Yaniv has lost.

[WomanBornNotWorn]

The judgement:

It was a common theme through these complaints that service providers initially perceived Ms. Yaniv to be a man based on her name and picture. Ms. Yaniv strongly objected to this, arguing that there was no basis to assume her gender based on these details and that the very assumption was offensive. I disagree. While we may one day live in a society where a person’s gender is not assumed based on signifiers like name or appearance, we have not yet arrived at that point. For the most part, people still make assumptions about gender based on outward characteristics. While in some cases those assumptions are wrong – as they were in this case – they are mostly right.

Hmmm....

Gender really is nonsense isn’t it?!!

Thank Christ for that.

It's been said but the judgement really is worth a read - some excellent extracts in there.

Fabulous. Bonkers it was dragged out like this. Hopefully the costs will put him off similar litigation in the future.

Imagine if one of the women had misspelled/ typo'd in their facebook ads and called it a 'brozilian' though. Could they have been compelled to wax a scrotum?

Good. Now let's get male-bodied people out of women's sport.

"She sought a service on her genitals and then refused to answer questions about the service she was seeking, eventually giving inconsistent and untruthful evidence. In that regard, I find that her evidence that she was not asking Ms. DaSilva to wax a scrotum but a vulva was patently untrue."

Does this mean that the Member has decided what genitals JY has, going against what JY themselves says? (iirc they have claimed to have any and/or all types of genitals in one way or another)
So you're allowed to say you're whatever gender you feel like but you can't say you are the sex you feel like?

Hooray - excellent result

FWIW I think Cousineau is a gender true believer and would love this to have been the test case that proves women have no legal right to boundaries if the person wanting to violate them IDs as trans, which is why she accepted the case in the first place, but at a certain point it became obvious that Yaniv was a terrible person to base that around and since religion is a protected characteristic she couldn't justify ruling in favor of Yaniv. At some point someone will try again, in fact Morgane Oger has already made that very clear, so I'd advise against putting any faith in Cousineau to shut down the next attempt. This is a judgement on Yaniv, specifically, and I'm sure that the fact that Yaniv lied in court and refused to disclose relevant information (eg claiming to be intersex and then refusing to clarify what that meant in terms of genitalia) influenced the tone Cousineau is taking too. Judges tend to get a bit peeved when you lie to them.

Does this mean that the Member has decided what genitals JY has

I think the member was quite clear on this. She repeatedly notes that there are scrotum people and there are vulva people. JY falls into the category of scrotum person. Wouldn’t it be handy if we had a clear term for scrotum people and vulva people?

While in some cases those assumptions are wrong – as they were in this case – they are mostly right

Hmmm indeed.

The assumptions about Yaniv being a 100% male human being are correct.

I note one or two of the southern hemisphere agricultural collective consider there to be a certain amount of arse covering within the ruling. It carefully avoids anything that concretely states women have any right to refuse XY trans people because they are not women.

Just for info / completeness I have also updated thread

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3644495-fascinating-tweets-about-jy-s-waxing-case-read-here-cont-thread-2?msgid=91024900

with a link to here.

I’m looking forward to Yanivs comment on this.

I had a quick read through the judgement. If I have understood it correctly, the answers to some of the questions above were:

• The judge commented along the lines that although it was not clear (and according to her, not necessarily further relevant) exactly what Yaniv had "down below", it was clear that that did include a scrotum, and that this was the relevant fact

• As such, for the "brazilian" waxing cases, the verdict was based on the fact that the women provided one specific service (brazilian waxes - and that these involved waxing vulvas but definitely not scrotums), but the service Yaniv wanted would involve scrotum waxing and would therefore be classed as a "brozillian" or "manzillian", which was a service these women did not offer. So they were not discriminating against JY as a person, but merely refusing to provide a service they never offered to anyone else either, which was therefore OK (as per the quote above about not asking a grocer to service a bike).

• In the arm/leg waxing cases, my understanding of the judgement was that the above reason for throwing out the case would NOT apply as these were the same services they did offer to others (there being no difference in technique etc between a leg wax for a male vs a female) and therefore it could potentially be discrimination to refuse him - UNLESS there was a legitimate other reason for refusing, apart from discrimination, in which case it would be up to the women to demonstrate this. However because Cousineau chucked out the cases already based on deciding Yaniv was taking the piss, they were not asked to demonstrate that. So my take is that if it had gone further, they may have been able to demonstrate that they had valid reasons for refusing (e.g. concerns about safety if allowing a male-bodied person into their home or visiting them at their home), or on the other hand they might have been in trouble if their reasons were not judged to be valid and/or if they could not sufficiently prove the refusal was not due to Yaniv being trans; but this did not get tested due to the case being already thrown out for the other reasons.

It seems to me actually that some of the biggest questions around the cases weren't actually answered directly. DOES a woman have the right to refuse to handle a penis if she doesn't want to, or are there still circumstances where she could be obliged to? Likewise does she, or does she not, fundamentally have the right to refuse to go to a person's house or allow them into her home to provide a service, because of their bio sex, if they "identify" as a woman? So while I'm very glad Yaniv lost this one, I can't help wondering whether it was accidental that some of these messy questions were quite neatly avoided.

I am not a lawyer though so others may disagree with my take!

Also x-posted with Arnold who has managed to say what I meant in my last bit too, but a lot shorter!

And I'm glad it wasn't just me with my suspicious mind thinking that...

Yaniv's 'gender' is entirely clear from 'her' presentation and pronoun choice. But the service providers were perceiving sex, which is also entirely clear. And sex was what mattered both for the type of waxing and their religious rights.

This is why it's so important to retain (or regain) the distinction between sex and gender, and services, sports etc specific to sex.

"Likewise does she, or does she not, fundamentally have the right to refuse to go to a person's house or allow them into her home to provide a service, because of their bio sex, if they "identify" as a woman?"

The Member had different reasons for dismissing each of JY's complaints. In one the waxer did not have any issue accepting JY's appointment even after the 'reveal' that they were transgender, but eventually cancelled on the basis that "she found Ms. Yaniv’s behaviour troubling and deceptive – which it was."

So it avoids that question - as does a lot of the judgement. As you say, it is convenient for the member that JY provided so many reasons for the case to be dismissed.

If you provided arm/leg waxing you might reasonably expect a proportion of your clients to be male (not necessarily transgender) so you would probably have your own policies about who you do/do not allow to come into your home which I guess would have to be non-discriminatory re protected characteristics.

I’ve seen it suggested that no other job requires people to go into someone’s home and handle male genitalia. This is not true - nursing and care workers regularly have to do this. Both for cleaning and also catheterising. However, they don’t see men in their own homes on this basis.

We need a clear ruling that nobody providing services out of their home can ever be compelled to accept as a client and thus allow into their home anyone who they don't feel comfortable with. Will someone people not want people as clients for bigoted reasons? Maybe, but the individual's right to refuse strangers access to their home if they don't want those strangers there has to outweigh that.

The only people who should be able to access a person's home without their permission should be police if they have a search warrant and emergency services if the person is unconscious and access is needed to save their life.

Great news.

Also great news he seems to have been given fines. As I don't know much about Canadas laws and such, but I saw a MNer a few months back, saying Yaniv could not lose anything..basically, if its a no then thats it, but he had much to gain if the tribunal took his side. So good to see some consequeces for him, however small.

Excellent

YESSS!!!

The Member (judge) was going to award higher fines - at least $5000 per represented defendant, so $15,000 total) but deemed that Yaniv had suffered a lot and was vulnerable so thought €2000 per complainant was fair.

*defendant!!