NHS Fife tries to silence nurse - Sandie Peggie vs NHS Fife Health Board and Dr Beth Upton - thread #19

[nauticant]

Sandie Peggie, a nurse at Victoria Hospital in Kirkcaldy (VH), has brought claims in the employment tribunal against her employer; Fife Health Board (the Board) and another employee, Dr B Upton. Ms Peggie’s claims are of sexual harassment, harassment related to a protected belief, indirect discrimination and victimisation. Dr Upton claims to be a transwoman, that is observed as male at birth but asserting a female gender identity.

The Employment Tribunal hearing started on Monday 3 February 2025 and was expected to continue for 2 weeks. However, after 2 weeks it was not complete and it adjourned part-heard. It seems that it will resume on 16 July and the last day of evidence will be 28 July but it wasn't completely clear whether it might end a day or two later.

The hearing commenced with Sandie Peggie giving evidence. Dr Beth Upton gave evidence from Thursday 6 February to Wednesday 12 February.

Access to view the hearing remotely was obtainable by sending an email request to [email protected] headed Public Access Request (Peggie v Fife Health Board) 4104864/2024 and requesting access.

However, as a result of problems with the livestreaming, apparently caused by a very large number of observers, remote public access to the hearing was suspended on Tuesday 11 February. It was suggested that it might be reinstated at some point but don't count on it.

The hearing is being live tweeted by https://x.com/tribunaltweets and there's additional information here: https://tribunaltweets.substack.com/p/peggie-vs-fife-health-board-and-dr. This also has threadreaderapp archives of live-tweeting of the sessions of the hearing for those who can't follow on Twitter, for example: archive.is/xkSxy.

An alternative to Twitter is to use Nitter: https://nitter.poast.org/tribunaltweets

Thread 1: https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5186317-nhs-fife-tries-to-silence-nurse
Thread 2: https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5267591-nhs-fife-tries-to-silence-nurse-sandie-peggie-vs-nhs-fife-health-board-thread-2
Thread 3: https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5268347-nhs-fife-tries-to-silence-nurse-sandie-peggie-vs-nhs-fife-health-board-and-dr-beth-upton-thread-3
Thread 4: https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5268942-nhs-fife-tries-to-silence-nurse-sandie-peggie-vs-nhs-fife-health-board-and-dr-beth-upton-thread-4
Thread 5: https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5269149-nhs-fife-tries-to-silence-nurse-sandie-peggie-vs-nhs-fife-health-board-and-dr-beth-upton-thread-5
Thread 6: https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5269635-nhs-fife-tries-to-silence-nurse-sandie-peggie-vs-nhs-fife-health-board-and-dr-beth-upton-thread-6
Thread 7: https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5270365-nhs-fife-tries-to-silence-nurse-sandie-peggie-vs-nhs-fife-health-board-and-dr-beth-upton-thread-7
Thread 8: https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5271511-nhs-fife-tries-to-silence-nurse-sandie-peggie-vs-nhs-fife-health-board-and-dr-beth-upton-thread-8
Thread 9: https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5271596-nhs-fife-tries-to-silence-nurse-sandie-peggie-vs-nhs-fife-health-board-and-dr-beth-upton-thread-9
Thread 10: https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5271723-nhs-fife-tries-to-silence-nurse-sandie-peggie-vs-nhs-fife-health-board-and-dr-beth-upton-thread-10
Thread 11: https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5272046-nhs-fife-tries-to-silence-nurse-sandie-peggie-vs-nhs-fife-health-board-and-dr-beth-upton-thread-11
Thread 12: https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5272276-nhs-fife-tries-to-silence-nurse-sandie-peggie-vs-nhs-fife-health-board-and-dr-beth-upton-thread-12
Thread 13: https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5272398-nhs-fife-tries-to-silence-nurse-sandie-peggie-vs-nhs-fife-health-board-and-dr-beth-upton-thread-13
Thread 14: https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5272939-nhs-fife-tries-to-silence-nurse-sandie-peggie-vs-nhs-fife-health-board-and-dr-beth-upton-thread-14
Thread 15: https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5273119-nhs-fife-tries-to-silence-nurse-sandie-peggie-vs-nhs-fife-health-board-and-dr-beth-upton-thread-15
Thread 16: https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5273636-nhs-fife-tries-to-silence-nurse-sandie-peggie-vs-nhs-fife-health-board-and-dr-beth-upton-thread-16
Thread 17: https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5273827-nhs-fife-tries-to-silence-nurse-sandie-peggie-vs-nhs-fife-health-board-and-dr-beth-upton-thread-17
Thread 18: https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5274332-nhs-fife-tries-to-silence-nurse-sandie-peggie-vs-nhs-fife-health-board-and-dr-beth-upton-thread-18

No.

The Health and Safety at work act required employers to provide single sex toilets and spaces for their staff. They don't have to justify it as a legitimate aim.

They [transwomen] don’t present less risk. They present the same amount of risk:

https://sex-matters.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/signed-Maya-Forstater.WS_.pdf

This is Maya Forstater’s submission to the tribunal which includes data on this exact subject.

Exactly

They put the sane letter first, and based the headline and url on it. Green shoots?

Apologies because you have probably covered it but I was amazed at the accurate reporting in a newspaper.

It followed Dr Upton, who is biologically and legally a man and used to be called Theodore

I hadn't realised that there wasn't even the official lie of a GRC.

https://www.scottishdailyexpress.co.uk/news/politics/trans-dr-beth-uptons-biologically-34659416?int_source=nba

It would be very nice if some competent, high profile journalist pulled all these safeguarding strands together in an article and published it in a respectable broadsheet newspaper. They wouldn’t even have to do much research - it’s all there, and the links and inferences easily made.

Also I think - though I’m not sure if that’s in the Forstater submission or not - that the subgroup of trans-identified men who are trans because they get sexually aroused by larping as women present slightly more of a risk than non-trans-identified men.

The Health and Safety at work act required employers to provide single sex toilets and spaces for their staff. They don't have to justify it as a legitimate aim.

Which loops us back to the 'sex is nebulous' claim. So, his position is that single sex provision is a nonsense as there isn't a meaningful way to separate the sexes. Therefore, the Health and Safety at Work act is unenforceable.

The "legitimate aim" requirement applies for a service provider who wants to provide a single sex service. It does not apply to an employer who needs to provide changing rooms for staff. That situation is covered by the Workplace (Health, Safety and Welfare) Regulations 1992 which place employers under a specific duty to provide separate facilities for men and women.

That's the Equality Act requirements. The relevant legislation here is about the workplace, passed in 1992, says provide single sex changing and toilet facilities.

You can never ever run away from yourself. You can go to the other side of the world (I tried this one) or you can try and erase your history and reinvent yourself.

But you can not escape yourself. You had to go on that journey to be the person you are. You can choose to be who you are going forward but it doesn't stop what you are and where you have come from because they shape you.

And since a male can only have experiences that are male and can never have the experiences of being biologically female, no matter how hard they try they can never claim the state of being a woman or being female. It is impossible.

And it is insulting and offensive to suggest differently.

You deal with it by coming to terms with who and what you are. Attempts to falsify this are just controlling behaviour which if taken too far and imposed on others can only become abusive. It is impossible that they don't because they involve the subdigation of others to your lie.

The fact that schools and hospitals are suggesting differently shows a huge lack of understanding and recognition of identity, mental health problems and of the pattern and manifestation of coercive control.

That is incredibly worrying and concerning on multiple levels for women.

I'd love to hear more about your relative's story, @TheCourseOfTheRiverChanged - she sounds extraordinary.

And this was so brilliantly put - "Davidson doesn’t believe that trans women are women. She operates from the basis of, “How would I proceed here if I did believe that trans women are women?” And my honest experience is that this is true of every TWAW-er I have ever come across, from be-kinders through to full blown and very effective trans rights activists."

It's such a true and important distinction. Rational thought can be challenged and conclusions changed; the simple impulse to be kind can redirect when the consequences emerge. Playing a role to stay in the herd seems to be hard-wired.

And since a male can only have experiences that are male and can never have the experiences of being biologically female, no matter how hard they try they can never claim the state of being a woman or being female. It is impossible.

And it is insulting and offensive to suggest differently.

As a child I was introduced to a set of triplets, and I asked them what it was like to be triplets. They had obviously been asked this many times, because the look of utter disdain I got was impressive. Their answer was “How should we know? We’ve never been anything else to compare it to. How does it feel not to be a triplet?” To which, of course, I had no answer, because how should I know?

I genuinely don’t understand why people don’t see men insisting that they feeeel like a woman as insulting as white people insisting that they feel like they are black.

Thank you for this excellent thought!
Perhaps explains why I instinctively didn’t want to change my name on marrying. It was also a faff
Professionally speaking I had a lot invested in my name so it would have been detrimental to me to change. But for a TW it is beneficial to wipe the slate clean. I’m just reaching for a thought here but JR mentioned aliases - people change names all the time - but is that true? I have the faint lingering impression that aliases are a sign of a flexibility with the truth? Goes off to google

This article has marked a fascinating personal moment for me in a protracted discussion with a male family member. It's been protracted because I knew I had to not talk too often about the subject, having been told "it's a fringe issue" etc etc (I can fully empathise with how it feels when someone seems obsessed with a subject.... and it's fair to say I am! I need to be to support my daughter).

I had spoken to him about general free speech and the impact of press obfuscation on soviety but to no avail, because gender identity was apparently just too niche for this to be an issue of that scale. Yes, yes, I know 🤦‍♀️ This board is an oasis of sanity on that point. For context, this person agrees wholeheartedly that puberty blockers are dangerous and children like my daughter (who is no longer actively gender questioning but is surrounded by messages and people that could conflate her autism-related puberty distress) need evidence-based support to unpick and address their distress. I think he's representative of many who don't see how it all joins up because it takes a concerted effort to do so. I've said on previous threads that I used to think JKR was a bit odd to be worried about the word "woman".... this was when my daughter was gender questioning and I was learning everything I could about the subject, including on this board. It took me a while to join the dots, because my focus was on gender questioning children not women's rights.

Anyway, fast forward to now and this family member is saying he's hooked on the story. When he said it was a "really interesting" subject I laughed out loud and said "I know" 😁 He is even reading between the lines on news reports, which is obviously what we should all be doing with all news i.e. engaging our critical thinking.

This headline and opening paragraph reminds me of the wording in the TRA-led petition about the Equality Act, which was debated in parliament on the same day as the "GC" one. It effectively said "don't change the Equality Act because we want to keep our rights to use the facilities of our choice". It's taken Stonewall law as real law. Here it is:

https://petition.parliament.uk/archived/petitions/627984

When I wrote to my MP to support the "GC" petition to update the EA with a clarification (https://petition.parliament.uk/archived/petitions/623243) he initially wrote back saying it wasn't needed because it was clear already that the EA meant biological sex. He also said that he agreed with all my concerns regarding the difference in sex and gender. So I wrote to him again. I can't have been the only person influencing his change of heart but he attended and we also met up to talk about the subject (the support he gave me personally was regarding my daughter's situation at school).

I appreciate these are just two straw poll experiences, where people are realising the magnitude of what's happening right under their noses. Three if you count my own peaking. But from what I've read in these threads, this awakening is happening in growing pockets in the UK in relation to this case. It's a mass peaking event. It's almost helpful that SP is a Trump supporter because it's allowing even more critical thinking to unfold about the Trump Executive Orders. Yes, it's uncomfortable realising that your views on one subject can line up with someone whose politics you don't support. I felt very much like that when I voted for the (Tory) MP I mentioned above, after having planned to spoil my ballot even when he was helping me directly. (In the end I looked at his local track record and made a decision on that rather than on a national political level).

I genuinely don’t understand why people don’t see men insisting that they feeeel like a woman as insulting as white people insisting that they feel like they are black.

Some believe that having a trans identity is a developmental condition. I think DU is one of these. They argue along the lines that the developmental pathway for males or females involves a cognitive component.

All the more reason to doubt DU’s ability to practice medicine.

I mean, I understand that maybe I have had more time to read the reams and reams of research than he has, what with his busy schedule of contemporaneous note taking, but IANADoctor, and even I know how tenuous a reach that is.

Not to mention that the weeping, wailing and gnashing of teeth followed by bellowed accusations of ‘deadnaming’ is all fine and good because the righteous are doing it and can call it that.

As soon as women started calling themselves ’transwidows’ there was outrage - how dare you, it’s offensive to compare yourselves to actual widows, nobody died, they found their brave and stunning selves

It’s so predictably illogical.

Yes, there's someone (possibly in good faith, it's hard to tell the genuinely mistaken from the deliberately delusional) doing it on the JKR poetry thread right now.

But it's utterly scientifically illiterate and there's not a shred of proof for it. I don't understand how an actual doctor could take the stand and spout that 'Stuff I Reckon' shite.

I agree and in years to come it will be judged the same as ‘blackface’ is now. Hopefully anyway. It is cultural appropriation.

All the more reason to doubt DU’s ability to practice medic

💯

It is a well known phenomenon that we create narratives to make sense of overwhelming feelings and that there are many factors that distort our thinking/narratives.

Coming back to say there is a tiny bit of evidence that people with genuine gender dysphoria have similar brain activation patterns in a certain part of the brain (I forget which) as people with eating disorders; the proposed theory is that there is some element of a proprioception or internal body-image issue in both cases, maybe.

I went down the road of that.

Then I had an epiphany. If I did believe transwomen were women I wouldn't give certain behaviours the time of day and I'd read them the riot act for it.

The fact it was regarded as ok to behave in certain way which women wouldn't and to be given fawning approval for doing so, was the big tell that the motivation wasn't achieving equality it was about keeping up appearances.

I've never ever been one for keeping up appearances not going with the herd, I simply don't value it. Perhaps this helped me see things differently because I'd struggled with feeling the pressure on women for social conformity and I'd gone through a process of actively rejecting that in my life on several different fronts.

If you believed trans women were women, then many women who get sucked in by it really would be rolling their eyes so hard at a lot of the performative stuff.

Once you understand it's all about virtue signalling and enforcing social conformity rather than a genuine belief, I think it helps because you suddenly start wanting accountability and responsibility for actions again. And you understand that women are not being judged by anything like the same standards. It's got NOTHING to do with being equal. It's got everything to do with increasing inequality and pushing women further down the food chain.

Which really mismatches when the people appointed to said roles are more entry level but still given the salary. I question the recruitment and selection process for any sort of job - not just public sector- because I see unfairness to an individual appointed above their competence level, and maybe also without the supervision and guidance they should receive if they are inexperienced. Doesn’t help anyone.

Agreed. I whistleblew at work regarding the mandatory training that all staff had to do and the fact that it positioned gender identity belief as true. I've mentioned it on previous threads but not for a while. We don't need to change at work and the training didn't specifically cover toilets.

During the whistleblowing process I ended up speaking to the EDI lead (my HR rep was there too) and we had a good conversation about differences in belief. The only point at which they both winced was when I said that I wouldn't be happy to see a TW in the ladies' toilets. The one positive that came from it was that the policy which had misrepresented the PC of gender reassignment got amended. However, all the training with gender identity belief as "fact" (i.e. we all have a gender identity and it's possible for it to be misaligned with your sex) still remains. The training for line managers makes it clear that it's more important than someone's sex.

Although his poem "Things Fall Apart" could be read as what's happening in women's rights at the moment!