Tickle till you Giggle but it’s Not Funny
An unusual libel case is currently making its way through the Australian courts. The plaintiff is a person who goes by the name of Roxanne Tickle. Incidentally, Tickle is a real English surname originating from the town of Tickhill in the UK county of Yorkshire.
Roxanne Tickle is what some people call a transwoman. Now, in order to avoid being accused of the sin of ‘misgendering,’ hereinafter (I’ve always wanted to use that word) I shall refer to this person as RT.
The background to this case, as I understand it, is that RT was born male but didn’t feel happy growing up as a male and wanted to ‘transition’ to the opposite sex – a biological impossibility. Nonetheless, RT underwent treatment with female hormone and submitted to the mutilations of castration and, apparently, the creation of ersatz female external genitalia.
If this is what RT wanted, then good luck to RT. No, this is getting ridiculous. From now on I shall use the pronouns appropriate to a male person and refer to RT as ‘he’ and ‘him’.
The problems began when he wanted to join a female-only online app with the amusing name of Giggle. At first RT was accepted, but then doubts arose in the mind of the organiser of Giggle, one Sall Grover, who recognised that RT was, in indisputable biological fact, male, and he was kicked off the platform.
But, instead of accepting this like the man he is, he is suing Giggle for discrimination. And, according to The Australian newspaper, the judgement of Judge Robert Bromwich included the incredible and deluded statement that ‘sex is changeable.’ He concluded that Sall Grover ‘indirectly discriminated against Ms Tickle when she removed her from the app because she did not look sufficiently female, and ordered her to pay Ms Tickle $10,000, as well as her legal costs.’ Ms Grover is appealing this decision.
Another indication of the absurdity of this situation is the illiteracy of Judge Bromwich. If someone is female, that is how she looks. Therefore, to talk of ‘not looking sufficiently female’ commits the grammatical infelicity of qualifying an absolute. You can’t have degrees of looking female. (This should not be confused with looking feminine.) In any case, one glance at Mr Tickle will tell you he is obviously a man: he has a man’s broad face with a square jaw, prominent Adam’s apple, and slightly receding hair. Also, if you hear a recording of him speaking, he has a man’s voice.
None of what I have written above, apart from him bringing a court case, should be taken as a personal criticism of Mr Tickle. If he wants to pretend to be a woman by undergoing surgery, taking female hormone, and cross-dressing, then good luck to him.
Mr Tickle, however, must be constantly aware that he is not, and never can be, a woman. This carries with it certain disadvantages apart from the fact that he cannot become pregnant. He has decided to take female hormone and undergo related medical checks for the rest of his life. If that is what he wants to do, I say again, good luck to him. But why does he have to act in a provocative manner by joining a female-only app under false pretences?
Perhaps what is behind all this confusion and difficulty is failure to look at the psychological aspects of the matter. If we were to approach the problem from the perspective of the great Swiss psychiatrist, C. G. Jung, it seems that what trans people are really doing, were they but aware of it, is seeking union with their opposite in the unconscious.
In consciousness we all know that we are physically male or female, as the case may be. But there is another side to the human mind: the unconscious. This is that part of the psyche (the totality of our mental apparatus) in which, apart from innumerable other contents, the archetype of the female, the anima, resides in males; and the corresponding archetype, the animus, is found in the unconscious of females.
Therefore, what people who are distressed over their ‘gender’ may really need, in contrast to crude manipulations to change their physical forms, is psychological help to integrate the anima or animus into consciousness, and thereby achieve wholeness of their personalities.
Note: Jung’s psychology is a vast and complicated subject of which the above is the merest hint. Interested readers are referred to Jung’s own voluminous writings or to one of the many introductory texts on his work.
Text © Gabriel Symonds
Picture credit: Creative Commons