The courts Down Under have gone topsy-turvy. At 9am Sydney time, a judge handed down a ruling that eradicated the category of sex in law, finding in favour of a man who was denied access to a women-only app. Justice Robert Bromwich stated that according to Australian law, sex is ‘changeable and not necessarily binary’. The case, known as Tickle vs Giggle, has set a dangerous legal precedent that the world may now follow.

The legal row started when Tickle – an angry man in a frock who changed his name to Roxanne – saw some posts on social media that annoyed him. He is a trans activist who has gone to some lengths to ‘pass’ as female. He had so-called gender-affirmation surgery in 2019 and changed his birth certificate to obfuscate the fact that he was, to use his words, ‘assigned male at birth’. His sex obviously remains male, as perfectly illustrated in photos by his five o’clock shadow, even if on paper he is legally a ‘woman’.

The tweets that upset Tickle were posted by Sall Grover, founder of the women-only social-media app, Giggle for Girls. Giggle, a small tech start-up, used facial-recognition software to screen out men. Tickle put this to the test, and initially was accepted on to the app. But after seven months his picture was clocked, either by Grover or the screening function, and his access was restricted.

Tickle then responded in the way that unpleasant, petulant men do when they’re spurned. He huffed, puffed and sent numerous emails and made phone calls to Grover. When that failed to get him reinstated, he took her to court.