#Vancouver rape relief and women’s shelter

[coochiequeens]

This guy is in the news again........

By Eva Kurilova. December 21, 2023

Canadian women are expressing outrage after a trans-identified male who campaigned to defund a rape crisis shelter was awarded the Meritorious Service Medal from the Governor General of Canada. Morgane Oger, a trans activist from Vancouver, was honored at a ceremony in Ottawa last week.

On December 16, Oger took to X (formerly Twitter) to boast of his receipt of the award, claiming he had been selected because of his work with “2SLGBTQ+ persons” and trans rights.

“Feeling so grateful, recieving [sic] the Meritorious Service Medal from Governor General of Canada Mary Simon last week for supporting 2SLGBTQ+ persons and furthering the legal protections of Transgender Canadians.”

In Canada, the Governor General is the federal representative of the monarch, currently King Charles III. According to the website for the Governor General of Canada, the Meritorious Service Medal is a civil award that recognizes “great Canadians for exceptional deeds” such as tackling poverty or improving educational opportunities for children.

In the list of recipients for the awards that were distributed on December 7, Oger is described as a “champion of diversity who has changed perceptions around 2SLGBTQI+ rights and has worked tirelessly to see those rights enshrined in law.”

Continuing, the office of the Governor General states that Oger has “forged alliances across party lines that propelled changes to provincial and federal legislation protecting individuals against discrimination based on gender identity or expression.” The short biography concludes by lauding Oger for his “courage, vision and perseverance have helped redefine the fundamental issue of equality and have advanced inclusiveness for gender-diverse Canadians.”

But the news of Oger’s top-level commendation did not sit well with Canadian women’s rights advocates, who noted that Oger has a long and disturbing history of actively fighting against women’s rights.

Canadian journalist and Feminist Current founder Meghan Murphy called out the Governor General, writing that Oger had once stalked her through her neighborhood in apparent retaliation for her views on gender ideology.

“Morgane Oger, whose career has involved harassing and vilifying feminists who defend women-only spaces, including fighting to defund Canada’s longest-standing rape crisis centre and transition house, @VanRapeRelief, stalked me around my neighborhood one day. Just one more reason I left Vancouver,” Murphy wrote. “Are these the ‘exceptional deeds’ bringing honor to Canada, @GGCanada? Making women feel unsafe and ensuring that when they are targeted by male violence they have nowhere safe to go?”

Murphy, like many others, was calling attention to an incident in 2019 where Oger successfully campaigned to strip Canada’s oldest rape crisis center, Vancouver Rape Relief & Women’s Shelter, of its city funding due to its female-only policy. In comments made before the city committee meeting, Oger called the shelter “non-compliant with Canadian law.

Prior to losing its city funding, Vancouver Rape Relief had been through a 12-year legal battle where its policies of only serving females and only allowing female peer rape counselors had been tested and held up in court. The Supreme Court of British Columbia and the British Columbia Court of Appeal both ruled that the facility was allowed to maintain a female-only space.

But despite the legal precedent, the City of Vancouver agreed with Oger and pulled the funding it had previously provided the shelter for its educational outreach programs despite the fact that the outreach programs were accessible to all, even transgender people.

While in the throes of defending its funding, Vancouver Rape Relief was targeted by a sickening harassment campaign from trans activists. Dead rats were nailed to the door and messages like “KILL TERFS” and “trans women are women” were written on the windows of its charity storefront.

Oger dismissed the abuse the rape shelter was receiving in a blasé statement he gave to press at the time.

“Sometimes, unfortunately, when Vancouver Rape Relief’s policies hit mainstream media and when their discriminatory conduct hits the light of day some people overreact,” he said of the vandalism and threats.

But just prior to the incident with the shelter, Oger had already attracted the ire of Canadian women’s rights advocates for his initial support of vexatious litigant Jonathan “Jessica” Yaniv.

Yaniv, a trans-identified male, made international headlines after filing a series of complaints with the British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal against female aestheticians who refused to perform waxing services on his male genitals. During a lengthy proceeding, it was alleged that Yaniv had deliberately targeted salon workers who were Sikh or Muslim in an effort to force women with religious restrictions on male-female contact to serve him.

On X (then known as Twitter) Oger referred to the women’s refusal to touch genitals on demand as “prohibited discrimination” and said that there was “no entitlement in Canada to refuse the performing of a service” on the basis of gender identity.

“Estheticians should take this up with their training providers. It wasn’t that long ago some service providers ‘weren’t trained’ to work on Black women or serve foreigners, either,” he said. “The law’s changed. Move on, get the training you need.”

When asked directly about his personal involvement with Yaniv, Oger was non-committal in his comments but admitted that he had spoken to Yaniv on the phone and that he had previously encouraged “trans women” to “complain to their human rights tribunal about prohibited discrimination.”

Eventually, the British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal ruled that estheticians were, in fact, able to refuse services that they were not trained to perform, such as waxing a scrotum.

This is not the first time Oger has received a Meritorious Service Medal. In 2018, he was given the award by then-Governor General Julie Payette for, according to City News, “her [sic] work advocating for LGBTQ rights.”

Speaking to Reduxx, journalist Meghan Murphy condemned the Governor General for providing Oger one of the most respected civilian awards in the country.

“Morgane Oger’s legacy is fighting against women’s rights, safety, and free speech,” she said. “Anyone who focuses so much effort on defunding one of the few rape crisis lines and transition houses in Canada is not someone who deserves to be celebrated.”

Murphy continued by noting that Oger had made her feel “unsafe” in her own home, prompting her to file a police report on him in 2020.

“This is a man who has gone out of his way to ensure that women don’t have safe places to go when escaping male violence. That the Canadian government has supported and celebrated him in these efforts is horrendous and shameful.”

[brazenautomaton]

What's your opinion on Dana Rivers, a trans activist leader, literally murdering a lesbian couple and their children? Or how trans activists shut down the Vancouver Rape Relief shelter because it was the only shelter in the city that was sex exclusive, thus putting vulnerable women on the street?

Actual feminists provide abortions to the same women who picket the clinics. Trans activists are like "these rape and abuse victims deserve to be homeless for having the boundary of not wanting to be near a man and committing the thought crime of not playing pretend that he's a woman."

Trans activism is a violent bigoted hate movement.

a crazy person being a member of a non-exclusive group doesn't prove shit

no shelter should be sex-exclusive and the reason you think women need shelters and men don't is because you are a sexist who believes all of the things sexism does but thinks all your biases are new and nobody in the past ever felt like men were threatening and women were victims.

feminism is a violent and bigoted and profoundly selfish hate movement. when men are suffering as much or more than women, you demand we only think of women. then you start cutting away the definition of "woman," because you're so intensely and reflexively selfish that you can't imagine any real woman ever having a different need or opinion. you fight for only one e right for women: the right to be a background prop in the emotionally flattering story you tell about yourself.

your first instinct is always to kick women out of the womanhood club for not being a mirror of your feelings, that's why you make terms like "pick-mes," why the fuck should anyone care that your definition of women doesn't include trans women? it doesn't include any women who are different from you, and you're a fucking shithead!

[bumblee-stumblee]

That's not at all what she said. Watching you all make up shit and then claim JKR said it, it's so fascinating. Watching some of you go and prove her right about how it is very much a misogynistic movement is just so funny.

Like this is just the trans community being the trans community i suppose but i guess i expected better from a group of people that constantly demand better behavior and beliefs from others.

I mean really, is she wrong? Is she wrong when she says this is a misogynistic movement?

This isn't even the worst of it, there's a bunch of "rape terfs, kill kerfs, punch terfs" and other misogynistic shit that transwomen and tras have said that qualifies doesn't it? The nailing a rat to a womens only rape crisis shelter store front

Or that time transpeople and TRAs took over the women's bathroom in UNAM, vandalizing the women's only space with "Rape and Death to terfs" because they couldn't wait a couple of days for their gender neutral bathroom to be built

So much more, we can talk about it if you like but moving on

Antisemitism? You wanna claim what she said is setting off an antisemitic and fascist alarms in your head? What's about the trans community's eager embracing of Nazi transwomen? Does that set off any alarms?

Do you think that maybe we can talk about all the rapist in the trans community that none of you seem to have enough of a backbone to stop using shit they've made like Shinigami Eye? The one made by lauralei bailey, the Transwomen rapist?

• The "Shinigami Eyes - Terf Hunter" extension was created by Wesley "Laurelai" Bailey, who has been accused of raping multiple young women, including a 14-year-old girl.

• The "TERF Tracker" project was founded by Dennis "Allison" Woolbert, a convicted rapist who assaulted a 15-year-old relative.

•  Ashton "Aimee" Challenor and their father David Challenor ran/run "Terfblocker" on Twitter. Aimee's father, a big helper in Aimee's political campaigns who was also very supportive of gender-neutral bathrooms, was convicted of kidnapping, torturing, and raping a 10-year-old girl.

She ain't even subtle anymore lmao

[msclaritea]

Canada's top court criticised after referring to female rape victim as 'person with a vagina'

Canada’s top court criticised after referring to female rape victim as ‘person with a vagina’

Vancouver’s rape relief shelter says the ‘blurring of language’ doesn’t serve the fight to end male violence against women

Rozina Sabur,

DEPUTY US EDITOR

16 March 2024 • 2:33pm

Justice Sheilah Martin (bottom right) with other justices of the Supreme Court in Ottawa, Canada

Canada’s Supreme Court has been ridiculed after ruling that referring to a female sexual assault victim as a “woman” was confusing and the term “person with a vagina” should be used instead.

It is believed to be the first time the new terminology has appeared in the country’s judicial rulings and has prompted sharp criticism for “blurring” the language around sexual attacks.

Canada’s oldest rape shelter told The Telegraph it followed a trend of “erasure of the violence that men are committing against women”.

“It definitely doesn’t serve the fight to end male violence against women when you’re blurring the language,” said Hilla Kerner, a spokeswoman for the Vancouver Rape Relief and Women’s Shelter.

Melissa Lantsman, a deputy leader of the Conservative Party, said: “There is nothing confusing about the word ‘woman’, it’s common sense.

“This is just complete nonsense that moves nothing forward. It’s not ‘progress’”.

The Supreme Court ruling, which was published on International Women’s Day, related to a sexual assault case which was overturned on appeal. A man was accused of assaulting a woman; no-one involved in the case identified as transgender.

Supreme Court Justice Sheilah Martin diverted from the original ruling's terminology

The case involved Christopher James Kruk, a 41-year-old from Maple Ridge, a city in British Columbia, who was convicted of sexual assault in March 2020.

The woman testified at the trial that she woke up in Kruk’s home in May 2017 to find him having sex with her and attempted, unsuccessfully, to push him off.

Kruk denied having sex with her, claiming that the victim had removed her trousers herself and that what she assumed was rape was in fact him startling her awake.

The presiding judge gave numerous reasons for finding Kruk guilty, including that it was “extremely unlikely” that a woman could be mistaken about the sensation.

“She said she felt his penis inside her and she knew what she was feeling,” the judge wrote, finding “it is extremely unlikely that a woman would be mistaken about that feeling”.

The Court of Appeal overturned the ruling in January 2022, finding the judge’s reasoning was “speculative” and ordered a new trial.

Restored Kruk’s conviction

Prosecutors petitioned the Supreme Court, which unanimously found the appeals court had erred and restored Kruk’s conviction.

However, while Supreme Court Justice Sheilah Martin concurred with the trial judge’s conclusion, she diverted from the original ruling’s terminology.

She wrote: “Where a person with a vagina testifies credibly and with certainty that they felt penile‑vaginal penetration, a trial judge must be entitled to conclude that they are unlikely to be mistaken.”

Justice Martin continued: “While the choice of the trial judge to use the words ‘a woman’ may have been unfortunate and engendered confusion, in context, it is clear the judge was reasoning... people generally, even if intoxicated, are not mistaken about that sensation.”

Later in the ruling, she stated “the fact that the judge relied on a generalised expectation is not itself problematic”, however, she said “this is not to say that this is an incontrovertible fact about all women in all instances”.

The ruling had been seen as a test case for an emerging rule challenging judges’ use of “common-sense assumptions” in rulings which are “not grounded in the evidence”.

The Women’s Legal Education and Action Fund (Leaf), said it had intervened in the case to argue around the “lack of clarity” around the rule.

It had warned about the additional barriers to justice “for survivors, who are more likely to be women, girls, trans, and non-binary people”.

Roxana Parsa, one of the lawyers representing Leaf, said in a statement the decision “will have significant impact for all sexual assault survivors”.

Ignited a firestorm online

However the ruling’s use of the term “person with a vagina” ignited a firestorm online, with even US politicians picking up on it.

Mike Huckabee, a former Arkansas governor and Republican presidential candidate, said: “You know what’s unfortunate and confusing? What’s happened to Canada.”

Ms Kerner, from Vancouver Rape Relief and Women’s Shelter, said the organisation “appreciated” the restoration of Kruk’s conviction, saying too few assault cases in Canada resulted in “holding rapists accountable”.

But she added: “If we do not name these crimes against women as they are, if we do not understand them in the context of women’s inequality, we are undermining our ability to fight against them”.

Well, well. It looks as though the World Economic Forum Klaus Schwab was telling the truth when he stated that the WEF had a number embedded inside of governments. Canada and Justin Trudeau are sorry as hell, for allowing this. And yeah, this does skew statistics on Sexual Assaults BY MEN. This is the same thing happening in Ireland, Britain...Maine, of all places. I'd also not fall for this open red meat throwing that the Conservatives are doing. Klaus Schwab is a pervert and a fucking Nazi and so are the GOP.

[cisanddesist]

Kind of related to my previous reblog, but one of the biggest reasons as to why I peaked was seeing how many of these TIMs are so quick to talk about how they "used to" be horrible people before they transitioned. How they "used to" enact violence against women. How they "used to" be white supremacists and/or in the nazi pipeline. So quick to talk about how their past self was a heinous man who hurt women, but he's a "woman" now and he feels ~soooo remorseful about it all~ and understands how women feel about men like him now that he is one.

As I was starting to peak, it made me wonder. How much of that is really true? Because these men will do anything to shut women up whenever we call out the way in which they revel in their "previous" hatred of minorities, particularly women, before they transitioned. It makes me think about the threats of violence and rape whenever they encounter a woman they don't agree with. The vandalism done to that rape relief shelter in Vancouver. Policing the language of women to make sure everyone worships them. The joy they take in these fantasies, and declaring themselves better women than those of us who refuse to partake in societal norms built to demean us.

They're men all the way down, and most certainly haven't unlearned their hatred like they say they have. No matter how you spin it.

[f1minist]

donate to vancouver rape relief:

Some people don't know how bad things have become. This is a rape shelter in Vancouver. First they got sued because they only have women volunteers on their phones.

Some guy really wanted to hear all the rape stories and they said no.

Then the rape shelter was vandalized. Talk about punching down! The ultimate abuse was they had funding stripped from them. Why? Because they dared be a shelter for women. And that’s not allowed any more. Not even for rape victims.

When they say who can any of this hurt? It can hurt those women. It can hurt those women a lot. The women who are traumatized and frightened and battered.

This shelter fought back and now depends on private donations. Other shelters have given in.

Imagine being a rape victim and just asking for one space where it can be all women. Even just one room. And being told you must include men or you can’t get help.

At the heart of it, rape is a crime of forced inclusion. You weren’t allowed to say no. Part of healing is being given back your power and that includes the ability to say no.

If a rape victim wants a healing space that only has redheads born on a Tuesday in it, I’d try to find her such a space. She has been traumatized. She is terrified. We would all do anything to help her be less frightened. At least most of us would.

To be clear, I can’t be sure of the motive of any particular person who demanded to be a volunteer at any particular time, but there are men who love to hear women’s rape stories and some women don’t like telling their stories to men.

And don’t think these are rare situations. There are many shelters across the world that have been facing the same pressures. It’s a huge story. When JK Rowling funded a shelter just for women she was swarmed by the fly lords! (See my pinned thread for that reference).

(All text and photo I took from twitter: babybeginner)

[topazthecat]

Vancouver Rape Relief & Women’s Shelter Podcast Pornography Harms Women Part 1

https://rapereliefshelter.bc.ca/womens-waves-episode-13-pornography-harms-women-part-1/

[coochiequeens]

In Vancouver, women are second-class citizens. The city that rescinded grant for woman-only rape shelter intends to spend $3.8 million to create a facility that is only for transgender people.

Vancouver city council, the same council that garnered international outrage after it stripped funding from Vancouver Rape Relief and Women's Shelter (VRR) for being female-only, has now invested CAD $3.8 million into housing for transgender-identified people.

The first single-resident-occupancy (SRO) that is specifically and only for those persons who identify as transgender, gender diverse, or two-spirited. The Ross-Aoki House will be in Downtown Eastside, and will have room for 24 residents.

The city used funds from its Empty Home Tax to buy the 24-bed Ross-Aoki House, which will be staffed by the non-profit organization Atira. In its 2021 budget, council identified their intention to focus on "equity and critical social issues."

Councilwoman Lisa Dominato said that  Ross-Aoki House "is really about an equity and ensuring that the transgender diverse and two-spirit community has access to safe affordable housing."...see rest of article

If trans women are women how do they which women get housing and which ones don’t? And fucking Lisa Dominato has been in politics for twenty years, next time she is up for election women should vote her out.

[blackswallowtailbutterfly]

Here’s Vancouver Rape Relief’s direct page. If you were one of the people who donated through a SuperStraight GoFundMe campaign and are now being refunded, you can donate directly. There’s a “donate” link at the bottom left on laptop, not sure on mobile.

[greenwire]

According to the owner, the restaurant that was vandalized was a different location, also owned by him. He made remarks that were supportive of Rowling in June of this year, and received several false google reviews and one of his restaurant's windows were smashed from the outside in the span of two days. Here's a story on it:

It's likely that this vandalism was due to the owner's statement supporting Rowling. The threats and attempt at ruining his business are clearly linked to this. I don't know if people within the echo chamber realize how much support they lost from their own allies when they vandalized the Vancouver Rape Relief and Women's Shelter, wrote "kill terfs" on their walls and windows, and nailed a dead rat to their door. This was apparently more subtle.

thank you, trans community! thank you for absolutely STUPID and USELESS act of so-said "trans activism" you are MORONS. As an ukrainian, I hate you even more after that.

[ablaske]

you sound like a terf ngl

and you sound like you have a lot of time on your hands. enough time to DONATE right here to Vancouver Rape Relief and Women's Shelther. (or any other female shelter or female support facility on your area)*

[killingpygmalion-blog]

the fact that people would rather spend their time and energy trying to shut down a female rape relief center than building those kinds of resources for their own ‘community’ is embarrassing, beyond telling, and reveals exactly how ‘threatened’ these people actually feel when it comes to sexual violence

[f1minist]

donate to vancouver rape relief:

they stand their ground maintaining a WOMEN ONLY shelter no matter what. in the face of law suits. in the face of vandalism and harassment. in the face of being defunded by the city of vancouver. that's worth something. even if you only have $1. please donate to them.

I'm so done with "TERFs" being outed everywhere and excluded from groups we SHOULD NOT be excluded from. Everyone picks trans women over women who want the world to be a safe place for us. How ironic is that?

[decemberterf-blog]

Vancouver Rape Relief and Women’s Shelter is in trouble... just because males want to be included where they’re not welcome.