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A B.C. Human Rights Tribunal hearing over Brazilian waxes devolved into chaos this week punctuated by a slew of bizarre accusations from a transgender woman.
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Jessica Yaniv, the complainant, argued she was entitled to receive the advertised wax service and that if the tribunal ruled against her it could lead to a “dangerous” precedent.
Yaniv’s claim emerged after she was denied a Brazilian wax of her male genitalia at a home salon in Vancouver.
At one point, Yaniv compared the business owner — a female immigrant of colour — to a neo-Nazi.
The lawyer for the business owner accused the complainant of engaging in “half-truths and fabrications.”
Tribunal adjudicator Devyn Cousineau frequently had to interject to maintain decorum and to keep the hearing from becoming even more chaotic.
But a substantive question remained at the core of the raucous daylong hearing: should a business be allowed to deny service on the basis of gender identity?
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“You cannot choose who your clientele is going to be,” Yaniv said.
However, business owner Marcia Da Silva said she was not comfortable carrying out a Brazilian wax on a person with male genitalia, nor did she have the training for it.
Jay Cameron, Da Silva’s lawyer and litigation manager with the Alberta-based Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms, told the hearing that a ruling against his client would be tantamount to ordering “intimate services” against someone’s will.
Yaniv has filed more than a dozen complaints and is a frequent flier at the human rights commission. She describes herself as a digital marketing expert and LGBTQ activist.
Some complaints against salons were settled outside the tribunal or withdrawn.
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Yaniv is no shrinking violet and managed to get free-speech advocate Lindsay Shepherd banned from Twitter after the pair engaged in a war of words. Yaniv was not banned.
The complainant wanted to keep the hearing under wraps but the tribunal ruled she was so ubiquitous on social media there was no point.
On Wednesday, Yaniv, who is representing herself, said she came upon a Facebook ad in spring 2018 offering a promotion for a Brazilian wax, which involves the removal of pubic hair around the groin.
Da Silva testified she had just started her home-based business after previously performing waxes on family and friends.
Yaniv was the first person to respond to her ad, she said.
They agreed over text message to an afternoon appointment.
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But Yaniv testified that after identifying herself as transgender and sending Da Silva a selfie, Da Silva cancelled the session.
“I have no problem with LGBT,” Da Silva said, adding she was simply not comfortable waxing male genitals and didn’t know how.
Yaniv also bombarded her with messages to the point Da Silva said she became frightened.
“For my safety, I said, ‘No,’” she testified.
Da Silva told the tribunal she defined someone who is transgender as a person who has undergone sex-reassignment surgery.
She responded affirmatively when asked if she’d perform the waxing service on someone who had undergone such surgery.
At one point, Yaniv equated the denial of service to neo-Nazism.
Under cross-examination, Cameron put to Yaniv that Brazilian waxes were services performed only around female genitalia and that what Yaniv should have sought was a “brozilian” — waxes that involve male genitalia.
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That prompted Yaniv to tell the tribunal that she was intersex and had female body parts.
“It exists,” she said, declining to elaborate.
Cameron accused her of an outright “fabrication.”
“You’re attempting to mislead the tribunal,” he said.
Cameron called Yaniv’s credibility into question and earlier suggested Yaniv had used a fake Facebook profile of a pregnant woman when she initially sought out the waxing service, a claim Yaniv denied.
The tribunal heard Da Silva shut down her salon business after her encounter with Yaniv.
Earlier this month the JCCF also represented two other estheticians who were the subject of similar complaints from Yaniv.
