This week’s Tickle vs Giggle court case result in far away Australia brought home the serious consequences of vanity social legislation, hasty bits of laws set up to ameliorate the discrimination some minority identity group allegedly suffers. Socially aware left wing governments often resort to public acts of atonement which are trumpeted as morally and historically significant. That they are often low cost gestures but reap tremendous amounts of positive press is a bonus. Julia Gillard’s government amended the 1984 Sex Discrimination Act (SDA) to pass the 2013 Sex Discrimination Amendment (Sexual Orientation, Gender Identity and Intersex Status) Act. The stated aim was to tackle misogyny and discrimination against women in public life but the title alone is illustrative of how messy the thinking behind this law was. But Julia Gillard could do no wrong after her famed Misogyny Speech which went global and had feminists and the liberal press applauding her profusely. What is the problem with the amended 2013 SDA? Well it basically erased the sex class of women (and men) and made discrimination against women based on sex meaningless as we saw this week.
Regular readers are likely to be aware of the amusingly named Tickle vs Giggle imbroglio but allow me bring you up to speed quickly. Sall Grover set up an app, Giggle, for women and girls only but a trans woman, Roxanne/Jason Tickle accessed it, was kicked off and sued Grover for gender based discrimination. In a ruling delivered on 23 August 2024 Justice Robert Bromwich said in his decision that case law has consistently found sex is “changeable and not necessarily binary”, ultimately dismissing Giggle’s argument and ordering her to pay compensation to Tickle and his costs. He said that 30 years of case law recognising men as women supported his ruling.
“The acceptance that Ms Tickle is correctly described as a woman, reinforcing her gender-identity status for the purposes of this proceeding, and therefore for the purposes of bringing her present claim of gender identity discrimination, is legally unimpeachable.”
The Australian Human Rights Commission which participated in the legal case by sending representatives to the court, including Anna Cody, the Sex Discrimination Commissioner, welcomed the ruling. Anna Cody said the judgment sent the message that Australia wanted “an inclusive society in which all can participate”, including trans people. Amnesty International welcomed the ruling but like the BBC refused to use Tickle’s photo, instead using a stock photo of an actual woman to illustrate its posts. Now, why would that be?
Roxanne Tickle has won her discrimination case against the social media app 'Giggle for Girls', which blocked her from joining on the basis of being male. This is a step forward in ensuring transgender women are not discriminated against on the basis of their gender identity. pic.twitter.com/552Qq6r2KJ
— Amnesty International (@amnesty) August 23, 2024
It is the ironic tragedy of feminism that we never bothered to define what a woman was and for decades actively fought against biological determinism – the notion that we had lady brains incapable of higher level thinking, that our wombs were wasted if we never bore children, that our reproductive functions did not define us. The most definitive international legislation concerning women’s rights – CEDAW- did not define what a woman was. It wasn’t thought necessary then. In the 1960s and 70’s “sex change” operations for transsexuals (it is very strange but there were hardly any female transsexuals then) became more common and governments began to grapple with the post-op identities of these men. Countries like mine, Singapore, which remained resolutely homophobic, were surprisingly (or not because the homophobia is the key ingredient in these matters) considerate of those very few men who became “women” and facilitated legal recognition of them as women, permitting a change of identity documents. Similar legal arrangements existed in western countries until the success of the gay rights movement culminated in landmark recognition of same-sex marriage and thereafter the trans rights campaign started in earnest. There was a spate of legislation in western countries at the turn of the millennium – the Gender Recognition Act in the UK in 2004 for example – that sought to enshrine anti-discrimination protections on the basis of sexuality and gender identity was often tacked on. What started as a legal fiction, a lie – that some men could become women after surgery- has now morphed into a certainty that trumps biological reality and the lived experience and instincts of the human species. Gonads, chromosomes, primary sexual characteristics are not the determinants of sex identity but legal documents. In the case of the hulking Algerian boxer Iman Khelif, a passport and in the case of Roxanne Tickle, an amended birth certificate.
While we are still reeling from the fallout of messy legislation and will be going back and forth to court over this case and countless others for years to come, the Home Minister of the UK, Yvette Cooper, wants to introduce yet more legislation to fight – yes, you guessed it, misogyny. It is terrifying but she has indicated that she wants eh, extreme misogyny to be classed on par with political extremism to fight the putative radicalisation of young men online. She has ordered a review of Britain’s counter-extremism strategy to address gaps in the Government’s stance towards this problem – as yet unquantified but why let that bother you- of hordes of bad boy Andrew Tate fans.
The Home Office currently has several extremism categories ranked as an area of ‘concern’, including Islamist, extreme Right-wing, animal rights, environmental and Northern Ireland related extremism.
There is a category for ‘incel’, which is an abbreviation of the term ‘involuntary celibate’, which refers to a male subculture of violent feelings towards women as a result of rejection.
However the Incel category is apparently not enough. I dont know what intelligence or evidence the Home Office has for a wave of specifically incel-led crime and mayhem. All the trolls on X/twitter humiliating the current government after the Southport riot and the government’s two-tiered response to it?
Ms Cooper said: ‘For too long Governments have failed to address the rise in extremism, both online and on our streets, and we’ve seen the number of young people radicalised online grow.
‘Hateful incitement of all kinds fractures and frays the very fabric of our communities and our democracy.
‘Action against extremism has been badly hollowed out in recent years, just when it should have been needed most.
‘That’s why I have directed the Home Office to conduct a rapid analytical sprint on extremism, to map and monitor extremist trends, to understand the evidence about what works to disrupt and divert people away from extremist views, and to identify any gaps in existing policy which need to be addressed to crack down on those pushing harmful and hateful beliefs and violence.
The government is convinced that very bad thoughts exist in specific parts of the population (just not the ones actually blowing up stuff and raping masses of girls) and like priests of the olden days, it is their morally mandated task to exorcise these from society. I wonder how these attempts to police misogyny will work out in actuality. Will the British dawah dudes who run podcasts justifying child marriage ie child rape be collared? Wrong demographic? Protected under religious freedom? Which community leaders will it importune to treat their females better? Will the trantifa who harass women exercising the right to free speech be dragged into police stations?
Given how the world has gone crazy in the last few years, a left-leaning ‘progressive’ government is the last one I would trust with the safety of women and girls. How many of Starmer’s babes in parliament have spoken out about Iraq’s plans to reduce the age of consent for marriage to 9 or the Taliban’s most oppressive laws yet against women?
In Afghanistan, the Taliban tell women what they can wear, where they can go, and who they can speak to.
But you don’t criticise Sharia law?
You don’t condemn those men?
You don’t seem to care about that injustice?Zarah is a hypocrite.
Don’t be like Zarah. pic.twitter.com/tZxunY2OPC— Samantha Smith (@SamanthaTaghoy) August 24, 2024
An amusing aside in how once esteemed human rights activist organisations like Amnesty deal with actual bloodcurdling misogyny such as the Taliban’s is this:
.@Amnesty claims the Taliban oppress people who identify as girls, as if a girl or woman could avoid oppression simply by choosing to identify as a man. The Taliban may be barbaric superstitious savages, but they have a better grasp of biology than woke Western elites. pic.twitter.com/IwIJtRpv1J
— Gurwinder (@G_S_Bhogal) August 24, 2024
Fuck you mightily Amnesty. We cannot identify out of our bodies, only the sick and confused ones amongst us attempt to do so with often tragic results. Thus we cannot identify out of oppression.
