M&S changing rooms

Your androgynous women look like women. It's easy. Very easy.

The same way as it was handled for decades beforwe, smart cookie.😊

I don't believe that either. She looks like a woman.

My mum had a similar short hair style her whole adult life. She had a slim androgynous figure, rarely wore make up and, unless she was going out, wore fairly unisex clothing.

Not a single person ever mistook her for a man. Ever. Because she was obviously still a woman.

I was often mistaken for a boy as a child - by adults and other children. I had short hair and was often dressed the same as my younger brother. Even my own children looked at photos of my brother and me when we were younger and asked who the boy in all the photos with Uncle Mark was! 😁

When I was about 6, some kids on holiday asked me what sex I was. I didn't understand the question and an older girl told me that, if i was ever asked that again, i should tell them I'm a girl. I remember that I still didn't understand the question or the answer particularly! But I was asked again.

However, once I'd been through puberty, not a single person has ever questioned my sex. Even when I 'dressed like a boy' through my teens. Because it was fucking obvious I was a girl.

People generally don't go around accusing women with short hair of being male, or the pixie cut would have fallen out of favour a long time ago!

Agreed.

I did once see someone doing a double-take when I dropped a girl off at a women's refuge - I'm tall, had short hair and was wearing trousers and a puffed jacket.

Once I reached the door of the refuge, the person concerned visibly relaxed. (For obvious reasons, the refuge had a females only rule.)

I don’t believe her honestly. She clearly looks like a women. Having short hair and not wearing make up does not make someone a man.

Who are these people 'regularly' harassing Kate Osborne? They must have vision issues. She is clearly a woman, I can't see how there'd be any ambiguity at all.

One of the women who regularly gets harassed for using female toilets was Kate Osborne, MP for Jarrow & Gateshead East. She spoke about it in parliament this week.

If you think the women who already struggle to use the correct loo in peace, are the sorts of women who are going to attempt to groll
others about whether they’re in the right place, you’ve lost your mind

Respectfully I disagree, she was my daughter’s next door neighbour, on an army base. In a relationship with a guy from the army. I can GUARANTEE you if those guys had known from the start, they’d have said.

Mmnnn - EHRC interim guidance kiboshes this I think. If the space was intended for women but they've the removed the sign in an attempt to gender neutralise it - that won't do.

Definitely implied and lulls you into a false sense of security

Looked at my local store - changing room has images of women at entrance and is in women's section of store but does not indicate it is for women. Just says Fitting Room. Same for the men's - images of men at entrance.

Don't know about lingerie section changing room. Suspect changing rooms are mixed sex despite mixed message.

Have you had a response to your email yet?

I hope that you are right.

With a fair few it may just be a lot of talk but no trousers (no pun intended). Posting angrily on Twitter doesn’t necessarily mean you’re going to be so ballsy (no pun intended) go ahead and do it.

Fair point!

Wouldn't it be nice if we could now just think that now that the law has been clarified, that any male who doesn't have ill intent towards women and children would simply keep out of the single sex spaces for female people? Just like people did before there was this paradigm shift forced by powerful lobby groups such as Stonewall.

Apparently, this expectation is too much from looking at the reaction to the judgement.

There’s a lot of talk about who is going to police it, has anyone mentioned “genital inspections” yet?
Maybe some brave women will say something but half of Mumsnet are too frightened to open their own front doors so they’re probably not going to suddenly start asserting themselves in public loos. Oh but apparently there’s thousands of very tall muscular women with deep voices (who no one ever mentioned up until the last week) so maybe those women will be brave enough?

I think the wider point though is if there is an incident or even just an accusation of something nefarious then what would the TW’s defence be as to why they’re in the ladies loo?

It's genetic. Women have evolved to successfully spot any male in their midst. Either as a potential mate or as a potentially predator.

Our brains are very basic on some levels.

qandatime

I think many will just observe the law tbh.

I know we have seen the protest and behaviours over the weekend in Parliament Square but I suspect people will be far less 'brave' about flouting the law individually because they know they can now be turned away.

I work for a huge retail chain and I’m going to interested to see how this will be rolled out. In the store I work for we have female and male changing rooms, I think most stores will now just make all of their changing rooms a unisex area. Stores like my local H&M and Primark already do this. As things stand in my workplace currently we are advised to point men to the cubicles to the left and women to the right. With Trans people we just advise them to pick an empty cubicle of their choice. Nobody has raised an issue with this, I also don’t have a problem with this because the doors can lock and I feel safe. I do have an issue with trans women using women’s toilets/changing rooms and rape crisis centres. I feel there should be a third space provided.
I do wonder how it will be enforced though, I would have no issue telling a trans woman to leave a female only area but some of the people I work with and who manage the fitting rooms are 16 years old. It’s unfair to put that on their shoulders.

I've noticed that if there is a trans actor in a tv show that I see this much quicker than dh does. Perhaps women are better at spotting something being off in some way than men? Or perhaps it's just down to individual attentiveness? Though I can see why women would need the ability to detect males more than males would.

It really isn’t that’s the point. If you can’t tell then that’s fine but most people can. Whether they say anything and confront is another matter

Then you must be staggeringly unobservant.

We are genetically hard wired to detect the hundreds of micro mannerisms that are different between men and women.

Even tiny children can tell the difference with almost 100% accuracy.

Seeing someone on the telly and saying 'I'd know they were trans', is like having the answer sheet to a quiz though. In real life there are plenty of people you would have no idea about. I knew my daughters next door neighbour for 2 years before finding out she was a transwoman.

Wow. That is very clear.

At last.