Mick Hartley

Sonia Sodha in the Observer on nurse Sandy Peggie and her case against NHS Fife – No woman should be forced to change her clothes in front of a male colleague:

Despite the law of the land enshrining that commonsense insight – that employers are obliged to provide separate changing facilities for their male and female employees – female staff working for this Scottish health board have been expected to share changing rooms with a male doctor who identifies as female. One nurse, Sandie Peggie, has brought an employment tribunal claim for harassment, sex discrimination and victimisation against the board, following her suspension after she raised concerns.

Peggie shared her account of what happened with the tribunal last week. She initially talked to her line manager on a couple of occasions, including after Dr Beth Upton, the male doctor in question, walked into the room while she was partially undressed. Her manager said she passed on the nurse’s concerns but didn’t get anywhere; Peggie said that if she were put in that position again, she would need to address it with Upton. This is what happened a few months later, when she found herself needing to use the changing room after heavy menstrual bleeding.

Peggie says she told Upton she felt embarrassed and intimidated; but the doctor claimed as much right to be there as she did. Peggie says she raised her previous experiences of sexual assault to try to engender understanding, and mentioned a recent case when a male prisoner had been put in a female prison. She described how she was “shaking with distress”. After this encounter, Upton put in a formal complaint, and Peggie was suspended for bullying and harassment.

The sheer effrontery of this doctor, who claims that he was the one who was left "distressed" and "afraid" by the encounter – see this BBC report for an (of course) sympathetic view of the poor trans suffering – with absolutely zero interest in the woman's concerns. It's all about him and his hurty feelings. 

Back to Sodha:

It is worrying that in evidence last week Upton did not seem to understand why a female colleague might not want to share changing facilities, and appeared to experience this as a personal affront. But the doctor is unlikely to be alone in that. The greatest responsibility lies with Peggie’s employer, who, instead of making separate accommodations for Upton, expected female colleagues to ignore the fact he is male.

Given the bravery required to take a legal case, this is likely to be the tip of the iceberg. A group of nurses in Darlington are also suing their trust as a result of having to share facilities with a male colleague. In a Sheffield hospital, female staff worried about sharing a changing room with one of their male colleagues were told, incorrectly, that the colleague in question had a right to be there. Outside the NHS, there have been many cases where employers have unlawfully elevated a male desire to be treated as female above women’s established workplace rights.

The idea that a man who identifies as female is literally a woman, and must without fail be treated as such, has become a cherished principle for some progressives. Politicians and women’s rights activists speaking against this have been excommunicated from the left. Slowly, but surely, this is starting to change in the UK: take health secretary Wes Streeting’s admirably principled defence of the Darlington nurses, for example.

Not before time. There is a cautionary tale from across the Atlantic, where Democrats’ stubborn and unpopular defence of men’s rights to self-identify into women’s sport has dropped the unlikeliest of moral victories into President Donald Trump’s lap, allowing a man accused of serious sexual assault to somehow position himself as a defender of women’s rights. Abandoning basic common sense for unpopular policies that put women at risk does not go well for the left.

Not just basic common sense: single sex provision is the law. But the Stonewall effect lingers on…