Dating apps need to better protect their users, after a study revealed high rates of sexual violence, stalking, assault and unwanted sharing of explicit images.
The Australian Institute of Criminology survey of 9987 app users found three-quarters were victims of some form of online sexual violence in the past five years.
One-third experienced in-person abuse from someone they met on an app, with 27 per cent of those reporting incidents of sexual assault or coercion, such as drink spiking.
Among those physically assaulted, nearly 20 per cent said they had been the victim of sexual health abuse such as “stealthing”, when a condom is removed without consent.
Among heterosexual respondents, 79 per cent of women reported some form of online violence, compared with 61 per cent of men.
Rates of sexual violence through dating apps were higher among LGBTQI people, with 87 per cent of women reporting abuse and 79 per cent of men.
The study said dating apps should prioritise safety via easier reporting processes, tougher ID verification to ban perpetrators, and censorship of explicit images.
The histories of conversations between users also need to be stored by the platforms to help victims who report abuse to the authorities, the authors wrote.
Source: Sexual violence rife on dating apps | Newcastle Herald | Newcastle, NSW
One third of respondents to a survey of staffers in the NSW parliament said they have experienced bullying or sexual harassment at work, according to a new report released on Friday.
The report indicates that the key drivers of the harmful behaviour that occurs in NSW parliament include the unequal distribution of power between politicians and staff, and the underrepresentation of women and people of diverse background in decision-making roles.
Women were more likely to experience sexual harassment than men across all roles, with female MPs (46 per cent) being the most likely group to report experiencing sexual harassment.
In the report, younger female staffers talked about sexual harassment as being normalised in the workplace, mentioning the unequal power dynamics between MPs and staffers.
“It’s very normalised, the MP and Chief of Staff sleeping with junior staff. The power dynamics were so unbalanced, it thwarted any possibility of a balanced relationship,” one staffer told the review.
Source: ‘Abhorrent behaviour’: Sexual harassment and bullying rife in NSW parliament
Slater and Gordon and Redfern Legal Centre have filed proceedings in the Supreme Court of NSW against the state on behalf of people who were allegedly “invasively and unlawfully searched” by police.
According to a joint statement from the firm and CLC, “group members also allege that some people who were searched – including minors – were directed by police to lift or remove items of clothing, lift their breasts and genitals, or strip naked and squat and cough so officers could visually inspect body cavities. Women were ordered to remove sanitary products so they too could be inspected”.
The strip searches that group members were subjected to, the Statement of Claim notes, were allegedly “conducted in contravention of the Law Enforcement (Powers and Responsibilities) Act 2022 (NSW).
Redfern Legal Centre senior police accountability solicitor Samantha Lee said: “Our investigations show that invasive and unlawful police searches at NSW festivals have become routine, resulting in very few charges, but leaving thousands of young people and minors humiliated and severely traumatised.”
“With this class action, Redfern Legal Centre and Slater and Gordon are seeking compensation and redress for the significant numbers of people believed to have been unlawfully searched,” she said.
Redfern Legal Centre senior police accountability solicitor Samantha Lee said: “Our investigations show that invasive and unlawful police searches at NSW festivals have become routine, resulting in very few charges, but leaving thousands of young people and minors humiliated and severely traumatised.”
“With this class action, Redfern Legal Centre and Slater and Gordon are seeking compensation and redress for the significant numbers of people believed to have been unlawfully searched,” she said.
The firm and CLC will also, Ms Lee went on, look to the courts to make findings that will ensure this “traumatising police practice becomes the exception, not the rule”.
Slater and Gordon Class Actions associate Meg Lessing added that hundreds of people had already registered for the group proceeding, since the firm and CLC announced that a class action was being investigated against police in relation to unlawful searches at Splendour in the Grass music festivals, dating back to 2016.
Raya Meredith, who is the lead plaintiff, was allegedly strip searched by police for 30 minutes at the Splendour in the Grass festival in 2018, an ordeal that found no drugs.
Group members are seeking damages, aggravated damages, exemplary damages, costs and interest.
For those whose searches were “particularly invasive or distressing”, the firm and CLC wrote, damages could be in the order of tens of thousands of dollars.
Source: Strip search class action filed against State of NSW – Lawyers Weekly
The Law Commission wants to strengthen the law to protect victims of intimate image abuse.
The key proposals are:
- It would be an offence for someone to intentionally take or share an intimate image of a person without their consent
- This new base offence would apply regardless of the perpetrator’s motivation and could lead to a maximum sentence of six months’ imprisonment
- If someone takes or shares an intimate image without consent to obtain sexual gratification, or to cause humiliation, alarm or distress, threatens to share an intimate image, or installs hidden equipment, they could receive a sentence of two to three years’ imprisonment.
However, Kate Isaacs, founder of Not Your Porn – which aims to hold the porn industry accountable for the distribution and commercialisation of non-consensual material – said: “The thing that concerns me the most is it doesn’t look like there’s anything in terms of profiting from [image-based sexual abuse] or platform responsibility here, which is really worrying.
“Addressing the installation of equipment such as a hidden camera is all very well and good, but I’ve worked on a number of cases with women who have been secretly recorded without their consent and then that footage has been uploaded to a platform that has allowed someone to profit from that content.”
Source: Calls for downblousing to be made a criminal offence in England and Wales – BBC News
The founder of a women’s only social networking app has found herself at the centre of a charged debate about the cross section of trans and women’s rights.
It’s a battle between advocates for trans rights – who have said trans people suffer from high rates of abuse and assault, and are already marginalised – and advocates and lawyers for women’s rights – who say sex discrimination laws allow for “special measures” to promote women’s equality and exclude men.
Ms Grover, the founder of the female-only social networking app Giggle, has been accused of discriminating against a trans woman after she denied her access to the platform.
Roxanne Tickle, the Lismorebased trans woman, filed a complaint with the Human Rights Commission on January 20 this year. “The app provider appears to not recognise transgender women as female. I am legally permitted to identify as female,” her complaint stated.
The case was brought to the Federal Circuit Court, but was inexplicably dropped on Monday.
Ms Grover welcomed the news on Wednesday, but may consider action to prevent a similar case from being brought against her in the future.
Ms Grover, who is about to give birth to her first child, said all she ever wanted to do was create an online “safe” space dedicated to women.
Source: Subscribe to The Australian | Newspaper home delivery, website, iPad, iPhone & Android apps
A landmark case is about to hit the Federal Court that will either confirm or challenge the ongoing attempt by the Australian government to erase ‘women, ‘female’, and ‘girl’ as sex-based categories.
Tickle vs. Giggle could be the title of a tween pillow fight, but it is the culmination of years of the legal erasure in Australia of the link between Australian women as recognised legally and the vulnerabilities of the female body.
Unfortunately, this is by no means a fair fight. Gender identity is a top-down movement, and the push for sex-based rights is bottom-up. Tickle will seek assistance from affiliates of billion-dollar law firms like Dentons, while Giggle and Grover will look to crown[sic] funding predominately from ordinary women.
A landmark case is about to hit the Federal Court that will either confirm or challenge the ongoing attempt by the Australian government to erase ‘women, ‘female’, and ‘girl’ as sex-based categories.
Tickle vs. Giggle could be the title of a tween pillow fight, but it is the culmination of years of the legal erasure in Australia of the link between Australian women as recognised legally and the vulnerabilities of the female body.
Sall Grover is a Gold Coast businesswoman who heads a social media company called Giggle. Giggle is an app for females. The intention of Giggle is to provide a safe digital space for women and girls, where they can find a flatmate, organise socially, date (if they are same-sex attracted), and chat in an environment free of males. You can read Sall’s story for yourself, which involves her recovery from the well-publicised systemic sexual abuse problems in the Californian film industry.
In the early days of the Giggle app, Sall was faced with the decision to make the app for women as a sex or women as a gender. After a sustained campaign of abuse and harassment by people calling themselves ‘transwomen’, Sall decided to make the app exclusively for females, including trans-identifying females or ‘transmen’. On Giggle, it would be the possession of female body, regardless of identity, that puts you in the ‘in’ crowd.
In January 2022, Sall Grover received a complaint from the Australian Human Rights Commission. The complaint was lodged by Roxy Tickle and referenced a tweet exchange between Sall and Roxy in January 2021 in regard to the McIver’s Ladies Baths in Sydney. The complaint also referenced interaction on the Giggle app where Roxy allegedly gained access and was removed on the basis of sex.
Sall Grover received the initial AHRC complaint by Tickle not long after she announced her pregnancy on Twitter. The complaint remains unresolved because Sall refused to attend gender identity re-education and open her app to males.
Tickle has now filed for a hearing in the Federal Court against Giggle and Sall Grover personally.
Unfortunately, this is by no means a fair fight. Gender identity is a top-down movement, and the push for sex-based rights is bottom-up. Tickle will seek assistance from affiliates of billion-dollar law firms like Dentons, while Giggle and Grover will look to crown funding predominately from ordinary women.
‘Trans women’ we are told must be trusted without question by women, mothers, lesbians, and children in exactly that same way as biological women are, not because, as in days of old, that these males are physically or chemically castrated, but just because they have a special female essence or morality. Like it or not, women don’t always trust men who claim to have mystical powers that make them innocuous.
If Tickle wins, it will establish that males have a legal right, not just to the female sex category, but all female spaces, to view the female naked body in those spaces and to expose his male body to women and girls in public female facilities. It will also compel women to submit to the state-mandated definition of a woman, which makes her not just a subset of her own sex class, but an underclass.
Reflecting this in a dystopian tweet in February last year, Tickle insisted that Sall Grover should not refer to herself as ‘female’. Tickle said, ‘You keep on using the word “female” but I think you mean cis female?… with an F on my birth certificate … I am legally female in Australia. All of my cis girlfriends treat me the same as them.’
Grover replied, ‘For me, being treated as female is getting death threats.’
[ed: Since this article was printed Tickle has discontinued the proceedings]
The lesbian in question is Allison Bailey, a black survivor of child sexual abuse who has overcome much adversity to become a criminal barrister. She was told by her chambers, Garden Court, to delete two tweets they said fell short of the bar’s professional standards, one of which described a workshop on “Overcoming the Cotton Ceiling” run in Canada in 2012 as coercive.
Cotton ceiling is a reference to lesbians’ knickers. It is a riff on the glass ceiling and posits that just as the professional advancement of women is hindered by sexism, the sexual acceptance of trans women is impeded by the “transphobia” of lesbians attracted only to females.
But shaming an oppressed sexual minority into dropping their boundaries, or risk being tarnished a bigot within the LGBT community, is inherently coercive. You don’t have to look far online to see women who maintain they are female-only attracted abused as transphobes, genital fetishists and worse. Women report being banned from dating apps for transphobia after stating in their profile they are looking for a biologically female partner.
This is an important reason why gender ideology – the belief that gender identity, whether someone identifies as a man or a woman, should replace biological sex in society when it comes to sports, single-sex spaces and data collection – has divided people who are gay, lesbian and bisexual. Taken to its logical conclusion, it redefines same-sex attraction as same-gender-identity attraction. But this is fiercely resisted by those who say this simply does not accord with the lived experience of their own sexuality.
Another flashpoint is the fear that in the service of this ideology, adult trans identities are being foisted on to gay, gender non-conforming children who are experiencing gender dysphoria, through hormonal and surgical interventions that have long-term health consequences. Many gay people say they temporarily experienced gender dysphoria during puberty and an independent review into the care of children with gender dysphoria has outlined how it sometimes naturally resolves itself and that gender identity can be fluid until someone’s early to mid-20s.
So many analyses of the gender ideology debate characterise it as a conflict of rights between women and trans people. But there are plenty of trans people who shun gender ideology and some women who embrace it. It is really a conflict of rights between people who want gender identity to replace biological sex in society and people, particularly women, who believe sex is relevant. In the case of lesbians and same-sex attraction, it is vital to re-establish the principle that it is never bigoted for a woman to be clear that she is exclusively attracted to other females.
This Article addresses the issue of sex‐separation in public intimate
spaces, e.g., public bathrooms, changing rooms, locker rooms, shower
rooms, etc. ሺcollectively called “bathrooms”ሻ. It challenges widely‐
circulated claims that sex‐separation in bathrooms was a historical
development of the late nineteenth century and that the primary reasons
for it were sexism, patriarchy, Victorian modesty, and class elitism.
Instead, it argues that sex‐separation in bathrooms dates back to ancient
times, and, in the United States, preceded the nation’s founding. It argues
as well that a key purpose of sex‐separation in bathrooms was to protect
women and girls from sexual harassment and sexual assault in the
workplace and other venues.
In the bathroom debates, the question of how bathrooms
first became sex‐separated has become a central one. Two theories have been widelydisseminated in the press as fact. One is associated with Professor Sheila
Cavanagh, who argues that the very first instance of sex‐separated public
toilets occurred at a ball held in a Parisian restaurant in 1739. She argues
that the Parisian upper‐classes initiated this separation “to indicate class
standing and genteel respectability.”
Professor Terry S. Kogan has offered a second theory that purports to
explain how sex‐separation became such a widely‐embraced norm. He claims that the practice arose in the late nineteenth century. Kogan maintains that when the Industrial Revolution brought large numbers of women out of the home and into factory workspaces, authorities believed that a practice of men and women using the same toilets would be indecent. Authorities also worried, Kogan argues, that the spectacle violated their ideal that men and women by nature occupied “separatespheres.” Kogan argues that a Massachusetts labor law statute, passed in 1887, was the first U.S. law mandating sex‐separation.
In conclusion, I reject the tales of the alternative bathroom histories as
too narrow. I suggest that their worst error is not merely factual, but
rather an approach that ignores and even contorts the histories and
experiences of other vulnerable groups, in this case, women and the poor,
even as they seek rights for transgender persons. Women have fought for
centuries to recover and preserve these histories. These stories are key
pillars supporting their current claims to protections against
discrimination.
The Article concludes that the alternative bathroom histories fail. As
they propose an explanation of sex‐separation that advances the interests
of some sexual minorities, they offer a narrative that oppresses women
and the female‐bodied. They ignore the stories of women’s lives and, in
particular, their struggles with sexual assault and sexual harassment. They
similarly ignore the struggles of the poor for safe intimate spaces. Women
and others must push back on approaches that contort women’s history,
for they are rooted in sexism and patriarchy, even when they may be
intended to advance the freedom of other groups.
Source: Sexism in the “Bathroom Debates”: – SSRN-id3311184.pdf
