Make her call him a laydee!
A war of words over pronouns broke out at the ongoing employment tribunal between nurse Sandie Peggie and trans doctor Beth Upton.
That is, male doctor “Beth” Upton who identifies as female. The journalistic surrender makes it impossible for reporters to write clearly and truthfully about this subject.
Ms Peggie’s lawyer Naomi Cunningham was accused by NHS Fife’s legal team of being “offensive” by referring to Dr Upton as a man and told she must use “appropriate language”.
But the fact that he is a man playacting being a woman is at the core of the whole tribunal. It’s just ludicrous to try to force opposing counsel to prop up the very lie that the tribunal is about.
On Thursday the tribunal heard from charge nurse Angela Glancy, who was appointed as the investigating manager into the allegations against Ms Peggie, and HR official Anne Hamilton.
When Ms Glancy was giving evidence to the tribunal in Dundee, she referred to Dr Upton as “he” and then quickly corrected herself and said “sorry, she”. This was in response to a question from Ms Cunnigham where she used the pronoun “he” to refer to Dr Upton.
Throughout the tribunal Ms Cunningham has consistently referred to Dr Upton as a man and used the pronouns he/him in her questioning.
That’s because he is a man. It’s the people who refuse to call him a man who are in the wrong. It’s not as if the tribunal is about something else altogether so hey gee the participants could just call the poor guy “she” to be extra special nice. The fact that he’s a man pretending to be a woman and trying to ruin the life of a woman for not agreeing that he’s a woman is what this tribunal is about. It’s outrageous to try to force team women to call him a woman in the tribunal. Beyond outrageous; outrageous squared.
NHS Fife’s lawyer Jane Russell interjected to stop the proceedings and said: “I want to raise concerns about the consistent misgendering. I have checked the equal treatment benchmark from May 2025 which says we should use an individual’s preferred pronouns or alternatively the gender neutral ‘they’ to help minimise offence.”
She added there is an exception when discussing “a biological male attacker”, but said this does not apply to his case.
Yes it does. He is an attacker, and he is a biological male. He’s attacking Sandie Peggie as profoundly as he possibly can.
When you pause to think about it you simply realize more sharply than ever what a horrible man he is. This ideology is not good for the characters of its adherents.
According to the law in England, Upton did commit assault by being in the female nurses’ changing room.
Battery / common assault
However, the law in Scotland is much more vague and complicated. Words alone do not constitute assault, although it seems that any words and actions used before a physical assault can be taken into account during sentencing, and from the example given, words accompanied by threatening behaviour short of physical contact might or might not be illegal. It’s a mess.
Peggie’s lawyer Naomi Cunningham made an absolute boss move in response to Jane Russell’s misgendering complaint. When the judge asked her if she wanted to say anything or time to reflect, Cunningham simply said, “No.” She then went straight back to questioning the NHS witness using he/him to refer to Dr Upton. She didn’t let Russell’s grandstanding disrupt her cross-examination. It was a master class in how to control the court’s attention.
It’s like having a trial involving identity theft in which defence counsel demands that everyone address their client by the name he’s accused of stealing.
What would the law have to say about a male’s unlawful presence in a single-sex, female space? Upton is certainly guilty of at least that, as, if I understand correctly, he doesn’t even have the flimsy excuse of possessing a GRC. (Not that a GRC should ever have had the power to permit this, or any incusion into female spaces, but this is an instance where we’re using the transactivists’ own rules against them. Not that they really have any “rules” beyond “Give us what we want, when we want it, and do it with a smile on your face,” but whatever.)
It’s interesting how an earlier witness kept refering to “Beth” instead of “Doctor Upton.” I wonder if Upton’s lawyer coached her to do this? Using “Beth” serves two purposes: it helps to maintain the fiction that he is actually “she”, and, along with sounding less formal and more personal, not using his title and work position is a ploy to trick you into thinking that Upton is not higher up in the hospital hierarchy than Nurse Peggie. I can imagine that in other social situations, Upton would insist on people using the honorific “Doctor” when addressing him. Its absense in this “social situation” is telling. This one little word, acting as a constant reminder that Upton is higher up in the NHS Fife food chain, is a hinderance when they’re trying to paint him as the victim in all of this. “Beth” sounds so much more vulnerable than “Doctor”, doesn’t it? I wonder if he’s also comporting himself with extra girlishness, too: pastel colours, soft lines, eyes cast down, greater head tilt. Now if they could only manage to find him a shorter chair….
Similarly, Cunningham’s use of “he” and “Doctor” emphasizes that Upton is male, and Peggie’s superior, bringing the case back to the issues of predatory men in women’s spaces, and sexual harassment of female staff by a male superior, rather than “misgendering” and “transphobia.” His expectation that Peggie should remain in his presence when he was in the change room is an indication of his sense of entitlement as both a man and a doctor. For him, “transness” was a perv permit, as well as a means to punish through claiming “discrimination.” That this self-defensive, safeguarding decision on Peggie’s part to could ever be reported as any kind of “incident” shows just how much more willing the hospital hierarchy was to cater to the whims of a male doctor, than they were to enforce the legally required, duty of care to their female nurses.
The statement from the Supreme Court was utterly clear – since the Equality Act, single-sex spaces for women have always been only for women; and no men, regardless of whether or not they hold a GRC, have ever been legally allowed to enter.