Australia has abolished womanhood

The courts Down Under have gone topsy-turvy. At 9am Sydney time, a judge handed down a ruling that eradicated the category of sex in law, finding in favour of a man who was denied access to a women-only app. Justice Robert Bromwich stated that according to Australian law, sex is ‘changeable and not necessarily binary’. The case, known as Tickle vs Giggle, has set a dangerous legal precedent that the world may now follow.

The legal row started when Tickle – an angry man in a frock who changed his name to Roxanne – saw some posts on social media that annoyed him. He is a trans activist who has gone to some lengths to ‘pass’ as female. He had so-called gender-affirmation surgery in 2019 and changed his birth certificate to obfuscate the fact that he was, to use his words, ‘assigned male at birth’. His sex obviously remains male, as perfectly illustrated in photos by his five o’clock shadow, even if on paper he is legally a ‘woman’.

The tweets that upset Tickle were posted by Sall Grover, founder of the women-only social-media app, Giggle for Girls. Giggle, a small tech start-up, used facial-recognition software to screen out men. Tickle put this to the test, and initially was accepted on to the app. But after seven months his picture was clocked, either by Grover or the screening function, and his access was restricted.

Tickle then responded in the way that unpleasant, petulant men do when they’re spurned. He huffed, puffed and sent numerous emails and made phone calls to Grover. When that failed to get him reinstated, he took her to court.

Tickle argued he had a right to use Giggle because he is a woman on paper. The judge agreed, noting ‘the imposed condition of needing to appear to be a cisgendered female in photos submitted to the Giggle app had the effect of disadvantaging transgender women who did not meet that condition’. (‘Cisgendered female’ is trans-speak for ‘real woman’, while ‘transgender women’ refers to men.)

For their part, Grover’s legal team agreed that Tickle had been discriminated against – but on the grounds of his male sex, not his claims to have a female gender identity.

The judge went on to explain that although the science of sex difference was not in dispute, ‘the issues in this case involve wider issues than biology’. He considered and then dismissed expert opinion from evolutionary biologist Colin Wright, author and philosopher Kathleen Stock, and campaigner Helen Joyce. Remarkably, he declared Joyce, author of a best-selling book on transgenderism, as having ‘no recognised expertise in any of the areas in which she expresses an opinion’.

Reading the ruling, it is clear that Justice Bromwich understands that blokes can’t become Sheilas; he just didn’t think that biology was relevant to the case. Instead, he stuck to a narrow, administrative understanding of sex and gender, stating that ‘Tickle is a legal female, as reflected in her updated birth certificate issued under Queensland law’ (sic).

Strip away the robes and legalese, law is supposed to uphold what we collectively agree as a society to be right. But trans activists have broken that covenant. They are twisting justice itself to meet the desire of an entitled few to be affirmed as something they are not. Perhaps Justice Bromwich ought to consider the words of the great Australian feminist, Germaine Greer: ‘Just because you lop off your dick and then wear a dress doesn’t make you a fucking woman. I’ve asked my doctor to give me long ears and liver spots and I’m going to wear a brown coat but that doesn’t turn me into a fucking Cocker Spaniel.’

What ought to send a shiver down the spine of all right-thinking people is that this ruling could have huge ramifications for those in other countries across the globe. The Convention to Eliminate All forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) is an international treaty adopted in 1979 by the UN. It is an agreement that recognises the specific needs of women. Giggle’s defence argued that Australia’s ratification of CEDAW obliges the state to protect women’s rights, including single-sex spaces. That Justice Bromwich rejected this will have ramifications for the 186 countries that have ratified CEDAW, as judges across the world look to landmark rulings like this to inform domestic decisions.

The real cost of Justice Bromwich deciding that ‘female’ is a legal identity rather than a biological reality is likely to be felt by those in CEDAW signatory countries where violence against women is highest. Judges in countries including Pakistan, El Salvador (the femicide capital of the world) and South Africa (which has the highest reported rate of rape in the world) are now likely to take their lead on the interpretation of CEDAW from Australia. Even if misogynist imans in Pakistan, woman-killers in El Salvador and rapists in South Africa all know which sex they are targeting, there is now a real risk their nations’ judges will follow in the heavy tread of Australia in abolishing the category of woman.

The human rights of the most marginalised women in the world have been put at further risk – all because an angry man in Australia wasn’t allowed to play with the girls on a social-media app. Despite the comical name, there is really nothing funny about Tickle vs Giggle.

Jo Bartosch is a journalist campaigning for the rights of women and girls.