Latest news with #SallGrover
Times
11-08-2025
- Entertainment
- Times
Sall Grover: I saw a man, not a woman, says app founder in trans lawsuit
As a 27-year-old Hollywood scriptwriter, Sall Grover was dumbstruck when a film producer offered her work and then plunged his hands down her pants. She fled and called her manager, only to be left stunned again. 'He goes, 'This is great. He wants you to write him a script',' Grover said. That experience and others, such as the Hollywood landlords who offered young women free accommodation if they did not wear clothes, left Grover disillusioned upon her return to Australia after a decade away. Encouraged by her mother, she decided to create an app exclusively for women — a space, as she describes it, where women could 'just talk and connect about anything they wanted to'. Or, as she told a court: 'It would be a place without harassment, mansplaining, dick pics, stalking and aggression, and other male patterned online behaviour.'
Times
10-08-2025
- Entertainment
- Times
I saw a man, not a woman, says female app founder in trans lawsuit
As a 27-year-old Hollywood scriptwriter, Sall Grover was dumbstruck when a film producer offered her work and then plunged his hands down her pants. She fled and called her manager, only to be left stunned again. 'He goes, 'This is great. He wants you to write him a script',' Grover said. That experience and others, such as the Hollywood landlords who offered young women free accommodation if they did not wear clothes, left Grover disillusioned upon her return to Australia after a decade away. Encouraged by her mother, she decided to create an app exclusively for women — a space, as she describes it, where women could 'just talk and connect about anything they wanted to'. Or, as she told a court: 'It would be a place without harassment, mansplaining, dick pics, stalking and aggression, and other male patterned online behaviour.'
The Guardian
06-08-2025
- The Guardian
Meaning of ‘woman' goes beyond dictionary definition, court hears as Giggle for Girls appeal concludes
Sex exists on a scale and the definition of 'woman' is not limited to the pages of a dictionary, a court has heard in an appeal hearing to overturn a landmark gender identity discrimination finding made against a women-only social media app. Giggle for Girls and its CEO, Sall Grover, are challenging Justice Robert Bromwich's August 2024 federal court judgment that found Roxanne Tickle, a transgender woman, was indirectly discriminated against when she was barred from the platform in September 2021. The case was the first gender identity discrimination case to reach the federal court. Much of the proceedings, which concluded on Wednesday, centred on the definition of sex, woman and what it means to be a woman. On Wednesday, Celia Winnett, the barrister for the Sex Discrimination Commissioner, who acted as a friend of the court, said the definition of 'women does include transgender women'. The full court of the federal court heard Giggle for Girls and Grover argue that the Sex Discrimination Act bears the 'ordinary' meaning of men and women. But Winnett said that ''woman' does now have a broader ordinary meaning … informed by its use' and that the meaning was 'broad enough to include trans women'. 'There's no need for ordinary meaning to hinge or rely on dictionary meanings,' she said. On Monday, Grover's barrister, Noel Hutley SC, told the court that 'even today, the Macquarie dictionary defines the word 'women' by reference to what I have called 'natal' woman'. A natal woman is a term used to describe a person who was assigned female at birth. Sign up: AU Breaking News email Giggle for Girls and Grover argue the app was allowed to discriminate against men because it was a special measure that redressed historical disadvantage between men and women. Grover has persistently misgendered Tickle and claims she did not know Tickle was a trans woman when she barred her from the app. The words 'opposite sex' were replaced with 'different sex' in the Sex Discrimination Act in 2013, when amendments made it unlawful under federal law to discriminate against a person on the basis of sexual orientation, gender identity or intersex status. Man, woman and sex are not defined in the act. Ruth Higgins SC, acting for Equality Australia, on Wednesday told the court that transgender people experienced unique forms of identity discrimination and that 'sex' included social recognition and personal identification. 'Sex is way of classifying people along a scale between a man at one end and woman at the other,' she said. 'Sex at birth is but one conception of sex.' A purely biological definition relied on a 'false simplicity', she said, questioning whether biological meant anatomical, chromosomal, hormonal or a balance thereof. The Lesbian Action Group was also given leave to intervene in the appeal. Its barrister, Leigh Howard, referred to the For Women Scotland case, when the UK supreme court in April issued a historic and definitive ruling that the terms 'woman' and 'sex' in the UK's Equality Act refer only to a biological woman and to biological sex. He said 'sex is a biological condition, not an identity' and urged for the word 'woman' to be given the same meaning throughout the act. Georgina Costello KC, Tickle's barrister, said Giggle for Girls' policy to exclude transgender women from the app disadvantaged transgender women – and that those women could face gender identity discrimination because of a discordance between their appearance and their identity. Because Giggle for Girls required users to have a gender identity that appeared consistent with their gender identity at birth, direct discrimination – rather than indirect discrimination as Bromwich found – was a 'better fit', she argued. But her opposition said it could not have been parliament's intention, when writing the Sex Discrimination Act, for protected measures – such as gender identity – to prejudice special measures for women. 'It would be an extraordinary by-blow of this exercise that expanding protection in effect undermines the ability to set up measures to achieve substantive equality,' Hutley said. Over the two-and-half-day appeal, the court heard Tickle was seeking $40,000 in damages and that she was treated as a 'hostile invader' when joining the app. A finding is expected by February.
News.com.au
05-08-2025
- Politics
- News.com.au
‘May the best woman win': JK Rowling weighs in on Giggle v Tickle discrimination case
JK Rowling has thrown her support behind the founder of a women-only app currently appealing a Federal Court ruling that she had unlawfully discriminated against a transgender woman. Sall Grover was ordered to pay $10,000 in damages last August after she was found to have indirectly discriminated against transgender woman Roxanne Tickle when she removed her from her social media app, Giggles for Girls. AI software designed to filter out men from the women-only app had cleared Ms Tickle, but Ms Grover removed her from the app herself after seeing her profile in 2021. The landmark case resulted in Federal Court Justice Robert Bromwich ruling that Ms Tickle was excluded from the app for not looking 'sufficiently female', and therefore was indirectly discriminated against. Ms Grover filed an appeal against Justice Bromwich's judgement in October. The first hearing of her appeal was held on Monday. Ahead of the hearing, Rowling – who has been outspoken in her criticism of what she sees as an assault of women's rights coming from transgender activists – issued a message of public support to Ms Grover. 'Good luck, Sall,' the Harry Potter author wrote on X. 'May the best woman (haha) win x.' Rowling also shared a post of Ms Grover's on the social media platform – a screenshot of an article by The Australian about Monday's hearing. Ms Grover captioned the screenshot of the article – headlined 'Trans women 'should have legal protections available to pregnant women'': 'This is how insane gender ideology is.' Speaking at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Brisbane in October, Ms Grover insisted 'somebody's biological sex is immutable' and it was a 'natural human instinct for us to be able to tell this'. 'And if you are then being told that you cannot acknowledge that really basic instinct, you have lost the ability to recognise one of our most basic skills,' she said. 'If you just look to the person sitting next to you right now, you can tell if they are male or female. Now imagine if you can't do that anymore because you've got to ask, 'Do you have a gender identity?'. And if you don't acknowledge that and give meaning to that then you're breaking the law. It simply doesn't work.' Ms Grover added 'we are told constantly that trans rights are human rights, but human rights cannot be rights that take away other people's rights'. 'That's not how it works. And it's not only that they're taking away our rights, we're actually being coerced into giving up our rights,' she claimed. It's not the first time Rowling has weighed in on an Australian court case related to women's and transgender rights. In December, she congratulated Moira Deeming's defamation win against John Pesutto, following a ruling from Federal Court Justice David O'Callaghan that Mr Pesutto had defamed Ms Deeming as a Nazi sympathiser after she attended a rally critical of transgender beliefs. 'The 'right side of history' is racking up a hell of a lot of losses recently, isn't it?' Rowling wrote on X at the time. 'Congratulations Moira Deeming.' She similarly celebrated Britain's Supreme Court's decision in April that a woman is defined by her sex at birth, in a major blow for transgender people in the UK. The case came about because the Scottish Government had argued trans women with a valid gender recognition certificate (GRC) could be afforded the same rights as all women under the Equality Act. A GRC can be issued by the UK government to people who are living as a different gender to their biological sex so long as they have been doing so for at least two years, have a diagnosis of gender dysphoria and medical reports from two doctors. Campaign group For Women Scotland fought the Scottish Government's decision in the Scottish courts and lost, eventually bringing the case to Britain's Supreme Court. That court said Edinburgh's 'interpretation is not correct'. While someone might possess a certificate saying they live as a female and they assert that gender, that 'does not come within the definition of a 'woman' under the Equality Act 2010', the ruling said. The Equality Act, the judges said 'makes clear that the concept of sex is binary, a person is either a woman or a man'. It means a trans woman with a GRC cannot claim she is being discriminated against if she is barred from female only spaces like, for instance, domestic violence shelters and toilets. However, Lord Hodge said trans people were a 'vulnerable and often harassed minority', who 'struggle against discrimination and prejudice as they seek to live their lives with dignity'. The Supreme Court also stressed that 'trans people are protected from discrimination on the grounds of gender reassignment'. Ms Rowling, who lives in Scotland and is an ardent campaigner against trans rights, lauded the outcome. 'It took three extraordinary, tenacious Scottish women with an army behind them to get this case heard by the Supreme Court and, in winning, they've protected the rights of women and girls across the UK,' she wrote on X.
The Australian
05-08-2025
- The Australian
Roxanne Tickle says Sall Grover must pay damages for misgendering her in 50 media interviews
Giggle app founder Sall Grover should have to pay hefty damages to trans woman Roxanne Tickle because she 'misgendered her' in media interviews, Ms Tickle's legal team has pleaded in a bombshell submission to the Federal Court. In a submission which, if accepted, would have far-reaching implications for free speech, Ms Tickle's lawyers argued that Ms Grover's description of Ms Tickle as a man in at least 50 interviews should make her liable for 'significant' aggravated damages. Ms Grover is appealing a decision by judge Robert Bromwich that she indirectly discriminated against Ms Tickle by rejecting her from the Giggle for Girls female-only networking app because she appeared to be a man. Justice Bromwich had awarded $10,000 damages because Ms Grover had laughed in court at a satirical piece of merchandise – a scented candle – which appeared to mock Ms Tickle. Ms Tickle is also appealing parts of Justice Bromwich's decision, asking for a finding of direct rather than indirect discrimination and that the damages be increased to at least $40,000. Ms Tickle had sought $200,000 in damages at the previous trial. The Giggle v Tickle appeal has gained global attention, with author and prominent women's rights activist J.K. Rowling expressing support for Ms Grover in an overnight post on social media platform X. Rowling retweeted a post by Ms Grover of The Australian's story revealing a submission by the Sex Discrimination Commissioner that trans women 'should have legal protections available to pregnant or potentially women'. Ms Grover had captioned the post: 'This is how insane gender ideology is.' Rowling also sent her support to Ms Grover. 'Good luck, Sall. May the best woman (haha) win x,' she wrote in a post on X. On Tuesday, counsel for Ms Tickle, Briana Goding, said the $10,000 damages award was insufficient, in part because the beliefs Ms Grover held privately were also being made publicly and expressed in dozens of media interviews. 'There was evidence that Ms Grover had participated in some 50 interviews in relation to this case, and in each of those she used the male pronouns for Ms Tickle, and that on at least 10 occasions she referred to being scared or threatened or harassed by Ms Tickle,' Ms Goding said. Ms Grover's conduct 'has at the very least been seriously aggravating and has caused Ms Tickle injured feelings', Ms Goding said. 'The aggravation and injured feelings have mounted up, blow by blow.' Ms Goding said Justice Bromwich had found the satirical candle to be so offensive that he didn't repeat the content in his written judgment. 'However, it's our submission that His Honour ought to have gone beyond that single act of laughing in court and awarded aggravated damages for much broader conduct in the proceedings. Those matters included the statement that Ms Tickle was a man, but should also include the fact that in her opening submissions Ms Grover and Giggle stated they 'do not know, and cannot admit, whether the applicant is a natural person capable of being sued in the name of Roxanne Tickle'. 'This is not just a delegitimising of gender, but a delegitimising of humanity,' Ms Goding said. 'There's further, the overall conduct of crowd funding for the case using the demeaning material, the promoting of others to purchase material from the Etsy store as well as the laughing in court,' Ms Goding said. Ms Grover has previously stated that she did not have any role in producing or selling the candle merchandise. Ms Goding asked the appeal court to reject Justice Bromwich's finding that Ms Grover's views were genuinely held and bona fide because of the 'continued public misgendering and denial of gender identity of Ms Tickle'. 'This is not a case of asking anyone to change their opinions, it is not policing the opinions that someone can hold,' Ms Goding argued. Given the purpose of the Sex Discrimination Act in eliminating gender identity discrimination, the 'continued misgendering of Ms Tickle' could not be considered bona fide, proper or justifiable, she said. Earlier in the hearing, Ms Tickle's legal team had contested Ms Grover's claim that her rejection of Ms Tickle from the app was on the basis of her perceived sex – that she appeared to be a man – not because she was transgender. 'It was proved that not only did Giggle have a policy of excluding transgender women, they did exclude transgender women, and not only Ms Tickle,' said Georgina Costello KC, also appearing for Ms Tickle. 'Ms Grover has a policy that is not a secret. In fact, it's spoken about with some confidence and pride,' she said. 'Ms Tickle provided a selfie to the Giggle app in which she had a low-cut T-shirt on and a female haircut. She used the name Roxy, and that's important because they now say that they didn't know she was a transgender woman. We say that you shouldn't accept that evidence. 'The fact that (Ms Grover and Giggle) deny that they knew that Ms Tickle was a transgender woman when they excluded her from the app is not a defence to direct discrimination.' Counsel for Ms Grover, Noel Hutley SC, noted in relation to the demand for additional damages that the trial judge had found that although the denial of her gender identity had upset Ms Tickle, he was unable to attribute responsibility to Ms Grover for her 'finding this exhausting and draining'. 'Ms Tickle's evidence as to loss or damage is slight, if not minimal, and does not rise higher than a modest degree of hurt,' Justice Bromwich found. Politics Treasurer's marathon consultation with Australia's business elite faces being relegated to a talkfest as government backs away from major economic reforms. Politics Jim Chalmers has abandoned major tax reform for his economic roundtable, instead focusing on deregulation and housing productivity amid rising business sector anxiety.
