From Georgia Straight, Canada
July 9, 2009
By Charlie Smith
The Vancouver Women’s Health Collective says transsexual/ transgender women will not be served at its new pharmacy on the Downtown Eastside. And that has a neighbourhood transgender activist alleging that the collective is discriminating against women like herself.
“That’s not acceptable,” Jamie Lee Hamilton told the Straight in a phone interview. “No city license should be given out to any business that operates in the city of Vancouver if it chooses to discriminate.”
Hamilton added that she plans on filling her next hormone prescription at Lu’s: A Pharmacy for Women, which opened on July 7 at 29 West Hastings Street.
The collective’s executive director, Caryn Duncan, told the Straight in a phone interview that her organization’s steering committee discussed whether or not to extend service to all “self-identified women”. In the end, members decided to serve “women born women”.
“We are an organization that has for almost 40 years supported women around their battle with breast cancer or unwanted pregnancy or delivering a baby with a midwife, [and] celebrating or dealing with menopause,” Duncan said. “It’s about bleeding—or wanting to bleed or not bleed. It’s about being a woman, and the physiology of being a woman.”
She claimed that the pharmacy doesn’t have the expertise or capacity to serve transsexual/transgender women. “I think we’re being very reasonable,” Duncan said. “I believe the massive groundswell of support for our pharmacy and for our work is evidence that what we do is supported in the broader community.”
The B.C. Court of Appeal has upheld women-only organizations’ legal right to restrict membership to women and not admit transsexual/transgender people. Hamilton, however, claimed that the court’s ruling dealt with organizations and not with a business that provides a health service.
© 2009 Vancouver Free Press
http://www.straight.com/article-238663/trans-activist-opposes-pharmacy-ban
07/14/2009 at 10:33 pm
After a while, I want to say: “Fuck you and the horse you rode in on!”.
I want to say it to the anti-trans lesbians, to the anti-trans gay men who are SURE we are just gay men in denial, to the anti-trans butch dykes who are really transmen but are afraid to come out simply because they see what happens to us, what they do to us, and are afraid of being alone in the world.
I want to say it to the “liberals” who “support” us — but really want us to go home at night (“wouldn’t you be happier with ‘your own kind’.”).
I want to say it to the right wing post-ops / HBS / WBT’s who refuse to support expanded marriage rights (“I’m NOT GAY!!”) — but DEMAND we support their heterosexual marriage rights.
I also want to say it to the self-styled TG “leaders” who have the nerve to speak for me, who co-opt my life, my reality, my existence, and attempt to silence me when I dare speak for myself.
Of course, I also have to say it to all the “loving Christians” who want to deny us our right to live — never mind our rights. They want to make us go away, and they really do not care how they do it.
So much hate speech, so much fear-mongering — we are losing about one per week to violent attacks — and none of those inciting this violence are willing to take responsibility.
So, when the various lesbian, gay, and straight folks either stand aside, look the other way, or actively deny us our humanity, when they seem to use opposition to various trans folks as a way to rally community support they’re just another part of the problem.
We’ve got homophobia in the trans community, trans-phobia among gay guys and various lesbians, misogyny among gay guys, straight folks, and some trans folks, and homophobia among some lesbians. This does not even BEGIN to deal with the multiple fears so many straight folks have.
I’m beginning to think a lot of folks would do better sticking with the horse.
08/06/2009 at 7:07 pm
This is the sort of extremism I wrote about in my article. The WBW Only movement is working to isolate any woman who was not “born 100% female, raised 100% female, and happily living 100% female” (their words). They have taken legitimate concerns many women have towards a population they can only marginally understand, and twisted it to serve a patently bigoted, hateful, intolerant, and potentially violent cause.
A commenter to my article titled what these alleged feminists are doing as “Patriarchal Feminism,” a move to define what makes a woman a woman according to patriarchal society, which often coincides with patriarchal religious extremism.
But what this pharmacy is doing goes against not just my sense of equality, dignity, and respect for all persons, but my medical training as well. The policy adopted by this pharmacy goes against all medical ethics, which clearly states they cannot deny procedures, products, or services to any individual or population that they offer to others. This is a globally accepted standard of ethics, period.
This is going to get people killed. How many will depend on how long it takes for the various courts (in this case Canada’s) to wake up to the fact that this is just a way to bypass existing anti-discrimination laws and render them ineffective.