GB News sparks outrage as Michelle Dewberry calls out co-star in heated trans row

shut down an activist on who agreed that trans women should be allowed to use women’s changing rooms.

The debate was sparked after a nurse named Sandie Peggie took the Fife Health Board and Dr Beth Upton, who is transgender, to tribunal. The medic complained to NHS Fife and said said Dr Upton should not be allowed to use the women’s changing room at Victoria Hospital in Kirkcaldy.

The nurse had left the room on two occasions where she encountered Dr Upton, before the pair exchanged words during a third encounter in December 2023.

On GB News, Dewberry was joined by LGBTQ+ activist Peter Tatchell, who believes the two could have come to some sort of compromise.

He said: “I think there’s no doubt that a trans woman should not expose their genitals in a female changing area or be in close proximity to other women.

“They should preferably be in a private, locked cubicle, where they can change in privacy and where they, nor anyone else will be offended or hurt. That would be the solution that I would propose.”

Dewberry explained: “Many biological women, it’s very simple, they don’t want to have to get undressed in front of a biological male. Whether you’re negotiating about whether or not you see their genitalia is quite frankly, with respect, a bit weird.

“They just don’t want to be in that intimate environment with a male, which I think is perfectly reasonable.”

Sharing his own experience with transgender women who he knows personally that use female changing rooms, Tatchell claimed they change in private cubicles and go to “extreme lengths” to ensure that no genitalia is visible to anyone else in the changing room.

“That to me would be a compromise,” Tatchell said. The 73-year-old explained he is aware that not everyone would accept that, adding: “But that is how most trans women deport themselves, with extreme sensitivity towards the feelings of women in those changing rooms.

“They don’t do things that would cause those women offence.”

Tatchell recounted the conversations he’s had with his transgender friends, who said they have never experienced an issue using female changing rooms.

Dewberry hit back: “But if I was in the common area of a female changing room and I was mid-change and a biological male exited into my space because he’s finished getting dressed, I would be uncomfortable with that.”

She went on to suggest that having a separate space in male changing rooms might be “more appropriate” for them.

The debate sparked outrage among viewers, with one writing: “They can go into a cubicle in the men’s changing room then. How’s that for a compromise. Women don’t want them there, in any way shape or form.”

Another posted: “Why are you asking a man how women feel about having cross dressing men in our spaces?”

A third declared: “There is NO compromising when it comes to sex based spaces.”