A Week in the War on Women: Monday 6th January - 12th Sunday January

Monday 6th January - This Never Happens

THE DAILY MAIL: A trans-identified male who attacked three strangers with an axe has been released from prison.

Evie (formerly Karl) Amati grew up in Perth, Australia, before moving to Sydney to study sociology and US foreign policy at university. In 2015, he underwent so-called ‘sex reassignment surgery’ in Thailand at the age of 22, detailing his ‘gender journey’ on social media. In January 2017, exactly two years after his surgery, Amati launched a brutal and entirely unprovoked attack on three total strangers in a Sydney convenience store.

Evie (formerly Karl) Amati prior to ‘transition’ - IMAGE CREDIT: The Daily Mail

At around 2.20am in the early morning of 6th January 2017, Amati was seen on CCTV entering the a service station store. He was carrying a 2kg axe in his hand and had an 18cm knife hidden in his back pocket.

After strolling around the shop, Amati spoke briefly to his first victim, Ben Rimmer, who was waiting at the till. Amati suddenly slammed the axe into Rimmer’s face, almost cutting his head in half. Rimmer later told the press that he’d felt a ‘bad vibe’ from Amati which caused him to turn his head away, a motion which probably saved his life; the appeal court heard that had the blow been ‘a millimetre or two above’ it would have proved fatal. Rimmer still suffered severe and life-threatening injuries including a fractured nasal bone, eye socket and cheek bones. He lost a lot of blood and required extensive reconstructive surgery involving the insertion of permanent titanium plates into his face.

Evie (formerly Karl) Amati entering the 7 Eleven - IMAGE CREDIT: News.Com.Au

Amati then moved on to his second victim, Sharon Hacker. Using both his hands he struck her forcefully with the axe, hitting her on the back of the neck. Though her dreadlock hairstyle partially cushioned the blow, the bone at the base of her skull was shattered. As Hacker lay helpless on the ground, Amati tried swinging the axe at her a second time. He would almost certainly have killed her but for his poor aim; he narrowly missed hitting his target. Stepping over Sharon Hacker, Amati left the shop. Walking out to the pavement, Amati struck his third victim, Shane Redwood, who managed to avoid serious injury by deflecting the blow with his backpack.

Following these brutal attacks, Amati walked into the garden of a nearby property where he propped the axe up against a wall and lay down on the ground. When apprehended by police and paramedics, Amati faked unconsciousness. He then refused to answer questions in a police interview, repeatedly stating that he wished to exercise his right to silence.

Amati then tried to claim that he was not responsible for these violent crimes, blaming mental illness exacerbated by the alcohol, female hormones, antidepressants, cannabis and an MDA tablet which he had consumed that night. He also blamed his unprovoked violence on the rejection of a blind date; he had been out that evening with a woman he’d met on Tinder but she had not been interested in him. It later transpired that Amati had purchased the axe two months in advance of his crimes and had practiced swinging it at the furniture in his living room.

Amati stood trial in Sydney’s District Court in August 2018. The jury rejected Amati’s not-guilty plea and mental illness defence and he was convicted of two counts of wounding with intent to murder and one count of attempted wounding with intent to murder. At his sentencing in January 2019, Judge Williams ruled there were ‘special circumstances’ to Amati’s crime and gave him nine years in prison with a non-parole period of four-and-a-half years. However, this extremely short sentence was successfully challenged at the New South Wales Court of Criminal Appeal. The court agreed that the original sentence was ‘manifestly inadequate’ and increased it to 14 years imprisonment with a non-prole period of eight years.

During the trial and subsequent appeal, many mainstream media outlets - including the BBC and The Guardian - were describing Amati as a woman and using female pronouns with which to refer to him.

Amati was incarcerated in a women’s facility. It was reported that he had physical fights with the female inmates at the Mary Wade Women’s Correctional Centre because they expressed their opinion that he should be serving his sentence in the male estate. As early as 2019, it was also reported that Amati had begun the process of de-transition while in prison and was ‘identifying as male’ again.

This week, Amati was released from prison on parole, having served less than half of the 14-year sentence imposed at the appeal court. According to The Daily Mail Australia, “While it is not known if Amati, now 32, will emerge from jail as a trans woman or de-transitioned male, she [sic] has spent her custody in female correctional centres”.

Tuesday 7th January - Leave Them Kids Alone

A newly published study has found that an alarming number of privately insured under-18s in the US were prescribed cross-sex hormones.

This week, the medical journal, JAMA Paediatrics, published a research letter entitled ‘Gender-Affirming Medications Among Transgender Adolescents in the US 2018-2022’. The authors analysed de-identified insurance claim data from all 50 US states regarding 5.2 million adolescents age 8 to 17 years old.

The study revealed that during this four-year period, about 1 in 1,000 privately insured minors had been prescribed cross-sex hormones by the age of seventeen. This figure can be broken down to about 140 per 100,000 young girls taking testosterone and 82 per 100,000 young boys taking oestrogen before they had even turned eighteen.

The researchers found that the youngest children to have been given cross-sex hormones were 12 years old, although this was vanishingly rare. The rate of prescriptions rose through patients’ teenage years, peaking at 17 year of age. Cross-sex hormone use was consistently higher among females.

Writing on his Substack site, journalist, Ben Ryan, describes the study’s shortcomings and omissions which, he says, compromise its data. He points out that the figures are based only on commercial insurance plans but do not include those adolescents who were uninsured or using Medicaid. Furthermore, this research does not appear to have included prescriptions written with the diagnosis code ‘endocrine disorder not otherwise specified’. (This is a stealth term sometimes used by clinicians when prescribing blockers or hormones to children who identify as trans.) Consequently, says Ryan, the study’s authors may have artificially reduced the prescribing rate of cross-sex hormones to minors as reported in their paper.

The researchers who produced the paper still seem to believe that gender distressed children should be treated medically. They argue that because the overall prescription rate of ‘gender affirming’ medications to minors - ie around 1 in 1000 - is comparatively rare, their use is appropriate for gender distressed youngsters. “Seeking to leverage their findings to score an advocacy win for the besieged field of paediatric gender medicine”, writes Ben Ryan, “They have argued that this rarity undermines arguments supporting state bans of such interventions for minors.”

Writing in Unherd, Victoria Smith makes similar points regarding the study and the attitude of its authors. She quotes the lead author, Landon Hughes, who expressed his hope that the paper will ‘cools heads’ on the issue and believes that the data don’t imply any ‘inappropriate use’ of medical interventions for children.

“Just how many children have been set on a path to lifelong medicalisation, facing consequences such as sterility and brittle bones, on the spurious grounds that they might have been born in the wrong body?”, she asks. “I’ll be honest: one in 1,000 still sounds a lot to me.”

Wednesday 8th January - A Room of One’s Own

CBC: A man in Winnipeg has been charged with voyeurism following allegations that he took photographs of a young girl in a mixed-sex changing facility.

The Pan Am Pool is a large leisure and fitness complex in Grant Park, Winnipeg, Canada. This week a 26-year-old man was arrested at the pool after allegedly taking photographs of a child in the ‘gender neutral’ changing room.

The Winnipeg Police Service released a statement that a man had used a mobile phone to take photographs of a 10-year-old girl ‘in various stages of undress’. It is reported that the girl’s father witnessed the man taking pictures of his daughter over the wall of the adjacent cubicle as she got changed in a private stall.

Pan Am Pool - IMAGE CREDIT: Global News

The father alerted Pan Am Pool staff and police arrived at the scene soon after. Colin Gauthier was arrested on-site and has been charged with voyeurism. He was later released on a court order prohibiting contact with people under the age of sixteen.

And this is why women and girls need single-sex facilities.

Thursday 9th January - Doctor in the House

THE TELEGRAPH: A court decision on transparency has revealed further details in the case of a nurse taking legal action after she was forced to share changing facilities with a trans-identified male colleague.

Last year we reported on a nurse at a hospital in Scotland who, after protesting the presence of a trans-identified male colleague in the female changing room, was suspended from her job. Following the failure of an application to conduct the hearing behind closed doors this week, more details about the story have emerged.

Sandie Peggie is a nurse with 30 years experience who works in the A&E department at Victoria Hospital in Kirkcaldy. Dr Beth Upton is a trans-identified male who ‘considers herself [sic] a woman and uses she/her pronouns’. It is reported that Dr Upton began ‘identifying as a woman’ in 2022, the same year he qualified as a doctor. He started working at the A&E department of Victoria Hospital in August 2023. The General Medical Council (GMC) erroneously records him as ‘female’ on its website.

According to GMC records, Dr Upton graduated from the University of Dundee in 2021. There is no record of a Beth/Elisabeth Upton graduating in medicine that year (unsurprisingly, since it is reported that Dr Upton did not begin ‘identifying as a woman’ until 2022). However, a Theodore B Upton did graduate from the University of Dundee’s School of Medicine in 2021. Below is the photograph of Theodore B Upton which was used during the university’s online graduation ceremony (held remotely due to Covid restrictions) that year.

Theodore B Upton - IMAGE CREDIT: YouTube/University of Dundee

Now working at Victoria Hospital in Kirkaldy, Dr Upton is permitted to use the women’s changing facilities. (As with many other NHS bodies, NHS Fife’s policy allows staff members to use bathrooms and changing rooms etc in accordance with their self-declared ‘gender identity’ rather than their sex.)

Sandie Peggie has been forced to share the women’s changing rooms with Dr Upton on three separate occasions, on one of which Ms Peggie was wearing a bra and trousers. On the third occasion, late at night on 24th December 2023, Ms Peggie was alone with Dr Upton in the changing room. Dr Upton started to take off his clothes and it is reported that the pair ‘exchanged words’. What was said is now in dispute but The Times reported on the alleged exchange last year.

Following this incident, Dr Upton made a formal complaint against Sandie Peggie, accusing her of bullying him and claiming that he’d experienced a ‘hate incident’. Peggie was immediately placed on ‘special leave’. In January 2024, she was suspended from work pending an investigation into her “Alleged unwanted behaviours” towards another member of staff. Following the intervention of her solicitor, she returned to work in April 2024 but NHS Fife then instigated disciplinary proceedings against her.

Peggie’s solicitors subsequently began legal proceedings against NHS Fife and Dr Beth Upton himself, alleging multiple breaches of the Equality Act 2010. In a very unusual move, both the NHS and Dr Upton made formal applications for the case to be heard in private and for the names of the individuals and the hospital department involved to be concealed. At a special hearing in November, together with various women’s rights groups - including Sex Matters - and several major media outlets, Peggie opposed these applications.

This week Judge Antoine Tinnion rejected the attempts of Dr Beth Upton and NHS Fife to veil this case in secrecy. He ordered that all proceedings be made public and that all of the parties involved can be named.

In attempting to maintain his anonymity, Dr Upton told the Edinburgh tribunal that he considers being a ‘trans woman’ is ‘a private matter’. The tribunal reported that Dr Upton’s close friends and family know of his trans identity, as does his supervisor, but that he ‘does not accept that all staff at Victoria Hospital know’.

This surely implies that, if he has concealed his true sex from his own colleagues, Dr Upton’s patients have also been kept in the dark about his trans status. One can’t help wondering how many women have been treated by Dr Upton labouring under the misapprehension that their clinician was female. And what happens in the event that a female patient specifically requests same-sex care?

It is understood that Dr Upton is still being allowed to use the female-only changing room at Victoria Hospital.

Following the tribunal’s decision, Sandie Peggie said she was pleased her case could now be heard in public. “My case is about whether the hospital and Dr Upton subjected me to sexual harassment and discrimination by forcing me and other female colleagues to share a changing room with a man identifying as a woman. Going to employment tribunal is very stressful for all concerned, but everyone has the right to a fair and public hearing. Changing rooms are a place where we expect privacy. Courtrooms are not”.

The full employment tribunal will be held next month.

Friday 11th January - These Are Not Our Crimes

THE ARGUS: A trans-identified male nurse who was once responsible for the care of vulnerable women has been struck off due to his long-term racist behaviour.

Jaden Rachel Dios Hole (yes, really) is a trans-identified male and former mental health nurse who previously worked for the Sussex Partnership NHS Foundation Trust. He was employed at The Chichester Centre, a rehabilitation and treatment facility within a secure environment. Somewhat surprisingly, he was the ward manager on Hazel Ward, a treatment and recovery ward solely for women. The online job description for this role states, “You will create an environment that supports meaningful relationships, and opportunities that support people to make sense of their risk behaviour in the context of their trauma history.”

Soon after he undertook this job, Dios Hole moved his office to the area where the female patients sleep. “I made sure that my office was on the main bedroom corridor rather than tucked away”, he said.

In August 2020, Dios Hole appeared in a YouTube discussion which focused on mental health nursing. It was entitled ‘Sexual Safety in Inpatient Settings’. Dios Hole was described as being the project lead for his team on something called the Sexual Safety Collaborative. It appears that, as part of this role, Dios Hole would “Collect data on feelings of safety from sexual harm on the ward”.

Given that it involved working so closely with vulnerable and traumatised women, a male seems a wholly inappropriate choice for ward manager. Especially a male who apparently likes to wear a fetishized latex nurse’s uniform.

In October 2023, Dios Hole was suspended by the Nursing & Midwifery Council (NMC) on grounds of misconduct. He was accused of multiple racially aggravated incidents between 2015 and 2020. His case was then brought before the NMC Fitness to Practise Committee with the final hearing taking place in December 2024.

IMAGE CREDIT: @DearRebelAda

The tribunal heard the following accusations about Dios Hole’s conduct:

• Asking a Polish colleague “Are you some sort of Nazi?”

• Using the ‘N word’ in reference to a colleague.

• Asking a colleague “Who are you? The man from the plantation?”

• Stating “I wonder which witch doctor she was going to get that sick note from” about a colleague who was off work due to illness.

• Asking a colleague “Have you met your lot yet?” and adding “You know, your BAME members.”

• Putting a white sheet over his head to scare a colleague then using words to the effect “I was hardly one of the Ku Klux Klan was I? it’s just a ghost outfit”.

Jordan Rachel Dios Hole

The committee found that these allegations were proven and that they were racially abusive or motivated by an intention to be racially abusive. Consequently, Dios Hole’s fitness to practise was deemed impaired by reason of his misconduct and he has been was sanctioned with a striking-off order meaning he can no longer work as a nurse.

Interestingly, the NMC allowed the tribunal to be held partially in private. Khaled Hussain-Dupré, Dios Hole’s legal representative, made a request at the outset of the case for parts of it to be heard in private. Robert Rye, representing the NMC, did not oppose the application. He submitted that Dios Hole’s right to privacy outweighed the public interest in this case and therefore invited the panel to go in and out of private session as and when required.

In reporting on the case this week, The Brighton Argus referred to ‘Ms Hole’ and afforded him female pronouns throughout the article. No mention is made of Dios Hole’s tru sex or trans status and there is no photograph. Consequently, the readers are left with the impression that a woman has been barred from working as a nurse due to abusive and racist behaviour.

Saturday 12th January - Leave Them Kids Alone

THE AUSTRALIAN: Despite acknowledging the serious risks involved, a family court in Australia has approved the prescription of cross-sex hormones for a teenager.

Judge Peter Tree is a family court judge in Queensland, Australia. This week he granted permission for a trans-identified teenage girl to begin taking cross-sex hormones, despite acknowledging that they may not prove effective in the long-term in treating her dysphoria and recognising the medical risks involved.

The teenager, known as ‘Ash’, is described as turning 18 years of age ‘in less than two years’. So it is reasonable to assume that she is only sixteen. She has been wearing a breast binder and layered clothing to try and disguise her developing female body. Furthermore, it is reported that she has been living in ‘stealth’ and did not disclose her true sex to her classmates at school.

One of Ash’s parents opposes her desire to take cross-sex hormones. Her other parent, wanting to be granted parental responsibility in order that their daughter can be prescribed testosterone, brought the case before the court.

In delivering his ruling, Tree referred to Ash’s ‘dignity of risk’. He said that he expected future Australian courts to see ‘regret’ cases in relation to the administration of cross-sex hormones to minors and conceded there was a ‘real risk’ with the testosterone treatment Ash desires. He acknowledged that the hormones may not alleviate Ash’s dysphoria ‘either materially or even at all’. He also recognised that, as Ash’s cognitive development is ongoing, she may not understand ‘all the risks’ involved and he acknowledged that Ash may well be rendered infertile by taking testosterone. (During the hearing, the court heard that Ash and his little sister, Lee, had made a pact that Lee would harvest her eggs to help Ash have children if Ash’s medical transition resulted in infertility. Lee is only 10 years old.)

Nevertheless, Judge Tree gave permission for Ash to be medicalised. In coming to his decision, Tree dismissed the Cass Review, claiming that it may have been driven by an ‘overt political imperative’ and he gave it ‘little weight’. Conversely, Tree relied heavily on the evidence of a gender clinician known to the court as Dr O who appeared as a witness for the Independent Children’s Lawyer. Dr O advocated the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) guidelines as “By far the best available guidance at this time, and… Informed by decades of expert clinician experience”. Tree agreed with Dr O, giving the WPATH guidelines “Great weight, because they are models of care arrived at by consensus of the relevant professional bodies”.

That’s the WPATH which was at the centre of a scandal last year when hundreds of messages were leaked from an internal forum of its clinicians. These revelations, known as ‘the WPATH Files’, painted a hugely disturbing picture of the so-called ‘gender affirming medicine’ it espouses as unsafe, unevidenced, experimental and driven almost entirely by ideology.

Sunday 12th January - It’s Just Not Cricket

THE DAILY MAIL: Young girls are quitting cricket over fears they will have to play with and against trans-identified males thanks to the ECB’s ‘inclusion’ policy.

In October 2024 we reported that the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) had updated its trans inclusion policy, deciding that the women playing cricket at grass roots level must continue to accept trans-identified males in their sport.

The ECB’s ‘transgender participation policy’ now operates a two-tiered system under which trans-identified males are barred from professional and semi-professional women’s cricket but not from grass-roots teams. At amateur levels, trans-identified males are able to ‘self-identify’ onto women’s teams. And into women’s showers, toilets and changing rooms.

According to The Telegraph, there are barely a hundred professional female cricketers in the country, whereas thousands of women and girls play cricket at a grass roots level. The ECB’s policy impacts the overwhelming majority of female cricketers in England and Wales, making their sport unfair and unsafe.

There are currently 17 peer-reviewed studies all demonstrating that male puberty cannot be mitigated when it comes to sporting performance. All of the scientific evidence demonstrates that, even after reducing testosterone levels, males retain numerous physical and physiological advantages over women and any loss of muscle mass and strength etc is negligible.

In addition to the obvious issue of fairness, including males in female cricket has very serious safety implications. Injuries in cricket are prevalent enough without forcing women to compete with or against males.

A 2013 Telegraph article discussed (and rapidly dismissed) the possibility of a woman playing on the English men’s cricket team. It explained that the idea is not viable given that physical strength and power are essential in cricket. Men bowl around 20% faster and hit balls further and much harder than women. That's why the women's game uses smaller and lighter balls and a shorter boundary. “A full-blooded whack from a female cricketer only goes two-thirds the way that a man's hit goes.”

In April 2022, Fair Play For Women compiled a dossier, with extracts published by The Daily Mail, of women dropping out of amateur and community sports over the participation of trans-identified males. In one example, a parent was concerned about the safety of girls, one as young as 12, asked to play cricket against a team containing a trans-identified male. “I find that unacceptable, uncomfortable and dangerous, both morally and physically.”

This week, almost three years later, The Daily Mail has reported that young girls are still self-excluding from cricket, dropping out of teams for which they had previously played, due to the inclusion of trans-identified males in amateur leagues.

One mother, who wishes to remain anonymous for obvious reasons, wrote an impassioned letter to the ECB, begging them to reconsider their harmful policy. She explained that her own 10-year-old daughter played at an under-13s event during the summer and found there were two trans-identified boys playing on the opposing team.

She also described other young girls being reduced to tears, feeling demoralised and self-excluding from cricket games as a result of being forced to play against boys who ‘identify as girls’. She said that one 12-year-old girl ‘cried in the trees’ as the presence of trans-identified males on the pitch, “Scared her, intimidated her and made her feel uncomfortable and worthless”.

As Oliver Brown, The Telegraph’s chief sports writer, stated in a recent article, “You do not need a doctorate in developmental biology to grasp the potential dangers of a middle-aged man hurling a hard leather ball at a 12-year-old girl”.

Quite.

See you next week.