Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
You are listening to three sixty. It's just fifteen minutes
away from ten o'clock. Now, I mentioned this in the
opener a little bit earlier. Now bear with me because
it is quite a bit of a description to get through.
But you may have seen those reports that a landmark
federal court ruling that the exclusion of a transgender woman
from a female only app constitute a gender identity discrimination.
(00:22):
It's been upheld on appeal on Friday. This happened now
in August twenty twenty four, Roxanne Tickle was awarded ten
thousand dollars in compensation plus court costs in a case
against the Giggle for Girls app and its chief executive officer,
Sal Grover. Now, Tickle access the social networking platform back
(00:44):
in twenty twenty one after submitting a selfie which was
assessed by artificial intelligence software designed to distinguish between the
facial appearance of men and women, but that account was
later restricted following a manual review. Now we know that
a class aim of direct discrimination failed because it was
not established that miss Grover was aware of Tickle's gender
(01:07):
identity when Tickle was blocked. It was the first case
to claim discrimination on the basis of gender identity since
changes to the Sex Discrimination Act in twenty thirteen, and
during an appeal hearing last year, Miss Grover sought to
overturn the ruling, while Tickle launched a cross appeal which
(01:27):
aimed to strengthen it through a finding of direct discrimination
and increase in the damages to forty thousand dollars. Now
the Full Court or the Full Court of the Federal
Court on Friday last week found that there were two
instances of direct discrimination against Tickle that included when Giggle
and Miss Grover refused to readmit Tickle and the court
(01:51):
reassessed damages and awarded twenty thousand dollars plus limited court costs.
Now the cases of many women wondering what this means
for the rights of biological women and lawyer and principle
of the Human Rights Law Alliance, John Steinhoff joins me
on the line to talk more about this. Good morning
(02:11):
to you, John.
Speaker 2 (02:13):
Good morning Katie. Great to be with you this morning.
Speaker 1 (02:15):
Yeah, wonderful to have you on the show. Now, John,
you represent Australians subjected to discrimination and vilification claims under
discrimination laws. How significant is Friday's ruling and the discussion
about it being a win for ideology.
Speaker 2 (02:33):
Well, this is indeed a landmark ruling from the full
federal court, and it's a very troubling ruling because it's
navigating that place, that balance between the rights of women
acknowledging their unique rights, and also the rights and dignity
of all people, including those who might identify as transgender.
(02:57):
And in this case, I'd say it's a victory for
ideology over truth. It's a victory for subjective feelings over
objective reality. And it is not just a niche issue
that relates to a woman's service and a person who
identifies as transgender. It has deep implications for our equality
(03:19):
law and the balance of rights.
Speaker 3 (03:20):
And I just think they've got it wrong.
Speaker 1 (03:22):
Do you anticipate that there's going to be implications for
women and children, women's services, women only spaces, sports.
Speaker 2 (03:32):
This feeds directly into those key areas. So now we
throw open the possibility that anybody who identifies as a
woman must be accommodated by sex based services. That's prisons,
that's gyms, that's changing rooms toilets. It also has implications
(03:56):
for the safety of children. For this, transgender ideology is
very prominent in modern schools and other educational institutions, in
our hospitals, in the way that we treat children who
are confused about about their identity.
Speaker 1 (04:14):
I mean, I've just had somebody message through Jenny's message
through and said, don't confuse a business discriminating against anyone
versus safe spaces for private, non business events. If it
was your child or brother, you may feel differently. I'm
a feminist and want spaces within the lesbian community that
are for us, but the moment you make money from it,
(04:34):
we have anti discrimination for a reason. Many trans women
pass and you can't tell visually, but if you don't pass, well,
let's discriminate, says Jenny. I mean, look, I get it
that there needs to be safe spaces for everybody, but
I feel very firmly that there does need to be
spaces that are safe for women, particularly little girls. And
(04:56):
when we're talking about them playing sport and you know,
playing game of footy and all that sort of.
Speaker 2 (05:02):
Thing, that's exactly the key issue that's at stake here,
and there really is needs to be a conversation about
this idea that's prevalent and that your caller has identified,
which is that if you make a business decision to
service a particular community, you should have the right, as
(05:25):
part of your fundamental right of freedom of association, to
determine who is part of that community and who isn't.
And it has nothing to do with whether it's a
commercial service or not. It's about a category era that's
made when you include people who aren't supposed to be
part of that service. And the Giggle app was directly
set up by Sol Grovell to be a safe place
(05:49):
for women away from men, and so she really has
the right to be able to operate that service in
a reasonable way that allows females.
Speaker 1 (06:00):
But John, does this decision mean that that right is
now lost.
Speaker 2 (06:07):
It doesn't categorically decide that, because there are some nuances
to the decision, but it certainly.
Speaker 3 (06:12):
Is a step in the direction of.
Speaker 2 (06:17):
Opening up all of these sex based services for those
who identify as women who are men to be able
to participate in those I mean, there has.
Speaker 1 (06:29):
Been arguments for the biological definition of a woman to
be restored in the Sex Discrimination Act after Julia Gillard
removed it in twenty thirteen. What would that mean?
Speaker 2 (06:41):
There is a way to navigate this because in twenty thirteen,
Julia Gillard made amendments that included new attributes of gender
identity and sexual orientation. This also removed the biological definitions
of sex. That's given the court the ability to then
go in and say, well, we no longer have a
fixed definition of sex. We're going to look at what
(07:03):
a more societal definition is. And the troubling issue in
this judgment is they didn't just say this is discrimination
against a person of transgender identity. They said, this is
a man who's undergone certain processes, including change of birth
certificate and surgery, and we now think that within the
(07:24):
societal definition, this is a woman, and so that needs
to be fixed in law so that we can navigate
the tension between being fair and reasonable to all people,
including those who identify as transgender, but also protecting some
fundamental definitions of what it means to be a woman.
(07:47):
And if you start messing with language in a way
that effectively makes being a woman like an Escher painting,
where you can describe it on paper, but it never
works in reality, that is going to crash hard when
it comes to real situations involving real women. So this
needs to be reviewed. It also needs to be the
subject of law changes and there's an easy way that
(08:09):
our Parliament could fix this. There's just been no appetite
for it up to this point.
Speaker 1 (08:14):
Yeah, it's interesting to me, and I guess that, you know,
like everybody deserves the right to be seen, there is
no doubt about that. But I do feel you know,
I do feel concerned, and I know that other women
listening this morning will feel concerned about what feels like
a watering down of women's rights.
Speaker 2 (08:33):
This is exactly the point, is that no one is
saying that we should erase the existence of anybody or
treat them unfairly or without equality. We tried to intervene
on this case actually for the Australian Christian Lobby because
there's a real issue here for those of Christian faith
(08:53):
who have a very clear view of what human anthropology is,
of what men and women are created, and that was rejected.
While the Court allowed the Australian Human Rights Commission to
be part of the case as well as Equality Australia
to be part of the case. And what it shows
(09:13):
is that there is this over representation on the equality
side without the representation of those who are trying to
stand up for fundamental rights of thought, speech, expression, and
this is going to have some real implications for what
you can or can't talk about and how you can
talk about these issues. And these are very important issues
(09:35):
that need public dialogue.
Speaker 1 (09:37):
Yeah, I feel like as a country sometimes we reach
a point where we're, you know, we're so scared of
offending people that we don't talk about some of those
important issues that really do need to be spoken about.
Speaker 2 (09:49):
That's indeed the case in terms of when we talk
about these things. We have to be very careful because
you know that the moment that you say that such
a person is a man rather than a transgender woman
and use the wrong terminology, there will be complaints to
the Press Council, there will be discrimination claims, and many
of the claims that we're dealing with involve activists who
(10:12):
are weaponizing these fairness laws, these anti discrimination laws to
try to silence speech and protection of women and protection
of children.
Speaker 1 (10:22):
John tell me, Obviously this case has been really sort
of public, It's received a lot of publicity. But have
there been other examples of court cases being driven by
gender ideology that you're aware of.
Speaker 2 (10:38):
There are many cases that are before the Court's right now.
Curly Smith is a mom from New South Wales who
was talking about the women's sports, women's soccer, and how
there is a male identifying as a woman who's been
in that sport and the safety concerns there. Curly has
(10:58):
been dragged through court. She's been granted an apprehended violence
order for just talking about this on the internet. She's
also been the subject of a discrimination claim which has
been found against her and she'll be back in court
again this week. We're representing a mother and breastfeeding advocate
from Victoria. She's being dragged through a Queensland call it
(11:21):
because she was opposing males who were invading the breastfeeding space,
saying that men can breastfeed, so men who identify as
women and take chemicals can breastfeed children. She said that
was a dangerous ideology that shouldn't be done, that it
has safety implications for children, and was highly critical of
a trans identifying man who was promoting his own experience
(11:46):
with breastfeeding. And now finds herself in court and a
process that's taken three years and maybe another year before
she sees the inside of a courtroom. And in all
these cases the process is the punishment and you talk
about sal Grover starting a commercial business while she spent
five years raising money to try to defend her basic rights.
(12:10):
There's been no income on that app because of this
very issue.
Speaker 1 (12:14):
Gee, it makes it difficult, and you know, I think
that we're probably well, I hope that we do see
more discussions about this. I hope that we're not seeing
more court cases, you know, in this space. But it
sort of sounds like that is the situation.
Speaker 2 (12:27):
Unfortunately, the problem is that our human rights mechanisms over
the last fifty years have been obsessed with discrimination law
and equality law and spent no time looking at fundamental
freedoms like rights of a freedom.
Speaker 3 (12:45):
Of religion, freedom of.
Speaker 2 (12:46):
Speech, freedom of open and free discussion, freedom of conscience.
Speaker 3 (12:51):
All of these things.
Speaker 2 (12:52):
Have taken a back seat while discrimination and equality of
loomed large. And we need to have a rebalancing look
at these things and make sure that we have the
proper balance.
Speaker 1 (13:04):
I just want to ask John, and I don't know,
you know, I don't know whether you're familiar with, you know,
with the situation here in the Northern Territory, but like,
if we've got a situation then more broadly where you know,
we're the handing down of the outcome of this court
case on Friday obviously happened. You know, our Chief Minister
not so long ago, was on this very show talking
(13:25):
about the fact that you know that she feels very
strongly that in the female prison it should just be
female prisoners. I mean, are we going to wind up
in the Northern territory where things like that cannot happen.
Speaker 3 (13:39):
It's quite possible.
Speaker 2 (13:42):
Your Chief Minister has shown unusual courage in saying that
there should be no men in women's prisons. This is
not the case around Australia, and in fact it's been
very controversial because there are cases where men have been
involved in violence against women in women's prisons. And the
problem is is that when you have a discrimination law
(14:05):
that obsesses with making sure that no one is treated unfairly,
it also tends to stifle and silence those who are
trying to step up and look at this in the
broader context and make sure there are no adverse consequences
where you go too far, where you put men in
women's prisons, where you extend rights beyond those that they
(14:26):
should be, and that which infringe on women's rights. We
don't want to silence that conversation and make people worried
about the fact that if they say something, they're going
to wind up in a court.
Speaker 1 (14:38):
Well, lawyer and principle of the Human Rights Law Alliance,
John Steinhoff, I really appreciate your time and your insight
this morning. Thank you so much for having a chat
with us.
Speaker 3 (14:48):
Great to be with you.
Speaker 1 (14:49):
Thank you.
You are listening to three sixty. It's just fifteen minutes
away from ten o'clock. Now, I mentioned this in the
opener a little bit earlier. Now bear with me because
it is quite a bit of a description to get through.
But you may have seen those reports that a landmark
federal court ruling that the exclusion of a transgender woman
from a female only app constitute a gender identity discrimination.
(00:22):
It's been upheld on appeal on Friday. This happened now
in August twenty twenty four, Roxanne Tickle was awarded ten
thousand dollars in compensation plus court costs in a case
against the Giggle for Girls app and its chief executive officer,
Sal Grover. Now, Tickle access the social networking platform back
(00:44):
in twenty twenty one after submitting a selfie which was
assessed by artificial intelligence software designed to distinguish between the
facial appearance of men and women, but that account was
later restricted following a manual review. Now we know that
a class aim of direct discrimination failed because it was
not established that miss Grover was aware of Tickle's gender
(01:07):
identity when Tickle was blocked. It was the first case
to claim discrimination on the basis of gender identity since
changes to the Sex Discrimination Act in twenty thirteen, and
during an appeal hearing last year, Miss Grover sought to
overturn the ruling, while Tickle launched a cross appeal which
(01:27):
aimed to strengthen it through a finding of direct discrimination
and increase in the damages to forty thousand dollars. Now
the Full Court or the Full Court of the Federal
Court on Friday last week found that there were two
instances of direct discrimination against Tickle that included when Giggle
and Miss Grover refused to readmit Tickle and the court
(01:51):
reassessed damages and awarded twenty thousand dollars plus limited court costs.
Now the cases of many women wondering what this means
for the rights of biological women and lawyer and principle
of the Human Rights Law Alliance, John Steinhoff joins me
on the line to talk more about this. Good morning
(02:11):
to you, John.
Speaker 2 (02:13):
Good morning Katie. Great to be with you this morning.
Speaker 1 (02:15):
Yeah, wonderful to have you on the show. Now, John,
you represent Australians subjected to discrimination and vilification claims under
discrimination laws. How significant is Friday's ruling and the discussion
about it being a win for ideology.
Speaker 2 (02:33):
Well, this is indeed a landmark ruling from the full
federal court, and it's a very troubling ruling because it's
navigating that place, that balance between the rights of women
acknowledging their unique rights, and also the rights and dignity
of all people, including those who might identify as transgender.
(02:57):
And in this case, I'd say it's a victory for
ideology over truth. It's a victory for subjective feelings over
objective reality. And it is not just a niche issue
that relates to a woman's service and a person who
identifies as transgender. It has deep implications for our equality
(03:19):
law and the balance of rights.
Speaker 3 (03:20):
And I just think they've got it wrong.
Speaker 1 (03:22):
Do you anticipate that there's going to be implications for
women and children, women's services, women only spaces, sports.
Speaker 2 (03:32):
This feeds directly into those key areas. So now we
throw open the possibility that anybody who identifies as a
woman must be accommodated by sex based services. That's prisons,
that's gyms, that's changing rooms toilets. It also has implications
(03:56):
for the safety of children. For this, transgender ideology is
very prominent in modern schools and other educational institutions, in
our hospitals, in the way that we treat children who
are confused about about their identity.
Speaker 1 (04:14):
I mean, I've just had somebody message through Jenny's message
through and said, don't confuse a business discriminating against anyone
versus safe spaces for private, non business events. If it
was your child or brother, you may feel differently. I'm
a feminist and want spaces within the lesbian community that
are for us, but the moment you make money from it,
(04:34):
we have anti discrimination for a reason. Many trans women
pass and you can't tell visually, but if you don't pass, well,
let's discriminate, says Jenny. I mean, look, I get it
that there needs to be safe spaces for everybody, but
I feel very firmly that there does need to be
spaces that are safe for women, particularly little girls. And
(04:56):
when we're talking about them playing sport and you know,
playing game of footy and all that sort of.
Speaker 2 (05:02):
Thing, that's exactly the key issue that's at stake here,
and there really is needs to be a conversation about
this idea that's prevalent and that your caller has identified,
which is that if you make a business decision to
service a particular community, you should have the right, as
(05:25):
part of your fundamental right of freedom of association, to
determine who is part of that community and who isn't.
And it has nothing to do with whether it's a
commercial service or not. It's about a category era that's
made when you include people who aren't supposed to be
part of that service. And the Giggle app was directly
set up by Sol Grovell to be a safe place
(05:49):
for women away from men, and so she really has
the right to be able to operate that service in
a reasonable way that allows females.
Speaker 1 (06:00):
But John, does this decision mean that that right is
now lost.
Speaker 2 (06:07):
It doesn't categorically decide that, because there are some nuances
to the decision, but it certainly.
Speaker 3 (06:12):
Is a step in the direction of.
Speaker 2 (06:17):
Opening up all of these sex based services for those
who identify as women who are men to be able
to participate in those I mean, there has.
Speaker 1 (06:29):
Been arguments for the biological definition of a woman to
be restored in the Sex Discrimination Act after Julia Gillard
removed it in twenty thirteen. What would that mean?
Speaker 2 (06:41):
There is a way to navigate this because in twenty thirteen,
Julia Gillard made amendments that included new attributes of gender
identity and sexual orientation. This also removed the biological definitions
of sex. That's given the court the ability to then
go in and say, well, we no longer have a
fixed definition of sex. We're going to look at what
(07:03):
a more societal definition is. And the troubling issue in
this judgment is they didn't just say this is discrimination
against a person of transgender identity. They said, this is
a man who's undergone certain processes, including change of birth
certificate and surgery, and we now think that within the
(07:24):
societal definition, this is a woman, and so that needs
to be fixed in law so that we can navigate
the tension between being fair and reasonable to all people,
including those who identify as transgender, but also protecting some
fundamental definitions of what it means to be a woman.
(07:47):
And if you start messing with language in a way
that effectively makes being a woman like an Escher painting,
where you can describe it on paper, but it never
works in reality, that is going to crash hard when
it comes to real situations involving real women. So this
needs to be reviewed. It also needs to be the
subject of law changes and there's an easy way that
(08:09):
our Parliament could fix this. There's just been no appetite
for it up to this point.
Speaker 1 (08:14):
Yeah, it's interesting to me, and I guess that, you know,
like everybody deserves the right to be seen, there is
no doubt about that. But I do feel you know,
I do feel concerned, and I know that other women
listening this morning will feel concerned about what feels like
a watering down of women's rights.
Speaker 2 (08:33):
This is exactly the point, is that no one is
saying that we should erase the existence of anybody or
treat them unfairly or without equality. We tried to intervene
on this case actually for the Australian Christian Lobby because
there's a real issue here for those of Christian faith
(08:53):
who have a very clear view of what human anthropology is,
of what men and women are created, and that was rejected.
While the Court allowed the Australian Human Rights Commission to
be part of the case as well as Equality Australia
to be part of the case. And what it shows
(09:13):
is that there is this over representation on the equality
side without the representation of those who are trying to
stand up for fundamental rights of thought, speech, expression, and
this is going to have some real implications for what
you can or can't talk about and how you can
talk about these issues. And these are very important issues
(09:35):
that need public dialogue.
Speaker 1 (09:37):
Yeah, I feel like as a country sometimes we reach
a point where we're, you know, we're so scared of
offending people that we don't talk about some of those
important issues that really do need to be spoken about.
Speaker 2 (09:49):
That's indeed the case in terms of when we talk
about these things. We have to be very careful because
you know that the moment that you say that such
a person is a man rather than a transgender woman
and use the wrong terminology, there will be complaints to
the Press Council, there will be discrimination claims, and many
of the claims that we're dealing with involve activists who
(10:12):
are weaponizing these fairness laws, these anti discrimination laws to
try to silence speech and protection of women and protection
of children.
Speaker 1 (10:22):
John tell me, Obviously this case has been really sort
of public, It's received a lot of publicity. But have
there been other examples of court cases being driven by
gender ideology that you're aware of.
Speaker 2 (10:38):
There are many cases that are before the Court's right now.
Curly Smith is a mom from New South Wales who
was talking about the women's sports, women's soccer, and how
there is a male identifying as a woman who's been
in that sport and the safety concerns there. Curly has
(10:58):
been dragged through court. She's been granted an apprehended violence
order for just talking about this on the internet. She's
also been the subject of a discrimination claim which has
been found against her and she'll be back in court
again this week. We're representing a mother and breastfeeding advocate
from Victoria. She's being dragged through a Queensland call it
(11:21):
because she was opposing males who were invading the breastfeeding space,
saying that men can breastfeed, so men who identify as
women and take chemicals can breastfeed children. She said that
was a dangerous ideology that shouldn't be done, that it
has safety implications for children, and was highly critical of
a trans identifying man who was promoting his own experience
(11:46):
with breastfeeding. And now finds herself in court and a
process that's taken three years and maybe another year before
she sees the inside of a courtroom. And in all
these cases the process is the punishment and you talk
about sal Grover starting a commercial business while she spent
five years raising money to try to defend her basic rights.
(12:10):
There's been no income on that app because of this
very issue.
Speaker 1 (12:14):
Gee, it makes it difficult, and you know, I think
that we're probably well, I hope that we do see
more discussions about this. I hope that we're not seeing
more court cases, you know, in this space. But it
sort of sounds like that is the situation.
Speaker 2 (12:27):
Unfortunately, the problem is that our human rights mechanisms over
the last fifty years have been obsessed with discrimination law
and equality law and spent no time looking at fundamental
freedoms like rights of a freedom.
Speaker 3 (12:45):
Of religion, freedom of.
Speaker 2 (12:46):
Speech, freedom of open and free discussion, freedom of conscience.
Speaker 3 (12:51):
All of these things.
Speaker 2 (12:52):
Have taken a back seat while discrimination and equality of
loomed large. And we need to have a rebalancing look
at these things and make sure that we have the
proper balance.
Speaker 1 (13:04):
I just want to ask John, and I don't know,
you know, I don't know whether you're familiar with, you know,
with the situation here in the Northern Territory, but like,
if we've got a situation then more broadly where you know,
we're the handing down of the outcome of this court
case on Friday obviously happened. You know, our Chief Minister
not so long ago, was on this very show talking
(13:25):
about the fact that you know that she feels very
strongly that in the female prison it should just be
female prisoners. I mean, are we going to wind up
in the Northern territory where things like that cannot happen.
Speaker 3 (13:39):
It's quite possible.
Speaker 2 (13:42):
Your Chief Minister has shown unusual courage in saying that
there should be no men in women's prisons. This is
not the case around Australia, and in fact it's been
very controversial because there are cases where men have been
involved in violence against women in women's prisons. And the
problem is is that when you have a discrimination law
(14:05):
that obsesses with making sure that no one is treated unfairly,
it also tends to stifle and silence those who are
trying to step up and look at this in the
broader context and make sure there are no adverse consequences
where you go too far, where you put men in
women's prisons, where you extend rights beyond those that they
(14:26):
should be, and that which infringe on women's rights. We
don't want to silence that conversation and make people worried
about the fact that if they say something, they're going
to wind up in a court.
Speaker 1 (14:38):
Well, lawyer and principle of the Human Rights Law Alliance,
John Steinhoff, I really appreciate your time and your insight
this morning. Thank you so much for having a chat
with us.
Speaker 3 (14:48):
Great to be with you.
Speaker 1 (14:49):
Thank you.
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