Dr Beth Upton: entitled male? Yes. Victim of a cult? Also yes.
A doctor talking utter nonsense about biology might seem funny, but in fact, it's a deadly serious sign of a much wider problem.
Many of us watch the tribunal of Sandie Peggie unfold in awe: in awe of the bravery of the woman at the centre of it all, Sandy Peggie; and at the same time in awe of the sheer lunacy of the situation we find ourselves in. Never could we have conceived of such a push back against women’s rights than this new topsy turvy version of reality, in which a woman can object to the presence of a man in her changing room and not only find herself disciplined by her employer for doing so, but also portrayed as bigoted and unkind during the subsequent tribunal. The aggressor - a male invading a female space - becomes the victim, and the victim - the woman objecting to the presence of that male - becomes the aggressor.
This classic example of DARVO (Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender) is well captured by this cartoonist (link to twitter, shared with permission)
As well as this full scale display of male entitlement, there is also a jaw dropping amount of denial of biological reality on show in the tribunal, made more incredible by the fact it’s coming from an NHS doctor, who surely should know their cervix from their prostate. And I’d like to argue that this makes Upton a victim, too.
For example, Upton stated yesterday that he is ‘not male’.
And, furthermore, that he is female.
Upton told the tribunal: “The term biologically female or biologically male is completely nebulous. It has no defined or agreed meaning in science, as far as I’m aware.
“I’m not a robot, so I am biological and my identity is female. Without wanting to appeal to the dictionary too much, I’m biologically female.”
This argument, that being made of flesh and blood = biological and that therefore if you are made of human and ‘identify’ as female, you are therefore a ‘biological female’, has been made before by India Willougby, who is a father of one.
Who can forget India’s ‘Let that penetrate’ moment…
Willoughby’s behaviour is immediately recognisable, especially by women, as classic, textbook male entitlement. But let’s not forget that Willoughby is also high on his own supply: he genuinely believes he’s a biological female, just like Upton.
Upton has also stated in the tribunal that sex is ‘assigned’ at birth, and that this happens by people ‘looking at the body and making a ‘best guess’’, clarifying that he’s ‘not an obstetrician’.
Aside from the huge departure from the basic facts, Upton is also accidentally saying the quiet part out loud here when he says that the ultimate expert who can tell the sex of the baby is the obstetrician. Er, actually, I think you’ll find it’s the woman, or as Upton would presumably say, the ‘birthing person’ or ‘sprog manufacturer’. But in the patriarchy that Upton so perfectly represents, it’s the bloke in the white coat who always knows what’s what.
Upton also claimed yesterday that the idea that ‘you need a large gamete and a small gamete person to produce babies’ is a ‘belief’.
Given all of this evidence and more, it would be easy to categorise Upton as a complete idiot who should be struck off immediately, or an edge case who just wanted to get in the women’s locker room. But this is reductionist. The fact is, the reason this tribunal is happening is because he had plenty of backing and support. He was allowed to use the women’s changing room, and he was apparently encouraged to believe that he had a right to do so.
There are also many people in the NHS who would be on Dr Upton’s side on all of this. Who would also argue that sex, and the concepts of male and female, are ‘completely nebulous’. Some of them are working at La Leche League, and have thrown their founder under the bus for arguing that male people should not be admitted and encouraged to lacate and feed their babies. Others, like former chair of the Association of Breastfeeding Mothers, Emma Pickett (featured in last week’s The Word is Woman) have written books for children about having healthy breasts removed. I will never forget the moment (mid 2020), when I was writing my puberty book for preteen girls, that a member of a facebook group of doulas and breastfeeding supporters I was part of, told me that I should consider including information for ‘trans girls’ (boys / males) about how to simulate a period. She pointed me to this video.
That was one of my tipping points, when I knew something really strange was happening, far beyond the realms of the kindness and inclusivity I had been led to believe was the main agenda. The moment that I had the uneasy feeling that a cult existed and was trying to recruit me.
And then when I wrote the book, the same cult pushed hard on my door again. The publishers tried to get me to include information such as, ‘it’s not just girls who have periods, trans boys have them too’. I fought back, but the book nearly collapsed completely under the strain. It now stands out as one of the very few books on puberty for young people that doesn’t contain any misinformation but sticks to the facts about biological sex - the same facts that Dr Upton, an NHS doctor, doesn’t have any time for.
These confusing and cult-like messages about biology that Upton has been ridiculed for repeating have been rolled out across children’s books, children’s classroom resources, and children’s PSHE lessons, for the past five to ten years. Children have been taught that they can pick what they want to be, and many of them have chosen something different than what they biologically are. They do this having been lied to. When I was fighting to keep the content of My Period rooted in reality, the publishers brought in sensitivity readers, a group called, “The School of Sexuality Education”. The first piece I read on their website told children that, “Psychological and scientific academia has widely proved that gender, and sex, are socially constructed”, and that, “Even the link we’ve made between penis and male sex (and vagina and female sex) is constructed.” Most worrying of all, they told their young readers that the highly complex and risky surgery performed to make a penis into a vagina is a '“really cool medical procedure”.
Dr Upton has been given all of these messages, and, like many many others, he has believed them. The fact that he has fallen for this in spite of medical training only reinforces to me the cult-like nature of this situation.
This week The Times reported that the NHS removes the breasts of over 1000 women a year - women who have also been drawn into a cult that says that this ‘really cool medical procedure’ will make them ‘biologically male’. And 80% of the women having this procedure are between the age of 17 and 25. They are the true victims, but presumably the doctors who are removing healthy breasts in spite of the core principle of ‘first do no harm’, are victims of a cult, too.
The idea that biological sex is less important than gender identity is now embedded across society. For example, every single non-fiction book on women’s health now contains ‘disclaimers’ at the start, effectively apologising for the sheer transphobia of writing a book that is rooted in female bodies and biological reality. (Maybe I’ll put a post together featuring all of them at some point). It’s wrong to think that Dr Upton is some lone buffoon, or that these ideas that ‘biology is bigotry’, or even that biology isn’t actually real at all, haven’t hit the mainstream. They really have.
The ideological capture of language that I feature each week in The Word is Woman, further decouples the concept of ‘woman’ from the visceral reality of the female body, in order that men may more easily lay claim to being ‘women’ or even ‘biologically female’. Lies about the facts of biology are everywhere. I have now written 60 editions of The Word is Woman and each edition features new examples of women being called, ‘birthing people’, ‘menstruators’, ‘vagina owners’, ‘non prostate owners’, ‘non men’, ‘bodies with vaginas’, ‘birthing bodies’ and more and more and more. On Friday I will share a guest piece about the situation in Sweden, where abortion law is being updated to replace ‘woman’ with gender neutral terms. (subscribe so you don’t miss it).
So as the Sandy Peggie case plays out, we need to focus on this bigger picture and ask serious questions about how this has happened. It’s easy to conceptualise Upton as an entitled male who probably has a fetish for dressing as and being seen as a woman, or gets a kick from violating women’s boundaries, and this may well be a fair assessment. But another way to look at it is that he is a victim of a cult. Somewhere he has a mum who has probably cried many tears for him. Somehow he has come to believe, as victims of cults always do, that his utterly skewed and dangerous version of reality is in fact the truth, and that heretics and non-believers like Peggie are the ones who need help and education. And this cult is not restricted to a tiny minority - it has taken hold of language, education, publishing, medicine, maternity, charities, the NHS, psychotherapy, academia, and more. It is causing direct harm to children and young people.
Those who are on Upton’s side suggest that women like Peggie - and me - should simply ‘be kind’. But nothing about this reality-denying cult is kind, and it has many victims. Perhaps if we are able to see Upton as one of them, and as such feel genuinely sorry for him, this is the kindest thing we can do.
Many of you contacted me to let me know about Sonia Sodha’s piece in the Observer on Sunday.
At the bottom of the article, letters to the editor were invited - here is the one I have written, let’s see if it gets published!
Dear Editor
Sonia Sodha is right to say that women at work should not be expected to share changing rooms with men (“No woman should be forced to change clothes in front of a male colleague”, News). She correctly points out that the case of Sandie Peggie, accused of bullying by NHS Fife for objecting to sharing facilities with Dr Beth Upton, a trans identifying male, has come about because of attempts to impose the ‘minority belief system’ that a person’s gender identity should be given priority over their sex.
As a published author on women’s health, I would like to point out that, whilst this may be a ‘minority belief system’, it is being imposed top-down by the NHS, as well as many other related areas, from birth and breastfeeding support organisations; to women’s charities; to public health messaging. During Sandie Peggie’s tribunal this week, Beth Upton, a medical doctor employed by NHS Fife, claimed that the terms ‘biological female’ and ‘biological male’ had ‘no agreed meanings in science’ and that he himself is a ‘biological female’.
These unscientific beliefs are amplified daily in the wider world: cervical cancer screening callouts are directed to ‘people with a cervix’; NHS trusts refer to ‘birthing people’; breastfeeding organisations open their doors to males; doulas and hypnobirthing teachers claim that ‘not all pregnant people are women’. If Sodha is correct that this is a ‘minority’ belief system, then it has taken hold with all the velocity and power of a religion, or indeed, a cult.
Milli Hill, women’s health writer
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'Duped by a cult' is my preferred phrase, rather than victim of a cult. To say duped by a cult puts the focus on the cult's machinations, imo, whereas to use 'victim' puts the focus on the individual in a compassionate way. Some of these individuals deserve our compassion, and some most definitely don't, but either way they were all played by the machinations of the cult.
No Milli… you’re too kind - he knows exactly what he is. If I was his patient I’d be reporting him to the GMC for quackery.