Nutmeg's week: Marianne Oakes, Manchester Pride, 'Rowan' Jetté Knox

‘I believe there’s a woman trapped inside me’

The tribunal brought against County Durham and Darlington NHS Trust by the group of eight nurses known collectively as the ‘Darlington nurses’ has begun. The Darlington nurses all worked at Darlington Memorial Hospital and were told they must be ‘inclusive’ of a male operating practitioner, who pretends to be a woman, using their changing room. They were also offered the opportunity of being ‘educated’ about kindness and inclusivity by ‘Rose’ Henderson (below), the very man whose presence they were objecting to. This offer came despite several of the nurses reporting that Henderson had behaved inappropriately towards them. The Darlington nurses eventually filed a claim against the trust on the grounds of sexual harassment, discrimination, victimisation and breaches of the right to a private life, under Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights.

Karen Danson, the first of the nurses to give evidence this week, detailed the panic attack she experienced when Henderson repeatedly asked her if she was ‘getting changed yet’ while they were alone in the changing room. Danson was sexually abused as a child and says being in the changing room with a half-dressed Henderson, who ‘was clearly watching’ her, made her feel ‘petrified.’ Danson was not aware of Henderson’s ‘trans identity’ and could not understand why a large man with facial hair was in the women’s changing room. The incident triggered her PTSD symptoms which negatively affected her health until she was signed off sick. She reported to the tribunal that her concerns about Henderson and the hospital’s policy of allowing men to self-identify into women’s spaces were ignored. She also disclosed that she and her colleagues were ‘scared of the backlash and being called transphobic’ but still escalated their concerns, which were met with the instruction to ‘broaden their mindsets.’

This, incidentally, is the response by therapist and counsellor Marianne Oakes (a transvestite), to finding out that Danson’s child sex abuse PTSD was triggered by a strange man telling her to get undressed:

Kellie-Jay Keen (pictured above, er, on the right) reported live from outside the hearing on day one and managed to create an iconic visual representation of the injustice and absurdity of the situation the nurses faced. The man she interviewed identifies as a woman and says he uses women’s single sex spaces. You can watch the full conversation here.

Another week, another Pride scandal

This week, the charity behind Manchester Pride, the UK’s third biggest Pride event, revealed it had entered voluntary liquidation, adding that its ‘ambitious refresh of the format’ resulted in it no longer being financially viable. It said it was ‘enormously sad’ to make this announcement, particularly as numerous people and businesses were owed thousands of pounds that they will now not receive, adding ‘we regret the delays in communicating the current situation’. It’s now also emerged that it lost at least three directors and one trustee in the days leading up to the announcement.

This shouldn’t have been a huge shock. Manchester Pride’s accounts for 2023 show that, despite it bringing in £2.7 million in income, it still somehow made a £467,000 loss, with its bank balance showing an astonishing minus £356,000 in funds. The accounts for 2024 have not been released yet but we know that trustees had expressed ‘concern’ over its financial situation last year.

Bizarrely, despite this, it still ran the 2025 Manchester Pride, and even started selling tickets for 2026, which are now being refunded. Keen to show that it’s learnt nothing from this debacle, Manchester City Council has said there will still be a Pride event next year, it will just be run by different people.

Meanwhile, the CEO of the biggest UK Pride event, Pride in London, has been suspended, removed as a director and ordered by a court to hand over access to bank accounts for the company, as he’s under investigation for alleged financial misconduct.

And these are, of course, separate to the much more serious sexual scandals that various Prides have become embroiled in lately. In fact, just this week Conservative MP Rebecca Paul called for Surrey County Council to reveal when it will publish the findings of its independent review into how it dealt with safeguarding concerns at Pride in Surrey. This is after its chairman and another senior volunteer were both jailed in June for child sexual abuse offences, amid reports that local politicians had been warned about Pride in Surrey, but chose to do nothing.

You might think it would be sensible for a politician to not align themselves with Pride at this time. However, despite all the problems Labour currently face, it’s not just Manchester City Council that hasn’t grasped this. Labour MP Alan Strickland used his one slot in Prime Minister’s Questions in several months to ... criticise a Reform council in Durham for cutting funding to Pride, amid cries of “Shame!” by other Labour MPs.

Meanwhile, neighbouring Labour-run Middlesbrough Council is running a Smoggie Queens themed silent disco to ‘celebrate queer joy’ at a local museum. The proceeds from any tickets that are sold for the event will be donated to Middlesbrough Pride.

‘The only thing not funny is the comedy’

A ‘non-binary’ woman introduces a transvestite, whose entire set is about his penis and ‘tits’. All judged by a woman in a hijab. This is the BBC’s 2025 Comedy Awards, and it’s unintentionally hilarious.

Elsehwhere this week at the BBC, a reporter interviewed people in a small town in Yorkshire, because filming for a Harry Potter TV show has been taking place there. And, would you believe it, one of the people interviewed was a ‘queer trans ally’.

Last week we also mentioned the Actual Gender Critical Left Facebook page, which is run by a BBC radio producer and mostly seems to spread disinformation about Jews. The radio producer has since quit her role on the page, which has now been set to private. This happened after a Jewish website asked the BBC for a comment about one of its employees sharing a post accusing the wife of Charlie Kirk of being his ‘Zionist handler’.

And finally

On the website Kiwi Farms there is a term for a particularly ridiculous troon, usually one who is so narcissistic that their extreme behaviour means they’ve lost all self-awareness: ‘lolcow’. And few fit the lolcow bill better than Amanda Jetté Knox.

Over 10 years ago, Canadian Jetté Knox was utilising social media and her personal blog to chart how she was using one of her children to get attention. This involved attempts to get various diagnoses, such as autism, but without anyone caring. Then she hit the jackpot: she announced he was transgender and very quickly her social media presence ballooned. In 2014 she announced she’d put the 11-year-old boy on puberty blockers.

The following year, her husband then announced that he was also a woman, and this led to even more attention with, for example, articles in Buzzfeed, an interview on Canadian radio, a fawning podcast about her family on the BBC and even a best-selling book deal.

Then, in 2020 - her son had now been on transgender drugs for six years - the boy revealed that he wasn’t a girl anymore. She wasn’t too bothered that she’d ruined his life and continued using she / her pronouns for him, and joked about how ‘queer’ and ‘diverse’ her family now was.

However, just a few days later, she deactivated her Twitter account while trans activists were sending her abuse because of her role as a global trans spokeswoman despite not saying she was trans herself. In fact, she’d made clear that trans is not a contagion, and she therefore could never be transgender. She then reactivated her social media accounts and, shortly after, announced she was ‘non-binary’.

Unfortunately, that didn’t generate much attention, and in 2023 she announced she was now a man called Rowan and she started taking testosterone and arranged for her breasts to be cut off (which is due to happen this weekend). To prove that she was a man, she, like a true lolcow, started using a man’s voice.

At the same time it was becoming increasingly clear that her husband, now called Zoë, was only sexually interested in other crossdressers, and was in a relationship with at least one other man. So, despite the fact that they had three children, and just three years earlier had adopted a fourth child, Rowan and Zoë decided to move hundreds of miles across Canada to live in a transgender polycule. This seemed to involve Rowan as the only woman in it, and principally three cross-dressing men, although other transvestites seemed to be sexually involved with the men as well.

She then spent much of the next 18 months or so detailing how wonderful her polycule is. You’ll never guess what happened next.

Last week she announced that her husband has left her for one of the other members of the polycule. She’s now in a relationship with that transvestite’s ex partner.

See you next week!