For more than five minutes of human history, society accepted biological reality as a simple fact. In primary schools everywhere, children were taught that XY chromosomes make someone male and XX meant female, and this understanding formed the basis of our laws. This foundation, once unshakeable, has been demolished in Australia by a combination of judicial decisions and legislative overreach – a process that culminated in the bizarre Full Federal Court decision in Tickle v. Giggle. Sall Grover, the founder of the women-only networking app Giggle for Girls, recently lost her appeal after being found to have discriminated against Roxanne Tickle, a biological male identifying as a woman. The court didn’t just uphold Justice Bromwich’s finding – it increased the penalties against Grover, delivering a watershed moment that enshrined a male’s right to self-identify as a woman over a woman’s right to single-sex spaces.

I recently rewatched the classic film Some Like It Hot. In it, men dress as women to escape the mob after witnessing a murder; the absurdity is the point. The joke relies entirely on the audience knowing that Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon are still men beneath the wigs and dresses. At no point does anyone truly believe they have become women – that’s the entire premise of the comedy. Fast-forward to modern Australia, and the absurd script of a 1950s Hollywood farce has become a legally binding tragedy. To make matters worse, legacy media have lined up to applaud this travesty. The ABC published an article gaslighting its audience, insisting that the ruling against Grover was a victory for women’s rights. It takes a unique brand of journalistic delusion to describe a Federal Court decision fining a female entrepreneur for creating an app exclusively for biological women as a triumph for her sex.

The roots of this ideological infiltration trace back to 2013, when the Gillard Labor government amended the Sex Discrimination Act to replace the biological definitions of man and woman with the amorphous concept of ‘gender identity’. Australians were reassured that these changes would merely protect marginalised groups from harm. (Sound familiar?) Critics who warned that the amendment would eventually cannibalise the sex-based rights of women were dismissed as alarmists and reactionaries. Yet, as Tickle v. Giggle has proven, the alarmists were correct. By allowing gender identity to override biological sex, the judiciary has weaponised anti-discrimination law against the very people it was designed to protect. A law meant to protect women has been turned upside down, now punishing a female entrepreneur for the ‘crime’ of building a space for women.

When the legal definition of woman no longer aligns with biology, the concept of single-sex spaces loses all meaning and cannot be enforced. If a biological male who identifies as female cannot be excluded from an app like Giggle, on what legal basis can he be excluded from a women’s shelter, a public changing room, a communal hospital ward or a school locker room? When the state tells a female survivor of domestic abuse that she must accept a man in her crisis accommodation simply because a bureaucrat has stamped a piece of paper, it has officially abandoned its duty of care. In doing so, it has prioritised progressive virtue-signalling over the safety of its most vulnerable citizens.

Thankfully, resistance is beginning to emerge. Leading the charge is Coalition Senator Sarah Henderson who has called on the Albanese government to correct this. Together with opposition leader Angus Taylor and other senior Coalition figures, she has promised that amending the Sex Discrimination Act to explicitly define ‘biological woman’ will be a first-term priority for an incoming Coalition government. Henderson’s pitch is refreshing and straightforward: it’s not radical to say that a woman is a biological female. What is radical is the progressive assumption that the state can redefine human biology with the stroke of a pen.

The next federal election is shaping up to be a battleground over biological truth and common sense. The Coalition is positioning itself as the party of reality, while Labor is entirely caught in its own progressive orbit. DJ Albo, ever keen to spin a track and his image as Australia’s most relatable PM, knows that supporting the Federal Court’s ruling will alienate working-class voters who hate this gender nonsense. Yet, if he backs Henderson’s amendment, he risks a mutiny from green-left factions that dictate his party’s socially liberal agenda. Meanwhile, the electorate is far more concerned with inflation, rising food prices, fuel shortages and a housing crisis than with debates over pronouns.

Australia does not need to look far for a way out of this cultural cul-de-sac. The United Kingdom’s Supreme Court ruled that ‘sex’ in the Equality Act means biological sex. In response, updated statutory guidance gives providers clear backing to ensure public toilets, hospital wards and changing rooms are strictly segregated by birth sex – while requiring a separate space for transgender users – restoring sanity to single-sex spaces and ending the legal fiction of gender self-ID. Australia must urgently follow suit. If we don’t, we risk sliding further into a technocratic dystopia, where reality is whatever the loudest activist or the most zealous politician says.

The politicisation of the legal system has led to some truly bizarre consequences. Sex Discrimination Commissioner Dr Anna Cody recently argued before Senate Estimates that transgender women could theoretically claim ‘potential pregnancy’ discrimination. Erm, what? Call me a bigot but I always thought blokes couldn’t give birth. This is what happens when lunatics take over the asylum.

Tickle v. Giggle should be the final straw. Sall Grover deserves recognition for her determination, but she should never have been forced to defend something so self-evident in court. The answer isn’t to wait for the Federal Court to learn Year 6 biology; it’s for parliament to act by amending the Sex Discrimination Act to recognise that sex is a fixed biological reality – not a feeling you can change like a wonderbra.