Susie O’Brien: Gender debate needs to be sensible, not hard or hateful

I don’t take issue with transgender people, but it’s the extremes on either side of the gender debate I have a problem with— and are causing the most angst in society.

For years, some things have been taken for granted in Melbourne.

August is freezing, Carlton Footy Club is crap, beer is alcoholic and women are women.

Now it’s 21 degrees, Carlton’s in the top eight, there’s zero-booze beer and men can be women.

The answer to the question: “What is a woman?” used to be easy.

It’s an adult female, isn’t it?

But on Friday it was established that a person born a man can be a woman in the eyes of the law, and even those with a female gender identity who don’t look female are still women.

The Federal Court ruled that Roxanne Tickle, who was born male, but who has been living as a female for the past seven years, is a woman.

Transgender woman Roxanne Tickle was excluded from the women’s-only ‘Giggle for Girls’ social media app because the owner thought she was a man. Picture: Jane Dempster.

In the case being referred to as Tickle v Giggle, Tickle sued women’s-only social media app Giggle for Girls in the Federal Court after its owner, Sall Grover, excluded her because she thought she was a man.

Grover is a well-known TERF – a trans-exclusionary radical feminist – who doesn’t see transgender women as real women.

But the court found Grover didn’t reject Tickle because she was transgender, just that she was a man.

Apparently, the app’s AI tool thought Tickle was female and initially accepted her application, but seven months later, Grover decided that she was male on the basis of her selfie and banned her. Grover argued Tickle “didn’t look sufficiently female”.

Justice Robert Bromwich ruled that individuals should not have to look like “cisgender females” in order to be accepted as women.

Cisgender females are those who are not transgender; in other words, their gender identity matches their biology.

Lawyer Alex Rashidi and founder of the female-only networking app Giggle for Girls Sall Grover. Picture: Jane Dempster

Justice Bromwich found Tickle had been indirectly discriminated against and ordered Grover to pay her $10,000 and legal costs up to $50,000.

It’s a win for Tickle, even though she didn’t get the $200,000 in damages she was seeking.

Justice Bromwich’s declaration that “sex is changeable”, affirms a view the courts have held for some years now.

In Tickle’s case, it appears this is true. She underwent gender-change surgery in 2019, is female on her birth certificate and identifies as a woman.

Individuals like Tickle, who just want to be given the same treatment and respect as everyone else, are not the problem.

It’s the extremes on both sides of the gender debate that I have an issue with.

We have the woke warriors on one side trying to make things more difficult than they need to be – insisting that a woman isn’t an adult female but a “cisgender chest-feeding human with a binary biological vagina”.

Even President Joe Biden talked at one point about “birthing people”. And the official Victorian government guide to pregnancy and vaccines refers at times to “people who are pregnant”.

One hospital chain in the UK decided the word “breast” is discriminatory because it “doesn’t respect chest-feeding people”.

Society needs to find a sensible middle ground, where gender diverse or transgender are respected and included.

The esteemed American Lancet magazine even recently referred to “Bodies with Vaginas” instead of women on its cover.

And remember poor former Health Secretary Brendan Murphy who was asked a few years ago to define what a woman is? He couldn’t say and eventually gave an answer that ran to 300 words.

Luckily, Albo hasn’t gone down that path, saying in more than one interview that a woman is an “adult female”.

At the other end of the spectrum are the anti-trans TERFs who don’t think those who are born male, or assigned male at birth, as it’s known, can ever be women.

I find this approach to be nasty, with individuals like Grover persistently going out of their way to misgender and humiliate members of the transgender community like Tickle.

I’m fervently against activists such as those from the National Socialist Movement who rallied in Melbourne recently, performing Nazi salutes and yelling anti-trans abuse.

I know a few people who have, or who are transitioning and it’s one of the toughest things anyone can go through.

No one does it for a stunt, to make a point, or to annoy others.

Most members of the transgender community go about their business quietly, hoping at best to be accepted and at worst not to be belittled or humiliated.

There needs to be a sensible middle ground, where people who are gender diverse or transgender are respected and included, without doing away with some of the pillars of our society like male and female, mother and father.

It doesn’t have to be hard, and it doesn’t have to be hateful.

(And good luck to the Blues this weekend.)