What’s Current: Esthetician forced to shut down business due to human rights complaint

Source: Twitter
  • The Post Millennial reports that Maria Da Silva, an immigrant from Brazil who operated her waxing business out of her home, was forced to shut down her business, losing that source of income for her family, after Jessica (previously Jonathan) Yaniv took her to the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal for refusing to wax his genitalia. Her representative and Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms lawyer, Jay Cameron, told The Post Millennial:

“Some of my clients have been very significantly affected on a personal level. [Another client also] closed her business, she has been depressed, anxious, sleepless and that has gone on for a period of many many months.

It is a very serious thing to launch a human rights complaint against a person. My clients are people. They have a right to make a living and this has interfered with their livelihood, but also you have the stigma of being associated with this hanging over you.”

  • In Germany, five boys aged between 12 and 14 raped an 18-year-old woman with what a police spokesperson described as “extreme violence.” This incident in Mülheim comes after several high-profile cases of teenage boys assaulting women and girls in the country since the start of this year, sparking a national debate about lowering the age of criminal responsibility to 12.
  • Los Angeles County sex crimes detective, Neil David Kimball, pleaded guilty to raping a 15-year-old girl whose sexual assault case he was investigating. The incident marked the third time Kimball has been accused of misconduct while on the job.
  • Los Angeles County agreed to pay $53 million to settle a 2010 lawsuit over invasive strip searches of female inmates, which a judge found violated their rights. The county does not admit wrongdoing and said in the settlement that the agreement was to avoid the cost of further litigation.
  • Samoan weightlifter, Iuniarra Sipaia, who recently lost to trans-identified male Laurel Hubbard in the Australian Open Weightlifting competition last week, told Samoa Observer

“I only found out when we arrived in Australia and Tuaopepe told me about it. At first, I thought my coach was joking until the day of the competition. I felt that it was unfair because we all know a woman’s strength is nowhere near a male’s strength no matter how hard we train.” Sipaia also said she was made to take a drug test, whereas Hubbard was not.

Genevieve Gluck

Genevieve Gluck is a writer and advocate for women's sex-based rights and creator of Women's Voices, an audio library dedicated to bringing awareness to feminist texts and speeches.