Giggle v Tickle: Buckle up

Sydney court case is a defining moment for Australian women’s rights.

Sall Grover and her lawyer, Bridie Nolan..

A Defining Moment for Australian Women’s Rights

On August 4–7, 2025, the Full Federal Court in Sydney will hear a case that could reshape women’s rights to single-sex spaces. The Giggle v Tickle appeal is more than a legal dispute—it’s a battle over whether biological sex can still define womanhood in Australia.

Single-sex spaces, from apps to bathrooms to shelters, exist to protect women from male violence and harassment. Sall Grover, ex-Hollywood screenwriter, entrepreneur and mother, launched a women-only app, Giggle after being sexually harassed as a scriptwriter in Los Angeles.

For many women. having a protected female-only space reduces the risk of being cyberbullied, doxed or sexually harassed by men online. Every woman who’s used female-only services, requested a female healthcare worker for intimate care, joined a breastfeeding group, or changed in public facilities understands the importance of women-only spaces.

But since the Gillard Labor government amended Australia’s Sex Discrimination Act (SDA) in 2013 to include ‘gender identity’ as a protected characteristic, Australian women’s rights have been dismantled.

Tickle v Giggle – Round One

Roxanne Tickle

In February 2021, Roxanne Tickle joined the Giggle app and was initially approved by facial recognition but later excluded after Grover reviewed the selfie provided for onboarding.

Tickle never mentioned he was ‘trans’ and uploaded profile pictures of ducklings and kittens, neither did connect with, or interact with a single woman on the app. Not one.

Tickle filed a complaint with the Australian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) in December 2021, requesting reinstatement on the app and a public apology from Grover, as well as gender re-education. Grover refused. Tickle lodged a discrimination lawsuit in the Federal Court in December 2022.

After a three-day hearing, Justice Robert Bromwich rejected Giggle’s arguments finding that they "conflicted with a long history of cases decided by courts going back over 30 years" which established that "in its ordinary meaning, sex is changeable."

Bromwich ruled Giggle indirectly discriminated against Tickle and awarded Roxy Tickle $10,000 in damages and for Giggle to pay Tickle’s legal costs of $400,000. Grover’s legal team filed an appeal in October 2024, arguing the ruling misinterprets “sex” and undermines women’s sex-based rights.

Then, in February 2025, Roxy Tickle decided to cross-appeal in order to seek a finding of direct discrimination and higher damages. With the $400,000 legal bill for the first case, costs of the appeal and the 2026 cross appeal, Grover faces bankruptcy if she loses. The stakes for Grover and all Australian women could not be higher:

Australian state-mandated ideology

The Australian Capital Territory, Northern Territory, Queensland, South Australia, Tasmania, Victoria, and New South Wales have introduced self-ID, enabling individuals, including 16-year-olds, to change the gender marker on all legal documents. Australia also offers a non-binary identity option. Self ID not only conflicts with women rights when it comes to single-sex spaces but undermines medical services e.g. how would a doctor’s surgery know which patients need to attend breast screening or prostate check ups? What sports teams, change rooms or gender-based services are open to those who are neither ‘female’ or ‘male’? What does it mean for the Australian census that informs policies, budgeting and services for women?

Self ID opens the door for every trans-identified male to access women’s spaces, services and sports.

And while there are many trans-identified women in Australia, there is not one court case insisting that trans-identified women be included in men’s sports, prisons or change rooms.

Angie Jones, a Victorian women’s rights activist posted on X about what this means for vulnerable women in public psychiatric hospitals:

Tickle v Giggle: Round Two

Since the first ruling that found against Sall Grover and Giggle in 2024, both the UK and US Supreme Courts ruled that biological sex takes precedence over the subjective, quasi-religious concept of 'gender identity.'

For Women Scotland, Sex Matters and friends after the Supreme Court ruling

The recent U.K. Supreme Court (SC) ruling in the For Women Scotland case resulted in a unanimous decision by five senior judges that "sex" in the Equality Act 2010 refers to biological sex. This ruling overturned the Scottish government’s guidance to organisations that they were to include trans-identified males with gender recognition certificates as "women."

Following this ruling the UK’s Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) has updated its guidance to reflect that "sex" means biological sex and clarify that policies for facilities like change rooms, toilets, services and associations e.g. lesbian-only groups may exclude men.

The UK Supreme Court’s For Women Scotland ruling could influence the Tickle appeal if the appeal judge considers the relevance of UK law to Australian statutes or finds parallels in statutory interpretation or public policy debates. But given the wording and judicial history of Australia’s SDA that already emphasises ‘gender identity’ over biological sex (and the recent Bromwich ruling), the appeal may hinge on domestic precedent and arguments around the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women’s (CEDAW’s) obligations including single-sex space protections.

The second case that is shifting the public conversation is the June, 2025 United States v. Skrmetti case that upheld Tennessee’s Senate Bill banning puberty blockers, hormones and surgeries for minors. The ruling for Tennessee relied on arguments regarding what constituted a person being male or female in law.

On June 18, 2025, the 6-3 majority opinion by the U.S. Supreme Court justices ruled that "sex" in the Equal Protection context refers to biological distinctions, male and female as determined by reproductive biology rather than gender identity.

While Australian and U.S. law are also different these cases provide a growing legal consensus that women’s rights are undercut by the incoherent concept of ‘gender identity’ in law.

The U.S. radical feminist organisation, Women’s Declaration International (WDI) USA filed an amicus curiae (friend of the court) brief in support of Tennessee’s position. The brief authored by Kara Dansky argued that "transgender" does not constitute a quasi-suspect class for Equal Protection purposes, that "sex" refers to biological sex, not gender identity, and that the state had an interest in protecting children from the harms of irreversible medical harms from puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones.

WDI emphasized that redefining "sex" to include gender identity undermines women’s and girls’ sex-based rights:

Furthermore, proponents of “gender identity” often say that sex and gender are different (we agree); other times they say that sex and gender are the same (we disagree). Proponents of “gender identity” can never make any of their arguments make sense. But for them, the point is not to make sense; the point is to play with material reality and language. The entire ideology of “gender identity” is in the realm of faith, ignorance, and proclamation, in full contempt of any collaborative social reality with shared meanings. Entangled in our individual inner worlds, all people are meant to see our thoughts as facts, shadows of concrete reality. And:

Worse, our words for female members of the human community are being hollowed out simply to serve as vessels for the creation of new “gender identities” with a seemingly endless set of behavioural and costume possibilities. Woman, man, boy, girl, sex, gender: all words warped by transgenderism and its unending, boring fascination with sex stereotypes.

Lesbian Action Group join the Tickle v Giggle Case

Members of the Lesbian Action Group outside the Victorian Pride Centre

The Australian Lesbian Action Group (LAG) have been granted permission to intervene in the Giggle v Tickle appeal in August. LAG has been actively campaigning for lesbian-only spaces, since losing their 2023 application to the Australian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) for an exemption under the SDA to hold a “Lesbians Born Female” event for International Lesbian Day.

When rejecting LAG’s bid, the AHRC said that sex is “non-binary and changeable.” LAG then lost its appeal of the AHRC decision when it took a case to the Administrative Review Tribunal in January 2025. LAG have been granted a final appeal of the ART decision that will be heard in Melbourne in February 2026.

LAG’s intervention in the Giggle appeal is part of their ongoing fight against what they describe as a “repressive political climate” that forces lesbians underground by denying them the ability to hold public, female-only events without including trans-identified men.

The U.K Supreme Court’s ruling highlighted that interpreting “sex” as legal sex (via a Gender Recognition Certificate) rather than biological sex, would undermine protections for sexual orientation, particularly for lesbians. The judges argued that sexual orientation is based on attraction to biological sex, not legal gender. They also noted that allowing trans women (biological males) with GRCs to be classified as lesbians under the Equality Act would “render meaningless” the protections for same-sex attracted women, as it would force lesbian groups to admit individuals who are not biologically female

This is the same argument LAG will be making to the Federal Court as Australian lesbians have been forced underground over the last 20 years while the rights of trans-identified males who claim to be “lesbians” take precedence over lesbians’ rights to be same-sex attracted.

The betrayal of women by the Australian Labor Party

It’s an irony not lost on many Australian women that the first female Prime Minister, Julia Gillard was responsible for overseeing the most significant erosion of women’s rights since the Married Women’s Property Act 1870 that allowed married women to own and control property independently of their husbands.

Now, 150 years later, vulnerable, indigenous and economically deprived Australian women are forced to share prison cells, psychiatric rooms, changing rooms and female services with men. Self ID or ‘certified sex’ is little more than a legal and linguistic fiction of a subjective, non-falsifiable belief that we each possess a ‘gendered soul’ that overrides the reality of our sexed bodies.

Reem Alsalem - the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women and Girls is one of the few women speaking out in the UN in support of women and girl’s rights. Reem spoke about the dangers of self ID when it was proposed by the Scottish government under Nicola Sturgeon.

Support the Appeal

The Giggle appeal in August aims to reverse the legal fiction pushed by LGBTQi+ lobby groups, politicians, men like Judge Bromwich and women like Julia Gillard that ‘trans women are women.’ They are not.

Sall Grover’s legal fight is a beacon for all those who believe sex matters - in language, in law, in policy and in life.

Support Sall by speaking about the case and raising awareness of what’s at stake.

Listen to Sall Grover discussing the case on Triggernometry

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Support Sall Grover’s Case

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