Jess 🟣🫥🟢

#TickleVGiggle concluded, outcome expected, now it's off to the High Court. Buy a Sweaty Balls candle and carry on 🕯️💦👇:

[Jess 🟣🫥🟢 @anonotanon]

Here's the thing, #TickleVGiggle was always going to turn out this way. If you're surprised, let that go now. The verdict was always going to be weak and frustrating: "Tickle is a woman becausebecausebecause, gender identity mumblemumble adjourned". Sall @salltweets knew this better than anyone.

Australia, young as we are, is in general short-sighted yet legacy-obsessed. Julia Gillard, Australia's first female Prime Minister, proved herself in 2013 to be no different. Without public consultation, she altered Australia's Sex Discrimination Act. She had biological definitions of sex removed, added gender identity as a protected characteristic (i.e., you're a woman/cat/magical air fryer if you simply identify as that), and conflated sex and these magical genders as the same thing. What does this mean? That apparently people have rights based on their actual sex, and yet have equal rights based on their made-up sex. It's a critical contradiction-- nobody can rely on protection from discrimination on the basis of their sex while anybody can identify as that sex. If a real woman tells a man-who-identifies-as-a-woman to get out of her work bathroom, who does the law protect? The woman on the basis of her sex? Or the man on the basis of his identity?

This is what Tickle V Giggle addressed, but with a female-only app instead of a bathroom. And, again, the verdict was always going to be "Tickle is a woman becausebecausebecause, gender identity mumblemumble adjourned".

A judge was asked to decide what takes precedent in Australia’s newly-crayoned discrimination laws: Sall’s rights as a woman, or Tickle’s rights as a man who calls himself a woman. But, unfortunately, there was always a third option and it was always going to be the one Bromwich chose: to not answer the question at all. He could simply ignore the gross conflicts in the laws, blast past the unconstitutionality of those laws, the conflict with the UN CEDAW treaty (Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women), and just choose either Sall’s rights or Tickle’s rights with a hand over one eye. Australia’s sex discrimination laws are Choose Your Own Adventure, and Bromwich chose the easiest road. The one we always knew he would.

If you think this verdict damns Australian women, you’re wrong. It’s disgusting of course, there is no avoiding the sting of being dismissed and gaslit by our very justice system, but I cannot stress enough: This was always going to be outcome. And this was never the hard target. The hard target is getting our broken systems fixed so this never happens again.

So if you’re wondering what happens next, it’s that. It's the appeal. It's the High Court. Better still, the farce that was Tickle V Giggle is the perfect launchpad for what happens next.

So buckle up. This is when it gets really interesting.

#IStandWithSallGrover

[Jess 🟣🫥🟢 @anonotanon]

@jk_rowling Handwritten. It's a wonder it wasn't rigged to self-destruct after 30 seconds.

[J.K. Rowling @jk_rowling]

I'm seeing quite a bit of comment about this, so I want to make a couple of points.

I'm not owed eternal agreement from any actor who once played a character I created. The idea is as ludicrous as me checking with the boss I had when I was twenty-one for what opinions I should hold these days.

Emma Watson and her co-stars have every right to embrace gender identity ideology. Such beliefs are legally protected, and I wouldn't want to see any of them threatened with loss of work, or violence, or death, because of them.

However, Emma and Dan in particular have both made it clear over the last few years that they think our former professional association gives them a particular right - nay, obligation - to critique me and my views in public. Years after they finished acting in Potter, they continue to assume the role of de facto spokespeople for the world I created.

When you've known people since they were ten years old it's hard to shake a certain protectiveness. Until quite recently, I hadn't managed to throw off the memory of children who needed to be gently coaxed through their dialogue in a big scary film studio. For the past few years, I've repeatedly declined invitations from journalists to comment on Emma specifically, most notably on the Witch Trials of JK Rowling. Ironically, I told the producers that I didn't want her to be hounded as the result of anything I said.

The television presenter in the attached clip highlights Emma's 'all witches' speech, and in truth, that was a turning point for me, but it had a postscript that hurt far more than the speech itself. Emma asked someone to pass on a handwritten note from her to me, which contained the single sentence 'I'm so sorry for what you're going through' (she has my phone number). This was back when the death, rape and torture threats against me were at their peak, at a time when my personal security measures had had to be tightened considerably and I was constantly worried for my family's safety. Emma had just publicly poured more petrol on the flames, yet thought a one line expression of concern from her would reassure me of her fundamental sympathy and kindness.

Like other people who've never experienced adult life uncushioned by wealth and fame, Emma has so little experience of real life she's ignorant of how ignorant she is. She'll never need a homeless shelter. She's never going to be placed on a mixed sex public hospital ward. I'd be astounded if she's been in a high street changing room since childhood. Her 'public bathroom' is single occupancy and comes with a security man standing guard outside the door. Has she had to strip off in a newly mixed-sex changing room at a council-run swimming pool? Is she ever likely to need a state-run rape crisis centre that refuses to guarantee an all-female service? To find herself sharing a prison cell with a male rapist who's identified into the women's prison?

I wasn't a multimillionaire at fourteen. I lived in poverty while writing the book that made Emma famous. I therefore understand from my own life experience what the trashing of women's rights in which Emma has so enthusiastically participated means to women and girls without her privileges.

The greatest irony here is that, had Emma not decided in her most recent interview to declare that she loves and treasures me - a change of tack I suspect she's adopted because she's noticed full-throated condemnation of me is no longer quite as fashionable as it was - I might never have been this honest.

Adults can't expect to cosy up to an activist movement that regularly calls for a friend's assassination, then assert their right to the former friend's love, as though the friend was in fact their mother. Emma is rightly free to disagree with me and indeed to discuss her feelings about me in public - but I have the same right, and I've finally decided to exercise it.

[Sall Grover @salltweets]

Australian politicians and human rights commissions are relying on citizen complacency to get away with this. If we ignore it, they can too.

A male sex offender of this magnitude being in a women’s prison because he claims to be a woman is the culmination of everything gender ideology is about. It’s one of the many worst case scenarios. What starts as “being kind” ends up right here.

But it’s not just that he is in a woman’s prison, as bad as that is. It’s that his claim of being a woman was used as a defense to get him a lighter sentence - and it worked. What do legislators think that says to all the worst men in society? The easiest loophole imaginable has been created for them and, evidently, they’re using it. They will continue to use it until someone in power puts a stop to it.

Currently, any man - ANY MAN - can claim to be a woman, go into a female only space full of women & girls, and then, in the event he does something horrific, claim to be a woman to get a lesser sentence & be put into a woman’s prison. Of course, no good man would even think to do this. Literally, only the bad men would. And that’s a massive part of the problem.

If you want both federal & state legislation changed to ensure that everything up to & including the worst case scenarios can’t happen, write to prime minister @AlboMP, Victorian premier @JacintaAllanMP, Victorian minister for corrections Enver Erdogan, Ro Allen at the @VEOHRC and the federal sex discrimination commissioner at @AusHumanRights. All of their emails are publicly available on their websites. Additionally, contact journalists and pressure them to a) cover this issue and b) ask for statements from every person responsible for this situation.

Enough is enough.

[J.K. Rowling @jk_rowling]

What the fuck has the UK become? This is totalitarianism. Utterly deplorable.

[Sall Grover @salltweets]

Today in the Australian senate, @PaulineHansonOz asked the sitting minister for women @SenKatyG, “What measures is the government taking to ensure women’s health, safety, privacy & basic rights are being protected from trans activism?”

Senator Gallagher responded, in part, that no stakeholders have ever contacted her about any issues.

Aside from the fact that we most certainly have, and I have the receipts to prove it, consider this the latest official contact:

• What is the Australian government doing to ensure that women are a protected class of people that men cannot identify themselves into?

• In your determination to “treat everyone equally”, how are you dealing with the inequality of allowing men who identify into women’s spaces at the expense of women who require women only spaces?

• What part of “gender identity” as a protected characteristic in the Sex Discrimination Act states that men who claim to be women have more rights than actual women, which is what happens when their demands are met at the expense of women’s needs?

• What part of the SDA says that “gender identity” means that men who claim to be women *are* women? (hint: it doesn’t)

• Why does “gender identity” as a protected characteristic override sex based rights, despite the fact that there is absolutely no indication in domestic or international law that this was intended let alone acceptable?

• When there is a “conflict of rights”, why is it that women are supposed to accept coming in second place to men who claim to be women?

• Why do private citizens have to spend millions of dollars in legal fees to clear up what is obviously a muddling of legislation while legislators such as yourself pretend that there is no issue?

• If there really is no issue, why don’t you let the Sex Discrimination Commissioner know that & allow female only spaces & sport?

• Are you aware that the US fixed a big part of this issue politically and the UK unmuddled the law in the courts, while Australia - who had the opportunity to lead the way - continues to look like the upside down joke we’ve always been infamous for?

• Finally, what is a woman?

There. A stakeholder in this issue has addressed it with you. I await your response with breath that is baited.

[J.K. Rowling @jk_rowling]

As another man who once worked with me declares himself saddened by my beliefs on gender and sex, I thought it might be useful to compile a list for handy reference. Which of the following do you imagine makes actors and directors who aren’t involved with the HBO reboot of Harry Potter so miserable?

Is it my belief that women and girls should have their own public changing rooms and bathrooms?

That women should retain female-only rape crisis centres?

That men don’t belong in women’s sport?

That female prisoners shouldn’t be incarcerated with violent men and male sex offenders?

That women should remain a protected class in law, because they have sex-specific needs and issues?

That language should reflect reality rather than ideological jargon, especially in a medical context?

That women shouldn’t be harassed, persecuted or fired for refusing to pretend humans can change sex?

That women should not be threatened with violence and rape when they assert their rights?

That freedom of speech and belief are essential to a pluralistic democratic society?

That troubled minors, especially those who are gay, autistic and trauma-experienced, should be given mental health support instead of irreversible surgeries and drug treatments on non-existent evidence of benefit?

That gay people shouldn’t be pressured to include the opposite sex in their dating pools, nor should they be smeared as ‘genital fetishists’ when they don’t?

That cross-dressing heterosexual male fetishists aren’t actually oppressed, but having the time of their lives piggybacking off gender identity ideology?

That said ideology, and the privileged, blinkered fools pushing it because they suffer zero consequences themselves, have done more damage to the political left’s credibility than Trump and Farage could have achieved in a century?

Let me have your thoughts.

[Sall Grover @salltweets]

“I can define a woman… I just take an inclusive approach.” This means she includes men in her definition of women.

Ffs.

There is a lot to unpack in this snide & immature clip. First of all, @AmandaCammMP is correct: you cannot protect women if you can’t define them. Otherwise, who are you protecting? How are you catering to specific needs? How are you helping a woman whose protection involves single-sex care? Words only purpose is that they have objective meaning.

Next, an inclusive approach to the definition of women is… only including women. That’s what inclusivity actually is. Allowing men to be classed as women simply turns the category of woman into a mixed sexed category. It dismantles the category. It’s not inclusive, it’s destructive.

Then, she calls defining a woman as importing Trumpian-style politics to Australia. This is laughably stupid. Trump didn’t decide what a woman is, he acknowledged that accurately defining women in law & society was a no brainer political win & ceased upon the opportunity. If you do want to talk about importing American ideologies, that conversation will be about gender ideology. You don’t have an issue with importing problems, only the solution.

Not wanting to stop with the stupidity, she then says that it’s all a distraction from the actual issue: men’s violence against women. Who and what are you talking about? If those words aren’t defined, the statement makes no sense. I’ll prove it: in the event there is male violence against men who claim to be women, that is going to be for a very different reason than men’s violence against women, requiring different plans & solutions. See, even to defend your stupid ideology it’s important to have correct definitions so everyone gets the correct help.

Finally, she mocks being told it’s tokenistic to wear purple to support the “queer community”. It’s so pathetic, I’m not even going to bother commenting on it.

When she was the Minister for Women, @ShannonFentiman blocked me because I said that a woman is an adult human female. She ignored pleas from me and many Queensland-based women to meet with her to discuss our opposition to self ID laws.

She says she is not ashamed of her stance but she should be. She is ignoring women in favor of men, proving in actions instead of words that she knows *exactly* what a woman is.

[Jess 🟣🫥🟢 @anonotanon]

@salltweets I can't decide if the freaks in your comments are sun-starved crypto incels or bots made by sun-starved crypto incels to sound like sun-starved crypto incels.

[Sall Grover @salltweets]

**Dad appreciation post**

(I know he reads my posts, because he tells me about the typos 😂)

I want to thank my Dad for being with me every step of the way during this stupid yet serious nightmare.

Dad has read the sex discrimination act, the Tickle v Giggle decision, and every submission so many times it’s at the point where he can quote them all off the top of his head. He could probably be quite an effective sex discrimination commissioner, to be honest.

It’s not that common that you get to spend so much time with a parent when you’re an adult. I feel really lucky that I have been able to. I will forever cherish the bond RG & I have formed during this process.

He has answered every hysterical phone call, talked me off the ledge multiple times, calmed me down & always reminded me, “you are right.”

When Team Tickle was making the argument, in the full federal court, that V-neck tshirts are women’s tshirts… my Dad was sitting in court wearing a V-neck tshirt. It became yet another ridiculous anecdote in this crazy saga that you couldn’t make up.

My whiskey drinking buddy has gone home now to help take care of my little girl while I have to do more work, and I just want to say…

Thank you, Papa 🩷

[Dennis Noel Kavanagh @Jebadoo2]

1/ I’m with Sall on all counts here and I share her optimism. Submission advocacy on a dry point of statutory construction is not the same as jury advocacy, and her impressive team capitalised on their opponent’s overreach to cast them as the ideological partisans they are.

[Sall Grover @salltweets]

Finally, after 3.5 years, I feel like I can emerge from the Giggle v Tickle bubble I have been living in and it feels so good.

How am I feeling about it all?

So, so, so good. Better than I have ever felt before. Not just relieved but confident.

We took facts & the correct construction of the law into the court room. No emotion, no ideology. Just reality. This was the instruction I gave & it was achieved.

Activism is for outside a court room. Inside, it’s all about the law. My legal team consisted of some of the best legal minds in the country. Noel Hutley SC is one of the top 3 silks in Australia with over 40 years experience. He knew exactly what he was doing and his brilliant final oral submission will echo in my mind for the rest of my life.

Bridie Nolan & @katherine_deves have been with me on this insane rollercoaster every day for 3.5 years. We have lived & breathed this case every second of the day. We have laughed, cried, yelled, sighed, and had hours long Zoom brainstorming sessions while cooking dinner, hanging out washing & raising the 9 daughters we have between us. Everything we do is for those girls.

The Sex Discrimination Commissioners interpretation of the law is bonkers. It is gender ideology in legalese. It is an attempt to enshrine a zeitgeist into legislation, while ignoring every group the sex discrimination act exists to protect in favor of one group: men who claim to be women.

If they need to create the Men Who Claim To Be Women Act, create it. But women need laws too and the sex discrimination act has to not only include but protect women otherwise there is absolutely no point to it.

The executive branch in Australia (aka the SDC) has gone rouge. The legislature is doing nothing about it. That leaves the judiciary. They are the checks & balance. And in that sense, there is every chance right now to establish that the system is working as intended.

In the first round, the trial was a circus and the judge was aggressively hostile. An appeal court is very different, and this court room felt very different. It is the second highest court in the land and very dry. Some might say boring. Judges are supposed to ask questions and doing so is absolutely no indication of their thoughts on the issue in front of them. It is them doing their job. They need to understand every aspect of an argument to decide on it.

To win, we only need two judges to side with Giggle. While I would love all three, I don’t need to be greedy.

Will this go to the high court (the highest court in the country)? Probably. I would definitely take it if need be, and I have no doubt that the other side feels the same.

Finally, I do want say: I cannot wait to never talk about him ever again.

The fight isn’t over yet, but we’re in the strongest position we have ever been in to win it.

Thank you everyone for the overwhelming support. It means the absolute world to me. Together, we have proven that while gender ideology has institutional support, the power of the people want reality.

I couldn’t do this without you.

https://t.co/5qxNEfrSVj 🩷

[Caitlin Roper @caitlin_roper]

A group of women, including survivors, objected to games glorifying rape, incest, extreme sexualised torture and violence against women.

@CollectiveShout called on gaming platforms to take them down, and when they didn't, we wrote an open letter to payment processors, who then required gaming platforms to update their policies and no longer host these games.

As a result, thousands of men who are angry about losing their rape games, have subjected us to an onslaught of misogynistic abuse, rape and death threats. They have sent us porn + CSAM, turned our images into porn, made threats against our families, expressed their desire for our deaths or suicides, published details about our small team of women and asked Grok where we live and where we get coffee.

Despite this, the dominant narrative has been that we deserve it. That we – while on the receiving end of threats to hunt us down and kill us – are the aggressors. That women are responsible for men’s violence and abuse against us, and we should keep our mouths shut about rape and sexualised violence against women.

These men reveal their true natures in their abuse of women who they disagree with.

This has been a campaign of extreme misogyny waged by men who want to silence women who call out men’s violence against us. Whatever your views might be on gaming or our campaign, there is no denying what we’re experiencing right now is male violence against women.

[J.K. Rowling @jk_rowling]

Only four weeks apart - we're practically twins! Yet on the one hand you've got someone who created a whole fantasy world, and on the other hand, you've got me.

[Sall Grover @salltweets]

I can’t wait for the day when I’m finally reading “Harry Potter” to my daughter and I say to her, “do you want to see something really cool?”

Link 👇

[J.K. Rowling @jk_rowling]

Western society is currently divided between people who know this is a man and are prepared to say so and those who know this is a man but lie out of obedience to an ideology. There is no third option. Literally nobody on earth thinks "Roxanne Tickle" is actually a woman.

[Jess 🟣🫥🟢 @anonotanon]

@diva_ex_machina Exactly this.

[Jess 🟣🫥🟢 @anonotanon]

"There's no need to define Woman if you understand Woman includes trans women".

- Celia Winnett, barrister appearing for the intervening Australian Human Rights Commission.

#GiggleVTickle #TicklevGiggle

[Sall Grover @salltweets]

It will be forever on the record that Equality Australia is against women and lesbians. They can never deny it now.

#gigglevstickle

[Jess 🟣🫥🟢 @anonotanon]

@thinksatnight 😂

[Jess 🟣🫥🟢 @anonotanon]

Noel Hutley pressed this point well. Giggle's point was that the Tickle team has thus far failed to provide explanation of the specific "gender expressions" in common that would specifically identify a "trans woman" as a "trans woman".

On this, we have heard only vague, flimsy, and/or contradictory remarks. "You need to assess the whole picture," we heard yesterday (regarding Tickle's onboarding photo).

And: "Discrimination of gender identity results from the disjunct between sex assigned at birth and gender expression."

Yet also: "Gender identity is self-realized. It is a deep sense of self". (Which, therefore, makes it unknowable to anyone else).

"You need to assess the whole picture" -- and then what? Disregard the biological aspects. Scrutinize everyone you meet and seek conclusions from how they present and perform. Try to discern their "deep sense of self" from, literally, their outer most layers.

Whilst simultaneously NOT drawing conclusions because we must also never assume someone's gender.

Assess the whole picture, but disregard the possibility of feminine men and masculine women who simply... are; any non-conformity to sex-common style or manner is likely a cue that someone rejects their sex and has adopted a gender label. And if we do not ignore the possibility of simple style non-conformity, how are we to tell the everyday non-conformist from the gender identity?

"Tickle had long hair," they argued. At what hair length can we recognize man from woman? What kind of make-up? Are there specific shades of colours that signal "trans woman" not "man who likes brights?". Is there a chart we can reference?

In order for a disjunct between sex and "gender expression" to be objectively indicative of a gender identity, both sex and gender expression must have fixed rules. We know the rules of sex. Team Tickle has not provided the rules of the other.

By Team Tickle’s account:

Sall must have known Tickle's gender identity.
Sall could not have known Tickle's gender identity.
Sall should have known Tickle's gender identity.
Sall should never have assumed Tickle's gender identity.

And, best of all: it doesn't matter whether Sall knew Tickle's gender identity or not. For "knowledge of someone's gender identity is not necessary to discriminate against that person on the basis of their gender identity". They have no logic or consistency; they're just swimming the witch. If Sall doesn't drown, they'l burn her.

The fragility and incoherence of Team Tickle's arguments cannot be overstated. Nothing is qualified. Nothing holds up under even glancing scrutiny. They use undefined terms within undefined terms. Their supporting examples are either wildly hypothetical or analogies so stretched they snap at a poke.

Quite simply, you're damned if you do, damned if you don't -- don't try to understand how, or what words mean, just go with it.

#GiggleVTickle

[Bruce Bowman @boswelltoday]

8/
And most critically, Grover did not know Tickle’s gender identity.
There was no name, no declaration, no context.
Only a selfie.
The removal was based on apparent maleness, not gender identity.

[Jess 🟣🫥🟢 @anonotanon]

Noel Hutley, barrister for Giggle, pressed this point well. Giggle's point was that the Tickle team has thus far failed to provide explanation of the specific "gender expressions" in common that would specifically identify a "trans woman" as a "trans woman".

On this, we have heard only vague, flimsy, and/or contradictory remarks. "You need to assess the whole picture," we heard yesterday (regarding Tickle's onboarding photo).

And: "Discrimination of gender identity results from the disjunct between sex assigned at birth and gender expression."

Yet also: "Gender identity is self-realized. It is a deep sense of self". (Which, therefore, makes it unknowable to anyone else).

"You need to assess the whole picture" -- and then what? Disregard the biological aspects. Scrutinize everyone you meet and seek conclusions from how they present and perform. Try to discern their "deep sense of self" from, literally, their outer most layers.

Whilst simultaneously NOT drawing conclusions because we must also never assume someone's gender.

Assess the whole picture, but disregard the possibility of feminine men and masculine women who simply... are; any non-conformity to sex-common style or manner is likely a cue that someone rejects their sex and has adopted a gender label. And if we do not ignore the possibility of simple style non-conformity, how are we to tell the everyday non-conformist from the gender identity?

"Tickle had long hair," they argued. At what hair length can we recognize man from woman? What kind of make-up? Are there specific shades of colours that signal "trans woman" not "man who likes brights?". Is there a chart we can reference?

In order for a disjunct between sex and "gender expression" to be objectively indicative of a gender identity, both sex and gender expression must have fixed rules. We know the rules of sex. Team Tickle has not provided the rules of the other.

By Team Tickle’s account:

Sall must have known Tickle's gender identity.
Sall could not have known Tickle's gender identity.
Sall should have known Tickle's gender identity.
Sall should never have assumed Tickle's gender identity.

And, best of all: it doesn't matter whether Sall knew Tickle's gender identity or not. For "knowledge of someone's gender identity is not necessary to discriminate against that person on the basis of their gender identity". They have no logic or consistency; they're just swimming the witch. If Sall doesn't drown, they'l burn her.

The fragility and incoherence of Team Tickle's arguments cannot be overstated. Nothing is qualified. Nothing holds up under even glancing scrutiny. They use undefined terms within undefined terms. Their supporting examples are either wildly hypothetical or analogies so stretched they snap at a poke.

Quite simply, you're damned if you do, damned if you don't -- don't try to understand how, or what words mean, just go with it.

#TicklevGiggle #GiggleVTickle

[Bruce Bowman @boswelltoday]

8/
And most critically, Grover did not know Tickle’s gender identity.
There was no name, no declaration, no context.
Only a selfie.
The removal was based on apparent maleness, not gender identity.