All entries by this author
Jul 24th, 2025 8:30 am |
By Ophelia Benson
There’s visibility and then there’s visibility.
What a good idea: training children to “escort” adults to toilets for the opposite sex.
SW Londoner has the exciting details.
A BBC TV presenter has launched a new campaign calling on UK workplaces and schools to make visible commitments to trans inclusion.
Dr Ronx Ikharia’s ‘Safe With Me’ initiative invites allies to wear a yellow badge with bold black text, signalling to
…
Read the rest
Posted in Notes and Comment Blog |
7 comments
Jul 23rd, 2025 3:38 pm |
By Ophelia Benson
JKR nails it.
The Sandie Peggie employment tribunal is currently exposing, as perhaps no court case to date has, the issue of class as it relates to the top-down imposition of gender identity ideology in the workplace.
‘Diversity officer’ Isla Bumba has now admitted in court that she didn’t bother consulting the 1992 regulations guaranteeing single-sex spaces when she told a trans-identified male, Dr Beth Upton, to use the female changing room at the hospital where he was working. Bumba justified this decision with comments that I assume sounded really clever and convincing, inside her own head.
‘I don’t know anything about Beth’s body. I didn’t at the time. I don’t now. I don’t need to know. But it
…
Read the rest
Posted in Notes and Comment Blog |
2 comments
Jul 23rd, 2025 9:00 am |
By Ophelia Benson
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
…
Read the rest
Posted in Notes and Comment Blog |
6 comments
Jul 23rd, 2025 7:46 am |
By Ophelia Benson
The tribunal about an hour ago:
[NC is Naomi Cunningham; KS is Kate Searle, the doctor who helped Upton make a big stink; Pete is the star of a thought experiment about women telling an obvious man to get out of their space]
…
Read the rest
Posted in Notes and Comment Blog |
2 comments
Jul 22nd, 2025 5:24 pm |
By Ophelia Benson
It’s about god damn time.
U.S. Olympic Officials Bar Transgender Women From Women’s Competitions
The United States Olympic & Paralympic Committee quietly changed its eligibility rules on Monday to bar transgender women from competing in Olympic women’s sports, and now will comply with President Trump’s executive order on the issue, according to a post on the organization’s website.
The new policy, expressed in a short, vaguely worded paragraph, is tucked under the category of “USOPC Athlete Safety Policy” on the site, and does not include details of how the ban will work.
How did the non-ban work? How did the ban work before trans ideology came along and shot holes in everything? What “details” do you need of how men … Read the rest
Posted in Notes and Comment Blog |
6 comments
Jul 22nd, 2025 11:58 am |
By Ophelia Benson
Big Trans is Watching You.
The Australian Greens’ new leader, Larissa Waters, is resisting calls to intervene in the widening row over the minority party’s embrace of transgender rights and halt a purge of members who don’t toe the line.
The expulsion of Greens co-founder Drew Hutton has brought to a dramatic head tensions around the alleged hounding of those who question the party’s pro-trans platform.
It’s not all that alleged when we can see it happening in real time.
Mr Hutton said upwards of 30 former Greens members had reached out to him about being expelled for challenging the party’s position on gender. Most were women. Many more quit after being subjected to harassment for voicing reservations about
…
Read the rest
Posted in Notes and Comment Blog |
4 comments
Jul 22nd, 2025 10:54 am |
By Ophelia Benson
A poignant bit of the testimony:
Asked why she told colleagues before Christmas Eve that she would speak to Dr Upton directly, Ms Peggie said: “No one appeared willing to speak to Beth on behalf of myself or my colleagues.
“I hoped that by speaking to him personally, he might be able to realise he was making us feel uncomfortable by changing in a female changing area, and the reason why, in the hope he would understand and change elsewhere.”
…
She said the incident lasted just two minutes and that she hoped the conversation might help Dr Upton understand.
Asked why she didn’t report the matter, Ms Peggie said: “I was hopeful that Beth would accept my concerns and
…
Read the rest
Posted in Notes and Comment Blog |
2 comments
Jul 22nd, 2025 9:57 am |
By Ophelia Benson
Thank fuck some of us know the basics.
https://twitter.com/JournalistJill/status/1947672547572781542
Srsly. A medical doctor, under oath, saying what sex babies are is a “decision” and that she’s not an expert.… Read the rest
Posted in Notes and Comment Blog |
10 comments
Jul 22nd, 2025 9:48 am |
By Ophelia Benson
From the Upton/Peggie hearing today:
Dr Searle says she first met Dr Upton in August 2023 and is her “educational and clinical supervisor”. She says she is the main point of contact for junior and resident doctors in her line of management and to support career progression and wellbeing support. She says she has known Ms Peggie since she started working at the emergency department at Victoria Hospital.
Dr Searle says she was not aware that Ms Peggie held gender critical views before the incident on Christmas Eve 2023 or any issues with these views.
That is…Dr Searle says she was not aware that Ms Peggie knew the difference between women and men before Christmas Eve 2023.
Wouldn’t you … Read the rest
Posted in Notes and Comment Blog |
2 comments
Jul 21st, 2025 11:30 am |
By Ophelia Benson
Anything missing?
No mention of women.
So naturally he knows what JK Rowling should be talking about better than JK Rowling does.
Women are in fact allowed to talk about issues and policies that affect women.… Read the rest
Posted in Notes and Comment Blog |
6 comments
Jul 21st, 2025 9:18 am |
By Ophelia Benson
A couple of things…
One, who the hell takes a jet plane to MINOT, NORTH DAKOTA? How does Minot, North Dakota even have an airport? We’re not talking Minneapolis here, we’re not even talking Fargo, we’re talking Minot. The one in North Dakota.
Two, more seriously, wtf?
The pilot of a commercial airliner has said he needed to make an “aggressive maneuver” to avoid colliding with a US air force B-52 bomber as it landed in Minot, North Dakota, on Friday.
The SkyWest airlines pilot said he had been cleared to land on a trip from Minneapolis-St Paul (MSP) to Minot when he spotted the vast nuclear-capable bomber on his right side and was told to
…
Read the rest
Posted in Notes and Comment Blog |
7 comments
Jul 20th, 2025 5:12 pm |
By Ophelia Benson
Trump is shouting at a football team to change its name back to the racist one they dropped. What a worthy cause!
Trump threatened on Sunday to interfere with a deal to build a new football stadium in Washington, D.C., unless the local NFL team, now known as the Commanders, changes its name back to Redskins.
Yeah fer sher, what right do they have to stop calling themselves “redskins” just because it’s a crude trashy insult?
The American football team dropped the name Redskins in 2020 after decades of criticism that it was a racial slur with links to the U.S. genocide of the Indigenous population.
But Mommmmmmm, Trump grew up watching movies about cowboys and redskins and he loves … Read the rest
Posted in Notes and Comment Blog |
10 comments
Jul 20th, 2025 10:18 am |
By Ophelia Benson
One or two further thoughts on the “what even is my own sex??” issue.
Isla Bumba, 29, is a senior “diversity officer” at NHS Fife. At an employment tribunal on Wednesday, she was questioned about her advice that a trans woman – that is, a biological male – should be allowed to use a hospital’s female changing room. And, during one extraordinary exchange, she told the tribunal that she doesn’t know what sex she is.
“I would hazard a guess that I would be female,” she said, with all solemnity. “But no one knows what their chromosomes are, or their hormonal composition, unless you’ve had that tested – and I at least have not.”
Wait. And then wait … Read the rest
Posted in Notes and Comment Blog |
15 comments
Jul 20th, 2025 4:28 am |
By Ophelia Benson
There’s this one bit…
Asked about the reference to the Scottish prison story, she said: “It was in the media at the time. I was trying to give [Dr Upton] an example of how I and other women feel.”
Asked whether she treated Dr Upton with dignity and respect, Ms Peggie replied: “Yes, because Dr Upton’s presence there and the board’s decision to permit him to use a female-only changing room was unlawful.
“I felt upset, humiliated and harassed to find him there, particularly when I had a menstrual flood to deal with. I remained as calm as I could, but I felt strongly that he should not be there.”
His presence there was an ongoing thing, but on … Read the rest
Posted in Notes and Comment Blog |
4 comments
Jul 19th, 2025 5:23 pm |
By Ophelia Benson
Originally a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? on Sobbing Upton.
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 … Read the rest
Posted in Notes and Comment Blog |
2 comments
Jul 19th, 2025 12:28 pm |
By Ophelia Benson
Labour MP says people who don’t believe in magic gender are swivel-eyed loons.
A Labour backbencher has been filmed deriding “transphobes” as “swivel-eyed” and suggesting they are “not very well people”. Tim Roca described the Supreme Court judgment on trans rights as “very depressing” and rejected his own party’s stance that it had brought “clarity”.
…
He made the remarks during a talk he gave earlier this month at an event hosted by the University of Westminster, called Queering Academia.
“I think actually the UK has now really gone down the rabbit hole into the way the United States discusses issues of gender, race, poverty, all of that,” he said. “So if we can bring the debate back into being
…
Read the rest
Posted in Notes and Comment Blog |
3 comments
Jul 19th, 2025 11:15 am |
By Ophelia Benson
https://twitter.com/boswelltoday/status/1946176626133234127
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
…
Read the rest
Posted in Notes and Comment Blog |
4 comments