A nurse who objected
“Beth” Upton continues to get away with it.
A nurse who objected to sharing a female changing room with a transgender doctor has won a claim for harassment against NHS Fife but other allegations of discrimination and victimisation were dismissed.
Sandie Peggie was suspended from her job in a hospital’s A&E department after she complained about Dr Beth Upton – a biological male who identifies as a woman – using a female changing room.
An employment tribunal judgement outlined four ways in which NHS Fife harassed Ms Peggie but dismissed the other allegations against the health board and all claims against Dr Upton.
Dr Upton is a sadistic misogynist bully.
The campaign group Sex Matters, which backed Sandie Peggie in the case, said it was very disappointed in the approach taken by the tribunal.
Maya Forstater, the organisation’s CEO, said it should have provided employers with clarity regarding single-sex spaces and that should have meant giving them the confidence to refuse to let trans women use those spaces. She added: “It is a travesty that a woman can be judged as having expressed herself in the wrong way when she objects to finding a man in the women’s changing room.”
Not least because a man in the women’s changing room could be in there for the purpose of assault. It’s not as if that never happens. I’m pretty sure all women have a supply of stories of finding a man lurking somewhere, and not enjoying the experience.
However, discrimination lawyer Robin Moira White – who works with Translucent, a trans-led advocacy and human rights organisation – said the ruling was a “very sensible, balanced judgement”.
Well of course he did!!! He’s a man who claims to be a trans woman! This is the whole point!
She said the tribunal had found that Sandie Peggie had harassed Dr Upton, not the other way around. Ms White added: “It recognised that both trans people and gender critical people have rights in the workplace and employers have to balance those.”
No they don’t, because the rights trans people have in the workplace don’t include a right for men to force themselves on women in toilets and changing rooms. If tribunals say they do have that right the tribunals are wrong, and evil besides.
How do we get people to stop believing that the bit I’ve bolded and put in parentheses means anything? How do we remove it from the list of Official, Authorized Progressive Positions and Beliefs? There is a nearly infinite list of things that someone might “identify as”. Almost all of them would be impossible, pointless, indicative of mental illness, or all of the above. Some of them are in fact illegal. For example, “identifying” as someone else. If I insist that I am Bill Gates, Meryl Streep, or Charles Windsor, and demand to be given access and admittance to their homes and posessions, I would be cautioned, and/or arrested, depending on how hard and how far I was pushing my demands. Even pretending to be a non-famous person is illegal. It’s a form of fraud. My “identification as” would make no difference. Nor should it. My belief, however fervent or sincere, would be beside the point. I could claim that it was my “right” to be accepted as my purported “identity”, but there is no such right. Even if I dressed up as any of these individuals, my imposture, however well researched and enacted, would not carry the day. Nor should it. Upton’s belief that he is a woman is as outrageous, impossible, insulting, and, I would say, as illegal as any other case of identity theft. He is not a hero or victim; he is a fraud and a sex criminal. For some insane, incomprehensible reason, his “identity” shields him from being treated as such. In fact, it is the only thing keeping him from being arrested, as any other man would be. It shouldn’t. He is “any other man.” He is not a women, he is not female. He is using his claimed “identity” to steal that which is not his, depriving women of their rights as women, including their safety and dignity. His “identity” is fraudulent. His “identity” is meaningless. He is a danger to women, and should be treated as such.
That anyone ever took this “argument” from “identity” to permit men to invade women’s spaces seriously is ridiculous. As time goes on, I find myself less concerned with finding out the exact how and why of this, important though it is. What is important now is that, whoever is responsible, however it began, it must now stop. Any authority that still upholds, defends, and enforces this kind of claim is now, in the UK, outside the law. Time to make them obey it. Women deserve no less.