The 'kind' outcome of the Sandie Peggie v NHS Fife tribunal would be a return to reality

While often frustrating to have to keep discussing – and punishing to become a target of opprobrium for daring to, as I have - the gender wars nevertheless make for compelling viewing. Particularly so when those who push the ideology at the heart of this – genderism – are forced to respond to exposing questions from highly competent barristers.

Which brings us to the ongoing Sandie Peggie vs NHS Fife/Dr Upton employment tribunal.

At root is whether Dr Upton is female - as he claims - because he ‘identifies’ that way. This assertion, genderists believe, means he should be granted unquestioned access to women’s single-sex spaces, including the female changing room at Royal Victoria hospital.

If you’re on my ‘side’ of the gender wars this is entirely wrong, both legally and morally. If you’re on the gender-identity side, the fact Nurse Peggie views ‘trans women’ as male makes her a ‘transphobe’ deserving of severe reprisals. This has been made clear in several extraordinary moments in this week’s tribunal.

Peggie cleared of gross misconduct

Dr Upton’s claims about Peggie’s interactions with him formed the basis of a separate internal investigation, which only recently concluded with the nurse being cleared of gross misconduct by NHS Fife, citing insufficient evidence. The Dr’s claims remain integral to this tribunal; at question is how NHS Fife dealt with them.

Upton claims Peggie endangered patient safety by refusing to speak with him on duty; that her self-excluding from the changing room to avoid him was upsetting, all of which culminated in an exchange on Christmas Eve 2023, when Peggie directly confronted him about his presence there. She was experiencing a menstrual flood she understandably wished privacy to deal with.

IT forensic expert Jim Borthwick, however, revealed on Friday that his investigation of the data provided by NHS Fife suggests Upton doctored his phone notes to include the accusations about patient safety far later than he initially claimed they took place. If so, this means Upton has misled the tribunal about having kept ‘contemporaneous’ notes about his interactions with Peggie. These include incredibly serious, potentially career-ending accusations against his colleague.

Upton’s version of events appear to have been accepted uncritically by NHS Fife management. Without seeking Peggie’s side, clinician Kate Searle, Upton’s supervisor, judged them a ‘hate incident’, openly condemned Peggie to other consultants, and spoke of potential police involvement. This, despite revelations in new disclosures to the evidence bundle that Upton reportedly caused ‘chaos’ on another placement, allegedly accusing an elderly woman patient of ‘misgendering’ him, and huffing about a female colleague not being supportive enough.

I’m afraid to say that embellishment or outright invention of supposedly ‘hateful’ incidents are tactics common to gender-identity activists. Not difficult to invent, of course, when using truthful pronouns – a necessity when making legal arguments, or writing about them, and wholly forgivable from an elderly woman with medical issues – is enough to render some genderists outraged, vengeful, or insensible.

The tribunal has also featured the spectacle of women so determined to defend Upton’s ‘right’ to demand being viewed as female, they report being unsure what sex they are themselves. Equality and Diversity lead Isla Bumba said (under oath) that she’d never had her chromosomes tested so couldn’t be certain.

Kate Searle, on the other hand, claimed a lack of expertise in how doctors determine a baby’s biological sex. Under questioning from barrister Naomi Cunningham, it also took her painfully long to agree that if a woman had experienced sexual violence at the hands of a male doctor in the past – as Sandie Peggie reportedly has – then encountering a male in a space supposed to be female-only would be a situation requiring ‘empathy’ and ‘compassion’, instead of smearing her as motivated by bigotry.

Searle sobbed at one point, when Cunningham named healthcare assistant Rehana Ashraf, who witnessed Upton and Peggie conversing, in flat contradiction of the claim – which Searle believed instantly - that Peggie refused to speak with Upton.

“I’m a kind person and I don’t want to cause harm to anyone as a result of being involved in this case,” Searle said. She claimed to know Ashraf didn’t want mentioned. As a mixed-race person she worried about Peggie’s views about her.

Shocking inference

It was a shocking inference about Peggie, following a week where it became clear that several baseless character-assassinating insinuations had swirled about Peggie among senior staff at the trust, including that she was racist and ‘homophobic.’ Her exasperated daughter, a lesbian, felt compelled to take to social media to emphatically refute this.

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As law professor Michael Foran argued on his daily podcast about the case, Searle’s testimony also indicates potential witness tampering. Searle shouldn’t have been speaking with Ashraf during the investigation.

That out-of-touch, gossiping middle-managers at NHS Fife seemingly bent over backwards to indulge Upton’s accusations, while suspending and smearing a nurse who, until Upton’s arrival, had an unblemished career of three decades, is indicative of how genderist-activism has long manifested.

We’re dealing with an ideology that has barged through society, destroying objective truth, and making otherwise decent, intelligent people say and do outrageous things to non-compliant, wholly reasonable women in its defence.

This is not an entertaining soap opera, it’s a woman’s life being upended, though the ongoing Peggie case could provide ample inspiration for any budding dramatist. The ‘kind’ thing, for everyone’s sake, is to return to reality. Women exist as a real and definable category of human. As Nurse Peggie knows, it’s far from kindness to deny this.