What’s Current: Jessica Yaniv loses cases against women who refused to ‘wax her balls’

  • The BC Human Rights Tribunal ruled in favour of estheticians’ right to refuse to handle male genitalia. Jessica Yaniv, a man who identifies as a woman and retains male anatomy, brought the case against five estheticians for refusing to provide a Brazilian waxing service on the grounds that denial constituted discrimination on the basis of gender identity. Yaniv was ordered to pay $2,000 to three of the defendants. The ruling states:

“Human rights legislation does not require a service provider to wax a type of genitals they are not trained for and have not consented to wax… [Yaniv] filed complaints for improper purposes.”

  • New research reveals that women are significantly less likely than men to be promoted at work after having children. The report, published by the UK Government Equalities Office, found that 27.8 per cent of women were in full-time work three years after birth compared to 90 per cent of men. 
  • Always, the sanitary pad brand, removes the “Venus” symbol of the female sex from its packaging after a trans activist tweeted, “There are non-binary and trans folks who still need to use your products too you know!”
  • Several UK police forces are allowing male rapists to record their gender as female if they no longer identify with their male birth sex. Nicola Williams, director of Fair Play for Women, stated:

“You can’t get much more of a male crime than rape. It would be highly offensive to a woman who was raped to have it written down that her attacker was a female when clearly that was a male with a penis.”

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.