Bruce Bowman Profile picture
Watching power, culture and law collide. Skeptical by nature. Not bad.
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Dec 8 13 tweets 3 min read
THREAD: How the Peggie Tribunal Neutralised the For Women Scotland Judgment

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The most revealing part of the Peggie judgment is how the Tribunal handled the @ForWomenScot Supreme Court ruling. If you want to understand the institutional resistance women are facing, you start here.Image 2/
The Tribunal accepts the core holding of FWS without hesitation:
👌“Woman” in the Equality Act means biological female
👌“Biological sex” means sex as recorded at birth
This applies wherever the Act uses those terms
👌They repeat this plainly. No ambiguity. FWS is binding. ✔️
Dec 8 11 tweets 3 min read
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There is no win here. The Peggie judgment is a portrait of a system that will do anything – absolutely anything – rather than admit it has sacrificed a woman’s dignity on the altar of policy. A nurse objects to a male colleague in the women’s changing room. Management keeps the arrangement. Two more encounters follow. The tribunal calls it “harassment” then calmly declines to call it discrimination.Image 2/
Read that again. NHS Fife granted and maintained permission for a male-sexed doctor to use the female staff changing room. They knew Peggie had raised concerns. They left the permission in place anyway, so she met him there on 25 October and again over Christmas Eve / Christmas Day. That failure itself is one of the acts of unlawful harassment.
Sep 22 10 tweets 2 min read
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The British Psychological Society has submitted a response to the @EHRC that reads less like science and more like scripture. Their sermon? Biology is offensive, truth is cruel, and women asking for boundaries must be shamed into silence.
@BPSOfficial
🔽
bps.org.uk/psychologist/e… 2/10
They are furious because the Supreme Court said the unsayable: under the Equality Act, sex means sex. Not identity. Not “lived experience”. Sex as recorded at birth. It should never have taken a Supreme Court to remind them of this.
Aug 26 9 tweets 2 min read
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Scotland is living through an age of institutional contempt. What was meant to bring power closer to the people has become a system designed to keep them powerless. 🧵 Image 2/
Devolution was supposed to liberate Scotland from Westminster’s decay. Instead it built its own little citadel of power, and taught people the same lesson: your voice does not matter.
Aug 25 11 tweets 3 min read
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🚨 Tribunal case: Newman v Commissioner of Police (Met).

Detective Constable Melanie Newman sued the Met for discrimination & harassment, saying she was targeted at work for her gender critical beliefs. She lost — but the story is bigger than one officer. 🧵Image In March 2023, Newman joined a Trans Day of Visibility event at New Scotland Yard. Guest speaker Eva Echo told the audience that people with gender critical views had “twisted, warped views” and “cult-like behaviour.” The room applauded.Image
Aug 7 12 tweets 4 min read
On Tickle v Giggle:
This isn’t satire.
These were real legal submissions - made by the government, the Sex Discrimination Commissioner, or accepted by the Federal Court.
Every word was serious.👇Image 1. That’s a direct quote from the Sex Discrimination Commissioner.
To the Federal Court.
In writing.
Sex, Australia is told, is now contextual, fluid and “non-binary.”
Apparently reality was just a phase. Image
Aug 6 16 tweets 3 min read
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🚨Day 3 of Giggle v Tickle is done.
Sall Grover’s case is now in the hands of the judges. Her side delivered clarity, substance, and law.
Equality Australia turned up with vibes, metaphors, and arguments that would not survive a Year 9 debating final.
🧵1/15Image 2/
Equality Australia opened the morning by declaring that “sex” is not biology.
It is a social performance. A designation. A guess.
Apparently, a birth certificate is now hate speech, and reality is just a little bit too rigid for modern equality.
Aug 5 17 tweets 3 min read
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Day 2 of Giggle v Tickle in the Federal Court laid bare the battle lines.
On one side, sex-based rights and legal clarity.
On the other, an ideology that demands submission to things we cannot know, cannot say, and do not believe.
🧵1/15Image 2/
The morning began with Roxanne Tickle’s counsel demanding aggravated damages.
Why?
Because Sall Grover laughed during cross-examination. Because she would not use a name that was not true. Because she said no, and meant it.
Aug 4 12 tweets 3 min read
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🚨 Giggle v Tickle – Day 1 of the appeal in Australia’s Federal Court has wrapped.
This is about far more than one app. It’s about whether women are still allowed any space of their own – and whether the law still knows what a woman is.
🧵1/12 Image 2/
Sall Grover’s app, Giggle for Girls, was built to be a female-only digital space.
Roxanne Tickle – a male person identifying as a woman – was removed after selfie verification.
Tickle sued under Australia’s Sex Discrimination Act. The judge ruled in his favour.
Aug 2 15 tweets 3 min read
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📘 The Secret Tribunal Diary of Dr. Beth Upton, Age 29¾

24 Dec 2023

Changing in the female CR when Nurse Peggie appeared, radiating disapproval like a scented candle of disgust.
She said: “You’re a man.”
I said: “Not anymore.”
Felt misgendered. Also festive.Image 25 Dec
Filed Datix (subsection: Hate Incident).
Added key terms: “chromosomes,” “Isla Bryson,” “menstrual context.”
Mum says I should let things go.
Dad (Dir. of Libraries, Edinburgh Uni) said: “The Enlightenment died today in a Kirkcaldy locker room.”
Jul 26 11 tweets 4 min read
Britain's NHS Trusts & Boards has been captured by identity zealots with PowerPoints, lanyards and zero public mandate. Here’s how you root it out with precision and purpose. No drama. Just bloodless efficiency.🧵 Image 1. Anyone who can’t define ‘woman’ is out

If you need a seminar to explain human biology, you’re not fit to run a sandwich counter, never mind a clinical directorate. Thanks for your service. Close the laptop. Door’s on the left.Image
Jul 25 10 tweets 2 min read
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Peggie v NHS Fife & Dr Upton: the case that asks – can a nurse be penalised for stating what everyone in the changing room can see? Spoiler: only if Equality Act protections no longer apply when someone’s feelings are involved. Image 2/
The legal context? Peggie alleges harassment (sex & belief), indirect discrimination, victimisation, and whistleblowing detriment. All of it stems from one confrontation in the staff changing room – where biology clashed with ideology, and HR reached for the rulebook it didn’t have.
Jul 23 15 tweets 2 min read
👇(so far). Image “I don’t know what sex I am - I’ve never had my chromosomes tested.”
—Isla Bumba, Equality Lead, NHS Fife.

This was her reply when asked about her own sex in a tribunal about single-sex spaces.
📄

(2/15)
Jul 22 4 tweets 3 min read
Day 5 | PM Session | Peggie v NHS Fife & Dr Upton

How to Bury an Email (and a Woman’s Rights)

The fifth day of Peggie v Fife NHS Board & Dr. Upton closed with two afternoon sessions that drilled straight into the case’s procedural and moral core. Dr. Kate Searle - A&E consultant and supervisor to Dr. Upton - returned to the stand, first under Jane Russell KC’s questioning, then under cross-examination by Naomi Cunningham. If the morning laid foundations, the afternoon cracked them open.

At issue were two strands of institutional behaviour: the framing of Peggie’s conduct as “escalation,” and the mysterious non-disclosure of a key internal email - one sent by consultant Maggie Curran on 5 January and copied to six recipients, including Searle. That email, we now know, discussed controlling witness narratives, limiting leaks, and appointing an internal “small need-to-know group” following Dr. Upton’s Christmas Eve complaint.

The email did not surface until April.

Asked why, Searle offered a cocktail of confusion and technical deflection. She hadn’t seen the case management order before. She wasn’t instructed to trawl her inbox properly until months later. “I’m not a legal expert,” she said. “I believe I complied.” Cunningham pressed: six people received it. Six failed to disclose. Could they all have forgotten?

“I can’t believe we would have held back emails,” Searle insisted. “I’m a doctor and trustworthy.”

But trust has never been the issue. The issue is a coordinated failure that just happens to shield the Respondents - and obscure the truth. Searle admitted the email’s language was “serious” and “inappropriate.” She agreed it would be embarrassing to the Respondents. But she denied any intent to suppress. She just… didn’t remember.

What she did remember - clearly - was giving Upton the green light to use the female changing room. Not because NHS policy demanded it, nor because she’d consulted female staff, but because she Googled it. “There are many references for trans people and changing rooms,” she said. Equality guidance was taken as gospel, though no one knew if Isla Bumba - the Equality Lead - could even define her own sex.

Searle’s handling of Peggie’s protest was telling. She didn’t speak to Peggie directly. She didn’t facilitate a conversation. She didn’t recognise that a woman removing herself from a shared changing space might be doing so to avoid distress. Instead, she accepted Upton’s framing: that Peggie’s behaviour was “escalatory,” that it was bad, and that it warranted formal concern.

When asked whether trauma histories could explain female discomfort, Searle agreed. “Male violence. Unwanted behaviour by men.” But these women, she added, don’t wear badges. They don’t announce their discomfort. Which is precisely why single-sex spaces exist—and why self-exclusion should be seen as principled, not punitive.

Cunningham closed in on the deeper question: Did Searle ever consider Peggie’s belief - that sex is real and can’t be changed - might be protected under law?

“Yes,” said Searle.

Did she consider that Peggie was not misbehaving, but asserting that right?

No answer.

As proceedings ended, Searle was asked if her email correspondence with Beth Upton - used to coordinate policy, press for trust-wide reforms, and exclude Peggie from shared spaces - was ever scrutinised for balance. It wasn’t. Her evidence revealed not just poor judgment, but a culture allergic to dissent.

Two sessions, one message: NHS Fife protects feelings. But only some. Women’s rights? Belief-based objections? Evidence chains? Those are inconvenient truths - easily forgotten, like a CC line in a damning email.

And if six people forget it at once?

That’s called a policy.

Searle back for more tomorrow AM.Image Second correction today: Maggie Currer *not Curren. Thanks @WingsScotland. Sorry folks.
Jul 15 12 tweets 4 min read
🧵 WHO’S WHO in the Peggie v NHS Fife tribunal

10 players. One massive case.
A career on the line. A policy on the ropes.
And a government refusing to accept biological reality - despite the law.

Here’s some of the cast of the most consequential workplace tribunal in modern Britain.Image 1. Sandie Peggie – The Whistleblower Nurse
30 years in A&E.
Suspended after objecting to a male-bodied doctor in the women’s changing room.
Claims sex-based belief, harassment and whistleblowing protection.
Was she punished for prejudice - or punished for honesty?Image
Jul 11 12 tweets 6 min read
🧵The Cringe Countdown – Top 10 Most EDI-Obsessed Police Forces in the UK 🇬🇧🚨
Policing, but make it HR.

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Policing used to be about catching criminals.
Now it’s rainbow patrol cars, TikTok dances and HR-approved pronoun badges.
Here’s the Cringe Countdown: the 10 UK police forces most committed to fighting crime... against feelings. 🧵Image 2/
🔟 @PoliceServiceNI – The Wrap Patrol

PSNI unveiled a rainbow squad car for Belfast Pride so bold it could double as a RuPaul tour bus.
Visibility? Maximum. Deterrence? Minimal.
Still, great photo op.

belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/northern-…
Jul 10 11 tweets 3 min read
1/🧵The @GoodLawProject receives much applause from the legally adjacent; it is time for a colder appraisal. Its litigation record is poor; its public representations are selective; its founder cultivates notoriety rather than trust. Let us begin.👇 Image 2/ GLP claims a 45% win rate. This includes cases it did not bring, including Miller (2016). A forensic audit by Labour Pains identified just 8 genuine wins in 49 cases - a strike rate of 16%. A spreadsheet of failure.
🔗 labourpainsblog.com/2022/12/05/goo…
Jul 9 11 tweets 3 min read
Ever wonder where gender ideology actually came from?
Not TikTok. Not Reddit.
Academia.
And one philosopher in particular mechanised it: Judith Butler.

The architect of the belief that sex is fiction, womanhood is theatre and identity is a script.👇Image Let’s begin with the foundation:
Butler claims gender isn’t something you are; it’s something you do.
Not truth and most certainly not biology. A socially rehearsed routine, in fact.Image
Jul 7 12 tweets 5 min read
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Ever wonder why your GP, BBC and local HR suddenly talk of ‘gender identity’?
Not chance. It’s a blueprint.
This thread digs into how euphemisms were strategically embedded into everyday British language.
👇Image 1. Judith Butler, Gender Trouble (1990)

“There is no gender identity behind the expressions of gender… identity is performatively constituted.”

This wasn’t just ivory tower babble.

It seeded the idea that gender is something you do; not something you are.

By the 2000s, this theory was being quietly smuggled into policy.Image
Jul 6 12 tweets 5 min read
🧵 Thread: How Disney Traded Brand Equity for Trans Ideology

This is how Disney - once the most trusted family entertainment brand - sacrificed its equity for ideology.
Not through films.
Through HR. Through policy. Through training.
All while claiming it was “just being kind.”👇Image 2/ 2005 to 2010: The shift began quietly

Every year since 2007, Disney has hit 100% on the Human Rights Campaign Corporate Equality Index -thanks to gender identity protections and transition -related healthcare benefits for employees.

thewaltdisneycompany.com/disney-earns-p…
Jul 6 11 tweets 4 min read
🧵 Thread: How @BBC Became a National Vector for Gender Ideology (2005–2025)

1/ For two decades, @BBC hasn’t just reported on gender ideology; it has amplified and normalised it. This thread outlines how one of the most influential institutions in the UK adopted a belief system that remains legally and scientifically contested.Image 2/ 2005–2010: The Drift Begins

Following the Gender Recognition Act, the BBC began shifting its editorial tone. By 2010, its own diversity reports used activist terms like “gender identity” and “assigned at birth” - introduced without legal or scientific grounding.
👇 downloads.bbc.co.uk/aboutthebbc/in…Image