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Wake up babe, the definition of woman just dropped.
The year was 2020, trans issues have already made their way through our social consciousness, and some women were getting frustrated at the inability to congregate without trans women showing up, and - in the minds of the TERF inclined - spoil the party.
Enter Sall Grover, a bold enterprising spirit, that recognized two facts:
She quickly joined the dots, and thus the Giggle app was born. In order to register you had to upload a selfie, which would be run through a sex-recognition AI, and non-females would be automatically rejected. The AI was deliberately calibrated to minimize false negatives, wanting to spare cis-women the humiliation of appealing the process, Grover figured it's better to let a few false-positives through and deal with them manually. For a while, the whole system worked wonderfully, and the women congregated, giggling happily.
But, as we all know, there is no Giggle without a Tickle... In February 2021, Roxy Tickle uploaded a selfie to the Giggle app and the AI was so amused at the word pun, it forgot it was supposed to be an image recognition algorithm. Roxy got through! Her joy lasted for several months, until she was caught by manual review as she was applying for premium features of the app. After a short and unsuccessful appeal attempt, she decided that the only way to resolve this dispute is in court.
Roxy Tickle argued that this was an outrageous injustice, that she was being discriminated against for being trans, and that this constitutes a violation of the Sex Discrimination Act of 1984. Sall Grover argued that this is nonsense, that Giggle does not discriminate against trans people, it merely excludes people on the basis of sex. The law hasn't outlawed sex-segregated spaces over the 30 years it was in effect, Roxy Tickle was treated no different than any other male-sexed individual, and therefore no illegal discrimination has taken place. The judge had to rule if Giggle excluded a man, and was well within it's rights, or if it excluded a woman and indirectly committed discrimination against a trans person. He was therefore forced to settle that ancient question - what is a woman? Last week we finally received the verdict, and the way I understood it is "a woman is anyone who the state identifies as a woman". It turns out that sex is mutable, and that Ms. Tickle is a woman because she has a state issued document saying so. Australia's legal system seems a bit complex to my eyes, but at first glance that seems to also boil down to "a woman is anyone who identifies as a woman".
The consequences of the verdict might be more interesting than the verdict itself. After all, if an app for women cannot keep an AMAB out, how can all the other controversial spaces like sports, prisons, waxing salons, etc.? We've covered enough of these cases over the years that I think it should be clear this isn't a hypothetical, and as connoisseurs of TERF content will know, hacking "gender violence" laws has become a pretty regular occurance in countries that lean on the self-ID side of the debate. More importantly, and/or ammusingly, normie men are deciding all that male privilege just ain't worth it, or perhaps the Spaniards are just more cheeky than average. In any case, if any such self-ID laws / rulings are to be maintained, I think they'll require some major qualifications.
Even without legal sanction calling oneself a woman was merely (and literally) a box ticking exercise. Despite living in the relatively unpozzed east, LGBT being a woke thing means the western dating apps are filled with self identified women. My lesbian friend showed me her filters and her preference matches, and she still gets flooded with dicks on the apps. Its all feminine penis stuff for the pozzed, and shameless 'you lesbos just need a REAL dick to know your place and this app lets me superlike you without review.' I understand the Chinese gay app Blued is just pure degeneracy and transphobia, and all lesbian apps whether western or eastern have been infested.
Singapore has a unique case where identity and sex are actually distinct: you can freely change your gender at will on official documents, but sex is based only on birth certificates. Since there are no legal protections for gender save for medical requirements, self declaration has no practical value here. Penises are conscripted regardless of presentation, and declaring oneself trans gets you out of conscription only because it is classified as a mental illness. Being homosexual used to be an excuse to get out of conscription too, but the army realized that actual gays will be the ones bullied in the army so they did not pose a threat to the integrity of a unit.
In this thread: “I can’t believe systems accept government ID!”
Also in this thread: “I can’t believe systems accept self-ID!”
Obtaining legal sanction—as Tickle apparently did—is a strictly higher bar than checking a box on the app.
Giggle’s method is something like an insurance company which ignores marriage certificates in favor of requiring a hand photo with your ring. Maybe they should be allowed to do so, but it’s hard to be surprised that the government definitions favor government-issued documents.
How is checking a box on a form for a new government ID a higher bar to clear than checking a box on an app?
What's so hard to understand about "'man' and 'woman' are words describing material reality, and not someone internal sense of identity, and that's the definition the government should be using when applying their laws"?
Hey, I didn’t say a high bar.
In Victoria, it appears to require a “statutory declaration” plus a “supporting statement.” The latter means you need to convince at least one person you’re applying in good faith. There’s also a cooldown period, $140 fee, specific requirements for prisoners, and you have to return the previous document. That’s a good bit more commitment than downloading a new app.
It also attaches something resembling legal liability. Unlikely that you’d fall afoul of that, but it’s more than an app checkbox will do.
Oh, I think arguing against the government criteria is fine and coherent. I was thinking of IGI’s response blaming the very concept of government records. It was funny to see that alongside the more common, exact opposite concern. The duality of, uh, man!
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