Dear Topshop

Look, if you want to appeal to the big wigs, you have to threaten their bottom line, not appeal to their conscience:

Send a copy of this article (or something like it) attached to your letter, saying you found it helpful, and that if their store isn't female friendly, online shopping can be:

www.wikihow.com/Order-Jeans-Online

I'm wondering if any shops actually still have women only fitting rooms and actually enforce it (ie tell a man or crossdresser to take his stuff to the mens). And what about women like me who do get mistaken on first sight quite often, worth some inconvenience for maintaining our private spaces though.

In this case of not putting young women first, its owned by Phil Green. Go figure.

And that's why I haven't been in since the changing room policy changed.

What will happen is that we'll teach our teenaged daughters, fgs don't use public toilets or changing rooms. Women already learn very young that if you see someone male bodied who you think is likely to be aggressive or dangerous to be around then get the fuck away from them as quickly and quietly as you can. It will be only a matter of time before an assaulted woman hears in court 'but you knew dodgy blokes like to hang around in the women's changing room so why did you go in there?'

It really is a case of women kick off, now, hard and loud and strong, or we accept being driven out of public spaces. By a tiny group who could not give a flying fuck for the reality or the needs of the sex they claim to identify as.

Imagine your teenage daughter meeting this person in the changing room:
www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6536045/Furious-transgender-woman-rages-store-clerk-calls-sir-instead-maam.html

They haven't thought it through, and they're scared of the tantrums and dramas of the TRA lobby. With Topshop it barely took whatzthename ordering them to 'sort it out' and they couldn't sling half the human race under the bus fast enough.

Always reminds me of the relationships board where people are advising a woman with a toxic relative, most usually a MiL, 'stop being the easier/less scary one to upset'.

So strange that businesses want to go down this route. My husband and every other normal bloke I know would hate the thought of going into a changing room that may have young girls in it! It's asking for a complaint to be made against them. Bloody madness! By all means have "gender neutral" changing rooms but they need to be completely separate a bit like the set up for "disabled toilets". Like a completely separate room.

At least up there you're far less likely to encounter crossdressing fetishists, voyeurs or sex pests. Could also use it as a handy opportunity to inform the male men why...

Safest solution, if you ask me. All the low risk men wouldn't dream of invading women's spaces and making them uncomfortable, however they identify (as the man and his partner in the OP illustrates). We'll be better off in the bit where the men who aren't flying endless red flags are.

Good point Shots. When men are put out by women in their changing rooms maybe wheels will start to turn.

I'd be heading up to the male changing rooms (if I somehow had no choice but to shop there).

At least up there you're far less likely to encounter crossdressing fetishists, voyeurs or sex pests. Could also use it as a handy opportunity to inform the male men why...

She also said that they have had men refusing to use the changing rooms upstairs in Topman as they prefer to use the changing rooms where young teenage girls and women go.

No sh*t.

The effects are so far reaching and all for a tiny percentage of people who want to feel validated. How dare they?!

No escape for abused and controlled women when our sex segregated spaces have gone.

What I did not like was the controlling nature of the man who took advantage of the mixed changing rooms to further control his partner and make her feel uncomfortable.

That's what stuck out to me in your post, OP. Not only was an obnoxious bloke controlling a woman in a private space, he was also making the other women and girls uncomfortable. And that's what mixed sex spaces allow: much as transactivists might like to pretend otherwise, it's not all about them.

Timely article from the Indy on invasions of privacy in changing rooms and other private spaces.

www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/women-spy-cameras-hidden-public-places-peeping-toms-a8689626.html

Sorry - juvenile sense of humour attack.

the big wigs just don't give a fuck

Communal changing rooms - OMG they were hell. As a chubby teen who was incredibly private I HATED these and always felt stared at and judged by other girls (who were probably doing nothing of the sort but it is how I felt).

I remember Topshop with no cubicles in the 80s and being stared at by another girl...I didn't go again. I didn't fear for my safety...some teenagers stare and judge others.

Only having curtains is a disgrace! They're useless for privacy when it's only girls and a safety issue with men there.

I remember the dark days when TopShop changing rooms were just a room with mirrored walls. No cubicles at all.

I was a teenager in the 70s and recall that all similar shops had that sort of changing room. As a very self-conscious (fat) teenage girl, I eschewed them completely.

I don’t mind mixed changing rooms if they have doors that close rather than a curtain.
My local Fat Face has a changing room with doors that open straight into the store.

I remember the dark days when TopShop changing rooms were just a room with mirrored walls. No cubicles at all.

The Arcadia Group is owned by Philip Green.

Oh but men will never, ever, make use of self identified access to women's spaces to enjoy perving on women and girls!

The subtext of which is, oh well, men will be men, can't stop them doing it, girls and women probably shouldn't get undressed in public spaces if they don't want to be perved on. Anyway, it's worth a few women and girls suffering if it in some way comforts some poor trans person. Women and girls deserve it anyway 'cos privilege. (Any other shite misogynist arguments I've forgotten?)