Trans activist Jessica Yaniv’s human rights complaints brought her prominence; now she’s accused of harassment and predatory behaviour
Joseph Brean
As the tribunal has heard Yaniv’s complaints, outrage has been roused over the possibility that anti-discrimination laws require women to wax male genitalia
In a phone call to a Vancouver-area beauty salon, a masculine voice inquires about the availability of Brazilian waxes for “Jonathan.”
“I’m transgender, just so you’re aware, I just want to make sure it’s not an issue,” says Jonathan Yaniv, a trans woman who is now named Jessica and who, on documents like her driver’s licence, has officially changed her gender to female. Yaniv would later say she made the June 2018 recording, which she shared with the National Post, in anticipation of discrimination based on past experience.
“I’m so sorry,” replies the employee of the salon franchise, which has since closed.
“I guess I’ll see you in court,” Yaniv says, and abruptly hangs up.
In another call a month later to a salon in Delta, B.C., Yaniv asks about price.
“Come here, then we can talk to you,” says the woman. And then, “F—— bastard… We don’t do. Are you mentally sick? This is a salon. Why do you keep calling?”
Yaniv, 32, is pursuing more than a dozen identical human rights complaints against salons for refusing to wax her crotch. She still has male genitals, but says she is on a wait list for genital surgery.
As the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal has heard Yaniv’s complaints in recent weeks, public outrage has been roused over the possibility that anti-discrimination laws require women to wax male genitalia — especially vulnerable, racialized women working precarious service jobs, often out of their own homes with children around.
The tribunal member hearing the cases has scolded Yaniv, saying her behaviour in pursuing case after case, even after the Tribunal cautioned against wasteful “unnecessary duplication,” has not been “conducive to having the issue resolved on its merits,” and “opens a valid question about her motives in filing so many complaints.”
The Tribunal member also called “improper” Yaniv’s tactic of withdrawing complaints against some of her targets who obtained free legal representation and made clear they intended to defend themselves at a hearing, rather than go through the tribunal’s settlement process.
But the member has also explicitly refuted that Yaniv’s conduct is vexatious or that her complaints are frivolous. Quite the opposite. “Waxing can be critical gender-affirming care for transgender women,” the member wrote in a procedural decision in May. “At the same time, it is a very intimate service that is sometimes performed by women who are themselves vulnerable. JY’s complaints raise a novel issue around the rights and obligations of transgender women and service providers in these circumstances.”
Novel or frivolous — or perhaps somehow both — Yaniv’s case stands out for another reason. She is an unusually problematic complainant, not simply because of her determined efforts at what looks like deliberate entrapment, and the self-promotion, often in the form of luridly argued Twitter fights, that was the key reason a publication ban on her identity was lifted in July.
Categorised in: Canadian News