By Josephine Bartosch, UnHerd
In 2020, following her own experiences of male violence and harassment, Sall Grover founded Giggle for Girls, a women-only social app. Two years later, she received a complaint from the Australian Human Rights Commission accusing her of “gender identity discrimination” for refusing to allow a male, Roxanne Tickle, to join.
Tickle, who identifies as a trans woman, attempted to gain access to Giggle. Following a legal challenge brought under Australia’s Sex Discrimination Act, the Federal Court ruled in 2024 that Giggle had unlawfully discriminated against Tickle on the basis of gender identity. This week, an appeal court upheld that decision, finding the discrimination had been direct rather than indirect, and doubled the damages awarded to Tickle to $20,000.
The judges stressed that the logic of including men within legislation designed to protect women was for Parliament to decide, holding responsibility for the absurdity of the ruling at arm’s length. As they put it: “The desirability or otherwise of that law is not a matter open to this court to consider.”
The legal mess stems from the Julia Gillard government’s 2013 amendments to Australia’s Sex Discrimination Act, which stripped explicit biological definitions of “man” and “woman” from the legislation and replaced them with protections based on gender identity. At the time, this no doubt seemed like a minor accommodation for what politicians were assured was a vulnerable minority. But in the years since, the threat to sex-based rights has become far more serious.