Keeping women-only space in BC

Many urgent fights need feminist attention

A talk by Jacqueline Gullion, March 8 2025. Jacqueline is a Vancouver Lesbian Collective member who has been active as a feminist since 1998, including organising Reclaim the Night/Take Back the Night in two cities and 15 years as a member of the Vancouver Rape Relief and Women’s Shelter collective. You can listen to this talk and the entire Feminists Speak Out (March 8, 2025) program at Julie Bindel’s substack.

We are in ecological catastrophe. The far right is on the rise and democratic institutions are being actively dismantled here, as well as next door. Racism and racist attacks are inflamed, and Indigenous-specific racism in Canada described as a genocide by Indigenous feminists. Male violence against women is still socially condoned. War continues on several fronts worldwide.

All of these crises are women’s issues --feminist issues-- because women are the majority of the population and remain at the bottom of the sex hierarchy. With all of these material changes for the worse, the poorest generally suffer the first, most desperate, and most difficult to repair consequences.  And that means women, primarily women of colour and indigenous women.

We need your help in the fight.
The situation is difficult, so allow us to make your fight easier with some lines from an ACTUAL LESBIAN. 

Queering us invisible

My neighbour in the BC interior is my age, locally born & raised and with an 18 year old they/them daughter, who has a 19 year old boyfriend. When I met her, she told me she had never met a lesbian before. ...Ta daa! Here I am, an actual lesbian.

The version of queer my nephew learned in grade 5 had him telling his mother he was pretty sure he didn’t know any lesbians or gays. Ta daa! Here I am, an actual lesbian.

At the engineering company where I work, I won management commitment to no retribution for employees refusing to comply with gender ideology (pronouns). In the course of that endeavour, I learned that out of 400 employees there is only 1 identifying herself as a lesbian on the demographics & inclusion survey. Ta daa! Here I am, an actual lesbian.

We organise as lesbians in public because our lesbian presence is crucial when queer ideology is bent on erasing us from public view. 

Why lesbian-only

Lesbians still experience sexist, homophobic attacks that threaten our physical safety and participation in public life. A taxi driver offered my girlfriend and me a free $60 ride if we got it on while he drove - blatantly referencing pornographic girl-on-girl tropes. 

This is the same-old-same-old male violence against women: aiming at least to scare us into compliance in the moment, and reminding us to police ourselves to avoid the next attack.

We are coerced to make ourselves invisible. In the re-telling of attacks, we unfortunately condition other lesbians to be less loud and proud.

We organise as lesbians-only to chip away at the massive challenge of connecting with same-sex attracted women. We have to  break the stigma blocking young women from seeing themselves as gay or lesbian.  We’re here, not queer, to interfere with the massive ideology machine driving girls in huge numbers toward so-called gender affirmation as trans. 

Girl Guides as prototypical women-only organising 

Speaking of girls, all of the current Vancouver Lesbian Collective  members were Brownies and Girl Guides. From age 8-12, I  learned how to start a fire, tie knots, navigate with a compass, mend a garment, fry an egg and pitch a tent in the rain. Except when Brown Owl’s husband came with a can of diesel to help with our campfire badges on that rainy camp weekend, we were among girls and women only, learning practical skills, resolving  conflict and following women  in leadership.

Girl Guides of Canada has changed their girls-only policy. Like many service groups, professional associations and unions -- with nursing, health and teachers unions being the most egregious -- removing sex-based protections was neither initiated by, nor done in consultation with, their massive female membership.

But if I were to meet a Girl Guide leader in my hometown in the BC interior,  I think she would say their troop does what most women-only groups are doing: women find a way to keep their group female-only without drawing too much heat on themselves. 

I was a member of Vancouver Rape Relief for 15 years just after that collective decided to fight for women only. And we took considerable heat. 

But we WON the legal ruling. It still stands and it protects the rights of women in particular, and other disadvantaged groups to choose our membership. Learn about this tremendous feminist organisation and this important struggle in the Rise Up! podcast

Female sports in a vision for feminist freedom

My 12 year old niece has quit playing hockey with boys. Last year, a boy on her team told her she was, “a little bitch who didn’t belong on the Rep team.” I think she punched him. I’m with her: women and girls can and should set boundaries and fight back. This year, she’s the Captain of the local girls Zones Under 13 team that won silver in the provincials!

Consider my niece's hockey experience in terms of  feminist freedom, not just fairness in sport. How will her self confidence change when she can skate without sexist slurs? What does it do for girls to be selected as Captain of the team or follow other girls as captain & assistant captain, under the leadership of women coaches & officials? How does it impact her understanding of her adolescent body to be in the dressing room with her whole team blasting Megan THE Stallion, rather than being isolated in the spare dressing room with the other only girl on the opposing team, as she always did in mixed hockey?

Girls-only spaces matter to me not just as a hockey auntie, but as a feminist. All girls, not just my beloved blonde, middle class niece, need spaces where they can pursue their interests, follow women in charge, take leadership themselves, and enjoy as much freedom in their bodies as is possible, given the constraints of patriarchy. 

Lesbian spaces as a threat to male sexual entitlement

When lesbians of middle age and older think of women-only space, we think of lesbian bars and dances.  I’m sorry to say that my young friend with her silver highlights may be among the youngest women attending today’s events who have made out with another lesbian in an actual lesbian bar. The rise of queer ideology means we are back to underground potlucks & picnics,trying to rebuild lesbian culture.

We have some legal protection thanks to  the Vancouver Rape Relief & Women’s Shelter win in the Nixon case and we aim to be more public in our lesbian events. Because when lesbians set our physical and sexual boundaries, personally, but especially by establishing space where women gather without men, we block male sexual entitlement and we hope, embolden more women to do so too. 

Women-only as an exercise of freedom

When girls and women establish women-only sports teams, gyms, spas, clubs, riotgrrl bands, hiking groups, social meetups, rape crisis centres, and political collectives, we draw attention to the position of women in relation to male supremacy by asserting we NEED these spaces.

We create space where women experience moments of freedom from male domination. We create opportunities for women to take pleasure in women’s company and learn from other women’s experiences. We provide an example to women that alternative formations are possible, and  we are less alone, and therefore, less vulnerable. 

Feminism is the only political ideology that integrates sex, race, and class material conditions

We feminists are in a tricky position as the political right wins women over with policy that comes across as informed by common sense, biological, sex-based differences.  You’ll see calls for fairness in sports, and protecting the security and dignity of vulnerable women.

I’m here arguing for something that sounds similar. Of course, I fight for the security and dignity of vulnerable women. I worked for free at a rape crisis centre & battered women’s shelter for 15 years!

However, we have a clear example with our neighbours in the USA (and in the platform of several parties in the Canadian federal election) of the risks to women, the poor, racialized people, the environment, and democracy if we become single-issue campaigners or elect officials who do not hold our integrated material interests in their platforms.

At the same time, the so-called left refuses to recognise or address the material circumstances that are the basis of women’s inequality, and the interconnected material conditions entrenched by race and socio-economic class.  

Notice that the only threats to our event today come from that left. This is a betrayal.

Attacking feminists for insisting on our entitlement to organise from our sex-based experience is the perfect campaign for misogynists on the left - they can express their hatred of women and be righteous about it

Feminism (not the fun kind) is the only political ideology that addresses the intersecting and layered material conditions, constraints, and burdens imposed by race, class and sex. 

Women-only as resistance

Women-only organising is fundamental to feminist strategy. We withdraw from men in order to talk and think together about how male supremacy shapes our lives, to think about how each woman’s experience reveals more, and to consider together what we might do to dismantle patriarchy and its entanglements with racist imperialism and capitalism. 

And this, my friends, is exactly why women-only groups have been under attack both by old fashioned sexism and the contemporary version that calls us TERF and bigot. We are a threat and they want us to shut up. And we simply refuse to be shut up.

We are indebted to the Vancouver Rape Relief & Women’s Shelter Collectives who fought and won the legal entitlement to protect women-only organising. While the VRRWS victory was 20 years ago, that victory is key to the inception and survival of several active women-only groups here in Vancouver. So I extend my profound appreciation to the many women (and a few men) in this room and beyond who have kept on since 1995 - staffing the lines, working out the legal and political arguments, raising the funds, and insisting on our entitlement to speak in public in defence of women.

Who profits from attacking feminists? 

As you think about what to make of today’s panel, bear in mind how the ideology WE promote  is connected to the material conditions of our lives. I make my living as a corporate hack by day, as do most of the feminists I know. 

No one profits, though all women stand to benefit from what we have to say

At the moment, fear of backlash is keeping a lot of folks publicly silent or on the fence about gender ideology’s harms to women. The backlash operates just like other forms of male violence & control: the first goal is to harm, or at least scare individual women, while the story about it scares the rest of us into compliance,  into trying to make ourselves invisible. 

The backlash tactics against us reek of fascism, sexist violence, homophobia, and excuses for racism wherever there is the slightest opportunity. We organised this event because we agree with our friend Lee Lakeman - it is necessary to fight. Please listen to the entire Rise Up podcast!, share it to everyone you know, and comment. We need you in this feminist fight!

You don't fight fascism because you think you can win, you fight because it's fascism . ...You don't fight patriarchy because you're sure you can win, you fight because it's patriarchy and because we can all live better by fighting it. Much better." Lee Lakeman, Rise Up! Podcast episode 4.

I would like to invite you all to live better by kicking a little more and trying our best to win.