Femininjas

Femininjas News Release – July 10th, 2009

At 10:30am on Saturday, July 11th, the Femininjas, a Vancouver-based feminist group, will be filming as a transgendered woman tries to get a prescription filled at Lu’s Pharmacy, Vancouver’s new women-only pharmacy. We will film as Lu’s pharmacy decides whether or not to refuse her service on the basis of her transgendered status. If she is denied care, her denial will be followed by a brief non-violent action. We welcome media coverage, and will have a spokesperson on hand willing to talk to reporters.

The Femininjas is organizing this action because Lu’s pharmacy presents itself as a resource that welcomes all women, but its policies and actions say otherwise. As part of the Vancouver Women’s Health Collective, Lu’s refuses access or services to transsexual women, intersexed women, and women without whatever they define as “female physiology.”

This is not only unjust, it is illegal. A recent Supreme Court decision has confirmed that at least some transgendered women are legally women, and therefore entitled to full treatment as women under the law. Yet Lu’s continues to act as though trans women and intersexed women aren’t so entitled. The Femininjas maintain that, regardless of legal status, discriminating against someone on the basis of her birth sex is no different than discriminating against someone on the basis of the colour of her skin, or her sexual orientation, or her religious faith, and is no less illegal.

We praise the Vancouver Women’s Health Collective for promoting the health of women in Vancouver’s troubled Downtown Eastside. But we lament that its misguided, illegal policies make it the only business in Vancouver that explicitly refuses transsexual and intersexed women.  We wonder whether the Vancouver Women’s Health Collective did any community consultation before opening their business, as many of the Downtown Eastside’s most vulnerable women are just those to whom they refuse service. None of the health hazards of the Downtown Eastside care whether or not a women is transgendered. So why does Lu’s?

Past communications between the Vancouver Women’s Health Collective and the trans community have not been successful, and so we reluctantly take this peaceful, non-violent action, in a spirit of helping our brave sisters grow into the sort of organization that all women can be proud of.

For more information about the Women’s Health Collective and the policies followed by Lu’s, please see http://www.womenshealthcollective.ca/PDF/Our%20Political%20Agreements.pdf.
For more information about the Femininjas, join us at http://femininjas.com/.