The Martlet

The UVic Students’ Society Women’s Centre could be opening its doors a little wider in the future, as discussion about trans inclusivity continues to work its way to the forefront.

“For the past few months, the Women’s Centre has been engaging in a discourse on inclusion and the Women’s Centre space,” said Sinead Charbonneau, the Women’s Centre communications and outreach co-ordinator. “Often, the conversation has been focused on trans inclusion.”

The centre, which operates as a grass roots collective run by UVic students, is designed as a space for all “self-identified women” who “strive toward providing a safe(er) space for women on campus and in the community.”

However, while the centre currently includes trans women, it excludes female-to-male trans people. Charbonneau believes it’s important for people to acknowledge that speaking about inclusion in one area must include an analysis of the multiple sites of identity.

“To speak about trans inclusion, we must also foreground anti-racism, anti-colonialism and many other frameworks,” Charbonneau said. “The coming together of all of these subjectivities can be ominous and seemingly insurmountable, but it’s not impossible.”

Some controversy was spawned last term when Mik Turje, the Women’s Centre board rep from 2007 to 2008, stopped identifying as a woman and resigned from the position. While Turje’s transition was not kept secret from the centre, Turje said it got to a point where he no longer felt welcome in the space.

“Being forced into the category of ‘woman’ has been a contentious issue for me for so long,” Turje said. “Why should I have to pretend to be something I’m not, just so I can do the kind of advocacy work I want to do?”

Turje, who took this term off, says that while he doesn’t consider himself part of the current discussion, he hopes to see changes made by the time he returns in September.

“I know there are people there committed to making the Women’s Centre trans-inclusive,” Turje said. “I don’t know any trans people who feel welcome and comfortable going into the Women’s Centre [right now].”

Turje emphasizes that he is not against the Women’s Centre and believes that it’s imperative to have groups on campus that focus on the effects of misogyny and sexism. Yet while Turje says he understands the arguments made against trans inclusivity, including the fact that some women feel unsafe with men in the space, Turje believes that allowing trans people into the centre will not lead to “biological men” entering the space, as some fear, because there are steps that can be taken to avoid that.

“It’s a really complex issue,” Turje said. “Trans people who have experienced misogyny and sexism need to have a place they can go to express [their feelings]. And this is especially crucial when you’re experiencing it from both sides.”

Rebecca Taylor, a former co-ordinator for the Women’s Centre, does not take a firm stand on whether or not trans folks should be allowed in the centre. She does point out that the first principle of the centre, as expressed by its statement of purpose, is to “provide a women-centered physical space to facilitate networking among campus women.”

She also noted the importance of the centre’s mission (to be a strong, radical, feminist voice on campus), and its vision: to create social change through political action, education and support of UVic women students.

“Some privileged folks, often those who are from the dominant social class, such as white men or those raised in class privilege, seem to think that equality has been achieved. However, women still face systemic patterns of discrimination, sexualized violence and objectification as well as the the silencing of women’s voices and experiences,” Taylor said. “I think there is a social pressure to move away from this [view] to include men or minimize women’s reality so as not to seem unprogressive, which actually re-centres men and further entrenches the oppression against women.”

Taylor says that while she does not deny sexualized violence occurs against many genders, such as trans folk, gender-variant people, or men, she does believe that intersecting oppressions complicate the matter. Addressing heterosexism and patriarchy is not solely the work of the Women’s Centre, she says, just as addressing racism or ablelism isn’t singularly the work of the Students of Colour Collective (SOCC), the Native students’ Union (NSU) or Access UVic.

UVic Pride Collective Co-ordinator Cora Bailey Babey says that gender and sexuality are often lumped together in queer communities, but while the two topics are related, they don’t always intersect.

“Trans people may or may not consider themselves part of the queer community for a variety of reasons,” Babey said. “While UVic Pride primarily serves self-identified members of the queer community, we have been actively working toward addressing intersecting oppressions through collaboration with other advocacy groups.”

Members of Pride hope all students recognize the complexities of the issue.

“We try really hard to be trans-inclusive, but our resources are limited, and it would be awesome to have additional groups actively supporting trans people,” said Miryam Burns, another Pride co-ordinator.

While some campus members have discussed the appropriateness of creating a trans advocacy group, Turje believes that creating a separate space for trans people would only serve to split groups further apart.

“It’s problematic to talk about a trans-advocacy group, as opposed to the Women’s Centre, because we’re still locking ourselves into gender barriers,” Turje said. “The problem, as I see it, is not so much women being oppressed, as gender oppressing all of us. We need a centre that questions categories. We need to stop splitting each other into smaller and smaller pieces.”

Charbonneau says that while she understands why women-only space exists, she realizes that feminist movements have historically marginalized those who don’t fit into the hegemonic ideologies of the time — the historical feminist stigma of the white suffragists who were “insidiously and openly racist and deeply colonial” is part of the reason feminism today has to constantly re-define itself, she says. For Charbonneau, part of that re-definition includes the Women’s Centre.

“The Women’s Centre, as a space for all self-identified women — which includes trans-women — appears to many as a site of female essentialism,” Charbonneau said. “Faced with this criticism [that the center should be more inclusive], I revisit the initial reasons women-only spaces were established and … thus the political, social and cultural role of women-only space remains relevant.”

While Charbonneau personally feels that shifting toward a trans-inclusive space would be a positive, though tumultuous, move for the Women’s Centre, she emphasizes the importance of trans-inclusion not marginalizing the experiences of the women who use the space.

Charbonneau says she does welcome all community members and students to share their thoughts on inclusion with members of the Women’s Centre.

Turje, for one, would like to see a centre that’s focused on gender-empowerment, but believes that, above all, people need to be discussing the issues.

“I’d like to see [the Women’s Centre] become a space where all people dealing with gender issues feel welcome,” Turje said. “It’s more about what we want to change then who we are.”