Defining

The Australian on the new adventures of Doctor Upton:

Australia’s medical regulator has registered as “female” the transgender doctor at the centre of a landmark UK legal dispute over women’s spaces, allowing the emergency medic to work in two NSW hospitals.

Beth Upton, 30, who began transitioning from male to female in 2022, gave sworn evidence to the UK Employment Tribunal of an intention to treat patients who had specifically requested a female doctor.

Under oath, the medic also described the concept of biological sex as a “nebulous dog whistle”, claiming to be “biologically female” on the basis that “I’m not a robot, so I am biological and my identity is female”.

But idenniny isn’t the relevant category. Idenniny can be anything or everything, but reality is more stringent than that. He can believe he feels like a woman all he wants, but in the real world the reality is that he’s a man.

The Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency registered Dr Elisabeth Ruth Annikki Upton as an unaccredited emergency medicine trainee on April 9, listing the medic’s sex as “female”.

AHPRA defines a “female” as any individual “whose biological sex is that of a female” and anyone whose “gender identity or gender expression is that of a female”.

So what kind of regulation is that? You’d think a regulation agency would seek to be reality-based, wouldn’t you?

The Australian has put questions to AHPRA over whether the regulator believes it is appropriate to register biologically male medical practitioners as female, and allow them to treat potentially vulnerable patients who have specifically requested a female doctor.

This masthead has also asked, given the relevance of biological sex to the treatment of many medical conditions, whether AHPRA believes it is appropriate to register a medical doctor who claims the concept of biological sex is a “nebulous dog whistle”.

I get the feeling AHPRA hasn’t answered.

AHPRA and the Medical Board of Australia in March effectively gagged Queensland psychiatrist Andrew Amos, banning him from making online statements about gender medicine and barring him from having direct clinical contact with any patients.

Fellow Queensland child psychiatrist Jillian Spencer is also being investigated by the regulator for sharing on social media an article from The Australian that quoted her concerns about gender-affirming medical treatment for children.

Is it the fox has taken over the henhouse or the lunatics have taken over the asylum? Or is it, tragically, both?

Women’s Forum Australia CEO Rachael Wong said it was “deeply alarming” that AHPRA had registered Dr Upton as “female”.

“(It) raises serious and unresolved questions about the protection of women’s sex-based rights in Australia, particularly in healthcare,” Ms Wong said.

“This exact scenario has already caused serious conflict, distress and legal action in the UK, including a finding that a female nurse was harassed by the NHS after being forced to share a female changing room with Dr Upton. It is extraordinary that AHPRA appears to be importing the same risks into Australia.

Yes but it harms mostly women, so it’s ok.

Ms Wong said Dr Upton was “not only male, he is a male who has openly disregarded women’s boundaries, privacy and consent”.

“He refused to respect his female colleagues’ privacy in their own changing room, and gave sworn evidence that he would treat female patients who had specifically requested a female doctor,” she said. “That is a direct threat to the dignity and wellbeing of the women he will now work alongside and treat in Australia.”

It’s what they want. Who are women to argue?

Ms Wong accused AHPRA of having been “captured” by gender ideology.

“In addition to its ongoing witch-hunt of doctors speaking out about the harms of youth gender medicine, the regulator – whose core job is protecting patient safety – has prioritised a man’s belief about himself over the truthful information women need to give informed consent. That is not regulation. That is coercion dressed up as inclusion,” she said.

That’s a good point. What about informed consent you absolute fiends???

Helen Joyce, director of advocacy at UK sex-based rights charity Sex Matters, said: “Male doctors should never practise as female and medical organisations should never, under any circumstances, record doctors as the sex they are not.”

“Doing so sets the scene for patients’ rights to be breached, since some patients may consent to a procedure only if it is carried out by someone of the same sex as them, or require a chaperone of their own sex if they are seen by a doctor of the other sex,” Dr Joyce said.

Doctoring is all about bodies – real bodies, not imagined ones. Doctoring is absolutely not the place for fantasy to run riot. Will these fools ever grow up?