Groin-waxing human rights complainant has history of anti-immigrant comments

How does the intersectionality approach issues like this?

New anti-immigrant comments from self-identified transwoman Jessica Yaniv — who has complaints against female immigrant estheticians before the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal for refusing to wax her male genitalia — have surfaced, shedding more light on the complainant whose lawsuits have made international headlines.

“lol i cant stand asians (sic),” wrote Yaniv in one Facebook conversation, according to a report this weekfrom Montreal-based news outlet The Post Millennial.

In the conversation, Yaniv described to a former online friend how she got an Asian e-commerce seller penalized on eBay.

In another conversation there’s both audio and a written message where Yaniv refers to Sikhs disparagingly.

“Can’t stand them turban f–kers,” she wrote in one message.

“Like, I was just having a joke with one of my friends on Snapchat. I was like ‘Okay, this guy is a turban f–ker.’ And the media decided to take this and make it into a whole big spiel over a three-second audio clip,” explained Yaniv to the Sun in a phone interview.

“And my defence for that is that I was pissed and the the guy literally rejected me for a massage after I mentioned I’m transgender.”

In another social media conversation — which the defence presented at the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal as evidence of Yaniv having a history of bigotry towards different minority groups — she sounds off on immigrants in B.C. generally.

“We have a lot of immigrants here who gawk and judge and aren’t exactly the cleanest people. They’re also verbally and physically abusive… They lie about s–t, they’ll do anything to support their miserable kind and make things miserable for everyone else.”

Critics such as Calgary Herald columnist Licia Corbella argued that getting one’s groin waxed is not a human right.

“Inherently, the right of a woman not to wax a man or a woman’s genitals has to be as fundamental a human right as one can find,” said employment lawyer Howard Levitt.

“I think that now that the public is looking at [Yaniv’s human rights claims,] and realize how outrageous it is, the B.C. Tribunal, fearful for keeping their jobs — will find a way to dismiss these cases. …The public glare is a wonderful thing sometimes.”

Yaniv told the Sun she was only discriminated against and rejected from getting a Brazilian wax once she disclosed she is transgender to 16 salons.

“These estheticians do male waxing,” claims Yaniv. “All of these waxing treatments were under the name Jonathan. It was only after I mentioned that I’m transgender that they ended up [declining] me service.

Calgary constitutional lawyer Jay Cameron is providing pro bono legal representation to five of the 13 respondents, some minority women, that Yaniv is suing and disputes Yaniv’s claims.

“The idea that the state would compel or punish a woman who is not trained and who is not comfortable to wax male genitals and fine her for refusing on the basis of gender identity or expression is just beyond the pale,” said Cameron

The Post Millennial also reported on sexually inappropriate conversations Yaniv allegedly had with then-underage girls.

“From speaking to five victims, three of which I profiled for The Post Millennial, I learned Yaniv demonstrated patterns of clearly disturbing sexual and emotionally abusive behaviour, specifically towards young girls,” said journalist Anna Slatz.

“Of the three girls I profiled, two had been subjected to vastly inappropriate and unwanted attentions from Yaniv when they were just 14 years old. The attentions surrounded sex, menstruation, and access to various women’s washrooms where Yaniv seemed to believe nude young girls would be present.”

Yaniv told the Sun “It’s a bunch of crap,”

“Yaniv’s assertion that the victims I profiled provided fake or photoshopped is demonstrably untrue,” says Slatz.

Levitt says the Human Rights Tribunals in Canada tend to “go on messianic, ideological missions… They attract as their judges or as their supposedly neutral chairs radical zealots in lots of cases. And they interpret the law to enhance their own power and jurisdiction, and pursue the standards of political correctness that are anathema to most Canadians.”

Source: Groin-waxing human rights complainant has history of anti-immigrant comments

Andrew Sullivan provides his perspective on what considerations should apply in such cases and the need for more nuance:

If Jessica Yaniv did not exist, the religious right and Fox News would have to invent her. Yaniv is a trans woman in Canada who has been suing multiple businesses for abuse of her human rights under British Columbia’s laws. She booked various appointments online with local female-only beauticians to get a Brazilian wax, and was refused when she showed up. The reason is that Yaniv has male genitalia.

Many of the beauticians worked out of their own homes with children present, most were immigrant women, one with Sikh religious strictures against touching male genitals other than her husband’s. The notion that women can have male genitalia hadn’t dawned on these obvious bigots when they decided to open up beauty shops, and they felt humiliated and exploited by the request. The cases have not yet been decided, but the women are already feeling the repercussions on both a personal and professional level. A lawyer representing some of the women says that one has been unable to sleep for months, racked with depression and anxiety: she eventually closed down her business; others think they might follow suit soon. And even if the cases don’t succeed, and their businesses stay open, the stigma of being associated with bigotry will linger.

In Ricky Gervais’s words: “How did we get to the point where women are having to fight for the right to choose whether they wax some big old hairy cock and balls or not? It is not a human right to have your meat and 2 veg polished.” But, according to British Columbia’s definition of human rights, it is, if you are a woman. Female-only salons have to accept every woman, including those with balls. And according to the proposed Equality Act, the gay lobby’s chief legislative goal, backed by every Democratic candidate, it would be a human right in America as well. Yaniv has described the beauticians’ refusals as “hate crimes.” And technically, they might be.

The case, of course, is a very, very rare one in its grotesquerie. Yaniv is an obviously somewhat disturbed troll. She has allegedly made creepy overturesto underage girls online, has been cited by a 14-year-old for alleged “child exploitation,” and she is now applying for a permit to host a topless swimming-pool party for “LGBTQ2S” individuals, 12 and above, without their parents being present. She has long seemed obsessed with tampons, says she has heavy periods, has publicly inveighed against immigrants, and has exulted when she has forced businesses to close down. She’s an extreme outlier in many ways — and terrible PR for other trans people who are not seeking this kind of pointless, offensive conflict. No serious trans groups support her. They rightly see her as a threat to the trans movement, confirming the worst allegations against trans people made by the hard right. Largely ignored by the mainstream American press, she has even inspired a hashtag worthy of Eric Cartman: #waxmyballs.

The trouble is, the way this issue is currently being understood, it’s hard to think of how you prevent trolls or fanatics like Yaniv from gaming the system. If your gender is determined entirely by self-definition, needs no further support or evidence, and always trumps genital biology, it’s a legal regime ripe for abuse. The current insistence that a trans woman is a woman in every single respect also ends in the absurdity of talking about a woman’s scrotum. It should be possible to defend trans women and trans men from discrimination without being forced into a surreal world, where a penis is a female organ and a vagina is a male one.

The truth is that trans people have the body of one sex and the mind and psyche of another. The mind is a much more central part of human identity than the genitals, and that is what ultimately should determine gender. But respecting this — and those who form this part of humanity — need not deny the physiological reality that trans women are not women in every single way. Trans women should be treated as women, but not conflated entirely with them. If they were simply women, in the brain and in the body, they would not be trans, would they?

I’m not sure how you quite pull this off, but subsuming sex into gender, making gender entirely a subjective choice for anyone, and placing this understanding of human sex into core civil-rights law is what makes Yaniv’s case possible. More nuanced laws that define gender identity as something more than mere subjectivity, protects trans people from discrimination, but allows for exceptions in nonmedical physically intimate interactions, seems a pretty good compromise. Imposing a very new ideology by force of law, rather than making pragmatic adjustments that will actually help the vast majority of trans people, is rife with unintended consequences.

If Yaniv’s case helps us recognize that, it may yet turn out for the good.