The ABC has declined to publish an opinion article on sex-based women’s rights by Sall Grover, The Australian reports.
“The rejection came despite Grover exchanging 37 emails over the course of more than three weeks — predominantly with ABC Religion & Ethics Editor Scott Stephens — and extensively redrafting the article twice in an attempt to meet the ABC’s requirements for publication,” The Australian said this week.
Last month, Grover, founder of Giggle for Girls, lost her appeal in her case against transwoman Roxanne Tickle, with the Federal Court finding that she directly discriminated against Ms Tickle by rejecting her from the female-only networking app on the basis of her ‘masculine’ appearance.
The Full Court found that Ms Grover “excluded Ms Tickle from the Giggle app and refused to readmit her on the basis of her gender-related appearance by reference to her selfie, and this amounted to direct discrimination by reference to a characteristic that pertains to people of Ms Tickle’s gender identity, being transgender women”.
Grover was vocally outraged about the decision, saying at the time: “Men who claim to be women have more rights than actual women in Australia.
“It is women who are being discriminated against, not the men who claim to be us. But in a sense, nothing has changed: we will all wake up tomorrow and men will still not be women.”
Grover is appealing the verdict in the High Court. She has received much social media support – and debate.
Support for Sal Grover from Senator Sarah Henderson. Image: Instagram
Nevertheless, The Australian found that “In rejecting the opinion piece, Stephens cited “pervasive inaccuracies” in Grover’s presentation of the Sex Discrimination Act and Giggle v Tickle, and “overstatement” about the extent to which changes to the Act present a threat or danger to women and single-sex spaces.”
For the past 3 weeks, I have been trying to get an op-ed published at the ABC. The suspicion has long been that the ABC is ideologically captured but when the editorial director assured Senators during the recent Estimates that ABC does publish diverse views, I said let’s see… pic.twitter.com/OX7JwSnDa4
— Sall Grover (@salltweets) June 21, 2026
The ABC rejects Sall Grover’s opinion piece
Grover had pitched the article as a response to a story published on the ABC’s Religion & Ethics website on May 18, by human rights law professor Paula Gerber. Gerber argued that the outcome of the case “puts an end to any debate about who is a woman” and said it was a “victory for women’s rights”.
In the proposed piece, Grover wrote about her platform, as per The Australian:
“It was designed as a space that reflected the same sex-based boundaries women have long relied upon in the physical world.
“The resulting legal battle, Giggle v Tickle, has become a test case for whether female-only spaces can still exist in Australia. At the moment, they cannot.”
Top image: Sall Grover/Roxanne Tickle. Images: Instagram