Completely agree with your post @Cerah. I'm glad that lurking on Mumsnet helps you to feel sane.
I think the stark differences in status make Sandie Peggie's courage in bringing this action even more remarkable.
Doctors are more important than nurses, younger people are more relevant than older people - Upton is a young doctor. Peggie is a middle aged nurse.
Upton is a man, Peggie is a woman. Not only is Peggie a woman, she is peri-menopausal. Her body is changing, her periods are likely to be irregular, unpredictable, very heavy when they come, and difficult to manage in a practical way, especially at work.
Upton states that he is a woman. He will never have periods, he cannot bear children, he will never go through the menopause. But he still maintains that he IS a woman.
Upton is a young, not yet 30-year-old, male in the prime of life. He has the high status of a practising medical doctor. He is accustomed to deference, by virtue of his sex and his status. So when he claims he IS a woman, he's not claiming the right to the automatic lower and more subservient status that women have. He wants to keep his male status and continue to order women about and have them agree with everything he says.
Peggie is a middle-aged, 50-year-old, woman in perimenopause. Her status is lower than Upton's, lower than any male person, but especially lower than Upton's, because of the hierarchy within the NHS, and because of her age, as women's value as perceived by our sexist, ageist society, diminishes with age. She's likely to have caring responsibilities for both younger and older members of her family at this stage of her life, and her financial status is certain to be lower than Upton's, too.
So even if it were true that it's possible to change sex, to become "the woman you always knew you were", which it isn't, and never can be - even if it were possible, the "woman" Upton claims to be is never going to be an ordinary woman. Not an invisible, undervalued, overworked, dismissed, menopausal woman with a complex and tangible relationship with her own sexed body. Not a real woman.
Sandie Peggie is marvellous, courageous and brilliant. It is searing to have to go to Court to argue for your rights. It is torturous having to go over the story again and again, to be undermined, disbelieved, punished and controlled, and to have to listen to all the lies and evasions. But it's necessary, and good, and powerful, that she is doing so.