Kimberly Nixon is a statuesque brunette with high cheekbones, fluffy bangs, gold hoop earrings, a broad chest, slim hips, and a large chin. To the untutored eye, she looks a bit like a man in a dress, which is not surprising in that she is equipped with a full set of XY chromosomes.

Ms. Nixon, however, has decided she's a woman. It says so on her driver's licence. She has declared that her chief desire in life is to work as a volunteer counsellor in a rape-crisis centre. And the B.C. Human Rights Commission, a stern defender of the rights of the transgendered, thinks she ought to have her way. Ms. Nixon is now arguing her case before the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal, which is separate from the commission and hears cases the commission recommends.

One might be excused for thinking that the real victim of injustice in this case is not Kimberly Nixon, but the Vancouver Rape Relief Society, a grassroots outfit that has been performing a valuable service on a shoestring for more than 25 years. It has spent the past five years trying to mollify the aggrieved complainant, alas to no avail. Future victims could well include women, many of them raised in highly traditional cultures, who seek the centre's help. They may be disconcerted to find themselves being counselled through the worst trauma of their lives by someone who appears to be a man in drag.

"We feel a bit beleaguered by it all," says Rape Relief worker Suzanne Jay.

Ms. Nixon, who was born male, has lived as a woman for 14 years. She had sex-change surgery in 1990. In 1995, she showed up at Rape Relief for a volunteer training session, and was invited to leave after reluctantly disclosing her original gender. Her feelings were quite hurt. "I could barely see because of the tears in my eyes," she testified on Monday. "All I could think of was the Lions Gate Bridge -- jumping off the bridge."

The very next day, she lodged a discrimination complaint with the B.C. Human Rights Commission.

Human-rights commissions, perhaps running out of other wrongs to right, have lately turned to the rights of the transgendered. In British Columbia, transgendered persons claiming affronts to their dignity have won several cases. Ironically, the losers tend to be feminist volunteer groups that pride themselves on being bias-free, and have few resources to defend themselves.

The people at Rape Relief maintain that growing up female is a bona fide occupational requirement for being a rape-crisis counsellor. Even so, they felt bad that they'd hurt Ms. Nixon's feelings. "We were very apologetic," Suzanne Jay told me. "We looked for ways for her to make a contribution. We suggested she could join a group that raises money for us. We suggested mediation. We offered her $500 to say we were sorry." But Ms. Nixon would have none of it.

Unfortunately for Rape Relief, the whole weight of B.C. law and precedent is on the other side. It says that, if Ms. Nixon says she's a woman, then she is a woman, and people have to treat her like any other woman. Ms. Nixon wants $10,000. She also wants Rape Relief to throw open its doors to all transgendered people and to get sensitivity training for all its volunteers in order to cure them of transphobia.

Feminists are torn up about this one. Judy Rebick will testify for the defence. But other rape-crisis groups have opened their arms to the transgendered. Academics who think gender is a social construct are also on Ms. Nixon's side. And the Human Rights Commission will argue that the rape-relief centre is guilty of "stereotypical biases."

Should you be able to change genders if you don't like the one you were born with? In Canada, the institutional answer is yes, and plenty of trained professionals will help you do it. They will diagnose you with gender-identity disorder or gender dysphoria, and they will offer elaborate, painful and mutilating cures, which, in B.C., are covered by health insurance. Maybe you'll feel better after, or maybe not. No one really knows.

But what if the right answer is not yes? Paul McHugh, chief of psychiatry at Johns Hopkins University, calls it malpractice. "Surgical sex change is nonsense, resting as it does on the preposterous assumption that one's biologic constitution is as much a malleable artifact as one's dress," he wrote recently.

Some people are convinced they can only be fulfilled if they have a leg amputated. But most of us believe that amputating their legs is unethical. Maybe some day we'll think the same way about the people who encouraged Ms. Nixon to amputate her penis.

We can castrate her and shave her Adam's apple. We can give her electrolysis and hormone injections and breast implants. But one thing we cannot do is change her Y chromosome into an X -- no matter what the Human Rights Commission says.