The Sall Grover Saga: A Lone Stand for Biological Reality
In a world increasingly mired in linguistic gymnastics and ideological contortionism, the case of Sall Grover stands out. For some it is just another legal skirmish in the 'gender wars'; it is however, for many, the front line in a bitter and ridiculous culture war that pits reality firmly against transgressive male sexual fantasies. Grover, an Australian freelance journalist, novelist and businesswoman, finds herself in court not for a crime of violence or theft, but for the unforgivable sin of stating a biological fact: that women are female, and they are defined by their sex.
This legal battle, known as Tickle v Giggle, was sparked by Grover’s creation of Giggle, on online app envisaged to be a digital sanctuary for women, conceived in the wake of her own bruising encounters with male predation in Hollywood. Designed as a female-only platform for connection, support, and refuge, The Giggle app was sabotaged in early 2020, mere weeks into its beta phase, when thousands of unmistakably male profiles, many from sex deceptionist men, flooded the app to assert their presence in a space reserved for biological females. Jason Glenard "Roxanne" Tickle’s 2021 discrimination complaint to the Australian Human Rights Commission, after being blocked from the app, led to a bizarre 2024 Federal Court ruling that Giggle had indirectly discriminated against him on the basis of so-called “gender identity.” and that according to Justice Bromwich, "sex was changeable"! Now, Grover’s appeal, set for August 2025 and funded by 12,000 individual donors, challenges a legal system corrupted by 2013 amendments to the Sex Discrimination Act by the Gillard Labor government, which enshrined so-called “gender identity” alongside sex as protected characteristics, igniting a direct conflict.
At the heart of this case is the deliberate conflation of sex and so-called “gender identity "by activists. In Australian law, sex remains anchored in biological reality, while so-called “gender identity,” introduced in 2013, allows individuals to claim a legal status at odds with their biology, as Tickle did by securing a female sex marker on his birth certificate. This sleight-of-hand, where so-called “gender identity” seeks to rewrite sex itself, threatens to dismantle protections rooted in the material reality of female vulnerability. Single-sex spaces - shelters, prisons, sports, bathrooms - exist to shield women from the documented risks of male violence and physical disparity. Grover, echoing sex realists, argues that allowing sex deceptionist men to access these spaces obliterates their purpose, exposing women and girls to untold harm. Her stance is not malicious it's simply honest: “Call yourself what you will,” she has said, “but do not rewrite my reality.” Without precise language and law, advocacy for females as a distinct class collapses into absurdity - or so the activist would have you think.
The Tickle v Giggle case lays bare a profound betrayal. The 2013 amendments, passed with reckless haste, have pitted sex-based rights against so-called “gender identity,” forcing women to cede ground to an ideology that redefines their existence. Lesbians, too, are ensnared, as groups like the Lesbian Action Group decry the erosion of same-sex spaces by policies admitting sex deceptionist men, which muddies the definition of same-sex attraction. Young lesbians like Anna, a 27-year-old shunned for seeking female-only spaces, face rape threats, death threats, and accusations of “genital fetishism” from activists for asserting boundaries. Extraordinarily, he Australian Human Rights Commission, intervening in Grover’s appeal against her, claims no evidence of such harassment, yet many lesbians tell of a toxic climate where dissent is punished. The AHRC's actions have been roundly condemned by Reem Alsalem, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on violence against women and girls.
A victory for Grover would be a triumph for reason, reaffirming sex as an immutable legal category and safeguarding women’s spaces. It would echo the UK’s 2024 Supreme Court ruling, which reinforced the fact that the law has always defined a woman by biological sex for single-sex spaces, and bolstered lesbians seeking environments free from male presence, whatever the claimed 'identity' of those men. The opposition, sex deceptionist men, draped in the faux language of compassion, demands a world where men's 'feelings' and sexually transgressive fantasies trump biology, where sex markers are malleable, and where dissent is crushed by legal and social fiat. Grover’s fight, funded by ordinary citizens, not wealthy patrons, is a stand against this authoritarian tide. Her app, now shuttered, was a casualty of a war she did not start but cannot abandon. As she told the court, “Women know what a woman is.” The Federal Court’s verdict will reveal whether Australia can still distinguish biological truth from ideological fiction, a question on which the safety, dignity, and autonomy of women and girls depend.