A man who identifies as a woman has won a landmark discrimination case in Australia against a women-only social media app after it denied him access on account of being male.
Justice Robert Bromwich said in his decision on Friday that case law has consistently found sex is “changeable and not necessarily binary”.
‘Roxanne Tickle’ was found by the Federal Court of Australia to have been the victim of “indirect discrimination” with the app, Giggle for Girls, ordered to pay Tickle $10,000 AUD compensation plus his legal costs.
‘Indirect discrimination’ refers to instances in which a decision disadvantages a person with a particular attribute.
In 2021, Tickle downloaded Giggle, an app marketed as a networking space for women to connect and socialise apart from men. To access the app, users uploaded a selfie for analysis by an artificial intelligence software to verify that they were a woman – which Tickle successfully did.
However, later that year Tickle’s membership was revoked manually.
Tickle sued Giggle and its CEO, Sall Grover, on the basis that, being “legally permitted to identify as female” and having had his birth certificate amended, he should be permitted into spaces reserved for women.
He sought damages amounting to $200,000 AUD, claiming that “persistent misgendering” by Grover had caused him “constant anxiety and occasional suicidal thoughts”.
The defence maintained that women have a right to single-sex spaces, both online and offline.
The outcome of the case was much-anticipated as it was considered likely to set a legal precedent for the resolution of conflicts between gender identity claims and sex-based rights, where they arise.
In the judgement, the court stated that “sex is not confined to being a biological concept referring to whether a person at birth had male or female physical traits, nor confined to being a binary concept, limited to the male or female sex…”.
The defence had argued that the Australian government acted unconstitutionally in amending the Sex Discrimination Act of 1984 to include “gender identity” as a protected characteristic.
However, the court argued that Australia’s Sex Discrimination Act section 5b, which prohibits discrimination on the ground of “gender identity,” is in line with the discrimination provisions in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR).
The Court also rejected the defence’s argument regarding the disqualification of Giggle on the basis that Australia was obligated to protect women’s rights, including single-sex spaces, under the Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW).
Tickle said the ruling “shows that all women are protected from discrimination” and that he hoped the result would be “healing for trans and gender diverse people”.
“Unfortunately, we got the judgement we anticipated. The fight for women’s rights continues,” Grover wrote on X in response to the decision.
Unfortunately, we got the judgement we anticipated.
— Sall Grover (@salltweets) August 22, 2024
The fight for women’s rights continues. 🙋♀️#TickleVGiggle