How the trans lobby holds Canada by the balls

Had you been engaged in the gender-identity debate back in 2018, you might recall a case out of Canada, where a man named Jonathan / Jessica Yaniv contacted a number of Vancouver-based beauticians to request a ‘Brazilian bikini wax’.

You might also recall that this man filed complaints against 16 of these beauticians (many of whom worked out of their homes and spoke English as a second or third language) via the BC Human Rights Tribunal (BCHRT) in an attempt to gain a cash reward. Yaniv claimed he had been discriminated against after they refused to wax his balls.

At the time, Yaniv was still using male pronouns in certain online spaces, referring to himself as ‘Jonathan’. In others, he used female pronouns and went by ‘Jessica’. Sometimes it was both. Despite this, when I tweeted, ‘it’s him’, in reference to Yaniv in 2018, along with the assertion men can’t be women, I was banned from Twitter.

Ultimately, Yaniv lost at the 2019 tribunal – but he has not given up on his quest to profit from transgender ideology. A litany of complaints has been launched in his name since 2020, including against a women’s beauty pageant, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, the Provincial Health Services Authority and Rebel News. Yaniv also threatened to sue the Langley Fire Department in 2021 after staff demanded he stop calling. Allegedly, Yaniv had inundated the department with requests for ‘assistance getting out of the bath’.

The 2017 introduction of Bill C-16 – which added gender identity as a protected category into Canada’s Human Rights Code and Criminal Code – has undoubtedly emboldened opportunists like Yaniv. I warned in 2016 that if Bill C-16 was passed, the result would be the nullification of women’s rights. And just as I predicted, men identifying as women gained the right to access women’s spaces and sports. Anyone who challenged these men’s proclaimed identity, or even the concept of transgenderism itself, could be accused of ‘discrimination’ or ‘hate speech’.

We saw this play out recently, when former school trustee Barry Neufeld was taken to the BCHRT after he voiced criticism of the SOGI (Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity) 123 school curriculum. This teaches school pupils of all ages, from kindergarten and above, that ‘everyone has a gender identity’. Following years of hearings, and tens of thousands of dollars in legal fees, Neufeld was found guilty of hate speech and was ordered to pay $750,000 in damages for ‘injury to dignity, feelings and self-respect’ to an anonymous group of ‘LGBTQ teachers’. ‘This is a form of existential denial’, the ruling said.

A key question in Neufeld’s case was whether the BCHRT, a provincial body, should have final authority over online hate speech, or whether such matters should remain under federal jurisdiction. In 2024, the tribunal affirmed its authority to hear these cases, effectively rolling out the red carpet for the Canadian Liberal Party’s proposed Combatting Hate Act.

Bill C-9 recently passed its final vote in the House of Commons. If implemented, the bill would allow any Canadian citizen to be accused of ‘hate speech’, just as Neufeld was, based on social-media posts. Those accused could then be taken through a tribunal process and ordered to pay tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars to a complainant who is permitted to remain anonymous. It is not far-fetched to imagine we might see many more cases like Neufeld’s emerging as a result. Indeed, just last week, after having referenced Yaniv again on X, I received an email from the ball-waxing fanatic himself threatening ‘litigation’.

‘Your conduct is intentional, discriminatory, and harmful, and engages liability under British Columbia human-rights law’, he wrote. This was followed by a copy of a claim Yaniv had filed with the BCHRT: ‘The respondent’s deliberate use of my deadname, followed by public mocking after being placed on notice, caused significant harm to my dignity, identity and sense of personal security. Being publicly misidentified in this way is deeply dehumanising and communicates that my identity as a woman is not valid or worthy of respect.’

Apparently, Yaniv (who now goes by ‘Jessica Simpson’) has filed numerous such claims in the past couple of weeks alone, hoping to cash in on the clownworld laws institutionalised by Canada’s ruling Liberal Party. You can bet he won’t be the last to do so.

Perhaps at some point in the future, I will be forced to testify in court in defence of reality. Stay tuned…

Meghan Murphy is a Canadian writer and the host of The Same Drugs podcast. Find more of her writing here.