Trans Rights Activists Convinced the City Council to Defund the Vancouver Rape Relief & Women's Shelter. You Won't Believe What Happened After That

By Luba Fein

Vancouver Rape Relief & Women's Shelter is Canada's oldest centre for rape victims. The centre was founded in 1973. From 1981, it also operates women's residences. In these transitional apartments, women can receive temporary shelter from abusive men in their lives: fathers, spouses, sons, punters and pimps. There's also a crisis hotline for distressed women.

Vancouver Rape Relief and Women's Shelter is committed to advocating for women's equality and works as an active force dedicated to challenging the social attitudes, laws and institutional procedures that perpetuate male violence against women and children. All services by Vancouver shelter are free and confidential. [1]

To meet these goals, Vancouver Rape Relief and Women's Shelter:

Operates a 24-hour rape crisis centre and provides services for victims of rape.
Operates a shelter for women and children trying to prevent or escape male violence.
Works to be an educational force for progressive changes in attitudes, laws, and institutional procedures, and to work for the prevention of male violence against women.
Works with other social services groups, institutions and community groups towards the prevention of male violence against women. Develops and builds relationships and alliances with other rape crisis centres, transition houses and women's groups to further women's equality.
Operates as feminist collective, providing opportunities for women to participate in ending male violence against women.
Works towards and garners support from communities and men in ending male violence against women.

Since 1973, Vancouver Rape Relief & Women's Shelter has responded to close to 46,000 women seeking support in escaping from male violence. The transition house has housed over 3,000 women and over 2,600 children since 1981. Every year approximately 100 women and their children live in the house (3 or 4 families each time). In addition to that, the centre offers peer counselling, support groups, advocacy with police, accompaniment to a sexual assault exam, self-defence classes and accommodation for women who come to Vancouver to have an abortion.

In 1995, the group was at the centre of a legal dispute when Kimberly Nixon, a trans woman, complained against the organization in the British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal. Nixon slammed the Vancouver Rape Relief for not accepting transwomen to the training program for volunteer counsellors. The verdict of the British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal to award Nixon a 7,500$ compensation led to a series of appeals. The B.C. Court of Appeal, in a unanimous decision by a three-judge panel, ruled in 2005 that Vancouver Rape Relief has the right to exclude Kimberly Nixon as a volunteer counsellor. The court ruling noted that the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal was accurate when it found, in 2001, that Rape Relief performed an act of discrimination by rejecting Nixon as a counsellor. However, the court determined that Vancouver Rape Relief, a non-profit group, is entitled to legal protections that balance group rights against individual rights. [2] The Supreme Court of Canada backed this verdict in 2007. [3]

Trans Rights Activists have never come to terms with the ruling, as well as the Vancouver Rape Relief's decision to settle in the transitional apartments exclusively biological women. The transgender community's members and their supporters appealed to the Vancouver City council with the demand to strip the shelter from any public funding. The Vancouver Rape Relief's staff argued that the reason for such policy has never been "transphobia". "We do not have the experience to offer services to people without the same life experience … this is not our work," said Vancouver Rape Relief representative Hilla Kerner to a City of Vancouver committee. [4] The shelter's site seconds this claim: "We know that people whose behaviour is not consistent with the patriarchal socially imposed definition of manhood or womanhood, including trans people, suffer discrimination and violence. Trans people deserve and must live in safety, and have equal rights and opportunities that are promised to us all. While some of our core services are not open to people who do not share our life experience of being born females and raised as girls into our current womanhood, we have a collective commitment to see to the safety anyone who calls our crisis line, including trans people". [5]

On February 26, the Vancouver city council voted against continuing its financial support of the shelter's public education work, $33,972 in total. The city council utterly disregarded the compelling statements made by Vancouverites about the importance of the shelter's activities and the rationale for women-only organizing and women-only space. In response to this decision, trans activists and their supporters burst into celebrations and cries of joy and delight on social networks. Vancouver city councillor Christine Boyle posted a tweet to her account accusing the organization of "supporting transphobia." "Trans women are women, and sex work is work … I can't support (organizations) who exclude them," Boyle wrote in an accompanying note.

Besides the pointless and repetitive "transwomen are women", Boyle insisted on mentioning that "sex work is work". Her stand on the sex trade was unexpected for an elected politician in a country whose legal system perceives women in prostitution as victims, not workers. Notably, Vancouver Rape Relief never ruled out services from women in prostitution or conditioned them on leaving the sex trade. The tweet apparently refers to the abolitionist stand of the shelter. Or, maybe, it was the way to re-emphasize the close connection between these two ideological camps, inseparable like life and consciousness.

Another public figure who led the defunding charge against Vancouver Rape Relief was Morgane Oger, a vocal trans activist advocate and vice president of the B.C. NDP. Oger called Vancouver Rape Relief "noncompliant with Canadian law" and guilty of "systematic, consistent misbehaviour", being the last B.C. women's shelter to continue denying services to the trans community.

Merely defunding the crisis centre wasn't enough for the local TRA. In August 2019, the shelter was vandalized twice in about two weeks, and a policy that denies services to transgender women was likely the reason for that. In the middle of August, a dead rat was found nailed to the door of the office. Two weeks later, staff found threats and angry messages scrawled on windows. Graffiti on the windows of the storefront space designated for support and training, include words like "Kill TERFS" and "TERFs go home you are not welcome." [6]

The violent graffiti images shocked me when I saw them on social networks. As a feminist activist, I was well aware of the growing tension between TRAs and radical feminists, especially the abolitionists. Still, nothing can prepare you for a vision of shelter for victims of abuse with murder threats on the windows. I've done the utterly emotional yet natural thing: logged in my PayPal account and made a donation to the Vancouver Rape Relief.

My donation wasn't the only one. Many women, horrified at the sight of the corrupted shelter, learned about the defunding and decided to contribute. An NGO that provides therapeutic services to only biological women has a right to exist. Various services are provided to the members of particular demographic groups: the elderly, children, refugees, ethnic minorities. These services' very existence does not deny similar services for other groups; they are given in addition to them. Women are no different from any other disadvantaged group. We need our own space, our customized services, and a place to get support without graffiti with murder threats.

A short time before the Coronavirus outbreak, I had the honour to meet Hilla Kerner in Tel Aviv. My first thought when I saw her was: "this is a perfect woman to receive support from at the moment of crisis: smart, understanding, empathetic". We talked about both my activism and hers. Hilla said that donations from thousands of women around the world, who have not ignored the injustice, have covered the municipal budget the shelter has lost.

Thanks to us, it continues to operate in an almost standard format even during the Coronavirus period. "We keep our house open to women, we do Skype face to face and video support groups, and accompany the women who need to go to the hospital after rape. Our crisis line still operates 24 hours, and our house is open to women. We are just utterly careful: constantly disinfecting, sitting in a bit of distance, and not hugging".

Let's send virtual hugs to Hilla and her staff from all over the world. They are the proof that women won't submit.

Donate to Vancouver Rape Relief HERE