A Canadian woman was awarded $10,000 because her former friend and landlady allegedly made “transphobic” comments to her while she was living on the ex-friend’s property.
According to Toronto’s National Post, the British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal (HRT) last month ordered Kirstin Olsen to pay Terry Wiebe that sum as “compensation for injury to (Wiebe’s) dignity, feelings and self-respect.” The three-member tribunal panel found that Olsen, as Wiebe’s landlady, had discriminated against Wiebe with her words, especially those expressing discomfort with Wiebe’s intention to have a double mastectomy to complete her “transition” to male.
LGBT RV
Wiebe lived in a motor home on her then-friend Olsen’s property from 2014 to 2018, paying $200 rent a month, reported the Vancouver Sun.
In November 2016, Wiebe, having decided she was transgender, began hormone therapy to acquire male characteristics. She informed Olsen in April 2017 that she planned to have her breasts removed.
In December 2018 — more than 19 months later — Olsen evicted Wiebe from her property. The Post wrote that, in tribunal testimony, Olsen
described wanting to evict Wiebe not because of the transgender surgery, but because of Wiebe’s “increasingly volatile” behavior, Wiebe’s “lack of appropriate boundaries,” Wiebe allegedly making the property “unsightly” and Wiebe’s “irate and distraught” behavior following a romantic breakup. Olsen testified that her tenant frightened her when Wiebe “scream(ed) about how they would ‘get back at’” their ex-girlfriend. Olsen also said she wanted to move her mother onto the property.
(The use of Wiebe’s preferred pronouns, they and them, pervades the HRT ruling, a clear indication of the panel’s bias.)
Further indication that Wiebe’s eviction had nothing to do with her gender change is that, in December 2017, eight months after learning of Wiebe’s planned surgery, Olsen left her in charge of Olsen’s property and business while Olsen was away.
Olsen testified that she suspects Wiebe deliberately connected the wrong tank to the business’s ventilation system during Olsen’s absence, which “could have caused serious health problems” for one of her employees. Wiebe claimed the supplier had delivered the incorrect tank, but Olsen found that the security-camera footage that would have revealed how the wrong tank got there and who connected it to the vent had been deleted. That certainly suggests foul play, though Olsen had no proof that Wiebe was behind it. (The HRT did not delve into the matter.)
Lost in Transition
Wiebe, for her part, contended that her eviction was motivated primarily by Olsen’s distaste for her gender transition. According to the HRT ruling, Wiebe “asked Ms. Olsen, more than once, if their tenancy would be affected if they got gender-affirming surgery. Ms. Olsen did not respond directly, but said she was uncomfortable with it.”
On top of that, alleged Wiebe, Olsen told her, “You’re fine as a lesbian,” and “You don’t need to mutilate your body,” which Wiebe took as an attempt to discourage her from transitioning.
Wiebe did, in fact, stop her gender treatments, telling Olsen it was because of medical complications and unwanted facial hair. (Apparently, she liked being a man in theory but not in practice.)
Olsen claimed to have made the “you’re fine” remark after Wiebe told her she was stopping treatment, as a way of consoling her. She denied ever having made the “mutilation” remark. On the strength of this “they”-said-she-said testimony, the HRT ruled that Olsen had indeed cautioned Wiebe against mutilating her body — an accurate description of having one’s breasts cut off unnecessarily but one that is anathema to the trans cult.
Biased Tribunal Grants Partial Victory
In a sane world, of course, Olsen would be free to say whatever she wanted on her own property and to evict a tenant for any reason she chose. In Woke World, however, the free exercise of one’s rights depends entirely on the allegedly oppressed group in which one claims membership. Thus, the HRT simultaneously ruled that Wiebe had not been evicted over her gender change (they accepted Olsen’s explanation) but was nevertheless entitled to $10,000 from her former landlady because Olsen’s gender comments had a “profound” and “devastating” impact on her.
Because Olsen’s “lesbian” and alleged “mutilate” comments were uttered outside her trailer door, where she and Wiebe often had conversations as friends, the tribunal found they were “related to the parties’ personal relationship, rather than their [Wiebe’s] tenancy.” Therefore, they did not constitute discrimination under the British Columbia Human Rights Code, said the HRT.
On the other hand, when Olsen refused to directly answer Wiebe’s question about whether she could remain on the property after her surgery, “it sent a message that Terry Wiebe would lose their home if they took further steps to change their gender,” wrote the HRT. Thus, Olsen had “discriminated” against Wiebe, causing “an adverse effect on [her] tenancy,” and now owed her the equivalent of 50 months’ rent. (It could have been worse. Had the tribunal found Olsen guilty of evicting Wiebe over her intended surgery, Olsen could have been socked with another $50,000 judgment.)
Misgender Regrets
That the HRT would rule in Wiebe’s favor to one degree or another was a foregone conclusion. Besides ensuring that they referred to Wiebe by her preferred pronouns in their decision, the panel — on its own initiative — apologized for having failed to police all pronoun usage during tribunal proceedings, thereby allowing witnesses “frequently” to “misgender” her. “We regret that the process harmed them [Wiebe],” penned the HRT.
The harm to Olsen, meanwhile, caused the panel no regrets.
