Feminists Protect the Idea of a Woman-only Space: One Centre's Fight in Response to a Human Right's Complaint
Vancouver Rape Relief’s Public Response, April 16, 2000
The Vancouver Rape Relief Society (Rape Relief) is a non-profit, women's organization. We are organized as peers to both aid the violated women who come to us and to contribute to changing the conditions in society that allow or foster that sexist violence against women.
We operate a twenty four hour crisis line, support groups, public education campaigns, and a shelter for women and children escaping violence. All members of this collective come into direct contact with women in crisis because of male violence. In order to protect our collective from sex discrimination complaints, we obtained an approval to operate as a women-only organization under the 1973 Human Rights Code of British Columbia, the predecessor to the current human rights legislation in the province.
Nevertheless, since 1995, we have been operating under the shadow of a human rights complaint of sex discrimination. The complaint is by an individual self-identifying as female, who wanted to volunteer as a counsellor and collective member in our rape crisis centre and transition house. It alleges a denial of the opportunity to volunteer on the ground of sex, thus raising significant issues about the intersection of equality rights for women and transsexual people.
The Human Rights Commission has now referred the complaint for hearing by a Tribunal. We are defending ourselves against this complaint. Does Rape Relief support equality and human rights for transsexual people?
Yes, we strongly support equality and human rights for everyone facing discrimination, including on the ground of gender identity. At the moment transsexual people have no clear legal protection. That's why we supported the call to Ujjal Dosanjh, the Attorney General, to introduce a new law that would protect transsexuals, but would not erode the rights of women. Along with several academics, legal practitioners and feminist activists, we got an appointment and put the case to him directly. Why is Rape Relief defending itself rather than accepting all people who self-identify as women as volunteers?
Our attempts at mediation were unsuccessful.
In taking a position on the complaint the Human Rights Commission has said that one issue is the validity of our women-only approval. The complaint has therefore brought into question our ability to continue as a women-only organization.
We believe it is not a violation of the Human Rights Code to exclude from volunteer training any individual who has grown up as a man and who our clients would not accept as a woman. We cannot agree that sex is a matter of subjectivity alone.
We do not agree that every person that honestly claims to be a woman or to wish to be a woman is one. We think that body parts, human history, growing-up experiences, social shaping all matter.
It is our practice to seek volunteers who can use their experience as women and girls, with the insights that experience can give them into male violence and women's inequality, to help women in crisis because of male violence.
Why are you going to court to try to stop the hearing by a Tribunal?
The BC Human Rights Code does not include discrimination on the basis of gender identity, and so we think that the complaint should not have been referred to a hearing.
We would like the court to decide the legal issue of whether sex discrimination legally includes discrimination on the basis of gender identity before our organization is subjected to the costs, both economic and political, and stress of a hearing.
Our case illustrates the serious difficulties for women's groups in trying to protect transsexual people from discrimination by trying to bend the current law, or pretend that it means something that it doesn't, rather than introduce a law which protects equality and human rights of all disadvantaged groups involved in this issue. We would have preferred a united front in pressing for such a law, but we must accept that we have been targeted, and that a case is proceeding which will cost us some tens of thousands of dollars to fight. We considered not defending the case and paying a fine but decided that we have lost three women-only spaces in our city over this issue and that it is time to stand and fight.
As well, the case has taken so long to be referred for hearing that we don't feel that a fair inquiry into events of 5 years ago is possible. Are you going to court to argue against human rights for transsexual people?
No, the argument is not about whether transsexual people should have legal protection from discrimination. It is about whether current BC law includes that protection under the ground of sex discrimination. We support the inclusion of discrimination on the basis of gender identity, but that can be achieved without requiring women-only organizations to pay the cost of being legally obliged to accept men or any individual who claims to be a woman. Thus, we don't agree that the prohibition of sex discrimination in the Code requires that people who identify as women must be treated as women for all purposes. The interests of two disadvantaged groups, women and transsexual people, are involved here. The hearing of this complaint will not advance the complex process of framing and defining legal protections for transsexual persons in a way that prevents the unintended erosion of the legal protection of women's equality.
Are you worried about this case?
Yes, we are very worried. We have very firm opinions about the rights of people to love who they will and to dress and talk and have sex in a variety of ways. Some of us are opposed to gender surgery and some of us are skeptical of the medical model of gender dysphoria. But we are united in a belief that people must have protections from discrimination. To be accused of not acting on that fundamental belief is very distressing. But we also value and will protect the work done by the independent women's movement in the last thirty years in creating transition houses rape crisis centres and women centres. These women only centres have played an important role in advancing the equality of women and in providing comfort and safety to individual women.
We would have much preferred a united front to find solutions for transsexual people. These solutions are complicated not simple and need our political skills. So it is important to us to fight this case with the greatest level of integrity and to avoid being used by the state in any homophobic pincer action.
We are fortunate in having been able to retain two renowned human rights and women's rights advocates in Gwen Brodsky and Christine Boyle. Both have reputations beyond reproach. Both have fought all their adult lives for the equality rights of the dispossessed and the marginalized. Most of their work will be pro bono. Happily as well, we have had offers of help from academics, activists and feminist theorists in every province, from most major universities and from the international women's movement. More and more frontline women's services are joining us because they see the implications of this case - a basic fight over whether we can have women-only women's centres, rape crisis centres and transition houses.