Irish campaigners have described the Australian Federal Court ruling which said that a biological male person was discriminated against when kicked-off a female-only app as a “devastating result for women”.
Rights group, The Countess, were responding to the appeal court finding in the Giggle v Tickle case which doubled the compensation payout to Tickle to AU$20,000 from a lower court ruling which had also found that Tickle had been discriminated against by Giggle for Girls app founder Sall Grover for blocking the account on the app.
The Australian Full Federal Court dismissed Grover’s appeal of the earlier ruling and further found that Tickle was directly – rather than indirectly – discriminated against by Grover. Ms Grover, who days she has shut down the Giggle app because of rape and death threats from transgender extremists, says she will appeal today’s ruling.
Giggle’s legal team had argued that sex is a biological concept and that Tickle was kicked off the app on the grounds of sex, rather than gender identity, in the first case of its kind before the Federal Court in Australia. Tickle was supported by $50,000 grant from the Grata Fund, a legal fund associated with University of New South Wales, to fund the case.
Under Australia’s Sex Discrimination Act, it is illegal for providers of goods or services to discriminate against another person on the ground of a person’s gender identity.
Ms Grover previously said that she had founded the Giggle for Girls app in 2020 in response to online abuse by men during her time as a screenwriter in Hollywood. “I wanted to create a safe, women-only space in the palm of your hand,” she said.
Speaking today, The Countess spokeswoman, Laoise de Brún, said that women in Australia and everywhere should have a right to say no to men in female-only spaces.
Ms de Brún said the ruling was “a devastating result for women”.
“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,” she said.
“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,” she said.
Head of Advocacy for Women’s Forum Australia, Stephanie Bastiaan, said that the judgement in Giggle v Tickle was “a shock to women across the country”.
“Sall Grover not only lost her appeal, the Court set aside the original finding of indirect discrimination and replaced it with direct discrimination, upholding Tickle’s cross-appeal,” she said.
“It’s important to note the Court expressly said it was only applying the Sex Discrimination Act as it is written – it is “not empowered to give effect to its own view” about whether that law is desirable,” she noted.
In 2013, Julia Gillard’s Australian Labor government 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,” she said.
“Today’s outcome is proof of what those amendments have done: women are left with no meaningful rights or recognition under the Sex Discrimination Act – a bitter irony, given that protecting women was the very purpose of the Act under our commitment to CEDAW.”
“In my opinion, this is a verdict on the law, not on Sall. The judges found that the law – as that government amended it – left them no other conclusion. These amendments must be repealed. The Sex Discrimination Act must once again recognise biological reality and protect women’s right to single-sex spaces,” she said.
“What a dark and devastating day for Australian women and girls.”
However, Jackie Turner, of the Trans Justice Project said: “The decision today is a major step forward for the freedom and equality of all women. It affirms that women who are trans are indeed protected from discrimination under the current laws, the same as all other women.”