It’s a familiar tale. Someone decides to depart from a popular creed or a particular aspect of societal group think. Others perceive this as a terrible act of heresy that must be punished at all costs, and proceed to make this individual’s life hell, the costs of their transgression serving as a warning to everyone else. But it’s a story we probably like to think belongs to the medieval history books, not contemporary news reports.
Think again. In the last couple of weeks, further details have emerged of a vicious witch hunt against a nurse with a 30-year unblemished record in a Scottish NHS trust. Her crime? Daring to object when her employer expected her to undress in front of a male doctor who identifies as female, and was allowed to use the female changing room.
Sandie Peggie has brought an employment tribunal claim for harassment and sex discrimination against NHS Fife after they suspended her when she raised her concerns about this. She initially talked to her line manager after the male doctor in question, Dr Beth Upton, walked into the changing room when she was partially undressed. Her boss said she didn’t get anywhere with management. Peggie said if it happened again she’d have to say something to Upton directly.
A few months later, Peggie found herself needing to use the changing room after heavy menstrual bleeding; she says at this point she told Upton she felt embarrassed and intimidated, and how “shaking with distress” she raised her previous experiences of sexual assault to explain her need for single-sex changing facilities. Upton took offence and put in a formal complaint, which led to Peggie being suspended for months on end for alleged bullying and harassment.
This is despite the fact that NHS Fife is legally obliged to provide female-only changing facilities for its female employees. The point of contention is not over trans people’s protections against discrimination and harassment; they rightly have exactly the same legal rights in that respect as other minority groups.
It is whether male employees who identify as female should be allowed to use female-only changing spaces at work: gender campaigners who think someone’s self-declared identity matters more than the reality of their sex say yes; the law – quite properly, according to feminists like me who believe women need our own spaces as a matter of our privacy, dignity and safety – says no.
The law reflects where the British public are on these issues; broadly, people support the right of people to live and let live, to identify and express themselves how they wish, but do not think that should extend as far as allowing men to self-identify into women’s sports and spaces. But this case is a story of how managers and bosses at NHS Fife ignored the law to punish a nurse who dared question their sectarian creed that gender identity trumps sex in the workplace.
The employment tribunal will rule on the facts of the case, but the evidence that has emerged in the last couple of weeks makes clear the shocking extent to which Peggie was denied due process. Upton’s own consultant manager emailed 19 other consultants sharing only Upton’s account of what happened, declaring “we condemn the actions of Sandie”. That message was sent, despite the fact the incident was the subject of a live investigation, Upton’s account had not yet been tested, and the investigation should have been bound by strict confidentiality. Extraordinarily, several senior managers wrote in correspondence that they thought purely on the basis of Upton’s account, Peggie could be reported to the police for a “hate incident”.
Upton also made serious allegations that Peggie had compromised patient safety after making the complaint, and told the tribunal contemporaneous notes of these were made; it has since emerged from the meta data these notes were in fact made after the changing room incident.
The allegations were so serious that Peggie’s legal team has pointed out that if they were true, delaying raising them would itself be a disciplinary issue for Upton. An internal investigation later found there was no corroborating evidence in relation to Upton’s patient safety claims and that it “would seem unlikely” one of the alleged incidents happened as Upton described.
It has emerged that Peggie was suspended by managers despite serious concerns from several members of the trust’s HR department that doing so was unjustified, with one even referencing the decision as “ludicrous”. Just as the tribunal was due to resume its hearings two weeks ago and 18 months after it suspended her, NHS Fife announced it was clearing Peggie of all the gross misconduct allegations made against her because they were unsupported by evidence. None of this has stopped NHS Fife including the allegations – including on patient safety – in their legal case.
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A very British victory for women
This is much more than just one isolated witch hunt. Right across society, institutions that should be impartial between different belief systems have picked the side of gender identity, from the NHS, to universities, to the BBC, to the police. Women, like Sandie Peggie, who have tried to stand up for protections that already exist in law have been punished – despite the fact that their views are mainstream outside the elite circles in which gender ideology has gained so much traction.
And it is about much more than gender. This debate holds up a mirror to how we as a liberal society negotiate conflicting rights and beliefs, and the image it reflects back is deeply unflattering. Three key insights emerge. The first is the obvious distaste many have for women, particularly older women, who dare to enforce their boundaries and to say “no” in the face of an ideology that ignores the fact that much of their patriarchal oppression is grounded in the reality of their sex. This group includes many who regard themselves as progressive in prioritising a male desire for validation over women’s existing protections in law.
Beyond that, there is clearly a class dimension at play in this case and more broadly. Senior doctors and nursing managers were waging a campaign against a frontline nurse; there was evidently a widespread contempt for her views at more elite levels of the hospital.
To purport not to understand why women – especially but not exclusively those who have experience of sexual assault – do not want to change their clothes in front of male colleagues in a patriarchal society where the vast majority of violence is committed by a minority of men – is the ultimate luxury belief, divorced from the reality of so many women’s lives.
Finally, the seeming inability of leaders to firmly but kindly enforce boundaries that exist to protect everyone reveals a discomfort of saying no to certain requests. The heightened reaction to the Supreme Court judgment earlier this year clarifying the law on single-sex spaces is a case in point; some leaders have been complicit in spreading the myth that this somehow makes trans people unsafe, or represents a major rollback in rights. It’s deeply irresponsible for those who should know better to stoke people’s fears and encourage harmful victimhood mentalities.
To return to the Peggie case, it is very clear that Dr Upton was excessively indulged by senior colleagues in a way that was not just harmful to Peggie; if the tribunal rules, for example, that the doctor intentionally misled them about certain incidents, which is possible on the basis of the evidence, there could be serious professional consequences.
Ultimately, gender identity ideology has simply been the vehicle for this round of contemporary witch hunts. They pose a series of deeper questions: why have the elites who run liberal institutions proved so vulnerable to groupthink? Why have leaders proved so unwilling to defend basic democratic norms around pluralism and free expression?
Why has it been so difficult for managers to understand and balance the rights of different groups of people with sometimes competing needs and desires, instead of picking winners and writing everyone else off as bigoted? The answers aren’t just important to women who believe they have a right to single-sex spaces, services and sports. They are vital to anyone who values living in a harmonious society that can cope with diverse, and often conflicting, views.
