In a devastating result for women, the Australian Full Federal Court has handed down its judgement in Tickle v Giggle. Sall Grover lost her appeal and the Court set aside the original finding of indirect discrimination and replaced it with direct discrimination, upholding Mr Tickle’s cross-appeal. Damages to Mr Tickle were doubled from $10,000 to $20,000.
Laoise de Brún BL, CEO and Founder of The Countess, explained. Sall Grover’s bravery in taking this all the way is to be commended. The case arose because Ms Grover’s app Giggle for Girls, a female-only social networking app, excluded males by using facial recognition software. This software identified Roxanne Tickle as male. Mr Tickle maintained that because he legally changed his gender identity and birth cert, he is now female and has been discriminated against. He took a case against Giggle.
Sall Grover fought for over 4 years for what should be basic common sense. Men cannot be women. Women deserve privacy and dignity. It’s a basic safeguarding principle. This ruling clarifies that Australian law puts ideology before reality and puts every Australian woman and girl at risk. It is now up to Australian legislators now to fix the mess created by the Sex Discrimination Act. The Court expressly said it was only applying the Act as it is written – it is ‘not empowered to give effect to its own view’ about whether that law is desirable. Australian men and women must fight this injustice and demand that the law is changed.
In 2013, a Labour Government under Julia Guillard amended the Sex Discrimination Act, stripping the meaning out of “man” and “woman” and adding gender identity as a protected attribute to be pitted against biological sex.
This is what was envisaged with the Yogyakarta Principles – to replace biological sex with gender identity. The Principles are not international law, nor are they legally binding on any country. The Gillard government erred when they enacted the Sex Discrimination Act by using gender identity instead of biological sex. CEDAW (Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women), protects women on the basis of biological sex. This convention is also under attack by the trans lobby. This is an all-out attack on the laws that protect women and girls.
Across the world, sex and gender identity are in conflict. Women and girls no longer have clear rights. In the UK, we saw the Supreme Court confirm that men who say they are women are not to be treated as women where sex matters, that single-sex spaces, services and quotas must be preserved. So a woman in Scotland could legally exclude males from her app but a woman in Australia cannot.
In Ireland there is a conflict between the Equality Acts and the Gender Recognition Act. We call on government to act to amend the Acts to make clear that female-only spaces, sports, and quotas must be maintained on the basis of sex.