If you refer to transgender people by their sex online, Australia might pass on compelling the platform to censor your speech, at least if posted from abroad. Say it Down Under, though, and you risk fines approaching six figures and a digital scarlet letter.

The New South Wales Supreme Court upheld fines of $95,000 Australian – roughly $66,000 U.S. – against women's sports activist Kirralie Smith and her group Binary Australia, as well as a court-written statement to be posted on their social media accounts for three months, for "transgender vilification" against male soccer players on women's teams.

That vilification consisted of outing the players as males, whom Football New South Wales allows to compete against women under a 2023 "gender diversity policy," and posting public materials about them from their teams and league.

By contrast, an administrative review board overruled eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant when she ordered X to block a post by Canadian gender-critical activist Chris Elston, which called an Australian female activist who identifies as a man a "woman."

In January and February 2023, Smith outed Stephanie Blanch as male in a Binary article, which included a photo of the player, and on social media by posting nameless photos of Blanch and identifying Blanch's team "on numerous occasions," sometimes linking her article, according to the ruling. It says Blanch has played on a women's teams since 2016. 

In late March that year, Smith outed Riley Dennis as male "on a number of occasions" on social media, "including naming her by nominating where her name fell on a reproduced leaderboard of sporting results," the ruling says, always using female pronouns for the male athletes. It says Dennis has played on women's teams since 2022.

The court ordered Smith to pay Blanch and Dennis roughly $38,000 and $28,000 U.S., respectively, and post the judgment against Smith "on all social media pages and websites over which she has control, including Facebook, Instagram and X," the ruling says. 

They must be "featured" and "pinned" posts on social media, and "published prominently" on Smith-controlled websites. The male athletes were reportedly born Nicholas and Justin, respectively, and YouTube personality Dennis's username still includes the athlete's so-called deadname, Justin.

The compelled speech says Smith and Binary "incited hatred towards, serious contempt for, or severe ridicule of a soccer player on the ground that she is a transgender person," and were ordered to pay damages, remove posts and cease the "offending behaviour."

Just the News could not find an archived version of the Jan. 20, 2023, article about Blanch, long removed from Binary, nor Smith's social media posts referenced in the ruling. 

A lower court had ordered the removal of the article and posts that link to it, as well as posts with photos of Blanch and the "leaderboard" showing Dennis's dominance. It also gagged Smith from identifying either as "a transgender person playing on a women’s sports team."

The male athletes' photos are now circulating widely, however, with X owner Elon Musk agreeing with British comedian Graham Linehan that the victors are "the worst of men."

"There’s no amount of money, no judgements, nothing that will turn any man into a woman," Smith told supporters after the ruling. She won't be "gaslit," intimidated or threatened in her campaign for "freedom of speech, for truth speech, and for women’s sex-based rights."

Smith didn't say whether she's planning an appeal to the High Court, the country's final judicial body. "I’ll have a lot more to say about that in the coming weeks," Smith said. "I will never comply with a lie."

Court doubled penalty after creator of women-only app appealed

NSW's financial penalty nearly matches that issued a year ago by a British Columbia nursing regulator against nurse Amy Hamm for expressing similar sentiments, starting with an "I (heart) J.K. Rowling" billboard Hamm put up to celebrate the gender-critical Harry Potter creator.

It follows Federal Court of Australia rulings against Sall Grover for blocking Roxanne Tickle, a male who identifies as a woman, from Grover's women-only networking app Giggle. 

The trial judge found Grover "indirectly" violated the Sex Discrimination Act, which added "gender identity" and removed definitions of "man" and "woman" in 2013. The full court, which hears appeals, doubled Grover's penalty to roughly $14,000 American this spring, finding that she "directly" discriminated against Tickle. Grover is appealing to the High Court.

Last week NSW Legislative Council lead candidate Lyle Shelton nominated Grover for the Australian Human Rights Commission's Human Rights Medal as a "champion of freedom of expression" for demanding that Australians "be free to discuss women's rights respectfully and without fear."

Another women-only space, a pole dancing studio on the Gold Coast, is facing a new lawsuit seeking roughly $21,000 U.S. by a male identifying as a woman. 

"We are putting our bodies in these vulnerable positions" and "prone to wardrobe malfunctions," owner Nomes Whitney told 7NEWS. "Having a biological male in that space just makes you so much more self-conscious."

Invoking the Queens of Pole Fitness and Dance lawsuit, Grover warned in an Australian op-ed Tuesday that "institutionalised misogyny dressed up as human rights" would continue in Australia until the government amends the law to enforce sex-based rights.

"Each time a woman-only space defends its boundary, the machinery of the state is used against it,' forcing women to "prove why females deserve privacy from males," Grover wrote.  "How many more human rights complaints are queued up to destroy women’s lives and livelihoods?"

Asked men for help getting league's attention about this 'bloke'

Gender-critical Reduxx reported that Binary's Smith started calling attention to male athletes in women's football, as it's known in Australia, in the wake of injuries to female players.

In an X post preceding her article on Blanch, Smith reportedly asked local men for their help getting the league to listen to their concerns about "a bloke [Blanch] playing on the women’s team in Wingham." 

She posted photos she attributed to the team's Facebook page that show the male "receiving an award for playing in the women’s division." The NSW deemed this vilification.

Two months after NSW police issued a restraining and gag order against Smith for speaking to the media about Dennis, Reduxx posted video of Dennis allegedly injuring a female player so badly she could only play for 8 minutes after returning to the field in the second half. 

Binary had previously spurred thousands of complaints against Football NSW for the presence of at least five males in women's competition, according to Reduxx. 

It first unmasked Dennis as the alleged subject of a Daily Mail article on an unnamed "trans woman football player," with pixelated photos, whose Football NSW domination and alleged injuries to female competitors had sparked backlash against the league.

Public broadcaster ABC reported that Smith couldn't offer evidence of Dennis injuring a competitor during cross-examination at trial, saying she unsuccessfully "tried to clarify who it was, what the game was, how it happened and was there any evidence."