A long backgrounder piece on the Peggie v NHS case with lots of interesting details.

NHS Fife may be fatally undermining its own case against a nurse who had an altercation in a hospital changing room with Dr Beth Upton, a trans woman, which resumes this week

Good. Keep undermining, NHS Fife.

Peggie, an experienced nurse, was experiencing a sudden and heavy period and feared that it had bled through to her scrubs. She entered the hospital changing rooms to find Upton, a biologically male doctor who identifies as female.

What was said between the pair is disputed, but there was a confrontation. Peggie expressed her discomfort with sharing changing facilities with a colleague she considered male and, within hours, a bullying complaint was lodged by Upton.

That part can never be underlined enough. A woman needing to change her blood-soaked clothes is called a bully by an extremely tall hulking man because she objected to his presence in the women’s changing room. He said she bullied him. Those five words sum up what is so wrong with this revolting perverse women-hating ideology.

The Supreme Court ruling in April that backed the “biological” definition of woman — ostensibly a big boost for Peggie’s case and the wider “gender-critical” cause — led to immediate calls for NHS Fife to throw in the towel. It has refused to do so, contributing to a legal bill of over £220,000 (and rising). 

Because women must be both punished for disobedience and deprived of all rights.

During the tribunal, Jane Russell, the KC representing the NHS and Upton, launched what was perceived to be a character assassination on Peggie, suggesting that the nurse supported Donald Trump, had behaved like a “dog with a bone” and had been “haranguing this poor doctor” ​during the changing room showdown.

This poor poor poor doctor who towers over the nurse – yes he’s definitely the victim here.

One MP said: “Personally I find the case completely astonishing. It speaks to the SNP’s whole approach to gender issues and the extent to which it has taken hold in the public sector. Sandie Peggie’s case is the clearest example of how this niche ideology has taken over, even taking precedence over the law.

“If they lose this case, as they surely will, there will be serious questions of the NHS Fife leadership and the SNP government about how this was ever allowed to get to this stage. There will have to be accountability.”

The answer is gender ideology. It rots the brain.

Although the witness list has not been made public, the tribunal will hear from Isla Bumba, the equality and human rights officer at NHS Fife, whose advice Peggie’s managers relied upon after Peggie complained about Upton’s presence in women’s facilities. ​She had met Upton in the changing rooms twice before the Christmas Eve row.

Bumba, who is in her twenties and worked as a Covid contact tracer for two years after graduating in 2020 before landing the NHS Fife role, told Peggie’s line manager, Esther Davidson, that Upton had a “right” to use the female changing rooms because she “identifies as a woman”.

Bumba, who is paid between £50,861 and £59,159 per year, has described herself as a “support aid” to NHS staff and dealt with issues such as “staff [who] are not sure what the correct pronouns for someone are”.

[Michael] Foran said the fact that NHS managers deferred to Bumba, rather than to lawyers, was “baffling” but spoke to a wider cultural issue in the public sector.

Yes we know what that cultural issue is.

Other key witnesses ​include Kate Searle, an emergency medicine consultant, who was Upton’s line manager and agreed that she should use women’s facilities. Searle also received Upton’s complaint about Peggie’s conduct in the early hours of Christmas Day, 2023.

She has been accused of sending an email to consultants four days later, presenting Upton as the victim and Peggie as the “bully” before an investigation had been opened.

To repeat: Upton is huge; Peggie is not. That’s not always relevant but it sure as hell is here. It’s at the core of the ideology as well as this case – the absolute, ferociously imposed dogma that a man who claims to be a woman is always the victim and a woman who objects to his presence in women’s toilets or politics is always the bully.