It's not a hate crime for a woman to feel uncomfortable waxing male genitalia

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/jul/27/male-genitalia-week-in-patriarchy-women

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Jessica Yaniv and the waxing wars

Should a woman be forced to wax male genitalia?

The answer to that is clearly “no”, right? If a female beautician has only been trained to wax female genitalia and only wants to offer these services to women then that should be her prerogative. But, hang on a minute, what if the person who wants their intimate areas to be waxed is a woman with male genitalia? What happens then? A court in Canada has been trying to figure that out. British Columbia’s Human Rights Tribunal has been holding hearings on the issue after Jessica Yaniv, a transgender woman, filed 16 complaints against female estheticians, arguing that she was denied service because of her gender identity.

“This is not about waxing,” Yaniv wrote on Twitter last week.

This is not about waxing. This is about businesses and individuals using their religion and culture to refuse service to protected groups because -they- don’t agree with it or the person and use that to illegally discriminate contrary to the BC Human Rights Code and the CHRC. https://t.co/34XIklXXbh

While the Yaniv case has been going on for a while now, you may not have heard much about it, as it has largely been covered by the rightwing press. The sort of outlets that normally joke about consent and women’s rights are now outraged that women are being forced to handle male genitalia against their will. The sort of writers that are normally whipping up hate against immigrants are now outraged and concerned that at least one of the beautificians that Yaniv has filed complaints against is a poor migrant. In short there has been a hell of a lot of bad faith and transphobia involved in the reporting around the case. A number of the world’s worst people have used the story as an example of “political correctness gone mad” and as a way to stoke hatred against trans people.

But does that mean that Yaniv is a brave crusader for human rights who should be supported? Absolutely not. Yaniv seems to be a troll, not an activist. She has also made a number of racist comments about immigrants, saying they aren’t the “cleanest of people” and allegedly said very disturbing things about underage girls in the past. Yaniv also seems to have tried to book the waxing services with fake Facebook profiles – the Spectator reports that in at least one case, she used the profile of a pregnant woman.

The long and short of this story is that Yaniv does not seem to be acting in good faith and a lot of women who were running small businesses out of their homes are now being dragged into court and branded as bigots as a result. If those women had refused to wax Yaniv’s legs because they had a problem with her being trans then she would have been absolutely right to take action. However, surely things are more nuanced when it comes to handling genitalia? Surely a woman shouldn’t be forced to wax testicles if that makes them feel uncomfortable? Yaniv argues that if you are a woman who is uncomfortable working with a penis then you are automatically a “transphobic bigot... committing a hate crime.” Not only is that untrue it makes a mockery of the hate crimes that are committed against trans people every day.

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Women still do most household chores

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