Efforts to defend the biological reality of sex have been underway across the world in recent years.

Last year, the Federal Court of Australia ruled in Tickle vs Giggle that Roxanne Tickle, a man who identifies as a woman, faced unlawful discrimination when he was denied access to the female-only networking app Giggle.

The Court also declared that, under the Sex Discrimination Act, “sex is changeable”.

At the time of the decision, Sall Grover, creator of the Giggle app, said:

I designed my app to give women their own space to network. It is a legal fiction that Tickle is a woman…A woman’s-only app isn’t about discrimination. It’s about freedom of speech, belief and association.

We are taking a stand for the safety of all women’s only spaces, but also for basic reality and truth, which the law should reflect.

Now that freedom of speech and basic reality is once again before the courts as hearings took place last week in Grover’s appeal.

At stake is whether or not sex categories have any meaning in law. The question before the courts is, as Janet Albrechtsen wrote in The Australian: “What is a woman?”

Grover’s answer to that question is clear: an adult human female.

The biological reality is also clear.

But Australian law has added unnecessary confusion to a simple issue after the Gillard government in 2013 added “gender identity” as a protected category under the Sex Discrimination Act.

Albrechtsen notes:

If there is no way around the plain text of the act as it stands, even if the interpretation is preposterous, then a judge is duty-bound to send it back to the parliament to fix.

This legal confusion over biology affects everyday Australians from all walks of life, including Jasmine Sussex, an HRLA client whose claim “men can’t breastfeed” has landed her before a state anti-discrimination tribunal.

While we await the outcome of Grover’s appeal, it’s important to affirm that destroying sex categories is bad for all Australians, and HRLA will continue to work to defend the right to speak truthfully about biological reality.

^{Image source: Sky News. Sall Grover to fight ruling 'sex is changeable' and appeal discrimination case after 'girls only' app was sued by biological man Picture: Jane Dempster/The Australian.}