Sobbing Upton
On Day 3 of Peggie v NHS Fife & Dr B Upton, the tribunal heard from Dr Elspeth Pitt, a senior consultant who encountered Dr Upton in visible emotional distress on Christmas Eve 2023. What unfolded was a revealing portrait of a system primed to cushion one staff member’s emotional response—so long as that staff member identified as trans.
Pitt testified that she found Upton “very shaken,” “pale,” and “sobbing” after a confrontation with nurse Sandy Peggie (SP) in the female changing room. The details were vague—Pitt could not recall the exact words—but Upton felt “cornered” and likened the encounter to hearing something as hurtful as a comparison to a rapist. Pitt moved the conversation to a wellbeing room and let him talk, then advised him to go home and rest.
But Upton felt cornered.
Did he now.
Why why why did Dr Pitt not pause to wonder how Peggie felt? Why in hell did it not occur to her to ask Upton whether Peggie might have felt “cornered” to find a man in the changing room with her? Why did it not occur to her to pause for a minute and compare the two people who were in that women’s changing room? How did she manage not to remember that small middle-aged women are not generally a threat to large men in their twenties?
It’s all so Platonic. Never mind the bodies, we’re talking about the souls here. It doesn’t matter that Upton is young and huge and male, because in his mind he’s a tiny delicate girl, an Audrey Hepburn if you like, and Peggie is a looming terrifying monstrous harridan, Margaret Hamilton riding a broomstick. Physical reality is nothing, imagination is everything. Punishment, on the other hand, is very concrete and real.
She also walked him to his car, explaining that although any threat was “unlikely,” it felt like the right thing to do. When pressed later about whether this meant she believed Upton was at risk, Pitt said no—it was simply kindness.
What about Sandy Peggie? Why did it not cross her mind to wonder how she was doing after this encounter? Why did she not worry about Sandy Peggie’s feelings in the wake of Upton’s intrusion?
What she did know, however, was that Dr Upton’s right to use the women’s changing room had already been affirmed by senior staff months earlier. Consultants had been told in autumn 2023 that DU—biologically male, in his 20s—was entitled to use the female CR. Yet no similar communication was ever issued to nurses, many of whom used the same space. Pitt admitted as much: “I don’t recall,” she said, when asked if anyone told them. The policy was clear, the institution said. But it remained a private understanding among senior medics—leaving women to discover its implications only when emotionally overwhelmed men arrived in their changing room.
There it is again. Every accommodation for the men; absolutely nothing for the women. It’s like a parody of the class system.
When barrister Charlotte Elves asked if Searle’s internal message to consultants—expressing support for Upton and condemning SP’s behaviour—was appropriate, Pitt hedged. The email wasn’t “specific,” she conceded, and “could be read” as taking sides. But her broader defence was that senior staff were simply trying to make Upton feel safe. Elves pressed harder. Given Upton’s height (over six feet), age, and physical stature compared to the much smaller SP, was it credible to suggest he’d been under threat? Pitt resisted the framing. Upton hadn’t claimed physical danger, she said—just that he was deeply upset.
Ok. Let’s put it this way. Suppose Upton had actually raped a woman that night. Suppose Pitt encountered him later sobbing about his victim’s reaction to being raped. Would she even then have all the sympathy for him and none for her? Because that’s the logic here.
What the tribunal heard was not a story of safety protocols or consistent policy. It was a lesson in which emotions get urgency, which bodies get accommodation, and whose discomfort is quietly absorbed without question.
Goddam right.
For the moment, let’s set aside NHS Fife’s outrageous contempt for women’s safety that is the central issue of this proceeding. Maybe Upton deserves a little more attention and scrutiny, but not necessarily the kind he’s craving. Let’s pretend that Upton really was as upset as he claims, and as upset as is being claimed on his behalf. Let’s say his sobs weren’t artfully summoned crocodile tears. They don’t say anything good or healthy about him. Clearly his distress wasn’t a matter of his physical safety. Let’s look at the whole question of sex, class, status, and power that Ophelia has been emphasizing here, and his apparent shock at never having been spoken to like that in his entire life. If he’s actually that disturbed and distraught at having his delusional entitlement challenged, maybe he doesn’t have the emotional maturity and stability to be a doctor?
In his professional capacity, he’s supposed to be helping other people, as part of a team of health-care practitioners, not satisfying his own, selfish, fetishistic desires. If he can’t keep the latter out of the former, then perhaps medicine is not the field for him. Maybe both patients and colleagues deserve someone more devoted to the job they’re supposed to be doing, than they are to pleasuring themselves. Maybe NHS Fife should be more invested in protecting their female nursing staff and less in enabling Upton’s kink. Because enabling is what they’re doing if they’re defending and enforcing his “right” to go out of his way, bypassing a more conveniently located changing room, in order to use a space for female nurses, that is never used by female doctors. Without the excuse of a trans “identity”, what Upton did would likely have resulted in a disciplinary procedure against him.
Those who granted that permission should be disciplined or sacked, the same for those who failed to communicate this policy to nurses and other female staff who would be subjected to illegal male intrusion as a result.
‘Upton felt “cornered”’ – then he could leave? If he were that terrified that would have been the sensible thing to do, and I doubt Sandy would have, or could have, stopped him.
Perhaps he felt rhetorically cornered, taken aback by Peggie calling his bluff and refusing to back down, sticking to her guns by insisting that, as a male, he shouldn’t be in a female, single-sex space. If he’d been given permission by higher ups in NHS Fife, her resistance to his presence would be seen in his mind as both insubordination, as well as bigoted refusal to comply with the official “TWAW! NO DEBATE!! ” policy that made him feel entitled to invade the female nurses’ change room. Just like “misgendering” is “actual violence”, transperbolic threat inflation makes Peggie’s refusal to roll over and submit to male/doctor/trans privilege a “threatening” “attack.” Behold, the unholy, unnatural power of a woman saying “No” to a man unused to hearing “No” from a woman.
[…] a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? on Sobbing […]