The founder of a female-only app waged an "online campaign" against a transgender woman after refusing to allow her as a user, a court has heard.
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Roxanne Tickle is suing the Giggle for Girls app and its founder, Sall Grover, to the tune of $100,000 for alleged discrimination based on her gender identity, a Federal Court hearing was told on Thursday.
Ms Tickle is seeking an additional $100,000 for aggravated damages, based on an online campaign allegedly waged against her by Ms Grover largely on the social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter.
The court heard Ms Grover has persistently misgendered Ms Tickle in media interviews and across hundreds of posts about the case made to her roughly 93,000 online followers.
Lawyer for Ms Tickle, Georgina Costello told the court her client had received an "enormous" amount of online hate as a result of Ms Grover's actions.
Several supporters of Ms Grover travelled from interstate for the three days of hearings, holding signs outside the courtroom stating the definition of woman as "adult human female".
A crowdfunding campaign established to help fund Ms Grover's defence raised close to half a million dollars, the court heard.
The Giggle app was created by Ms Grover as "safe space" for women to interact with each other, free from male patterns of online violence, the court heard previously.
Ms Grover blocked Ms Tickle and refused to reinstate her based on a selfie uploaded by her to the app, which she perceived to be of a man, the court was told.
Ms Costello argued the picture was of a person presenting herself as a woman, who has undergone gender-affirming surgery and hormone treatments, told family, friends and her workplace of the decision, uses women's change rooms and shops in women's clothing departments
Even when Ms Grover was made aware that Ms Tickle identifies as a woman and holds a female birth certificate, she refused to accept her as such, Ms Costello said during her closing submission to the court.
Ms Costello argued Ms Grover has a "modus operandi of treating transgender women as men".
"We say because of the way Ms Grover views transgender women, she was unable to see that a transgender woman is a woman," Ms Costello said.
In her closing submission, Giggle's barrister Bridie Nolan argued Ms Tickle is a man, and it was therefore lawful to exclude her from the female-only app, due to provisions in the Sex Discrimination Act.
Ms Nolan told Justice Robert Bromwich the court was faced with the impossible task of determining whether a person is a woman based on their "psychological state" and having undergone surgery to remove their reproductive organs.
"When a person thinks they are the woman, what are they thinking?" Ms Nolan asked.
"You cannot reduce a category in discrimination legislation to a thought."
Ms Nolan added that a more "troubling and insidious" aspect of the case is "a sense of entitlement to enter places where people of the male sex should not go".
Single-sex spaces such as women's change rooms, toilets, and dormitories partly exist for the purpose of women defending themselves against male violence, Ms Nolan submitted.
Ms Nolan said when a woman walks through a dark park at night and hears male footsteps behind her, "she does not stop to think, I wonder which side of Kmart this person shops on".
"She laces the fingers around her keys ... she speeds up," Ms Nolan said.
If a man were to have the psychology of a woman, "they would know that, and they would not enter those spaces," Ms Nolan said.
The hearing continues.
Australian Associated Press
