Yesterday at London's Olympia, during the ARC (Alliance for Responsible Citizenship) annual conference, Sall Grover, a young businesswoman from Australia, told the story of what happened to her when she was targeted by a man who used transgender ideology to demand that his rights should override those of women. The man, (who claims he is a woman), took Grover to court and, with the help of the Australian Human Rights Commission, (an independent authority within the Australian federal government’s Attorney-General’s portfolio, funded by Australian taxpayers), won two cases against her.
Grover's fight through the Australian courts continues. She is preparing a challenge to these earlier verdicts. As always where law is concerned, the process is very expensive. If you support her arguments and can spare her some money to help pay her legal costs, this is her crowdfunder
Despite being in the eye of a legal and ideological storm for several years now, Grover remains extraordinarily good humoured, while continuing to advocate and fight for reality, freedom and truth.
Here is a transcript of the speech Grover gave to an enthusiastic London audience:
“Hello, thank you so much for having me. I have flown halfway around the world to tell you that men are not women - something so obvious that, in a normal world, it would not need to be said - but we are not, apparently, living in a normal world.
For those of you who don't know me, I am the woman who had to go to court to establish what a woman is, and lost to a man - twice. In 2019, I created a social networking app called Giggle, exclusively for women. I had absolutely no idea I was doing this at the one time in human history when people have begun pretending not to know what a woman is.
In February 2020, when we were beta-testing the Giggle app on the App Store and Google Player, I woke up one day to find thousands of men on the app and thousands of one-star reviews calling us transphobic, and calling me a TERF.
I'd never heard the word before, and so I googled it - and I found that there were many women already raising the alarm: Helen Joyce, Kathleen Stock, Julie Bindel, to name a few. What they were saying was so insane that I had to see for myself whether it was true. I started doing my own research and discovered they were not telling a word of a lie. Not only were men claiming to be women, but people were believing them.
I still didn't know enough about transgender ideology at the time, and so I naively thought it would all blow over. But in January 2022, when I was 14 weeks pregnant, I received an Australian Human Rights Commission complaint, citing gender identity discrimination. It was from a man who claimed to be a woman and who had tried to use the Giggle app. He had gotten on it, but I had removed him. I don't remember doing it. There were many men who tried to get onto the app, and we would remove them.
He only became a person of note in my life when he called and texted my telephone. He was the only potential user of Giggle ever to do that. I put his telephone number into our server; I saw a picture of a man. I called my dad and said, "A man that we blocked from Giggle has called and texted my phone. I'm quite freaked out by this." My dad said, "Block his number and don't tell your mother, because she sees the threats that women receive speaking up on this issue and lives in fear."
To settle in the Australian Human Rights Commission, I was told that I would have to:
• let the complainant onto the app;
• let all men who claim to be women onto the app;
• go to sex and gender education classes, (which I knew could only be re-education);
• pay the complainant $20,000;
• apologise to the complainant - for which the best I could do was say, "I'm sorry you're a man";
• and - (and I think this is the most sinister element) - moderate all content on the app so that men who claim to be women would not be offended by what women said.
In other words, not only did this man want to be in the women's space, he wanted to control it.
I said no.
The complainant's name is Roxy Tickle, and he filed in Australia's federal court, thereby creating the world's first sex vs. gender identity discrimination case. To make this situation even stupider, the case is called Tickle v. Giggle.
This is actually my life.
In terms of legislation, what has happened in Australia is that, under the government of Julia Gillard, our first woman prime minister, (she has spent over a decade dining out on that fact), the Sex Discrimination Act was changed: the definitions of man and woman were removed and gender identity was put in. What this change has created is a completely muddled act. Whereas it once existed to protect women, it is now being used as a piece of legislation to punish us for not going along with an ideology.
The Australian Human Rights Commission intervened in the case, with the Sex Discrimination Commissioner arguing on the side of Tickle - and, by extension, all men who claim to be women. The commissioner argued that men are women - to the point where they need pregnancy protections in law, in case anybody perceives them to be pregnant!
What they are doing is giving men who claim to be women legal protections they don't need, while taking away legal protections away from women, who do need them.
I lost in the federal court. I was told that sex is changeable. I was found to have indirectly discriminated against the complainant - and I was fined $10,000 because during cross-examination I laughed.
I was punished for laughing, in a case called Tickle v. Giggle. It's so stupid
So I appealed - and I genuinely thought that we were going to win. I thought that the full Federal Court was going to be the barrier preventing this ideology from infiltrating all Australian institutions.
We should have won. We are right. Men are not women, and there is absolutely no evidence that there was an intention to have one amendment change the legislation to the point of excluding women from it.
But unfortunately the full Federal Court went even further. They said there was direct discrimination.
They also said that looking like a man is a protected characteristic of being a trans woman. Yet trans women are women.
The court increased the damages to $20,000, because not only did I laugh, I also called Roxy Tickle a man in court.
Tickle's side, his legal team, said that I had called him a man in 50 interviews. That's not true - it's hundreds. I've never called him a woman, and I never will.
Now we have to go to the High Court. This is the highest court in Australia. If I lose, beyond the devastation of women being excluded from Australian law, I will have to pay one million dollars for Tickle’s legal costs. This case has already cost $AUD 1.2-1.3 million, all of it crowdfunded by people all around the world generously supporting the case.
Why is this important? What am I here to tell you? I'm here to say that, if a state can force you to accept men as women, they can force you to accept anything. Freedom of speech, belief and association are the bedrock of a free society - but they are in direct conflict with transgender ideology.
I believe that this is among the most important issues facing us at the moment. If we don't eradicate transgender ideology from law and society, we're going to lose reality, because transgenderism is forcing us to ignore reality and our instincts, and it's imposing an ideology upon us. Women's rights are just the canary in the coal mine. This impacts everyone.
Gender identity, gender ideology, transgenderism, whatever you want to call it, isn't true. It's not real. Every aspect of it is a lie. In fact if you look at each claim it makes, you find that in every single case the exact opposite is true:
• Men are not women.
• Women are not men.
• No one is born in the wrong body.
• Sex is not changeable.
• Gender identity isn't real.
We are told to be kind and inclusive, but people's empathy is being attacked to force them to be cruel to themselves. Why do I have to be kind and inclusive to a man who claims to be a woman, at the expense of my perception of reality and my own rights? How is that kind?
People ask me, "What can we do?" Speak. At every opportunity, every time it's needed, say, "Men are not women and I will not be forced to accept transgender ideology."
Silence is being mistaken for consensus. I'm often asked if I regret taking this stance and giving up years of my life, having to raise and spend millions of dollars in legal fees, getting called a bigot, basically derailing my career. Wouldn't it have been easier to just pay this man $20,000, let him on the app, and accept that the word "woman" has evolved?
No. It is not easier to submit to an ideology that isn't true, to give up your rights and to watch society crumble under the weight of nonsense.
When I was pregnant, having to decide whether or not to fight, I knew that I was having a daughter. And I knew that I would have to teach her to stand up for herself - and I couldn't do that if I backed down the first time it really mattered.
The Australian government - the Albanese government - could do their job and fix this, free, in a week, but they won't. They'll let me do it for them instead. And, while it may not be coming from the government itself, finally, after years of inaction, some political pushback is emerging.
I know that I will eventually win, one way or another, because the truth always does. I will be able to relaunch my company and provide women with an online platform to connect with each other all around the world, I'll be able to sleep soundly knowing that my free daughter has rights - and Roxy Tickle will never be a woman.
Thank you.”
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