AUS: Founder of Women-Only App Ordered to Pay Up to $120,000 to Trans-Identified Male For Recognizing Him as a Man

Entrepreneur and founder of a women’s-only application has been ordered to pay $20,000, with an additional maximum of $100,000 in court fees, to a trans-identified male after he was denied access to the platform. CEO of Giggle for Girls Proprietary Limited, Sall Grover, was also found to have “discriminated” against Jason “Roxy” Tickle by recognizing him as a male in a selfie he submitted for on-boarding.

The ruling comes after more than four years of litigation, with Tickle having first filed a discrimination complaint through the Australian Human Rights Commission in December of 2021. The latest and final ruling, handed down in the Federal Court on Friday afternoon, was a response to an appeal lodged by Tickle in August 2024 to a decision made by Justice Bromwich stating that Grover was guilty of “indirect discrimination.” At the time, Grover was ordered to pay $10,000 in compensation to Tickle and to pay his court costs up to $50,000. Dissatisfied with the outcome, Tickle further pursued litigation seeking a verdict of direct discrimination.

In a shocking new development, Justice Melissa Perry sided with Tickle, doubled the compensation payout from $10,000 to $20,000, found Grover guilty of direct discrimination, and ordered her to pay court costs for Tickle up to $100,000. In her decision, Justice Perry cited the Sex Discrimination Act of 1984, which was significantly amended in 2013 to include explicit protections for “gender identity.”

Under Section 4(1), “gender identity” is defined as: “…the gender-related identity, appearance or mannerisms or other gender-related characteristics of a person (whether by way of medical intervention or not), with or without regard to the person’s designated sex at birth.”

Section 5B defines what constitutes discrimination in a legal situation and is divided into two categories: direct discrimination, and indirect discrimination. Direct discrimination “occurs when someone is treated less favorably than a person of a different gender identity would be treated in the same or similar circumstances.” It can be inferred from this definition that the law is suggesting that all individuals possess a “gender identity.”

Indirect discrimination is said to occur “when a condition or requirement is imposed that is the same for everyone but has the effect of disadvantaging people of a particular gender identity, and that condition is not “reasonable” under the circumstances.”

The final ruling stated that Grover had “engaged in unlawful direct discrimination” against trans-identified male Tickle by “excluding Ms Tickle from access to the Giggle App on the basis of her gender-related appearance,” “refusing to restore Ms Tickle’s access to the Giggle App on the basis of her gender-related appearance,” and “thereby treating Ms Tickle, who is a transgender woman, less favourably than a person designated female at birth seeking access to the Giggle App.”

The May 15 ruling states that Grover discriminated against Tickle because she recognized him to be male, and in a bizarre reasoning, argues that he qualifies as a woman despite having male features.

“It is apparent that Ms Grover made her decisions in relation to Ms Tickle solely on the basis of viewing the latter’s onboarding selfie and her conviction that that photograph showed a male person… Ms Tickle’s selfie was in evidence and we were taken to it in the course of argument in the appeal. Although the photograph presents Ms Tickle as a woman (eg hair, clothing), there are features of her appearance that may be considered discordant with that presentation. Ms Tickle’s appearance, it may safely be concluded, was the reason why Ms Grover concluded that she was not entitled to remain as a user of the Giggle App; and that appearance had elements (“characteristics”) that generally appertain to, or at least are imputed to, transgender women – namely, for want of a better expression, male facial features.”

Somewhat confusingly, the ruling also acknowledged that “gender identity” is a “multifarious and cryptic” attribute. It also explicitly details how amendments to the Sex Discrimination Act 1984 (SDA) were designed to remove sex-specific protections, stating: “to the extent that the SDA had previously embodied a concept of sex as involving binary categories fixed at birth, part of the intention of the 2013 amendments was to ensure that the Act would no longer embody or give effect to such a concept… to the extent that the term ‘woman’ appears in the SDA or the concept of womanhood is important to its operation, it is not to be understood by reference to any narrow or rigid conception of femaleness.”

Immediately following the decision, Grover said from her X account: “I am absolutely devastated. Men who claim to be women have more rights than actual women in Australia. It is women who are being discriminated against, not the men who claim to be us. But in a sense, nothing has changed: we will all wake up tomorrow and men will still not be women.”

Grover has signaled her intention to appeal the recent decision in Australia’s High Court.

Tickle, a man who claims to be both intersex and transgender, claimed he attempted to join the female-only app in February 2021 but found that his membership was revoked in September that year. The Giggle app utilizes a screening process which uses AI to determine the sex of an applicant based on a selfie. Tickle was initially granted access to the female-only digital community by the AI.

During an interview with The Australian in April 2022, Grover explained that she took it upon herself to remove Tickle after seeing his photo and identifying him as male. “The person was removed from the Giggle app because they are male, no other reason. The removal was manual. I looked at the onboarding selfie and saw a man. The AI software had let them through, thereby making a mistake that I rectified.” Lawyers defending Grover said that she had been unaware that Tickle identified as transgender during the screening process.

Justice Melissa Perry doubled the amount Sall Grover had been ordered to pay, and found her guilty of “direct discrimination”

Tickle was therefore was booted from the community, and then made several attempts to contact Grover to complain. He sent Grover multiple emails and called her at her home in October 2021.

In January 2022, Grover received a legal complaint from the Australian Human Rights Commission which targeted herself and her company with accusations of discrimination.

“I believe that I am being discriminated against by being provided with extremely limited functionality of a smartphone app by the app provider compared to that of other users because I am a transgender woman,” Tickle wrote in the complaint. “I am legally permitted to identify as female… I believe that Giggle and Sall Grover have decided in error that I am male.”

Tickle bizarrely went on to compare Grover to a white supremacist group, saying, “I have been unable to locate a Facebook page or website for the Ku Klux Klan in Australia. Yet groups that favor discrimination against people based on their gender identity appear to have no need to hide their face.” He then went on to list several Australian women’s rights groups which are critical of males being permitted to identify as female, and referred to this position as “bigotry”.

Tickle had, in his first complaint, sought damages from Grover of up to $200,000, alleging that her “persistent misgendering”, or referring to him as male, had prompted “constant anxiety and occasional suicidal thoughts”. He also requested that Grover be made to “seek out education” regarding the concept of gender identity.

In July of 2022, Tickle, being unable to bear the costs of pursuing the matter further, filed a Notice of Discontinuance with the court, and the complaint was dropped. But five months later, Tickle filed another complaint, having received a $50,000 grant from the University of New South Wales (UNSW) Sydney, and assistance from Barry Nilsson lawyers, who run a multimillion-dollar pro bono program.

In contrast, Grover was left with no other option than to crowdfund an incredible $500,000 in order to defend herself against the discrimination claim.

In August 2024, the Federal Court of Australia found Grover had “indirectly discriminated” against Tickle. While reading out the verdict and reasons for his decision at the Federal Court of Australia, Justice Bromwich referred to Tickle with feminine pronouns, and made the bizarre claim that “sex is changeable.”

“Roxanne Tickle is a transgender woman whose female sex is recognized by an official updated Queensland birth certificate… I have found that Ms. Tickle’s claim of direct gender identity discrimination fails but that her claim of indirect gender identity discrimination succeeds.”

The argument made by Grover’s legal team was that Tickle was discriminated against on the basis of his sex, which is not prohibited, rather than on the basis of gender identity, as he claims. Justice Bromwich’s verdict stated that “these arguments failed” due to a “long history of cases decided by courts going back over thirty years” which he said established that, “in its ordinary meaning, sex is changeable.”

Justice Bromwich then ordered Grover to pay Tickle $10,000 compensation, in addition to court costs up to $50,000, within 60 days.

Justice Bromwich went on to say that “that indirect gender identity discrimination did take place” on the basis that “Tickle was excluded from the use of the Giggle app because she did not look sufficiently female according to the respondents.”

As previously reported by Reduxx, Tickle’s behavior has been called into question, with some critics suggesting that he has been behaving in an overtly sexual manner.

In addition to his attempts to access the female-only social networking app, Tickle has been playing field hockey on a women’s team. He has opposed proposed legislation which would have prohibited men from identifying into women’s sports, while boasting of using the women’s change rooms.

On his personal Instagram account, Tickle has also shared photos of his underwear, jokes about sex toys, and several cartoons drawn by Canadian transgender diaper fetishist Sophie Labelle. Recently, Tickle took to X to reveal that the youngest girl he competes with on the field hockey team is just 15 years old.

News of the recent ruling has prompted widespread criticism on X, the social media site primarily used by Grover, with an outpouring of support for her.

Senator Michaelia Cash, Leader of the Opposition in the Australian Senate, added her thoughts on the ruling by stating that “women and girls have a right to safe, private, and fair single-sex spaces.” Senator Cash played a central role in the evolution of the Sex Discrimination Act 1984 (SDA), though her position has shifted over the years.

Initially, Cash was a vocal supporter of adding “gender identity” as a protected attribute. Her support was significant because it signaled bipartisan agreement on legally codified “gender identity” policies.

More recently, while acting as Attorney-General, Cash called for limitations on the enforcement of “gender identity” policies and became an advocate for establishing exemptions which intrude on the personal lives of individuals.

Similarly, Leah Blyth, Senator for South Australia and representing the Liberal Party shared her views on the ruling.

“The judges made clear that under Australia’s current laws, ‘gender identity’ is treated as legally equivalent to biological sex. That means Sall Grover lost this case. I believe the Court applied the law as it currently stands. Which means the law itself must change. Women and girls deserve clear, protected sex-based rights in law, including the right to single-sex spaces, services and protections based on biological reality.”

One particularly egregious result of the subjective sense of “gender identity” being codified into law is the transfer of violent male sex offenders into women’s prisons.

In March, Reduxx revealed that a transgender pedophile is attempting to sue the Australian state of Victoria over alleged “human rights violations” he has experienced while housed in a women’s prison. Autumn Tulip Harper, also known as Hilary Maloney, sentenced to just under 5 years in prison for the horrific sexual abuse of his own 5-year-old daughter.

Police determined that Harper had directly sexually abused the girl on at least 19 separate occasions in the course of just one month – yet despite this, Maloney was sent to a women’s prison, on the basis of claiming to identify as a woman, to serve his sentence.

reduxx

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *