours would I have wasted with an AI therapist, pleading for her to reassure me that I had done nothing wrong? And knowing that she would never chastise me for my compulsive behaviour? I could have carried on endlessly, without shame, and without the necessary realization that there were years of difficult work—the actual work of managing the disorder—ahead of me.

And perhaps I would have done just that—kept my nonjudgmental, reassuring AI therapist always at the ready—thus never learning the truth of what stoic Marcus Aurelius so perfectly said about anxiety:

“Today I escaped from anxiety. Or no, I discarded it, because it was within me, in my own perceptions; not outside.”

I don’t know how to introduce this post. You’ve likely seen the news, from media or my posts on X, about having been fired from my job at Vancouver Coastal Health after 13 years as a registered nurse.

The health authority was emboldened by the guilty verdict (“unprofessional conduct”) in my BC College of Nurses case. I had been under gag orders from my former employer for more than a year before getting fired. During that time, I was subjected to a campaign of harassment and bullying—but of course it was me who was ultimately and falsely framed as the aggressor.

I wrote about it in the National Post. There is a lot more to the story than could reasonably fit into a single column. Currently, I am thinking of the ways I might tell the whole story. I think it is critical to hold people to account for their cowardly actions, and for their treatment of a woman who challenged misogynistic gender ideology.

I’ve never been fired before. I can’t believe it happened.

I have sons to take care of, so there is little time for self pity. It’s time to move on to the next phase of my life.

I did set up a “Buy Me a Coffee” page for persons interested in helping me get through this “in-between” stage in my career. It embarrasses me to share it, but I cannot lie: the support helps.

Currently, I have four separate legal issues related to my advocacy for women’s sex-based rights. My legal bills are all generously paid by the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms, and am mainly working with Lisa Bildy.

1. An appeal, at the BC Supreme Court, of the BCCNM ruling that found me guilty of unprofessional conduct. We are trying to get a “stay” of the penalty hearing (where my punishment will be determined) while the appeal is heard. Timelines are unknown to me at this time.

2. A BC Human Rights Tribunal complaint against the BC College of Nurses and Midwives. I filed a discrimination complaint on the basis of “political belief.” The complaint was received, and is subject to review by the HRT. They have the power to either accept or reject the complaint.

3. Pending: A BC Human Rights Tribunal complaint against Vancouver Coastal Health, also on the basis of “political belief.” We have not filed this yet.

4. The BC Nurse’s Union is (I hope) grieving both a previous unpaid suspension and my termination from Vancouver Coastal Health. At present, a union-hired lawyer is compiling information about what happened, which they will present to the BCNU. The BCNU will then decide if they are going to fight on my behalf. Should I fail to receive representation from the BCNU, I am entitled to hire a lawyer and sue for “failure to represent.” Let’s hope that doesn’t happen.

What’s next?

Well, you can expect me to do a deep dive piece on my legal appeal, which is just so, so excellent. I wasn’t expecting to have such difficulty in reviewing the materials and details of everything that has happened, but it has proven to feel quite overwhelming. But I can’t wallow — it’s time to move on to bigger and better things!

I have some leads to follow up on in terms of employment offers. You can still find my weekly (or more) column in the National Post. I will also have a weekly column in the New Westminster Times.

With a mix of terror, excitement, and pre-emptive shyness, I am going to seriously move into creating video content, and launching a YouTube channel.

And of course you can find me here! I promise that the amount of content you will find here will only grow.

By the way: I love getting story tips and ideas, or interviewing people who have strange tales to tell. Get in touch.

Thank you for reading,

xo

Amy

Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre’s campaign strategy is too timid, and the polls—if they can be trusted—are showing it.

What’s missing from his campaign is clear: Poilievre needs to take a bold and unabashed stand against wokeness—and particularly against gender ideology.

It seems the biggest impediment to his doing so, despite his history of anti-woke and reality based comments on sex and gender, is a fear of being compared to U.S. President Trump. Trump campaigned on anti-wokeness, and defended women’s rights with an executive order, issued on his inauguration day this Jan. 20, declaring that there are two sexes. It was glorious.

While Canadians are rightfully angry with Trump over his tariffs and obnoxious annexation commentary, that does not—and will not—change the fact that Poilievre’s base, and the majority of Canadians, are sick to death of woke nonsense. We want to know that Poilievre feels the same way. Not via his offhand comments on wokeness, or by his jokingly deflecting a journalist’s question about the number of genders that exist—but by coming out and telling us: I will protect women’s spaces and sex-based rights, because I know what a woman is.

And he needs to say it—on repeat—on the campaign trail. His near silence on women’s sex-based rights has been, to me and dozens of women I’ve spoken to, a crushing disappointment.

One year ago, Poilievre defended sex-segregated sports and spaces for women, and said—reasonably—that medical transition should be restricted to consenting adults. Three months ago: he promised to say “no” to males in female prisons, should he become prime minister.

But now, he’s silent on the campaign trail.

We know that you are not Trump, Poilievre. Those who understand the scourge of wokeness on our country—its institutionalization of repressive tolerance, and its devasting impact on women’s rights and our freedom of expression, for instance—also understand that to rail against wokeness is not Trumpian. It is the only path forward for a free and prosperous Canada.

Besides, Poilievre won’t be able to change the mind of any Canadians who have already bought into that sloppy, baseless logic that says anyone who shares a talking point with the U.S. president is no different than the U.S. president. So forget them.

Poilievre needs more to offer than promises on taxes, crime, and houses. Because Liberal leader Carney—who is now facing credible academic plagiarism accusations—has done nothing but steal and repackage Poilievre’s campaign ideas. Recent polls suggest that Canadians may be falling for Carney’s campaign plagiarism, and may be willing to elect this unelected prime minister to the office he holds—but certainly does not deserve.

The Liberals, and Carney, in his economic advisory role to Justin Trudeau, got Canada into the mess we are in. Carney has never expressed a word of dissent over Trudeau’s hyper-woke “Lost Decade.” His begging for another Liberal chance is really just a plea for Canadians to inflict themselves with Stockholm Syndrome. No thank you.

An official email advertising a Conservative rally last week in Surrey, B.C. read: “A fourth Liberal term with Mark Carney in office will be just like the previous three. It'll mean higher taxes, higher housing costs, more food bank lineups and raging crime in our streets. We can’t let that happen. Only a Common Sense Conservative government led by Pierre Poilievre will put Canada first and axe the tax, build the homes, fix the budget and stop the crime. Let’s rally together to help make it happen and bring home the Canada we know and love.”

Great—but it's too tame.

Right now, Conservatives are scarcely standing apart from the Liberals. Part of me expected that Poilievre had a revised campaign strategy to launch after the writ dropped—a strategy that would shock and awe Canadians and drive the Liberals into negative polling numbers. That didn’t happen, unfortunately.

It now appears that if the Liberals are to slip in the polls, it will be due to their own gaffes and scandals. (Which, by the way, they are handsomely delivering on.)

As a co-founder of Canadian Women’s Sex-Based Rights, I’ve had the pleasure of speaking to hundreds of Canadians who oppose gender ideology over the past several years. A near-universal theme, in conversations with women from across the country and political spectrum, is that they want a leader who will firmly oppose the misogyny and falsehoods of gender ideology. So far, the Conservative party has largely shied away from this topic.

That’s a mistake.

We women are half of the population. We aren’t a minority, and our concerns are not fringe. We do not want to be left guessing as to how a Conservative government plans to address our valid outrage about the erosion of women’s rights in Canada since the passage of Bill C-16—the bill that opened the door to gender self-identification policies.

If a Poilievre PM is going to remove males from female prisons, does that mean he plans to repeal C-16? Is there a plan at all?

Poilievre, please don’t be timid on women’s sex-based rights. We are waiting to hear from you.

***

Thank you for reading.

If you haven’t heard, I was fired from my 13-year job as a registered nurse with Vancouver Coastal Health last week—all because of my outspokenness on women’s rights and free speech. (I will be sharing updates publicly.)

Thank you so much to all who support my work here. If you’re able to do a paid subscription, it would be immensely appreciated.

Amy

I will have a lot more to say in the coming days, including in my regular National Post column. But—the fight isn’t over.

You can read the ruling by clicking here.

The Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms issued this notice about the ruling:

Thank you for your support,

Amy

PS Transwomen are men.

This International Women’s Day, on March 8, caWsbar held our second annual Reality Based Women Unite event. We met in Calgary (last year it was held in Toronto), and look forward to meeting in another city in 2026.

Speakers included Maureen Sullivan, Drea Humphrey, Ghislane Gendron, Heather Mason, and Kara Dansky.

The day after our event, Heather Mason led a large—and well-received—protest in downtown Calgary to raise awareness about the dangerous males being housed inside women’s prisons in Canada. It was even mentioned by Fox News.

This is a copy of my speech:

Today I want to speak to you about defeating gender ideology in Canada after our next federal election. What a tumultuous road this country has been on just waiting for an election that feels like it might never come—and it’s still not clear exactly when it will. I’ve been calling this period in Canada “political purgatory.” It certainly feels as though we are trapped in some in-between country. Not the Canada we knew, and not the Canada we want.

I’m pleased with rumblings that Mark Carney may call an early election, should he win leadership of his party.

Carney’s honeymoon with the media and public is over and it also looks as though whatever bump he provided to the Liberal party is not significant enough to take away the Pierre Poilievre Conservative majority government that we can all feel coming.

Putting aside the reservations that some of us may have about the right side of the political spectrum, I do think it’s widely accepted among gender critical or sex realist persons that our Conservative party is no longer sympathetic to “wokeness” which, of course, includes gender ideology.

As such, they are the best party to represent us in this fight. We are going to, in 2025, end up with a government that recognizes females as a distinct sex class from males. (It’s thrilling just to say that out loud.)

Whether we will see the types of sweeping promises to women and girls that we saw President Trump make with his executive orders on biological sex and women’s sports remains to be seen. Regardless, there will finally be members of parliament, and a prime minister, who recognize reality, are not afraid of reality, and can do something about it.

But—not without our ongoing work and dedication, which takes me back to the purpose of my talk. That is to start a dialogue about the work that we have left to do.

Gender ideology, we know, is a house of cards. And in some places, it’s falling. In Canada, it rather feels as though someone built our gender ideology house of cards using crazy glue. (Crazy glue of course being the only type of glue that could hold such a whacky and flimsy house together.)

But anyways, we are going to have to dismantle this thing through our own efforts. We can’t simply rely upon Poilievre or his MPs to do this, without our prodding, our helping, and our insisting. And we will.

We also must recognize that our work on shifting our culture, and opening the eyes of our fellow Canadians, is not over. And is crucial.

So let’s get into that.

I have been reading John Stuart Mill’s On Liberty, which he wrote in 1859, and I must share a passage with you today. For those unfamiliar, On Liberty is a both defence of freedom and an examination of tyranny.

Mill wrote:

“Like other tyrannies, the tyranny of the majority was at first, and is still vulgarly, held in dread, chiefly as operating through the acts of the public authorities. But reflecting persons perceived that when society itself is the tyrant—society collectively, over the separate individuals who compose it—its means of tyrannizing are not restricted to the acts which it may do by the hands of its political functionaries. Society can and does execute its own mandates: and if it issues wrong mandates instead of right, or any mandates at all in things with which it ought not to meddle, it practices a social tyranny more formidable than many kinds of political oppression, since, though not usually upheld by such extreme penalties, it leaves fewer means of escape, penetrating much more deeply into the details of life, and enslaving the soul itself. Protection, therefore, against the tyranny of the magistrate is not enough; there needs protection also against the tyranny of the prevailing opinion and feeling; against the tendency of society to impose, by other means than civil penalties, its own ideas and practices as rules of conduct on those who dissent from them; to fetter the development, and, if possible, prevent the formation, of any individuality not in harmony with its ways, and compel all characters to fashion themselves upon the model of its own. There is a limit to the legitimate interference of collective opinion with individual independence; and to find that limit, and maintain it against encroachment, is as indispensable to a good condition of human affairs, as protection against political despotism.”

When I read this passage, I cannot stop thinking about gender ideology.

Mill spoke on the tyranny of a prevailing orthodoxy. An orthodoxy based on what he called “wrong mandates” or mandates that should not be imposed at all. That’s gender ideology. Mill said that the enforcement of a wrong mandate creates a unique type of oppression.

A deep oppression, that afflicts victims to their core. In their everyday lives. That is contrasted to the oppression inflicted upon citizens via a political tyranny. And we need to, he said, figure out the guardrails or appropriate limits to how a prevailing orthodoxy—but an appropriate one, not one based on a “wrong mandate”—might infringe upon our liberties.

That is the same concept of figuring out the guardrails of a political system, where you need to have defined individual rights and constitutional checks.

In Canada, gender ideologues are currently inflicting both tyrannies on all of us. The social tyranny. And the political tyranny. Both need to be dismantled.

What does the social tyranny look like? It’s this: it’s the people who disowned us, their friends, for refusing to say that trans women are women. They’ve inflicted social penalties where they don’t have the power to inflict political ones. It is their shunning, their excommunication and their gossip. These are painful and punishing things to have happen to a social creature, as we all are. The impact is often profound, as I am sure many of us in this room can attest to.

The social tyranny is also every act of fealty performed in service of gender ideology despite one’s internal discomfort. From adding pronouns to your work email signature when you know that it is a silly thing to do, and it irks you, irritatingly. It is also the pit of fear that women and girls shove into the depths of their being when they feel their natural and biological reaction to a male—to an unknown threat—within the spaces where they want to be and deserve to be safe and away from males.

It is the voice inside their minds that says “I’m afraid” or “I’m uncomfortable”—or even, hell, “That’s a linebacker in stilettos and a dollar store wig”—but which the mind supresses and forcibly, under the social tyranny, ignores.

And then there is the political tyranny. Our government undermined and eviscerated women’s sex-based rights by legislating gender ideology into our human rights act and criminal code. We know this. We know that Bill C-16, and the addition of “gender identity” to our laws was not an act of liberty.

It was not an act to provide any necessary or absent freedoms within our society, certainly not for women. It was an act that legislated tyranny against our sex class.

Our governments and institutions, since 2017, have been infiltrated and taken over by many who either gleefully or thoughtlessly impose gender ideology’s social tyranny. And within our institutions, they exercise, with politics, the very same coercive and evil mandates.

Many of these people will remain in positions of power even after a federal election.

We can look to the United States to see what sort of struggles are ahead of us. This week, Democrats in the US senate managed to thwart and block passage of the “Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act.” The Act, of course, would have made sports sex segregated, as they should be.

Women, like Kara Dansky, have been doing ongoing work to meet with political opponents, to meet with Democrats, and explain the issue. Because within this political and social tyranny of gender ideology that we all live under, some people still simply do not understand what is going on. They do not fully understand the opposition to this issue, or they haven’t examined their complicity in upholding gender ideology.

They are not enforcers, so to speak, so much as people who are executing the mandates of a social tyranny because it has so infiltrated their minds. And they still might be convinced otherwise, if shown the illogic and the cruelty of the positions they’ve assumed. If encouraged to listen to the voice inside their minds that knows that all of gender ideology is a lie.

And if they are shown that the immense pressure that they are under to conform to gender orthodoxy is, in 2025, a pressure exerted by a smaller and smaller minority of hateful zealots.

And that the pain one expects to feel if and when they refuse to continue to execute the mandates of this social tyranny—from within their positions of political power—is not pain, but instead, a path to freedom. And to self-respect.

We, all of us, can lead the way by showing and convincing such persons how we personally have been targeted by but ultimately foiled gender ideology’s social tyranny and—while it hasn’t always been easy—we have a clear conscience for having done so. We need to get through to people like this.

Cowardice is ultimately more painful than living in reality.

I know that many of us are already tackling this difficult work in their own communities. What I want to impress upon everyone is that we have no time to let off the gas, even if or when we get a new government.

Our fight is far from over. And in some respects, it is about to get more difficult. But—that’s only because we are on the precipice of victory.

In psychology, the principle of “extinction burst” refers to an intensification of an unwanted behaviour when that behaviour stops being reinforced. An extinction burst looks like a tantrum, or a fit, performed when one is not getting what they are accustomed to receiving. We must expect a great extinction burst from Canada’s gender tyrants once the country has elected a government that no longer caters to their falsehoods.

And we must remember that these tyrants, or their uncritical minions, are widespread within our government and institutions.

Our senate—where Justin Trudeau just appointed five new senators, days before he is out as Prime Minister, and 10 total in this year alone—and our judiciary. Our Supreme Court has a majority of judges—six out of nine—appointed by Justin Trudeau.

We can pray for, but should not expect, their impartiality.

Our healthcare regulators are similarly stacked institutions. The BC College of Nurses—need I say more? Well, their CEO and registrar was just appointed as BC’s deputy minister of health, by our NDP government. No doubt this was an intentional move to place a reality-denying gender cultist into a higher position of power, at a time when the BC NDP must answer to an opposition party that doesn’t entertain their nonsense ideology.

We can look at all of this and feel dismayed. But I suggest feeling hopeful and motivated instead.

Last year, when we met on International Women’s Day in Toronto, I wouldn’t have believed it possible for Canadians to repeal Bill C-16. I do think it’s possible, now. We have made enormous gains over the past year. We have mainstreamed opposition to gender ideology—in Canada.

No one can point to us and say that we are lone bigots, strangely obsessed with others’ genitals. No. That ship has sailed. The public largely knows that this is not some niche issue we are here speaking about today.

Gender tyrants do not deserve to hold the power they do. John Stuart Mill’s On Liberty reminds us of the seriousness of the behaviour of these people.

Some people believe that we should just ignore gender ideology until it goes away, not understanding that gender ideology won’t suffocate under the weight of its own bullshit. Because it’s more than a nonsense ideology—it is a vehicle for the social and political tyranny that plagues mass societies across space and time.

This is a noble fight. It’s a fight for women, for children, and for liberty. We, all of us, are a force against a brutal form of social and political tyranny.

Keep up the fight, because we are so close to winning.

Happy International Women’s Day!

Evolutionary biologist Colin Wright recently drew public attention to peer-reviewed public health journal, Health Promotion Perspectives (HPP), for their bizarre (to say the least) article from a Western Oregon University professor: a poem about her elective and “gender affirming” hysterectomy.

The poem was published in HPP this month and is little more than a solipsistic rant by one self-identified “non-binary” woman, Lauren Bouchard, who had her uterus removed aged 31.

On its website, HPP is described as “a peer-reviewed and multidisciplinary forum for the publication of studies aimed at understanding the implications and approaches to health promotion and public health.”

Bouchard’s article is titled “Poetry for the Public’s Health.”

Prefacing her poem, Bouchard bashfully tells readers that she was only able to have a hysterectomy because of her "educational, geographical, and racial privilege." (Bad girl! Give yourself 10 lashes for all that privilege!) She refers to persons like herself as “gender expansive” and claims that "public health can benefit from the irreverence of gender euphoria." I can only assume that Bouchard doesn’t know the definition of “irreverence”—and likely meant to say “reverence” instead. Anyways…

Her poem, she argues, is about "resisting moral panic one stanza at a time." Even the best and brightest healthcare practitioners, Bouchard writes, can be intrusive, ignorant, and infantilizing towards patients like her. You know, patients that will review their own charts in search of evidence of their doctors’ and nurses’ alleged ignorance, will demand to be referred to in the plural, and then mock the same doctors and nurses—à la channelling the late Dr. Seuss—for going along with it: “We showed our care to They Them Theirs.”

First, the poem (some formatting was lost in translation, but who the f*ck cares, really)—followed by my thoughts:

My hysterectomy was the jackpot

after years playing fruity fertility slots

again

and again

and again

eight years until

three crimson cherries

let me begin the real conversation

Before then, birth control, P-M-mess,

lose some weight, assumed regrets,

imaginary husband, hypothetical baby,

nothing we can do, you’re a little bit crazy

How much did I bleed on waiting room chairs

while I waited to be seen?

Academia legitimized me,

even when I entered the Women’s Center

without a women’s center

The doctor still hesitated—

wouldn’t I want kids? (we don’t want kids)

what if I changed my mind? (we have another

uterus at home)

The medical notes verbatim stated:

“Patient is a 31 year old with history of severe

pelvic pain

and abnormal bleeding with suspected endo-

metriosis based on history.

“Of note the patient is non-binary with preferred pronouns of they/them.”

“They was scheduled

for a total laparoscopic hysterectomy

with bilateral salpingectomy and

cystoscopy.”

“They was counseled

extensively on treatment options

and desired to proceed with

definitive management.”

“They was consented,

discussing the risks of bleeding, blood

transfusion, infection, damage to

surrounding organs, conversion to open

procedure and agreed to proceed.”

We showed our care to They Them Theirs

and it wasn’t even June yet

We was pros at nouns, and our notes were EPIC

It could only have been the Oxy, but I laughed at the

syntax

because I was just a body of water

without a pool of blood

Leave a MyChart message—they aren’t here right

now

to correct, educate, or advocate

They was elated

their body elucidated

Tomorrow, the body of work would start again

Where to start? The poem is terrible—just excruciatingly godawful—but, let’s not bother going there. This isn’t from a poetry magazine, after all: it’s from a bloody academic journal!

The article and poem are blatant political activism, rather than any sort of knowledge or evidence-based editorializing. And academic journals do indeed publish editorials. Rarely are they so unhinged—outside of the less academically rigorous arts departments—though. Bouchard’s rant isn’t labelled by HPP as an editorial, but I am giving them the (undeserved) benefit of the doubt and assuming it was not presented as authoritative public health research.

For anyone in healthcare to normalize, promote, and valorize medically unnecessary surgery for the purpose of gender indoctrination—at a time when “gender affirming care” is being outed as the medical scandal of our lifetimes—is heinous. It is reckless. It is unethical, immoral, and stupid.

Hysterectomies, mastectomies, "bottom surgeries"—these are not things worthy of celebration.

A young woman who has undergone a total hysterectomy can expect a host of terrible side effects: menopause (if her ovaries were also removed); vaginal prolapse; sexual dysfunction; and urinary incontinence—to name a few.

Is peeing one’s pants a type of gender euphoria?

No medical professionals, or medical journals, have any excuse for their continued participation in gender ideology and its well-document harms. I have moved past granting a grace period to health care professionals who’ve yet to critically examine their ignorance towards, or complicity in, "gender affirming care."

The evidence and reality-based opposition to “gender-affirming” care—the truth, in other words—is no longer buried. It’s out there, for all of us to see. No excuses remain.

As Colin Wright from put it: “Why is this published in a peer-reviewed health journal? What does peer review even entail for a piece like this? WTF is going on?”

WTF indeed.

___

Thanks for reading,

Amy

Wow, what a year of ups and downs it has been for every person on Earth.

Between the Middle East, the U.S. election, the U.K. riots and free-speech crackdown, the developments in the culture war that are causing wokeness and gender ideology to fall like a house of cards, Trudeau and Singh merrily grinding Canada to a pulp, and JK Rowling gifting me a $5,000 Gucci purse (it’s still in the mail)—so much history has been stuffed into 2024. It was overwhelming.

Despite the hustle, the daily news, and the ongoing battles, I’m trying to slow down and enjoy the Christmas season. I absolutely adore Christmas. A year ago, you might recall that I ran an X survey and then published a Substack piece asking whether or not it is cruel or abusive to tell children that Santa Claus is real.

Respondents were divided, and many shared their “traumatic” experience upon learning the truth. It had me second-guessing my decision to go all-in on the Santa lie—particularly for my oldest son, Llewyn, who has a sweet and sensitive soul. I figured he would discover the truth in 2024—he did—and I had no idea how he would react.

Here’s how it went: My younger son, Ainsley, was asking why he hasn’t lost any teeth yet, and therefore has to unfairly suffer the profound jealousy of seeing his older brother collect stacks of coins from the Tooth Fairy. Llewyn then popped into the conversation and said: “I know that the Tooth Fairy isn’t actually real!” I whipped my head around to give him my best bulging, crazy eyes in an effort at communicating a non-verbal “stop talking,” but not before he continued with: “And I know about San—”

“SHHHHH!” I panicked. I reassured Ainsley that the Tooth Fairy is very real and very strapped with cash. Then I took Llewyn aside and asked him to not spoil the fun for his brother. “I know about Santa too!” he emphasized.

He wasn’t angry at all. He was simply proud of himself for having acquired this information, which, to him, seemed to represent nothing more than an evolution in maturity. He held knowledge that separated him from the “little kids,” those naive little things. Christmas—or trust in his mother—wasn’t ruined at all. Thank God.

I wrote about Christmas again this year, but for the National Post. I implored Canadians to bring back the traditional Christmas season that I fondly recall from childhood, particularly during the years I lived in Edmonton, Alberta. If you’d care to, drop a line in the comment section about your own Christmas memories and traditions.

This also marks my third year celebrating a new Christmas ritual with my boyfriend.

After my divorce, it felt devastating to realize that I would have to split time over Christmas with my ex. The boys should spend time at both homes, and see both sides of the family over the holidays, but knowing that didn’t make it easier to go through a Christmas Eve dinner or a Christmas night without them.

Here’s where the new ritual comes in: We go downtown Vancouver on Christmas Eve (or the day before, depending on the boys’ schedule). We dress up to the nines, and buy fancy cocktails from luxurious hotel bars. We end up at one bar in particular (I won’t share the location for obvious reasons). Later, we head into a gorgeous old church for midnight mass. If it snows, it’s even more magical.

The first year we did this together, I nearly broke into tears partway through the night—because I realized that the sadness and anxiety of not being with my sons for the entire holiday was suddenly tolerable. I was with another person I love dearly, making cherished memories. I told him this as we were hurriedly walking between hotel lounges, huddling together in the snowy cold. He stopped walking to give me an all-encompassing hug. Then we carried on. It felt like a little broken-off piece of my heart had been repaired right there on the sidewalk.

There is nothing more important about Christmas than love. The love you feel watching your children decorate, eat sweet treats, and open their presents. The love you feel when you finish the cooking, cleaning, decorating, and wrapping and finally get to sit back and enjoy it all with friends and family.

This December, I feel that good things are on the horizon.

I hope you are all going into 2025 with a similar sense of optimism, and I wish each of you a Merry Christmas.

xo

Amy