Giggle v Tickle

This case has passed me by. Probably because it is happening in Australia and because the media has been rather coy about it, although having been made aware, I did find articles in the Guardian and the Mail about it. I must have been sleeping that day.

In summation, Sally Grover set up Giggle, a female only app. Roxanne Tickle is a trans woman (i.e. a man). Follow the link, this is not a woman. Tickle managed to fool the AI system and get onto the site. He was only blocked when a real person saw the images and correctly identified him as a man. This tells us something about the quality of the AI, but I digress.

Tickle then decided to take the matter to court. Those of us who are reasonable, rational adults would recognise that this is a frivolous and vexations action and any reasonable court would dismiss it.

Apparently not. Nope, the court ruled in Tickle’s favour – yes, he has a piece of paper that says he’s a woman, but biology begs to differ. So Grover is now facing costs. The action was at one point dropped because of potentially escalating costs, but as a cap was placed on them Tickle came back for more and this is going to the supreme court. I’d like to think that the court would rule in Grover’s favour, but these days, nothing rational is a given.

This is being seen as a landmark case that decides what is a woman – yup, we need the Aussie supreme court to define what a woman is, while we’ve known all along that biology got there first.

But this case should never have been about that. It is about freedom of association. If you run a website/app, you own it, you have every right to eject people for whatever reason you choose. I’ve done it here and for different reasons. It doesn’t happen often, but I have a low tolerance for fools and trolls, so out they go. People are being banned from sites all the time. Grow up, get over it. But not Tickle. No, Tickle has sensitive feelz and they must be respected, by force if necessary. He wants full access to the site and an apology. Given that any apology would be given through gritted teeth by force, it would be meaningless, so the objective here is humiliation.

The first court that saw this should have thrown it out on those grounds – freedom of association. No one should be forced to associate with Roxanne Tickle. I absolutely support Grover’s right to exclude Tickle for the same reason I absolutely support the Garrick club’s right to exclude women. This is one of the fundamental civil liberties. That this case has got as far as it has, shows just how far Australia has fallen – much like the rest of the western world.