twowivestwoknives:star-anise:allthecanadianpolitics:This is big news.The city of Vancouver will not
twowivestwoknives:star-anise:allthecanadianpolitics:This is big news.The city of Vancouver will not renew its annual funding to Vancouver Rape Relief unless it starts being inclusive to Transgender people.That funding will instead be given to other feminist groups that are inclusive to Trans people.Can I also just say: This became an issue because Kimberly Nixon, a trans woman, a sexual assault survivor, and a trained peer counsellor, wanted to volunteer with VRR. They had interviewed her, screened her, selected her, and got her halfway through volunteer orientation, THEN rejected her because they believed that a trans woman didn’t have the “life experience” to relate to cis women.I’ve said before and I’ll say it again; my experience working in Canada’s domestic violence shelters have convinced me that the outdated emphasis only on male violence against women is dangerous and counterproductive. It fails to understand the causes of violence in many women’s lives, especially poor women, Indigenous women, Asian and African women, trans women, lesbians, bisexual women, and women with substance use problems and mental health issues; it also signally fails to understand that intimate partner violence can affect people of all genders, as well as be perpetrated by them.But more than that: This became an issue because a trans woman wanted to help. She had been a woman in a crisis shelter, she had been assaulted, and she wanted to spend her free time working at that shelter for no money. She was a goddamn benefit to the community.And they didn’t want her.Vancouver Rape Relief denies not only that trans women can be victims, but that they can be powerful counselors and advocates in the fight they’re committed to.So damn fucking right they shouldn’t get that money. Their ideological blinders make them bad at the thing they’re trying to do.Side notes that I’ve learned from an old mentor of mine who was doing trans-activism during the Nixon events in 2003 in case ppl dont go read the links:- VRR considers themself Canada’s first rape crisis centre. So they’re kinda pivotal in the politics of all of this bullshit.- Nixon took them to court where initially the court said Nixon was in the right. They later rescinded this and amended that VRR was not in the wrong - Nixon then appealed to the BC court of appeal and where they upheld their second opinion- So BC said Nixon was right, but VRR was more important, basically. - VRR as a result was allowed to keep pushing their violent rhetoric. That case was in 2003. I was 8. They haven’t been pushed by the province since. - Their rhetoric not only includes that trans women cannot access their services or aid as councellors ect, but for a while (not sure if this is still ongoing) they had a clause in their paperwork for new hires where the new hires had to assert that they believed in an inherent biological definition of womanhood. - They’re also violently sex-worker exclusionary, in the name of “women’s liberation” and publicly contested Amnesty Int.’s choice to decriminalize parts of sex work in 2015. Here of course, they used women of colour as a driving “factor” in their opposition, but its obviously just opportunistic tokenism.I know this probably doesnt matter much to people outside of BC but like, this is fucking Big. The people who run VRR are heinous and even shit they touted at town hall where this final decision went down shows that this T/ERF/S/WERF rhetoric is the core of the organization. Thank god they got cut off. -- source link
#transphobia