It was all her fault.

A veteran nurse was viewed as “misbehaving” for refusing to share a female changing room with a transgender doctor, her lawyer has claimed in a landmark tribunal.

Dr Kate Searle, an A&E consultant, recalled being told about two occasions when Sandie Peggie left the women’s changing facilities at Victoria Hospital, Kirkcaldy, when Dr Beth Upton entered, causing the doctor to feel “uncomfortable”.

Isn’t that classic? Man bounces into women’s changing facility and it’s the woman who leaves who is causing discomfort. Classic classic classic. “You bitch, your nose hurt my hand when I punched it.”

She said that Peggie could have been reported to her manager, but Upton, who is biologically male but identifies as female, deciding against pursuing the matter further.

Awwww, isn’t he generous.

But of course he did not decide against further forcing himself on women in their changing rooms.

Peggie confronted Upton on the third occasion on which they met in the female-only space, on Christmas Eve 2023, claiming the doctor had no right to be there.

Not claiming but pointing out. Obviously he had no right to be there.

Searle was Upton’s line manager and, giving evidence on Tuesday, said that the doctor had informed her about the two occasions, in August and October 2023, in which Peggie had left the changing room when Upton entered, without saying anything.

Documentation showed that Upton had been given the option by Searle to “take the matter further” in late October that year.

That is, Searle, a woman, encouraged Upton to punish a woman for not staying in a changing room after he entered it. A woman wants women to stay in spaces where they are vulnerable if a man comes in. What next? Holding their legs apart so that he can rape them more easily?

“At the time you discussed this with Dr Upton both you and he [Upton] considered Sandie’s choice to remove herself from the changing room if he was there, to be misbehaving, didn’t you?” Naomi Cunningham, Peggie’s lawyer, said. “She was behaving badly and making him [Upton] feel uncomfortable.”

Searle replied: “Beth felt uncomfortable that Sandie appeared to not want to engage, she was the only one behaving like this and that was why Beth felt uncomfortable with someone behaving differently like that. I don’t agree we would have classed it as misbehaviour.”

Why did Searle not worry about Sandie’s feeling uncomfortable? Why is it only “Beth”‘s discomfort that matters? Why is Beth so very important while Sandie is so very insignificant?

The consultant said she had checked when introducing Upton to the department, in August 2023, that the doctor was comfortable using the female facilities.

Searle agreed with Cunningham that she had proceeded on the basis that it wasn’t “anyone else’s business” whether Upton, who began transitioning to live as female in January 2022, was going to use the women’s changing room or not.

Because women who aren’t men just don’t matter? It’s only women who are men who matter? When did we decide this? Why did we decide this? How can we undecide it?

“Beth identifying as a female has every right, under the Equality and Human Right Commission Act [sic] to use the facilities under the gender in which she identifies,” Searle said.

Every right? Moral as well as official? I beg to differ.

However, she went on to admit that many women may feel uncomfortable about taking their clothes of in the presence of a man.

But oh well, tough shit, sucks to be them, doesn’t give them the right to tell him to get out, or even to leave themselves.

Cunningham put it to Searle that her suggestion that she might have facilitated a conversation between the nurse and Upton “about why she wasn’t willing to take her clothes off in a room that he was present in” would have been “a very long way from kind or compassionate” to Peggie.

A very very very long way.

Searle added: “That’s not how I would have directly approached them nor how I did directly approach it. I was suggesting ways that you might manage a situation when two parties are uncomfortable.

“We would have discussed, if Dr Upton felt very uncomfortable and it was affecting them in coming to work, then it would have been appropriate to take it further, whether it’s just a discussion between parties to say how can we work through this together, with compassion and kindness and to make sure everyone is safe.”

Cunningham put it to Searle that Peggie was clearly feeling uncomfortable with sharing facilities with Upton, after being told about the two occasions in which the nurse self-excluded from female changing rooms.

The lawyer asked: “What steps did you take to offer her any compassion or kindness?”

Searle replied: “I didn’t make that approach.”

Exactly so. WHY NOT????