Transgender Roxanne Tickle, a man living as a woman in Australia, is suing the women-only app Giggle for Girls for denying him membership.
Sall Grover created the Giggle for Girls social media app to be a female-only “safe space” free of harassment and established a gender verification process using AI to bar men from joining the platform. In 2021, Roxanne Tickle tried to apply but access was revoked. He is now suing Grover for discrimination. Tickle’s lawyer, Georgina Costello, told a Federal Court in Sydney that Grover illegally discriminated against Tickle’s gender identity.
“The evidence will show that Ms Tickle is a woman,” Costello said. “She perceives herself as a woman. She presents herself as a woman.”
Bridie Nolan, representing Giggle in the lawsuit, said the app had always been meant as a women-only safe space free of “male online digital violence.” Grover allegedly endured sexual abuse while working as a screenwriter in Hollywood and later underwent trauma therapy.
“The vision was to create an online refuge,” Nolan said. “It would be a place without harassment, mansplaining, d— pics, stalking, aggression.”
Nolan further argued that the app did not breach sex discrimination laws, adding that they allow for “special measures intended to achieve equality,” further creating greater “equality between men and women in public life.”
Tickle received a birth certificate in 2019 from the Australian government that reads, “Female,” after undergoing transition surgery.
“Gender is not merely a biological question, it is partly social and partly psychological,” Costello told the court. “Ms Tickle was assigned male gender at birth but she has changed to being a woman and that fact is clear in this case.”
Per Sydney Morning Herald, representatives from the “Australian Human Rights Commission, including Sex Discrimination Commissioner Anna Cody, are assisting the court by providing submissions about the ‘meaning, scope and validity of relevant provisions of the Sex Discrimination Act.'”
“The commissioner is not a party to the proceeding and has not made submissions about whether Ms Tickle was in fact discriminated against,” the commission said in a statement.
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