Rape crisis centre loses its funding in transgender row

CANADA’S oldest rape crisis centre has been stripped of funding for refusing to accept trans women in some of its services.

Vancouver Rape Relief and Women’s Shelter said it was the victim of “discrimination against women in the name of inclusion” after refusing to change its policy of offering some services only to women who were born female.

Vancouver city council approved this year’s funding for the centre, $34,312 (£19,500), at a March 14 meeting but described it as termination funding. The council said no further funding would be awarded until the centre accommodated transgender women.

Vancouver Rape Relief, which opened in 1973, strictly bans men from its premises to protect its clients.

The centre maintains that there is an essential experience that comes from being born in a female body that shapes some of its core services, but said it would see to the safety of anyone, including transgender people, who calls its crisis line.

A statement from the centre said: “The fact that we are born female and raised as girls to adulthood as women shapes our lives in profound ways ... and from that place, in a woman-only space – with other women who have the shared experience of being born, without a choice, to the oppressed class of women – we come together to organise and strategise our resistance and our fight for women’s liberation.”

The centre accused the city council of trying to “undermine our autonomy as a women’s group”.

However, the measure was cheered by some activists who have long protested against Vancouver Rape Relief for what they call “trans-exclusionary” behaviour.