Here’s a perfect example of why sites like The Good Oil need to exist: if you relied on the legacy media, you’d never know about some of the most important stories happening. As early as April 2020, I first started reporting on the emerging evidence that lockdowns were worse than useless. You’d be lost in the echo chamber of the NZ mainstream media if it wasn’t for some of the stories that Cam and the team have fearlessly pursued.
And you’d certainly know nothing about Tickle v Giggle. Unless you’re a Good Oil reader, where I’ve covered it several times.
Yes, the name is ludicrous, but it’s also entirely fitting for a court case that could only happen in a clown world. A man who looks like a bulldog in a wig decided to change his name to totally not-fetishistic ‘Roxanne Tickle’ and try to barge his way into women’s spaces. Specifically, a female-only social media app, called ‘Giggle’. On being politely declined, the outraged cross-dresser, as they will, flounced off to the courts.
And here we are, with a court being asked to radically legally redefine the meaning of ‘man’ and ‘woman’, which is a pretty big deal, you’d think.
Not according to the Australian legacy media, who, with two notable exceptions, have been completely silent. Even as the rest of the world sits up and takes note.
This week the full bench of the court hearing the appeal has been asked to rule not only that “sex” is non-binary, but that the distinction between men and women has all but disappeared. Lawyers for Equality Australia, which claims to represent gay and trans people, have proposed that sex is simply “a way of classifying people along a scale between a man at one end and a woman at the other”.
“As a matter of ordinary meaning, the statute is agnostic as to where persons are plotted along that scale,” barrister Ruth Higgins added unhelpfully.
No matter what your view of its merits, the idea that sex is a continuum between men and women is a radical interpretation even of the confused 2013 amendments to the Sex Discrimination Act. But the proposition was apparently supported – and certainly not challenged – by the Sex Discrimination Commissioner, who also insisted to the court that sex was non-binary, and that a trans woman - a biological man - cannot be excluded from a female-only space.
If you think that that proposition is ludicrous, you ain’t heard nuthin’ yet.
What caught JK Rowling’s attention this week was a story in the Australian revealing that Sex Discrimination Commissioner Anna Cody had declared trans women should be able to access legal protections available to “pregnant or potentially pregnant women.” Unsurprisingly, she made no attempt to explain how this was biologically possible and by the hearing’s end we were still none the wiser.
This is a hugely consequential case. The court clearly understands this, as it has allowed live-streaming of the hearings, something it reserves for the highest-profile cases, such as the Bruce Lehrmann defamation suit.
Similar cases, such as in the UK recently, were headline news around the world. The Australian legacy media, though, are united in a conspiracy of silence. With the exception of the Australian, which has had running commentary on the case, and surprisingly the Guardian, the mainstream media haven’t said a thing about the case for a year. Even then, they only reported the outcome of the first round of court action because it came down in the tranny’s favour.
So, why the conspiracy of silence now?
Because this is a case that has the potential to not only demolish one of their most fervently-held dogmas, but to challenge their entire shaky grip on power. Sall Grover is the little girl pointing out that the Emperor isn’t unclothed so much as that he’s prancing about in women’s undies and trying to creep his way into the girl’s locker room. For that, she’s being brutally punished, to be held up as an object lesson to any of the rest of us who might dare stand up to the bullies and inquisitors of Wokeism.
Hers is a case none of us can afford to lose.
