We can be heroes

UK feminists continue to make history

Yesterday brought two seismic legal victories in the failed state that is the UK. A nurse has won the right to refuse to undress in front of a man at work. A lesbian football fan has just ended the police's ability to enforce a misogynistic and homophobic belief system. You might assume these principles were already established, but public bodies had been acting as if they weren't—and these rulings will force them to stop.

Sandie Peggie

Sandie Peggie is a nurse with thirty years of experience working in A&E at Victoria Hospital in Kirkcaldy. On 24th December 2023, she found herself alone in the female changing room with Dr Beth Upton, a 6-foot man who identifies as a woman. This was the third time she had encountered him getting undressed in the women's facilities. On this occasion, Peggie told him she didn't think he should be there as it made her uncomfortable.

As is the norm in this upside-down, two-tiered failed state, Peggie, not Upton, received a bullying complaint. She was suspended and faced disciplinary charges. In May 2024, she submitted a formal claim to an employment tribunal against NHS Fife and Dr Upton for sexual harassment, belief discrimination and victimisation.

Knowing that the sight of Upton would quickly disabuse people of the notion that he was any kind of woman, he and NHS Fife sought orders to anonymise his identity and prevent Peggie from using male pronouns for him. Both requests were rejected by employment judges. Thank God for that, because otherwise outlets like the BBC and The Guardian would have been free to obscure the reality of what this case was actually about: a man using the law to force women to endure his presence while they undress at work.

In January, Employment Judge Sandy Kemp ruled that forcing Peggie and her legal team to use terms they consider "inaccurate" would be unfair. The judge granted it might be "painful and distressing" for Dr Upton but upheld Peggie's right to use male pronouns.

The main tribunal continues in July, but Peggie has already secured important preliminary victories for the principle that people cannot be compelled to use language that contradicts their protected beliefs.

Linzi Smith

Linzi Smith is a 34-year-old lesbian and lifelong Newcastle United supporter. In October 2023, she received an email from Newcastle United saying her membership had been suspended pending a police investigation into a possible hate crime.

The investigation concerned three posts Smith had made on social media expressing gender-critical views. One tweet suggested that transgender activism was trying to "trans the gay away." Newcastle United later claimed that another post made what they called "an exceptionally offensive, abhorrent and intolerable comparison with Nazism."

Northumbria Police interviewed Smith under caution for two hours. They concluded she had committed no crime and that her posts didn't even meet the threshold for a non-crime hate incident. Despite this, Newcastle United banned her from the club for three seasons.

In March 2025, Northumbria Police apologised to Smith, admitting their treatment of her was "unacceptable" and that officers hadn't considered carefully enough whether there was any crime to investigate.

Yesterday, helped by Harry Miller and the fine people at Fair Cop, Smith won a judicial review against Northumbria Police over their participation in Newcastle Pride marches. The High Court judge found there would be "issues" with policing impartiality if counter-demonstrations occurred while officers were actively participating in the march. The ruling is decisive: the court has declared that police participation in Pride 2024 was unlawful and inconsistent with their impartiality duty.

Gender-critical professor Kathleen Stock provided a witness statement that comprehensively dismantled the arguments for police participation in Pride events, and the judge was clearly impressed by her evidence. (The full judgment can be read here.)

Linzi said after the ruling: "It is terrifying to live in a community where the police have abandoned their duty of impartiality and embraced a highly controversial political cause."

Sandie and Linzi have a few things in common. Both hold gender-critical beliefs that biological sex is immutable and important. Both faced institutional responses wildly disproportionate to their actions. Both endured lengthy processes that imposed significant personal costs regardless of the eventual outcomes.

Sandie was suspended for over a year for expressing discomfort about sharing a changing room with a man. Linzi was banned from her football club and investigated by police for expressing views that are held by the vast majority of the population.

Like Maya Forstater, both women chose to fight back rather than accept defeat, securing ongoing victories that establish important precedents for anyone facing down the gender cult.

While the punishment may be the process, there's a pattern emerging from the courtrooms. Each hard-fought victory builds another layer of legal protection, serving as a sandbag against the rising tide of insanity and each case features one or more witnesses humiliated as they admit to the extent of their credulity. Yesterday, a witness for NHS Fife claimed she didn't know whether she was male or female and concluded by saying she would "hazard a guess" that she was female.

The victories yesterday matter not just for Sandie and Linzi personally, but for the massive precedents they establish. Linzi's victory affects every public sector body with an impartiality duty. That's essentially the entire public sector. The ruling means police forces, councils, NHS trusts, and countless other public bodies will have to reconsider their participation in political campaigns disguised as community events.

Ordinary people should not have to fight these battles. During his election campaign in June 2024, Keir Starmer pledged to "end the Tory culture wars" if he became Prime Minister, telling the Huffington Post that people were "exhausted" by political battles over issues like trans rights. Instead of bringing that promised end to the culture wars, Starmer hides from them entirely. So ordinary women like Sandie and Linzi have had to exhaust themselves further while he goes absent without leave.

When anyone tries to pretend that self-ID poses no threat, or that police participation in Pride marches is politically neutral, we only have to point to the cases brought by Sandie Peggie and Linzi Smith to bring the discussion to a sudden, decisive stop. Two ordinary women bullied by powerful institutions triumphed over their accusers, and they didn't have to lie or call anyone a bigot to do it. They just brought them to a courtroom, put them under oath, and let them speak.