Reconstructing the West

No Giggling Matter

Last week at the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship conference in London, I had that feeling you get when you’re watching a movie with friends. You know the one. You have seen the movie before, but they have not. You know the funny part is coming up. They do not. Oh, the delicious tension!

So as Australia’s own Sall Grover strode confidently across the stage in front of thousands to deliver what was one of the speeches of the conference, I was watching everyone else watching her. She did not disappoint.

For those who do not know, Sall is the brave woman who, after rejecting a female-identifying man from her women-only social media app – Giggle for Girls -, found herself in an appalling Kafka-esque legal nightmare in Australia that has seen her lose, not once, but twice, in the Federal court under Australia’s anti-discrimination legislation.

So what was the funny part? Sall simply announced the name of the case, “Giggle versus Tickle”, which set everyone off. As it should.

Yet the deep irony of the case is that it is no laughing matter. A man who has renamed himself Roxanne Tickle has now successfully sued a woman in the courts – not once but twice, on the basis that to block him from membership is in violation of the changes to the Sex Discrimination Act, made in 2013.

Those changes were pushed through by Australia’s only female Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, who herself is viewed as a women’s rights champion in many quarters for standing up to misogyny.