transwomen banned from women’s rooming houses
From the Port Phillip Leader:
A PORT Phillip-based welfare group has slapped a ban on transsexuals using two of its St Kilda rooming houses.
Hanover Welfare Services has taken civil action to stop male-to-female transsexuals frequenting its women-only hostels.
It has also won the right to employ only women at the crisis housing centres in Dandenong Rd and Burnett St, where more than 250 women are accommodated each year.
The group recently won an exemption from anti-discrimination laws at the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal, entitling it to refuse care to male-to-female transsexuals seeking shelter.
The action came after a male-to-female transsexual housed at one of the women-only centres horrified other tenants by walking through the facility naked and displaying male genitalia.
Hanover chief executive Tony Keenan said the ban applied to women-only accommodation and would not extend to other services, such as drug and alcohol rehabilitation and sexual assault counselling.
“We have transsexual clients for a number of our services and we’ve long had a proud history of that,'’ he said. “But at this stage, we have some women who have suffered violently at the hands of men, so we need an exemption on a small scale.'’
Right. Because according to this logic, transwomen are really men. Transwomen are not women — not unless, according to the VCAT decision, they provide medical certification that they don’t have any ‘manparts’. I’m sure all the homeless transwoman are going to be planning their careers in crisis accommodation with such things at the top of their to-do lists. It’s a shame that women at the rooming-house were traumatised. But if someone behaves inappropriately, you deal with their individual behaviour. You don’t go getting a VCAT exemption from equal opportunity law unless you secretly believe transpeople shouldn’t be in women’s only crisis accommodation in the first place.
What makes it ten times worse is that Tony Keenan, the CEO of Hanover and the architect of this little transphobic battle, is also the Chair of the state government’s Ministerial Advisory Committee on GLBT health. This should surprise no-one: the committee has done sweet FA to directly improve the lives of transpeople, even though several very trans-friendly health workers sit on it. Yet another example of the lie that is the ‘queer community’.
This is a very sad situation indeed. Transwomen are among the most vulnerable in the community and are regularly threatened and treated with violence by men in this country (just for walking down the street) mind you. Transwomen often encounter discrimination and barriers to all basic things in life. Whilst women who have suffered abuse and violence at the hands of men are fragile,the message that is being sent simly confirms some kind of awful myth that transwomen (simply because they have male genitalia which they often despise like a wart)are to be feared and not to be trusted. It would have been a better decision to enforce a policy whereby all accommodation clients sign off and agree to a no nakedness in the commonrooms rule
Comment by Elle — September 2, 2009 @ 1:21 pm