Apr. 13, 2011 - Issue #808: Destroyer

Queermonton

A history of violence

Sexual safety a growing problem at York University

Valerie Bustros is a 24-year-old student at Toronto's York University. Last week she was using the bathroom at the Absinthe Pub on campus when a man opened the door, swore at her and told her she was in the wrong washroom—she was meant to be in the men's. Bustros informed her helpful advisor that she was a woman and a lesbian. When she came out she found the man, now joined by two of his buddies, as he continued to exchange more angry words with her. Then she says, they attacked. The assailants punched her to the floor and repeatedly kicked her face. She fought back until bar staff intervened and the men took off. The Keele campus bar is only open to students and their guests, visitors have to sign-in.

Did Bustros's assailants victimize her for being a butch women or for viewing her as a man in the ladies room? Did they see themselves as just protectors of the real women on campus? Even if the victim had been male and using a women's washroom, why was their first response to brutalize such a person? Bustros herself seems unsure what motivated the attack. "I just remember I was telling him over and over again that I was a girl and it didn't seem to sink in," she said.

Trans folk and those with different gender presentation still run the risk of beat downs and humiliation for simply trying to go pee. Bathroom anxiety has become such an obvious problem for transgender people that many organizations are working to install gender-neutral bathrooms wherever possible. S Bear Bergman nicknames the issue "tranny bladder," denoting the forced skill many trans people develop in which they can go lengthy periods of time without having to visit a washroom.

Perhaps the attackers are to be forgiven for thinking that a gender-motivated assault was anything other than business as usual at York University. After all, the Keele campus has been a playground of sexual violence over the last few years.
York first made news in 2007 when two men gained access to a locked dormitory during Frosh Week and raped two women in their rooms. It turned out that one of the men had graduated from York the year before. In 2009 a male student sexually assaulted a female student in the campus library and in 2010 a woman was assaulted near campus and sent to the hospital with serious injuries.

Students pressured the university into conducting a safety audit on campus and the results unsurprisingly found a third of respondents felt unsafe or very unsafe on campus. The Metropolitan Action Committee on Violence Against Women and Children report highlights a lengthy list of security deficiencies, from low staffing, lack of emergency phones and poor morale to having "no policy or procedure to address sexual assault."

In the audit, some York Security Services personnel described their roles as "professional witness[es]," citing their non-intervention policy. The report links this security technique to the lack of confidence reported by students, "Feeling responsible for their own safety, women student respondents discussed the various ways they attempt to manage security for themselves."
In the end it doesn't matter if Bustros' attackers thought her a man or a lesbian, whether the attack was homophobic or transphobic. Bustros is hoping the incident results in some sort of action from the University. She's quick to point out the underlying issues of prejudice and ignorance that created the situation, sharing mixed feelings about her attackers. "Yeah, I'm mad at them. I'm angry but I also feel sorry for them. Clearly they're not educated enough." V

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