Don’t let the seemingly frivolous title of this case – Giggle v Tickle – distract from the serious implications of Friday’s Federal Court decision. The right to access a women-only app called Giggle for Girls sounds harmless enough, but the appeal court’s determination means women no longer have the right to gather in their own spaces without the presence of biological men. The Federal Court has chosen gender ideology over biological reality. It didn’t need to. The Sex Discrimination Act was designed to promote equality between men and women – if necessary, by allowing “special measures” that might discriminate against men but help women. There was always a recognition that giving rights to one person might infringe on those of another. When parliament passed poorly drafted amendments to the act in 2013 giving protections for “gender identity”, it clearly never intended that biological boys would sleep in girls’ dormitories, or that biological men would be locked into prison cells overnight with vulnerable women.
There is nothing, even now, in the omnishambles legislation that required the Federal Court to give gender identity precedence over sex. The judges did that all by themselves. Sex-based protections designed to protect women can now be employed by biological men who identify as women to ride roughshod over women who refuse to comply with their demands. Sall Grover, who has fought this case for more than four years, has actively supported trans people having their own spaces, their own clubs, their own sporting events. “We’re not opposing other people having protections that they need, but you cannot take away our protections to get yours,” she says. “That’s not how human rights work.” Alas, that is now how human rights law works in Australia. We need to catch up with the rest of the world. The UK Supreme Court ruled a year ago that sex and gender identity are not the same, and that sex-based rights must be protected. Yet we’re now in an even more invidious position than before Grover’s appeal.
Justice Bromwich had originally found that Grover only indirectly discriminated against Roxanne Tickle, because she didn’t know she was dealing with a transgender woman – she just saw someone who looked like a man. The appeal judges have said that doesn’t matter. You can be directly discriminating against someone because of their male appearance, according to the Full Court, because male appearance is a gender-related characteristic of transgender women. You might have thought male appearance was, well, because someone was born male. After this judgment, if someone who looks like a man but identifies as a transgender woman goes into a women’s toilet, it is illegal to challenge or exclude them. Grover says the damages awarded against her are punitive. It’s hard to disagree. The appeal court awarded aggravated damages to Tickle because of Grover’s “gratuitous” and “disrespectful” conduct in “misgendering” Tickle during the trial.
That is, Grover stated her sincerely held belief, in a court of law, that a man cannot be a woman. It cost her $20,000. The one-time scriptwriter has already paid a high price for taking on a battle that should have been fought by those entrusted with protecting women. Many women gave evidence in the proceedings that they needed their own spaces because of past experiences of sexual assaults and intimidation by men. Grover was one of those women. In the face of this evidence, the Australian Human Rights Commission and its Sex Discrimination Commissioner backed the right of a biological male who identifies as a woman to insist on being admitted to a space established for women. Grover was 14 weeks pregnant when this saga began. Her daughter is now four. But Grover says she’s determined to do whatever it takes to ensure her daughter has the rights so many women have fought for. “I want every woman and girl to be able to say “no” to a man, no matter how he identifies, and not be punished for it.” It is past time for parliament to step in and deliver some basic commonsense.
Source: Compiled by APN from media reports
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