Trans woman denied access to Lu’s Pharmacy
The Georgia Straight has a new article up about VWHC’s policy of discriminating against trans women, Lu’s Pharmacy rejects transgender customer. From the article:
“I have felt that people are employing intimidation tactics, and it’s hurtful to me personally,” she said. “As I said to Jamie Lee Hamilton, we want to help women here. We want to focus on the work that we do that’s very important to us and to the women who want to use our services. That’s where I want to put my energy.”
This is a common tactic in derailing arguments for rights. Despite the fact she is supporting a belief set which leads to trans women being denied services and which restates their marginalization, she feels she is being intimidated personally. This sort of comment plays on cultural biases and fears of trans women, relying on the reader to on some level be afraid of us.
Later, in response to the protest action on June 11th, and activist Beth Marston:
Duncan characterized her actions as “generous” and “thoughtful”, emphasizing that she is willing to talk to Hamilton and her supporters about how to create a pharmacy for transgender women and their supporters.
So generous and thoughtful they closed the pharmacy to avoid engaging the peaceful protest and called the police. Trans women and their allies are not interested in talking about finding somewhere to go to stop bothering Caryn Duncan. Separate-but-equal might be considered a reasonable position for the VWHC, but for trans women and the women’s organizations in the downtown east side who do not discriminate against us, it is a regressive ideology that promotes a cultural system in which discrimination flourishes.
I’m sick of “women born women” and their supporters treating us as an inferior sort of woman.
“Apparently, DiMassa believes that the anger lesbian women feel about being marginalized by the straight, male-dominated mainstream is legitimate, but that the similar anger trans women feel about being dismissed, stereotyped and exploited by the lesbian community merely represents selfishness on our parts.” – Julia Serano, Whipping Girl, pp. 203-04
If you do not understand trans women, you should not attempt to speak to our motivations. Our motivation is to be accepted as women, full stop, because we are women, full stop. Not as a kind of ur-woman separate and lesser from “women-born women,” such that you are doing us some sort of Imperial favour by so much as deigning to acknowledge our existence with the pronoun “she” rather than dismissing us with “he” or annihilating us entirely with “it.”