Transgender woman's waxing complaint dismissed by Human Rights Tribunal
Credit to Author: Postmedia News| Date: Tue, 22 Oct 2019 20:37:13 +0000
A transgender B.C. woman who filed complaints against several estheticians who refused to provide intimate waxing services has had her complaints dismissed.
Jessica Yaniv is also ordered to pay $2,000 each to three of the respondents for her improper conduct, according to the decision released Tuesday and authored by Human Rights Tribunal member Devyn Cousineau.
The original complaints were filed after Yaniv sought genital waxing services from several service providers in the Vancouver area through Facebook Marketplace and was refused after she made it known she has a penis and scrotum. Many of the providers operated out of their homes or were women whose first language was not English.
In the decision, Cousineau noted that Yaniv’s testimony was found to be “disingenuous and self-serving” and that “in crossâexamination, she was evasive and argumentative, and contradicted herself.”
Cousineau found that the industry-accepted definition of a brazilian wax is the hair removal for an individual with female parts, while what Yaniv sought was hair removal for male parts, more commonly known as a brozilian or a manzilian. None of the service providers listed as respondents offered brozilians or manzilians.
Yaniv was also found to be deceptive, using different Facebook accounts with different names and photos to engage with the same esthetician, pretending to be a cisgender woman who wanted to help a transgender friend seek waxing services.
“In my view, the most likely scenario is that Ms. Yaniv was trying to make (the esthetician) feel uncomfortable or awkward for her own amusement or as a form of revenge,” wrote Cousineau. “This is consistent with Ms. Yaniv’s behaviour in relation to all of the respondents. ”
Cousineau then dismissed all of Yaniv’s complaints, going so far as to say Yaniv’s repeated complaints, some of which resulted from her use of deception, were not filed to “prevent or remedy alleged discrimination, but to target small businesses for personal financial gain.”
“In many of these complaints, she is also motivated to punish racialized and immigrant women based on her perception that certain ethnic groups … are ‘taking over’ and advancing an agenda hostile to the interests of LGBTQ+ people.”
Yaniv has been ordered to pay $2,000 each to three respondents and all her complaints have been dismissed.