Latest / Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps / "Trans Rights vs Women's Rights" with the feminist being sued for her women's app, Sall Grover

Transcript

"Trans Rights vs Women's Rights" with the feminist being sued for her women's app, Sall Grover · Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps

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  Hey humans, welcome to the safe space for dangerous ideas and what a doozy of a dangerous
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  idea. We have for you today which is quite peculiar because I can actually imagine an
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  alternate universe in which this idea is not controversial at all and is open to rational
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  conversation, the likes of which we're having here today. Well we don't live in that world,
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  in which conversations like this are regarded as beyond the pale by at least half the population
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  and probably 99% of journalists and media institutions who aren't co-opted by the conservative
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  reactionary right. And it's quite peculiar because the question is pretty simple. The question is
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  should biological women, people who were assigned female at birth, that is, have a right to
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  organize themselves and create spaces for themselves that exclude women who were assigned
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  male at birth and have transitioned. Now even just my introducing the topic using that language
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  will immediately alienate a certain proportion of people who are very exercised about this issue,
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  namely people who perhaps sometimes carry the label of turf or trans exclusionary radical
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  feminist. That's because I use the language assigned female at birth and assigned male at birth
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  and I want to make clear why I use the language I do here. The language a person being assigned male
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  or assigned female at birth is the language that is preferred by transgender activists and transgender
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  people and I use it not because I necessarily agree with the language to it because my job as I
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  is to unite the largest number of people around a common conversation and to speak in ways that
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  don't immediately put on the back foot some cohort of people who I want to actually be winning
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  over. So I want you to listen to this regardless of what side of this debate you're on or whether
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  you're just curious and in the centre where there's generous a mind as possible and hopefully we can
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  all grow towards some kind of resolution to this question. It's coming up now because there's a big
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  court case in Australia this week, a big court case that you wouldn't know existed if you
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  listened to mainstream media and watched mainstream television and read the mainstream press
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  because nobody wants to talk about it. It's quite baffling. Conservative reactionary pundits like
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  to talk about it but mainstream media institutions especially ones that consider themselves on the
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  left and on the right side of history and especially especially ones that consider themselves
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  allies of women and feminists are not interviewing the individual we have on today who is the target
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  of the litigation sale rover. The contours of this particular case will become apparent as I
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  speak to sale I don't need to outline them here but basically the question that is being challenged
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  in the federal court of Australia is the question of whether or not a trans woman in other words
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  a individual who has assigned male at birth and subsequently went on to transition to being a
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  woman has the right to sue a private organisation for excluding her on the basis of the fact that she
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  wasn't assigned female at birth wasn't born biologically female and this raises questions for
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  women's rights of course we see this all across the sporting industry where questions about whether
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  or not people who went through puberty as biological males and subsequently transitioned should
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  be allowed to compete against people who have been assigned female or their lives we see it in
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  the case of prisons and women's rape shelters and safe spaces and so on whether or not women
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  who have biological male genitals or genitals associated with males perhaps I should say
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  should be allowed into women's safe spaces and the deafening silence from the mainstream press
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  about whether or not this is an issue worth covering is just extraordinary I mean you know just
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  recently a presenter on the BBC was trying to explain this issue and said in passing trans women
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  and then he said in other words biological males he almost lost his job I mean he was formally
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  reprimanded and he was suspended because he was seen to be taking a partisan position while he
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  was doing with stating a biological fact he wasn't necessarily saying that he concurred with the
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  conclusions of anti trans people he was just trying to clarify for the viewer who might not be
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  quite as online and agitated by social justice issues as the activists are what he was meaning by
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  the term trans woman it's so perilous that people are tiptoeing around it and really just ignoring
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  it because it's more hassle and it's worth I mean when I was on the ABC it was at a time when
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  Britain's largest gender clinic the taverstock was closed amidst a huge controversy in the
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  United Kingdom after a government inquiry had found that it was being too hasty in providing
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  affirmative gender care to young gender dysphoric people in other words it wasn't doing enough to
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  examine whether or not there was a depression anxiety autism any other psychological condition going
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  on among young people especially teenage just and pre teens who would come to the clinic claiming
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  to be of the opposite sex it was hurrying them too quickly with inadequate investigation
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  down the gender change or gender affirmation as the activists like to call it pathway and nobody
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  the public broadcaster in Australia covered this story when media watch the watchdog
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  asked why news hadn't covered it they said oh well it's a foreign story so we didn't think it was
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  relevant which Paul Barry the host of the media watch show the kind of ombudsman of the media
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  did not buy making the point justifiably I believe that if it was any other major cultural
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  shift in British policy then the Australian public broadcaster would note that and would perhaps
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  add a line about how or maybe things have done differently here and this doesn't
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  reflect the way things are done but you'd interview a local person and you'd say how do we do
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  things that are differently from the bridge does this have any flow on implications any ramifications
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  for how we do things here you know it would be a really we do it all the time as journalists
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  something major happens in a similar allied country abroad so we reexamine whether or not we're
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  doing things the right way here we didn't do that at the time and in fact the only show on the
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  ABC that touched this was my radio show where I interviewed the head of the psychiatric association
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  who has some concerns in Australia about whether or not we're too hasty in affirming
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  the changed gender of children with gender dysphoria and he said on my radio show and indeed they
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  played this clip on media watch the ombudsman tv show he said I feel like the girl at a high school
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  party who's never asked to the dance and no one at the ABC asked me to dance and so I'm grateful to
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  finally being asked someone has finally asked me to dance Josh which made me feel sad I mean
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  somewhat a little bit tiny bit proud when the bar is that low but sad that I belong to a
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  profession which has been so routinely ignorant of this I mean you look up you know transgender
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  rights in the UK for example on the first page on google is a New York Times article opinion
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  how British feminism became anti trans then the times of London inside the turf wars that
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  so trans exclusionary radical feminist wars tearing the guardian apart then there's a
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  vise article turf war transphobia in the British media gender critical feminism and its effects
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  on Britain then pink news transphobia scholar explains why the UK became turf island and its
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  eye opening vox says JK Rowling's transphobia is a product of British culture open
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  democracy dot com has an opinion piece why as an American trans gender woman I don't feel it's
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  safe to visit the UK I mean hysteria much this should be a cool calm collected rational conversation
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  about human rights and gender rights and that is the that is the circumstance under which the federal
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  court of Australia will be hearing this case it has landmark implications for women's rights and
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  for trans rights and therefore for all human rights really um like I say every time anyone tries to
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  touch this they get piled on often they get doxed which means that their personal details their
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  private details their home address and so on gets exposed online by social media activists who
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  regard them as being guilty of peddling hate speech anytime you talk to people like the guest I have
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  on today you're accused of platforming people who are guilty of hate speech you're accused of
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  calling into question human beings right to exist I mean I recently proposed a conversation
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  about this particular issue about how to juggle the competing rights of women's safe spaces with
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  the rights of trans women to be included in society and I was told by a very important person
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  that we don't have conversations which call into question people's right to exist
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  which call into question people's right to exist well let's a convenient way of shutting down
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  the conversation before you even have it isn't it um so I'm glad that I'm now independent and
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  able to have these conversations I urge you to listen to this conversation with as compassionate
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  a heart as you can regardless of which side of the aisle you come from I understand that it's
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  going to antagonize a lot of people that's not the intent the intent is to wrestle with some level
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  of courage with an issue that is going unremarked upon too often because there's a heckless veto
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  a terrorist veto if you will that cows people and prevents them from having an honest conversation
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  about this stuff let's wrestle with this in a spirit of goodwill I hope you enjoy this conversation
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  with the one I'm only sell a grove up uh yes okay so Monday Monday or Tuesday that you're in
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  court Tuesday it all gets up okay and you're coming to Sydney on Monday
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  how are you feeling um I'm incredibly anxious because in part because of
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  the what I would deemed sort of the ridiculousness of the whole thing like when you've got once
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  in one sense it's so important and then the other said you're going other part of you going is
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  going but this is so obvious and stupid so it's it's a real conflict in your mind and it's also
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  been two very long years leading up to this so this is consumed my life for two years and so to
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  finally for it to go to court and to have this week just it it's a lot and but at the same time
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  yesterday the UN special repertoire released the thing statement and it's already gone to the
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  Australian Morat's commission saying like sexist biological women out of human females so that made
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  me feel really good so the United Nations is chiming in is that because of the context of your case
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  yeah yeah so part of our defense is a constitutional challenge um because of based on the
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  amendments so actually before we get to this let's go back to the experience and I know you've
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  probably said it a million times but it has been strangely overlooked in the mainstream media so
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  there are probably people hearing this for the first time tell us what happened from your
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  perspective and then we can talk about the legal charge I spent last night pouring over federal
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  quarter of Australia documents to try to understand the legal questions here which are more
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  complicated as they always are in court cases than one might initially assume but so what's
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  happening what happened what happened so basically um I created a social networking app court
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  giggle that was for women only it was inspired in part by my time I was at screenwriter in Hollywood
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  in a previous life I did I'd experienced the me too stuff like I was there pre-me too and it was
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  as horrible as as you know they say when you say that were you were you personally a victim of
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  sexual abuse yeah it was actually assaulted in three meetings specifically when they were
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  in professional settings and then there was stuff that was more in like sort of what you'd
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  got social settings but I literally was leaving a meeting with a producer who wanted me to write
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  a script on spec and he put his hand down my pants and when I told people what had happened they
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  were like great he wants you to write a script on spec and I was like that's not get too excited
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  about that that's writing script for free yeah exactly that's right I can know I can get anyone
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  I'd be happy for everybody to write me a script on spec I could do that myself but um and
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  did those people ever was was just a sever sort for those people did you ever get pressure on
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  that you know and I didn't write the script because I didn't want to be in I never wanted to see
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  that guy ever again and so you know you get called I'm professional it affects your reputation
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  not here's so I mean it completely destroyed my career I remember when I in 2017 I was like
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  laying in my bed one morning I was just looking at the ceiling and I was like I am in a absolute
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  pit of depression I can't get myself out of this but I just refused to give up the dream I wanted
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  to write so much and so I was like well I'll go to New York there's still industry there I'm not
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  giving up but I'm just out of this environment because it was so horrible and toxic and in in
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  I probably should have moved to New York years before I did it it suited my personality a lot more
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  and I liked that there was lots of people doing lots of different things there it wasn't just
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  Hollywood because that was while it was intoxicating when you when I first arrived in Hollywood it
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  became horrible eventually because you sort of going like there is a whole world outside of this
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  place yeah yeah you're preaching to the converted I mean I tried living in LA a couple of times
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  throughout my life but I've spent most of my adult life living in New York City for that reason
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  that there's something about a single industry town that can become quite claustrophobic exactly
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  and so I loved New York but I mean I still I I moved there too late I was still sort of damaged
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  the damage had been done and I just I physically couldn't write and so when I basically I came back
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  to Australia it was initially a three-week holiday and then it was in this is in 2018 and then it
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  was it became very apparent that I I was broken I was just a shell of a person and so I extended
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  the trip and I went into therapy to just try and cope like deal with it and get some tools to
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  just recover from what had happened and two things that was said in therapy to me that sort of
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  you know changed my life I suppose in a way one of them she made me realize that I was
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  why I wasn't able to write because I was basically having a trauma response and my brain knew
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  that writing put me into the rooms with these horrible men and so it was self-preservation so
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  while I because I just I physically couldn't write out sit at my computer and I'd have all the
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  ideas in my head I could not articulate them and my livelihood was dependent on being able to
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  practice if it's any consolation as a victim of writers block that sometimes happens to me even
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  without being sexually assaulted so the sexual abuse is maybe a cherry on top cell but not a
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  necessary condition and then but the other thing she said to me was you need a strong female
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  support network in your life and it was just this light bulb moment of like she was right because
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  you know when all of the me two stories can't started to come out the thing that was really clear
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  it was all of these women we didn't know it was happening to everyone else because it's it the
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  experience is very isolating places like Hollywood these very competitive industries and also
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  big cities are sort of isolating by design and it just really resonated with me I was like if we'd
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  had a place to sort of share these experiences just with other women or just to talk to other women
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  in general to like help recover or to something what in what she said I was like you're right
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  and so when my mom and I were just having a drink like a few nights later and I was telling her
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  what I was learning in therapy and what had been said and that it really sort of stuck with me
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  and it was my mom who eventually the conversation said oh we should create an app for women
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  and it was sort of also off the back of me telling her about when I moved to New York and I had
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  to find a room to rent I went on like roommates.com and things like that and there would be guys saying
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  things like you know if you you can live here rent free if you walk around naked or do you want a
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  boyfriend as well or like foot fetish stuff like just really gross stuff and I was like can there be
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  one part of my life that does not involve sexual harassment like the indignity of finding a room
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  to rent is horrible enough and so we were basically we were like oh why don't we create like a
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  female-only roommate app so that you know you just don't have to deal with that kind of stuff
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  and then we sort of were like well these other things like we sort of set it to scale it a bit
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  and like there's other things that women need it for and so we just went like it was just in general
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  of just being able to connect for whatever reason that a woman wants to connect to other women
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  they basically have a female-only space in the palm of your hand so we it was actually really easy
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  how it all came together like we did a family and friends investment round we've never gotten past
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  that um we designed the app we developed it um built it and that took a year it's all of 2019
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  and then it was on the app store and google play in the beginning of 2020 and we were doing beta
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  testing for it and like just finding out the bugs because it still had bugs and our security
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  features weren't you know proper yet we hadn't turned everything on and what I now know to be trans
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  rights activists I didn't know that they were a thing at the time found it and we woke up on the
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  7th of February 2020 to thousands like like in the like 10,000 men on the app writing killed
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  they've written killed turf profiles they'd inundated the apps during google play with one star
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  reviews um I'd never heard the word turf before said to google at that man I was being called
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  transphobic I had no idea what was going on and at this stage did the app have any overt policy about
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  trans women um no because we had basically I didn't know all of this stuff that was going on but
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  I'd heard just you know from being alive these talks of like inclusivity and trans and so I was
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  like when we were putting a policy together it was we had a like a trans inclusive policy but I
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  don't actually know at the like what I was thinking at the time of who I was including because
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  now like that I know what I know I was including females with a trans identity who have always
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  been included but welcome because to me actually that would be gender identity discrimination to
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  say that a female couldn't come onto the app because she had a gender identity and just to clarify
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  you're using the word female there to include trans men people who were a female a birth through
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  then transitioned and now present as men but yes but what was your policy I'm just wondering what
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  what like what raised the eye of these protesters in the first place was there something how did
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  they come to okay so I don't know but my assumption is that so to create a female-only space you
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  actually you have to have gatekeeping otherwise how is it female-only sure so our gatekeeping was
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  basically all you would have to do to use the app is you have to type in your phone number because
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  every user needs an anchor to make something work it's the same for everything like when you have
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  to set up an account with an email or whatever it is but we chose phone number so it was the only
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  sort of information we'd have for someone and then what you'd have to do is take a selfie and AI
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  would scan that selfie now when when we discovered that that was something that existed like I didn't
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  create this I at the time this is 2019 me when well that's fantastic because we all know who's
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  male and female by looking at them that is a human skill we have and we take a billion selfies
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  a day so this is like the least controversial way to do it um I could not have been more wrong so
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  I'm assuming that that was the problem because there was a lot of you can't tell if someone's
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  met a woman by looking at them and I remember at the time again at the time I didn't know I was like
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  what are you talking about and just to verify this was a third party um what software development
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  company that you found how did you find that this thing existed in order to research it's a big
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  okay it's a big company lots of different places use it and they so they would they would just
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  take in the billions of photos that exist they they know that they're metad tagged with male or
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  female yeah they can put the AI compares this photo to all of the photos that have ever been
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  taken of anybody and makes a judgment about whether this is a male or a female but then as I
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  understand that there's also a human factor that comes in on top of that at giggle where if there's
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  some dispute about that or if the AI does come understand you can step in no totally because
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  like technology is faulty and we had it set to 94% accuracy because by the time we had done
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  testing which we had not done yet in February 2020 we hadn't finished for the time we had done
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  testing um 94% accuracy was the one where unless a woman was taking a really blurry selfie it would
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  let her on or sometimes this is actually a great example see how I've got a white wall behind me
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  and then I've obviously am like pale skinned that what it could sometimes trip up with the AI
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  that it would think that it was a photo of a photo because there's not a lot of
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  depth of field here oh right okay yeah and so if people are listening to the podcast they can come
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  and see sales beautiful face on youtube by watching subscribe to the show everybody subscribe
• 22:38
  subscribe subscribe leave a comment at the review so so rightly or only we've made the decision
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  that so basically if we don't want women to get denied but if we if a man occasionally got through
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  we just manually remove him and also just out of interest you're talking about February 2020
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  like what happened when the pandemic hit and all of a sudden everybody's wearing masks
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  well they weren't in their houses when they're just taking a selfie okay some people were
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  I mean people wearing triple masks even when they were remember I don't know a load in their
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  apartment masks I'm not okay but yeah so basically like at the time I was like what a non-invasive
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  like well that was just such an easy way of doing it because that was just like it incorporated
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  just that basic evolutionary human skill that we all know that we walked down the street and we
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  can tell his male and female that's literally 99.9 percent of the time I didn't even go as far
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  to say 100 because the tiny few exceptions to the rule really don't just prove it um and so
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  I yeah I I just didn't think that it was controversial at all but I think that that is what
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  bothered the trans activists right so they start parachuting yeah sorry it's like the fact that
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  it was for women like one thing that's really important to understand here that I did not know
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  but has become very clear to me when you do something just for women the trans activists are
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  immediately angry about that so I've been introduced to this in a very very big way but
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  so I will actually say we did nothing wrong or nothing that should have annoyed them because
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  females with a trans identity have always been welcomed so to say it was trans exclusionary
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  transphobic is actually forgetting the 50 percent of their demographic whose biological sex is
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  female that we were including yeah but just park that from them because you know that that's not
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  what they're complaining about they're not complaining about yeah about the fact that biological
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  females who I have who are trans because then they now regard themselves as being male can't
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  use the service they're talking about the fact that would they want the definition of female to
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  include people who were biologically male at birth or as they like to say assigned male at birth
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  who now have undergone surgery present as female pass as female that's the cohort of people who
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  they want included in the broader cohort of females that you object to the so at the time what's
• 25:06
  giggle mostly being used for in 2020 because I had originally heard this story reported as it was
• 25:11
  a female only dating app yet so it wasn't being used for anything because it wasn't launched yet
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  we actually had to just sort of because of that what had happened we had to sort of just really
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  quickly get it all together and kind of when you were saying there were like you know one star reviews
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  on at the app store and Google play and stuff like that that only happens post launch right what is
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  it well it was on the app store and Google play because we were beta testing it we had to like
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  announce the as a as a thing of like hype come and discover this to be used like right so before
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  it even before anyone's even using it in earnest there's already a backlash yeah yeah no clearly
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  it hadn't even like we were canceled right out of the gate without a doubt and because when you
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  have thousands upon thousands of one star reviews you go into an algorithmic black hole you it's all
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  like no no this now but at the time I was very optimistic we'll get out of this but it's actually
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  almost impossible to get out of that because you then can't market the app you can't you are you're
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  at the bottom of the bin it doesn't show up as readily in people's searches for you know
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  yeah women's social media app or something like that it'll be below 15 other apps if it's got
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  all one star reviews yeah so um and so when does the when does the app ever get traction I mean
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  does it ever become in 2021 which is the period of time during which the person who's suing you
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  is concerned about what is the nature of the app at that point so we had made the decision in 2020
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  basically after this first attack and I was introduced to all of this stuff and I started researching
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  and reading what was going on so that I could basically you know all the trans activists were saying
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  educate yourself so I did um and for lack of a bit of word became a raging turf from it which
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  most people do and they educate themselves um I I said because my mum and I the owners of the
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  company and it is basically just us and I said well this is so preposterous what's going on
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  this will pass let's just tread water and just sort of just have it just sit there we'll just
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  tread water eventually we'll be able to do stuff and that and I honestly thought it would just be
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  a few months how wrong I was um so that was basically our decision and so we were still just
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  treading water we made it treading water by meaning that the apps are available but you're not
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  pushing or promoting it you're not doing it being we're not doing anything it was we were trying
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  we made sure that like we could run it as like cheaply as possible because you know they're
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  actually expenses with running an app in terms of like servers and whatnot so we were just making
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  sure that we were just being as economical as possible while it sort of just sat there and we
• 27:50
  waited this out and was this a self-funded thing salad were there investors who you were
• 27:55
  and we did a family and friends investor around all right yeah you said that so but they're
• 27:59
  probably they're probably somewhat more forgiving in terms of the the timeline of returns
• 28:03
  than a professional investor might be yeah I mean with startups it can take like you know it can
• 28:08
  take a normal trajectory for a startup can be 10 years before you know like great stuff happens so
• 28:13
  you know we're still well within that but yeah I mean this is definitely not the journey that
• 28:17
  anyone expected um because everybody invested into an app for them and right no I would have
• 28:23
  a woman is um and so by 2021 it was still just that it was just there we'd we'd building it was
• 28:30
  building up there was like a few thousand women using it by this point so it was starting to kind of
• 28:35
  work you know in the way it was supposed to it it is often referred to as a dating app it had a
• 28:42
  lesbian dating platform within it because of course it does it's a female-only app so of course
• 28:47
  you would cater to that but it was a it was for women in general like the only prerequisite to use
• 28:53
  it was be female and yeah you could find roommates could have found freelance work emotional support
• 28:58
  there was like a female and we like Twitter style forum I mean we had a place where you could find
• 29:02
  pen pals if that's what you wanted to do we try to think of everything that why women would want
• 29:07
  to connect there was even actually a place to connect on the basis of gender identity because
• 29:13
  when I was introduced to this we added this category afterwards I was like okay well we'll
• 29:17
  try and cater to the females who have one like I actually was trying to to do the right thing
• 29:25
  on the basis of sex still so you know just that was just sort of always my thought pattern it's like
• 29:31
  you know I don't believe in gender identity at all but I also don't believe in Islam and we did
• 29:35
  have a category and the app for Muslim women to connect so it's we didn't judge anyone's thoughts
• 29:41
  or anything and and so at its when was its peak when was the peak of giggle's use there's I mean
• 29:47
  they just isn't it's just the it never got off the ground in a way that you wanted it to no it's never
• 29:53
  got enough the ground like hopefully it's it's peak is still to come like I mean we get offline at the
• 29:58
  moment and just in terms of the and so when did it go how long has it been offline for so it went
• 30:03
  offline in basically in August to 2022 since we by that point we'd been trading water for such a
• 30:10
  long time and technology changes and you have to do updates and what yeah of course and we
• 30:16
  you know we can't go and do huge new builds like X can while still running it we are
• 30:22
  don't need a little startup with not much money so we decided to we have a hard decision but we
• 30:27
  were like okay we have to do these updates we will take it down and then we will relaunch and
• 30:31
  maybe hopefully by that time like not like that we would not by that time actually should have said
• 30:37
  that it was more like when we get to launch it in a few months we'll have some control over it
• 30:41
  for the first time ever like it can be on our terms and we can really but you also knew at that point
• 30:46
  that there were court challenges coming at no so what had happened so that we can go into the
• 30:53
  details but at the in August 2022 no because the applicant had withdrawn that initial case
• 31:00
  so right so just sitting there at the time going like did we win because we stood out
• 31:04
  brown like we had to sort of just take it as a win and so we were just trying to move on with
• 31:08
  our lives but what happened is he refiled in December 2022 and so that stopped us for relaunching it
• 31:14
  so we haven't relaunched it the app currently is offline no one can you know right and just and
• 31:19
  quickly in terms of the dating component and also I'll just do an assigned so people are confused
• 31:23
  you're calling the applicant a he I'll refer to her as a she it's a person who was born a
• 31:30
  natal male and we can get into the details but basically this person seven years ago in 2017
• 31:41
  changed her physical appearance to become female started using female pronouns picked a female name
• 31:48
  underwent gender surgery in 2019 changed her birth certificate in 2020 and there's now
• 31:56
  now as a birth certificate that says she's female you have a principled objection to that so I won't
• 32:01
  want to dispute your right to call her a he but if that's confusing to the listener then
• 32:06
  that's why there's a difference between the gender that Sal and I are using so and in terms of
• 32:11
  that just the dating component because I find this interesting are you gay or are you
• 32:15
  straight you're so that was always just a fringe component of what you regarded as being an app
• 32:21
  that was designed for predominantly a sense of community among yeah I mean I wouldn't say I wouldn't say
• 32:28
  a fringe component because like I mean like lesbian dating is just as important as anything else
• 32:36
  and also you know you you could be a lesbian on the app and not be there for dating you know what I
• 32:42
  mean you could yeah sure no no just I just mean numerically it's always going to be a small
• 32:46
  minority of the overall cohort of women maybe except for in the fevered dreams of guys who
• 32:52
  watch a lot of lesbian porn yeah okay so so so the applicant joins Giggle it correct me if I'm wrong
• 33:00
  in 2021 uses it and passes the AI test as a woman uses it for some number of months throughout
• 33:09
  the majority of the year no um the only reason he was not detected is because he wasn't using it
• 33:16
  got it okay but he's on is an active is an active user he's gotten past the AI which as I said before
• 33:24
  not unusual every a man would do it it would sometimes if we have a lot of men coming up trying
• 33:29
  to come on because I remember even like throughout from 2020 to 2022 and it went offline the
• 33:36
  those attacks where thousands of men would try to get on happened frequently roughly once a
• 33:40
  month to every six weeks he was constantly under when you say thousands of men who were trying to get
• 33:45
  on do you make any differentiation between trans women in other words men who who live there
• 33:52
  in telling our lives as women versus men who are just sort of trolling you because they want to
• 33:57
  you know they want to take up arms against you and they live as men and they they regard their gender
• 34:03
  as being male and they're bombarding you to me no because I know because I can't tell
• 34:09
  someone's gender identity from a two-dimensional photo when you've just got thousands of male
• 34:14
  people bombarding you the gender identity is even more irrelevant than it would be in my in my
• 34:21
  normal life one night but you'd be able to I mean in the sense that the applicant was you know
• 34:26
  managed to get past the AI obviously there's a difference between someone who presents
• 34:30
  with traditionally female characteristics like long hair and dress and lipstick and a dude with a beard
• 34:37
  no not at all I'll give you an example the only this one was modifying so Steve Baxter who is
• 34:42
  you know well known venture capitalist who's been a great mentor to me um he when he was first
• 34:48
  sort of just circling just to sort of see what we were doing um he took so he got on I was
• 34:54
  mortified the biggest venture capitalist in Australia just got on it looked like my company was
• 34:59
  an absolute failure no occasionally a man would get on technology is not perfect the human eye
• 35:04
  works much better and we would just remove them so right but I'm also just interested when
• 35:08
  you talk about being bombarded by men does that mean that there was a coordinated campaign
• 35:13
  amongst trans women to bombard you or amongst men men no idea I mean sometimes the only thing we'd
• 35:20
  know about them like yeah they'd be but how did you know then are you looking at the pictures
• 35:25
  yeah but I mean like first of all like I mean I can tell when um even if I were to grant you
• 35:31
  that transgenderism doesn't exist or something I would be able to tell when a guy is trying to pass
• 35:36
  as a woman or I um sometimes you could have a guy that's wearing makeup but what would is it
• 35:42
  not offensive to assume that he's not just a guy who likes wearing makeup because lots of men
• 35:47
  like that well I make an assumption on his gender identity I would understand that that cohort
• 35:54
  of people is probably different from males who present as male yeah but so but my point is to
• 36:00
  explain how it all works so like for example if I'm getting thousands of men trying to get on
• 36:04
  the app and like something all I could tell about them other than the fact that they're males they
• 36:07
  were wearing you know like gaming headsets so we'd assume that like something was happening like
• 36:11
  a discord server a twitch or something like that that there was like an orchestra you do suspect
• 36:15
  that it was it was just it was dude it was dude bros being cheeky yeah so for the most part I'm not
• 36:21
  saying I'm not making the accusation that like trans women were constantly trying to bombard the
• 36:27
  app that's not the application that I'm making I make me accusation that male people for whatever
• 36:33
  and whatever demographic from then on that they belong to would often do orchestrated attempts I
• 36:39
  don't know anything else about yeah right so this is this suspicion might be that they're super
• 36:43
  social justice uh like dudes who are trying to telegraph their virtue to yeah and it's by taking
• 36:51
  down some men from all around the world as well I mean they would they would be we'd have times
• 36:55
  where it'd be like the attack would be coming from Bangladesh you know this then maybe there
• 37:01
  are also men's rights types like you know it could be anyone you could attract so the good thing
• 37:06
  about you is you attract a lot of hate from a lot of different groups so it could be you know it
• 37:10
  could definitely also be the men's rights uh people objecting to women having a
• 37:16
  no I don't believe all right so good yeah I'll say this I picked it I received more dick picks
• 37:22
  than any woman on the planet well they would quite often just take pictures of their penises
• 37:27
  and just we like doing that it's uh you know it's a so kill us we're primates you know we we're
• 37:35
  proud of our winners I will I will say this the behavior of men towards a female only app has proven
• 37:43
  the need for it they've not done a single thing to you know dampen my suspicions that a woman
• 37:52
  only space is actually completely and utterly necessary online that's interesting so talk us
• 37:59
  through the timeline so this the the person who's suing you uh it comes to comes to your attention
• 38:05
  that she's a biological female or rather you what cancel her account oh so I don't even remember
• 38:15
  removing him from the app because it wasn't an odd thing to see a man and go oh that's a man and
• 38:20
  just remove so I didn't I don't even recall it it was not an event in any way shape or form there's
• 38:25
  many other men that I've removed from the app I don't that that's completely normal what then
• 38:31
  became a bit odd in terms of my journey with it is I think it was October 2021 he called and
• 38:39
  texted my phone I don't know how he got my phone number he I because as I said the only like
• 38:49
  anchor that we had for any user was the phone number so just but because he didn't because he
• 38:53
  texted me I just typed the phone number into the Google server and so the onboarding selfie came
• 39:00
  up and I was like that's clearly a man and I called my dad and I said this guy that's blocked from
• 39:05
  Google has called and texted my phone wanting to be on um I don't remember anything else that he
• 39:10
  what he specifically said in that text um and I my dad said you know you don't have a saved
• 39:19
  the text no because my dad said to my the advice might because it really creeped me out it really
• 39:23
  actually scared me and I my dad said block his phone number and don't tell your mom because
• 39:29
  my mom does live in fear she sees all of the death threats woman get for speaking out about this
• 39:34
  sort of stuff and so I it was one of the you know something like sort of creepy happens and you
• 39:38
  just try and forget it didn't happen so I did that I just tried to I just forgot that I was just
• 39:42
  like oh I'll uh yuck and I'll just you know move on then in January of 2022 I got these
• 39:51
  drilling human rights complaint for alleged gender identity discrimination and at this point I
• 39:55
  was 15 weeks pregnant so it was just it was a horrible we were also the appers under attack that week
• 40:01
  and um they were calling us calling it racist because a bunch of white guys with gamer headsets
• 40:06
  were leaving reviews saying that they were black women who weren't allowed on now there was no
• 40:10
  racism at Google we had to from that those accusations both Google play an apple contacted us we had
• 40:17
  they invest they had to make sure that we weren't actually doing something horrible like racism
• 40:21
  we were able to prove it in minutes and it was fine and they let us on our way like when you create an
• 40:26
  app you actually have to pass through a lot of stuff in the app store on Google Play through each
• 40:31
  build as it's being built so it's like literally at no point did even apple or Google say like
• 40:36
  during the building process of it like oh hang on you've got a there's a problem here that's why
• 40:42
  it was such a shock in February 2020 when suddenly we were under attack and I just never heard it
• 40:48
  I had no idea that this stuff was going on I was in a Trump hating bubble on my online experience
• 40:53
  so I yeah we all was a weird time I think the yeah it was a weird time early 2020 to early 2022 I think
• 41:02
  just look at it 2018 to 2020 even like you know Trump was in office it was like I can't stand
• 41:09
  the guy and I you know there was like so many people like you know I lived in America and so I
• 41:15
  sort of had like such an affection for the place and I like so many others which is trying to like
• 41:19
  read as much to understand how this happened but even in that no no point led me to oh there
• 41:25
  were people that were kind of against all this stuff a bit earlier or whatever so yeah I just
• 41:30
  no it was hot I mean it was a heartbreaking period I do I also just realized that you were during
• 41:34
  the pandemic you were in Queensland not in California in my brain you were in Los Angeles
• 41:39
  hence the comment about the mask you certainly weren't wearing masks in Queensland because there
• 41:44
  was basically no virus in Queensland and also you dodged a bullet somewhat in terms of the bush
• 41:50
  fires I'm just mapping the calendar on here in 2019 to 2020 the other really traumatizing thing
• 41:56
  that was happening at that moment at least for me I had two year old twins at the time so I remember
• 42:02
  being in a you know sort of baby haze not that dissimilar probably from your pregnancy haze
• 42:09
  which was which was that I mean Sydney was the skies were dark you couldn't see the end of the
• 42:16
  street for all the smoke there was ash falling on the cars everyone was just raw and traumatized
• 42:22
  and the houses were blowing up and like thunderstorms of fire and flame were just leaping out of
• 42:28
  that like the bush it was yeah I'm totally surreal in early 20s I look on the goal coast and I
• 42:34
  always say to people like this is like the best part of Australia to live in because it's so relaxed
• 42:39
  and cruzy very very stereotypically Australian and yeah we don't really get any disasters and we
• 42:44
  don't have great white sharks we have tiger sharks but we don't have great ones all right I'm
• 42:48
  moving to the goal coast yeah okay so that's so that's that period of time and then we're so now
• 42:55
  we're fast-forwarded too and there were we won't bother going into the details of the fact that there
• 42:59
  was this court case that then expired and you like unless you think that's particularly salient I'm
• 43:05
  more interested in what's happening now yeah it's just generally just to relevant in terms of
• 43:10
  if the people don't understand why it's gone on for so long so how have you not withdrawn and then
• 43:14
  refound six months later this actually would have already been heard in the federal court it would
• 43:18
  be right solved by now so it's just gone on longer than normal that's all I see because there was
• 43:24
  an initial application to sue you that then was not pursued that expired the individual had to
• 43:31
  come back resubmit and now what's happening this coming week is that what that period well let
• 43:41
  me just read the the claim right this is from the actual claim this is the this is the statement
• 43:47
  of claim since on around 2017 the applicant has presented a physical appearance to be female
• 43:52
  used the female name of Roxanne Tickle the applicant underwent gender affirming surgery on October
• 43:57
  2019 by which her gender as a woman was affirmed the applicant's birth certificate issued by the
• 44:03
  Queensland registry of birthstets and marriages in or around January 2020 states that the applicant
• 44:09
  is female and the claim is that from February 2021 to September 2021 the applicant enjoyed ordinary
• 44:17
  access to the giggle app around September 2021 you used the override powers to restrict access
• 44:25
  and that means that the applicant was treated less favorably than cisgender women because the
• 44:30
  applicant is a transgender woman that's the claim of discrimination which will be heard and your
• 44:39
  your defences what well so a few things so first of all I'll just say that even the description
• 44:47
  of the experience is incorrect I don't have the ability to restrict access you like to limit access
• 44:53
  sorry it was either you were accepted or blocked so I blocked access it was on the basis of that
• 44:59
  semantic isn't it no because to say that our limited features and limited the enjoyment of the
• 45:05
  app whatever is just actually we just limit the features in the sense of like or you could only
• 45:10
  do some things or whatever so it's probably symmetric but it's just also just incorrect it's
• 45:15
  five I'm going to talk about this correctly I'm going to talk about all of it correctly then also
• 45:22
  in terms of the usual enjoyment of the app this person actually didn't make a single connection
• 45:26
  I'll talk to anyone on there so I don't quite know what enjoyment was being had
• 45:30
  and so part of our defense of this is a constitutional challenge the reason for this is
• 45:38
  what has happened is gender identity was put into the Sex Discrimination Act in 2013
• 45:45
  now under this normal sex discrimination act which was created in 1984 female-enely spaces were
• 45:51
  completely non-controversial in fact the act itself was the exemption to allow them to go ahead so
• 45:55
  long as it was like you know for a specific aim like me a proper purpose or whatever to be honest
• 46:03
  I can't think of female-enely spaces it wouldn't have a legitimate aim or purpose and just as
• 46:07
  on the side do you know if male-only spaces were also carved out as legitimate in that act or
• 46:13
  was female spaces specifically mentioned the Australian the Australian club the Melbourne club
• 46:19
  these male-only spaces continue to flourish yeah I wasn't sure if they're actually illegal
• 46:24
  no well none of them are illegal because I think it's really important to remember the
• 46:30
  law is currently muddled and unclear it hasn't been given clarity which is what we're doing
• 46:35
  what this case will be doing it's not that female-enely spaces are not allowed although the AHRC
• 46:40
  is very much pushing that narrative but they are wrong I mean this whole thing is interesting
• 46:45
  because there's also this parallel case that I don't need you to comment on but I will cover
• 46:49
  where there's this women's only exhibition in the museum in Mona the museum in Tasmania
• 46:57
  and that they're being sued by a man who was not allowed not a not a trans woman a male man who
• 47:03
  was not allowed into that exhibition on the basis of that being unjust so like there is this whole
• 47:11
  yeah question of like is it legitimate to arrange ourselves according and divide ourselves
• 47:16
  according to sex but let's part that for the moment and say that it is yeah I think it is I mean
• 47:20
  I think that say like game male dating apps are really important I think that's on the basis
• 47:25
  of biological sex I think that's really relevant I think I mean and in a strange way if it weren't
• 47:31
  the case that we could have women's only spaces and men's only spaces and gay only spaces and
• 47:35
  you know red-haired people's only spaces then this whole case would go away anyway because according
• 47:41
  to the human rights commission the person who's suing you is a female wait if you if you were to
• 47:48
  regard the person like there's a parallel potential case here which would be to say
• 47:56
  even if the person is biologically male they should be allowed in because you're not allowed to
• 48:02
  have a female only I get what we're saying it's just it's what it's hard to articulate but
• 48:10
  essentially the concept of female only spaces aren't actually in dispute it's whether this male
• 48:16
  person is female that's what's in dispute got it so nothing to do with sex per se it's to do with
• 48:24
  gender identity but I'll come in a moment to the Australian Human Rights Commission's submission
• 48:30
  in this case which is really revealing and was actually quite shocking for me to read but
• 48:35
  carry on about what you're yeah so well yes so basically because gender identity gender identity
• 48:44
  was put into the sex discrimination act which has muddled it because gender identity is either
• 48:49
  going to be the opposite of your biological sex it would be a male person saying that they're
• 48:55
  female or it's got completely detached from it so say you're going to say that your
• 48:59
  non-binary or a cloud gender or gender focal whatever it knows these knee agendas that exist so
• 49:08
  when the sex discrimination act was put into law in Australia 1984 it was because Australia had
• 49:15
  signed become a signatory of CEDA which is the convention of the elimination of discrimination
• 49:22
  against all women and girls it's got a really long name that doesn't completely spell CEDA but
• 49:25
  that's what it is which is essentially an international bill of rights for female people
• 49:31
  it was written in 1979 and with Australian law how we can create laws is through it's the heads
• 49:40
  of power and the other thing that I always forget external affairs power and so basically we've got
• 49:46
  to stay within the conventions that have been live into the law now CEDA is not is for females and
• 49:55
  is a document for female people which is what our sex discrimination is based on which is based
• 50:03
  on biological sex in 2013 under the guillard government they took out the definition of biological
• 50:09
  sex and the definition of man and woman and they put in gender identity and they did put in a
• 50:14
  definition for it but it's effectively like gender identity is gender identity it's very circular
• 50:19
  definition like something something mannerisms it doesn't really explain anything to what anyone
• 50:24
  could understand what it is in any practical manner so part of our defense is the fact that
• 50:33
  gender identity whether or not it should be there is one hard like you know sort of a question
• 50:39
  it what people would have a different answer to but it needs to be established that sex takes
• 50:44
  primacy in the sex discrimination act because that was the intention of the act and that's how it
• 50:50
  stays with CEDA or otherwise it's if it's not it's in breach of CEDA and you can't be in breach of
• 50:56
  something and does the Australian sex discrimination act mentioned by name the convention on the
• 51:01
  elimination of discrimination against women that international treaty or is it doing its own thing
• 51:06
  no no no what's actually quite unique about Australia and New Zealand actually so it is that we
• 51:11
  incorporated CEDA into our laws pretty much in full our sex discrimination act is CEDA
• 51:17
  lots of other countries like this because it's with 189 secret theories around the world so it's
• 51:21
  only really the bad like the countries you'd expect not to sign up that have been but like say the
• 51:26
  UK for example in Canada they are both signatories of it they have ratified it in law into a point
• 51:33
  but Australia is quite unique we really just sort of took CEDA and went crossed out CEDA
• 51:39
  and put Australian sex discrimination act on basic kind of thing obviously that's right and that
• 51:44
  was and that we did that in 1979 when this international law was done or this is the 2013
• 51:50
  no so CEDA was written in 1979 Australia became a signatory in 1983 and then in 1984 we put
• 51:59
  our we put our obligation to CEDA into effect in law by creating the sex discrimination act in 1984
• 52:05
  and then in 2013 they did amendments to take out the definition of sex and put it in the
• 52:10
  I see so your argument is you can you can amend the 19 when the amendment took place to the 1984
• 52:17
  law in 2013 it was illegitimate or unconstitutional because it was tinkering with 1979 international
• 52:25
  convention that made no mention of gender yes got it it's it's a twisted and tangled
• 52:36
  sort of process isn't it like the the underlying question obviously is whether or not it's
• 52:44
  legitimate for biological females who were born with 2x chromosomes to identify themselves as a group
• 52:54
  distinct from yeah I don't think the rest of the population I don't think it's too complicated I
• 53:01
  think that's really relevant I think it's really important I mean realistically speaking we're
• 53:06
  there in the very early days of women even being mentioned in law and we all know what it was
• 53:11
  like when we weren't wasn't great it didn't work feminists actually did a lot of work to make
• 53:17
  sure the women were included in law and specifically women were included in law like every demographic
• 53:23
  has had to do like how gay people have had to do that and I'm not opposed to people with gender
• 53:28
  identities if that's what they believe in being protected in law having the freedom of belief to
• 53:33
  that having able to congregate as just that group if they want to that is I'm not disputing that
• 53:39
  at all I'm just saying in addition to all of that female people also need to be recognized
• 53:45
  the all of the reasons why female-only space is unnecessary all of the reasons why females need
• 53:49
  to be recognized in law have not gone away nothing has changed in fact it's only got getting worse
• 53:56
  at the moment because of this gender identity that we're even having conversations like what is a
• 54:00
  woman we all know what a woman is so when I first identify whatever they want but that's not
• 54:06
  that's not my problem my problem is being told that I have to believe it too when I first heard
• 54:12
  about this case so I assumed that it was going to be one of those frivolous cases which you hear
• 54:19
  about sometimes where like there's the case of you know some trans woman who really makes no
• 54:27
  attempt to be to present as a woman and might be a big burly you know bearded dude who goes to a
• 54:38
  you know Korean spa salon and asks for his penis and balls to be waxed at a female-only place
• 54:46
  yeah this is a real this is a true story that I'm citing and then when the Korean attendees of
• 54:51
  the women's only spa refuse this person takes them to court saying they're discriminating against
• 54:57
  trans women right so there's a I mean I'm I'm enormously sympathetic to what you've gone through
• 55:03
  in being attacked by men I'm enormously sympathetic to women who find themselves the subject of
• 55:15
  frivolous lawsuits from men who are trying to make it impossible for women to find safe spaces
• 55:21
  and I'm enormously sympathetic to the pushback against some of the confusing and extreme
• 55:26
  gender ideology that has been floating around that is damaging not only women's interests but
• 55:33
  also as I say as a man who's married to a man gay interests as well in the sense that there's a
• 55:38
  rising opposition to gay marriage and to to gay rights I think hardly as a result of the extreme
• 55:46
  overreach of gender ideology which regular people feel worried about they're worried about
• 55:54
  you know having to swallow the idea that there's no such thing as men and no such thing as women
• 55:58
  and that your gender is just something you you pick and choose yet yet there's a small cohort of
• 56:07
  people who in almost all times and almost all places have from a very young age exhibited
• 56:15
  this sense of gender dysphoria which puts them in the role gender body and I acknowledge that
• 56:23
  those people have really had a really shitty time they've tended to have to do really dangerous
• 56:27
  jobs like prostitution and they've been excluded from workplaces and they've been called freaks
• 56:33
  perverts and we got to figure out what to do with those people it's no good to insist that they
• 56:43
  carry on in the same gender that they were born in I don't think is there a way to
• 56:48
  incorporate them into our thinking about sex that doesn't force you to swallow the entire
• 56:54
  extremist line of course there is first of all though it is a stablet you've got to establish
• 56:59
  that sex is real and in some cases really relevant so if there is they can they could be way you
• 57:07
  could have a woman space like a woman plus trans woman only space I'm just not going to be the one
• 57:11
  who creates it I'm not going to stop someone from doing that like there are 13 or 14 apps on
• 57:17
  the app store right now that is exclusively for trans people I don't have a problem I self-exclude
• 57:21
  from them I be on your way enjoy yourselves my whole point is that female ones have to also
• 57:27
  exist we're actually the conversation I think is always so incorrectly framed as you know it's
• 57:35
  this marginalized oppressed group that we've got to have the most empathy for here they got laws
• 57:41
  changed in stealth the Australian government made gay people practically beg to get married then
• 57:48
  you what biological sex was then and now it's being reframed as marriage equality because they don't
• 57:54
  want to bring attention to the fact that it was actually same sex marriage they're trying to
• 57:58
  eliminate that reality from the history of it I'm completely opposed to that I'm terrified that
• 58:04
  gay people are going to be held responsible for what's happening because it's not gay people's fault
• 58:08
  gender ideology is in direct conflict with sexual orientation because it is saying that you can
• 58:15
  just change your sex and that you if you are someone who is like a gay man or a lesbian woman
• 58:21
  and you don't want to be with either a trans man or a trans man that you have a genital preference
• 58:26
  that's homophobic so on top of this horrible ideology being very misogynistic it is inherently homophobic
• 58:34
  it is telling little feminine boys that they're born in the wrong body that there's something wrong
• 58:39
  with them there's nothing wrong with them they're just adorable feminine boys who some like ballet
• 58:43
  and dolls and many of them grow up to be amazing gay men that's when I started to learn what this
• 58:49
  ideology actually is I was repulsed by it I think you can believe it if you want because there's
• 58:56
  lots of different ideologies in the world that I really don't like but I do accept that we live
• 59:01
  in a society where people think or believe things differently to me and that's fine so
• 59:09
  in terms of how can we move forward with this it's it's not us that actually has to do the big
• 59:16
  change we're saying live your life have fun be who you want to be I don't care I only care if
• 59:24
  you're going to try and make me restructure my perception of reality of truth and of everything
• 59:31
  in law that women require then I've got a problem with it what so is there a compromise to be found
• 59:38
  in the fact that some cohort of some portion of this cohort and not just people who've drunk an
• 59:44
  ideological correlate but who feel this medical issue from a very early age this gender dysphoria
• 59:50
  and then do everything they can including surgery like the I think there's a plausible case to make
• 59:59
  that for example people who have penises shouldn't be in female prisons especially if they've been
• 1:00:05
  perpetrators of sex crimes for example which is something that can actually happen in some
• 1:00:11
  jurisdictions that have gone all the way down the you know the trans rights line that you'll have
• 1:00:17
  trans women with what's that sorry Australia is one of the leading nations for it we have the
• 1:00:22
  most amount of men and women's prisons per capita out of all of them is that right yeah in a
• 1:00:27
  strait in Queensland women's prison it's approaching 10% of the women's population women's prison
• 1:00:32
  population is male so assume that you get people assume that you win people over in saying that
• 1:00:41
  you know women who are in prison biological women some of some some proportion of whom will
• 1:00:49
  have been victims of sexual assault at the hands of men themselves should not be forced to share
• 1:00:56
  that environment with female identified people who have biological genital who have male biological
• 1:01:02
  genitals is that I'm just confused about why we're unable to then make a distinction between
• 1:01:11
  that cohort of people and people who have from the age from the earliest possible age felt like
• 1:01:18
  they're women and then presented as women in primary school and then gone on puberty blockers
• 1:01:23
  in their teens and then had the full operation and they now have everything you could possibly
• 1:01:29
  want out of a woman except for the unless you get out of microscope and look at their chromosomes
• 1:01:35
  right they have a vagina they have boobs they wear makeup they pass as women what they want is
• 1:01:43
  what people who fought against discrimination throughout all time want which is not just to be oh
• 1:01:49
  you can have your little club if you want it over there but to be included in the legitimate
• 1:01:55
  larger group of citizens yeah I'll start by saying a woman is not a medical condition
• 1:02:04
  so it you don't get to become a woman because you might have a medical condition such as gender
• 1:02:11
  dysphoria woman is an adult human female it's a category of people you can't have an operation
• 1:02:18
  to become it I actually think it is utterly cruel to tell a vulnerable and distressed person
• 1:02:25
  that by taking hormones and having surgery they will they will become something they actually
• 1:02:30
  are not to becoming in reality and this is what I was saying before where it gets real
• 1:02:34
  it this gets really really important in terms of how much biological sex does impact our life
• 1:02:40
  sexual orientation is a thing we look like so you when you're saying that somebody like
• 1:02:47
  completely looks like a male person completely looks like a woman which is so rare it almost
• 1:02:53
  actually is never the case but we're always advertised with the very few who sort of at least in
• 1:02:57
  photographs might pass well um you don't get to then go and say the biological sex is a relevant
• 1:03:06
  when that is sexual orientation is very relevant and dictates some of the most important decisions
• 1:03:13
  we're making our lives like who we spend our life with now there's some people who say bisexual
• 1:03:17
  they don't care fantastic great not like but for those who are not biological sex in that context
• 1:03:25
  is going to be really important so furthermore this concept of living as a woman is incredibly
• 1:03:33
  offensive to women you don't live as a woman you either just are or you're not and this is again
• 1:03:40
  when the framing of this conversation has always been so wrong it's always been to be kind to
• 1:03:45
  this demographic of people but that kindness is a cruelty to women and girls and no one's talking
• 1:03:51
  about it it is really offensive and insulting to women to say that not only can men be women
• 1:03:58
  sometimes they can be better women or that a little girl has to just accept that either the
• 1:04:06
  boy is in her change room or that he's now in her sports team but I remember that every single
• 1:04:12
  time a male is included in a female sport on the basis of inclusion it means that at least one
• 1:04:17
  girl is just missing out just based on numbers and she doesn't have anywhere else to go there's
• 1:04:22
  nothing else she can go and identify into it's one of the things about this whole ideology that
• 1:04:27
  I think is so insidious is that how it much it lies and forgets about females in general
• 1:04:33
  because females with a trans identity actually rely on their sex based rights that's how they
• 1:04:38
  still play sport majority of trans men play on female teams same with females who are non-binary
• 1:04:44
  they play on female teams because of the reality of biological sex that women aren't as strong
• 1:04:49
  and fast as men I wish we were we're not we just have to play with the cards we've been dealt on
• 1:04:53
  that one whereas men who claim to be women go on to female teams or that they claim to be on
• 1:05:00
  non-binary they go into the female teams or competition the only people who actually benefit
• 1:05:05
  from gender identity superseding sex in law a men who claim to be women every other trans person
• 1:05:11
  does not we don't cater society to non-binary we for cloud gender or any of these other ones
• 1:05:18
  they are relying on their sex based rights when they want to do sport when they want to be in a
• 1:05:23
  specific facility they need their sex based rights so even the concept of gender identity superseding
• 1:05:32
  law is itself incredibly misogynistic and forgetting about the most many of the trans community
• 1:05:40
  who aren't male I mean sport is a fascinating one because where it does seem that we're being asked
• 1:05:47
  to accept something that everybody knows isn't true which is that men are stronger than women
• 1:05:53
  on average on average you know you always say well but look there are certain you know women who are
• 1:05:59
  stronger than certain men if you superimpose the bell curves over each other there's a difference
• 1:06:04
  and that difference arises from predominantly via going through puberty as as a in a male body
• 1:06:11
  so if you've gone through puberty in a male body your bones are stronger your muscles are bigger
• 1:06:16
  your taller than your than counterpart who went through puberty as a female um it's extraordinary
• 1:06:24
  it's also extraordinary to me that you know it's controversial for someone like Jermaine Grier to say
• 1:06:29
  that there's something fundamental about womanhood to be found in growing up as a girl in a sexist
• 1:06:36
  society that you know you're never truly going to be a woman unless you've experienced being a girl
• 1:06:44
  in a sexist environment I think there's some something true about that that has to be
• 1:06:49
  recognized in honoring what it means to be a woman and yet when you talk about there being actual
• 1:06:57
  harms to cisgender women or as you would call them women from from the blurring of these boundaries
• 1:07:06
  yeah I don't know do you ever just get paused that like maybe it's a storm in a teacup like I don't
• 1:07:13
  not the whole thing I mean the specific question of whether or not an app like if you need to put
• 1:07:20
  a little label on the trans women on the app so that nobody gets fooled and then there's no
• 1:07:26
  I mean I think that wouldn't that be that would be treating trans women different to cis women
• 1:07:29
  which isn't actually who knows but I mean no I mean like where's the harm in other words like
• 1:07:35
  was that I understand the harm in sports I understand the harm in you know prisons I don't really
• 1:07:41
  understand the harm in just having a live and let live like I understand the indignity I understand
• 1:07:47
  the emotional frustration with this ideology that has gone so far that you just want to push back
• 1:07:53
  against it and say I'm drawing a line in the sand fuck you women or women like fuck off I kind of
• 1:07:58
  get that I get that emotionally but I also don't understand like rationally why it's such a big deal
• 1:08:04
  yeah many many people especially men don't and it's sort of that thing highlights the difference
• 1:08:08
  between men and women in one part I mean it's like what's the harm what's the harm in just
• 1:08:14
  expecting women to just like sort of like move over and allow men to come into our spaces and
• 1:08:19
  sport and our scholarships and awards and everything that has been sort of no I didn't say that
• 1:08:24
  I didn't say allow men to come and take scholarships and say a person who presents as female has a
• 1:08:31
  female body and wants to associate socially with other females they're the male body that has
• 1:08:39
  had cosmetic surgery either we talk about stuff like in the truth matters or it doesn't and that's
• 1:08:45
  actually the harm here but I'm obviously I've come into this for defending female spaces and
• 1:08:50
  women's rights but my north star with it is truth reality freedom of belief and freedom of speech
• 1:08:57
  we don't have a functioning society without them and it petrifies with a thing if they
• 1:09:01
  can force people to believe men or women what's the next thing they can force people to believe
• 1:09:06
  and then act on okay you're right that I'm with that there's there's a distinction that we need
• 1:09:11
  to introduce here which I'm I should have introduced earlier between sex and gender right and
• 1:09:15
  this will bring us to what I find shocking about the human rights commission submission in your
• 1:09:20
  case but do you think there's a difference between sex and gender in other words between the biology
• 1:09:28
  of the mammal or the the creature you know they need a very sort of clinical biological sense
• 1:09:35
  and the way that we present and play with the expression of that difference culture so biological
• 1:09:42
  sexes of the just male or female small gametes for large gametes like that and it's you know it's
• 1:09:47
  even in plants it's in animals like it this is very very understood Richard Dawkins explains
• 1:09:51
  it really well he says most things actually do exist on a spectrum like you know when does
• 1:09:55
  tall become short when does night become day when is young old there's lots of great philosophical
• 1:10:01
  questions to be had there male and female the uniqueness of it he said it is completely binary
• 1:10:05
  it's that it doesn't exist that much in the universe like it does with biological sex and it's
• 1:10:12
  both the species yes I mean a tree can be male a flower can be male or female very an elephant
• 1:10:18
  and a human being um gender there's a lot and just I'll just make a point that we are we understand
• 1:10:24
  that there are rare exceptions to that there'll be people there'll be intersex people there'll be
• 1:10:28
  people born with with they they confirm the sex binary so they're not exceptions like I think it's
• 1:10:34
  really cruel to say that they're an exception like they did not male or female like there there's
• 1:10:38
  some other no all of the disorders of sex development which is a medical can but that is an
• 1:10:44
  actual medical condition they confirm the binary they still aren't actually male or female people
• 1:10:50
  they've just had there's just some disorders of development that have happened in you to
• 1:10:54
  it and some I don't think that's true but let's not let's not park let's just park that dispute
• 1:10:59
  because I've spoken to biological experts who who say that you know if you've got if you've got a
• 1:11:04
  cluster of chrome of x y chromosomes and you've got you know a tiny little micro penis sticking
• 1:11:10
  out of a vulva and stuff like that it can be tall intense and purposes impossible to establish what
• 1:11:15
  the person still is male or female well let's move on from that because that's not the that's
• 1:11:21
  not the current state of the science but even if it were I mean I don't think anything hinges on
• 1:11:25
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• 1:11:30
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