First day of hearing before B.C. Human Rights Commission

A man who had been surgically transformed into a woman was so distraught at being rejected as a counsellor for a women-only rape crisis centre that she considered suicide, a human rights tribunal heard yesterday.

Kimberley Nixon's account came at the beginning of an unusual hearing that already has dragged one of Canada's oldest rape-counselling centres through the courts over allegations that its women-only policy is discriminatory.

The Vancouver Rape Relief centre says only women can counsel female victims of rape. Ms. Nixon, 42, and her lawyer argued yesterday that she should have been allowed to try.

Yesterday, Ms. Nixon took the hearing back to a 1995 night, recalling how she was picked out of a group of about 35 volunteers by a centre co-ordinator who took her aside to ask if she was a man.

Ms. Nixon had been through surgery to change her gender.

"I said, 'I am not a man,'" Ms. Nixon testified yesterday on the first day of a two-week hearing before a tribunal of the B.C. Human Rights Commission.

Nonetheless, Ms. Nixon was ordered to leave, even after she sought the support of the volunteers attending the orientation session.

"I was hoping someone might speak up and say "This is wrong "' recalled Ms. Nixon, who has been a woman for about 20 years.

"I walked back to the car and could barely see because of the tears in my eyes," said Ms. Nixon.

"All I could think of was the Lions Gate Bridge ... jumping off the bridge."

Instead, she started a process that has run through the B.C. Supreme, Court, which ruled against an effort by the centre to throw out Ms. Nixon's complaint to the human rights commission, and to the tribunal.

Ms. Nixon has held various jobs over the years. She once trained as a pilot and progressed to the point of learning to fly Dash-8 aircraft before quitting. She decided she wanted to help other women after she was physically abused by a male partner.

A lawyer for the centre struck back at Ms. Nixon's arguments. "Rape Relief says that life experience of growing up being treated as a girl and woman is a bona fide occupational requirement for its peer counsellors," said Victoria Gray.

Ms. Gray said she will call Judy Rebick, a former head of the National Action Committee on the Status of Women, to testify on the principle of women's groups organized along common experiences. The centre's "political belief" is that "male violence is a symptom of a sexist society in which women are oppressed by men," said Ms. Gray.

Ms. Nixon is seeking various remedies, including a one-day workshop at the centre on discrimination against transgendered people that would be attended by all staff and volunteers and a posting on the centre's Web site that transgendered women are welcome. She is also seeking $10,000.

A lawyer for the human rights commission, a party to the case, said they would be siding with Ms. Nixon, noting that it would be inappropriate to prevent a woman from participating as a counsellor because of "stereotypical biases."