If a woman includes a trans woman, get ready for some crazy consequences | The Australian

It’s a mad, mad world. The Australian Club lawfully excludes women because men have stuff they like to do on their own. Religious schools, in some states, can impose faith-based exemptions from discrimination law for certain staff.

All within the law, apparently.

Sall Grover set up an online app for women called Giggle for Girls. It was a space where women could talk candidly among themselves about issues that concern women – a cheaper and more cheerful online Australian Club for women only, if blokes want to understand it on their terms.

Next month, Giggle is appealing Federal Court judge Robert Bromwich’s decision last year where he found that by blocking Tickle, the female-only app had illegally – though indirectly – discriminated against the trans woman based on gender identity.

The Bromwich judgment is a mess probably because the Sex Discrimination Act is a bugger’s muddle too. In 2013, the Gillard government amended the SDA to include gender identity as a basis for discrimination. By removing the definition “woman means a member of the female sex”, Labor left it to judges to work out. Bromwich decided that “in its contemporary ordinary meaning, sex is changeable”.

That will be news to many people who believe that sex is determined by our biology. Indeed, Grover’s lawyers say for the SDA to make sense, woman means biological woman. Also, that’s what a woman is – a biological female.

Grover’s appeal, to be heard over four days in early August, comes down to a simple question: in the clash between women’s rights and trans rights, why should biological women come off second best?

This problem has already been identified and solved in Britain. Even accepting that there are differences in the law between Britain and here, the recent landmark ruling of the UK High Court (sic), that woman means biological woman, should be a powerful precedent in this country. The court made clear that its decision does not mean the end of trans rights; it simply means that biological women are entitled to their own spaces.

Why are Australian women having to fight for these rights in the 21st century?

(Ed: Landmark ruling was by the UK Supreme Court which is their highest level court)

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