I chased a man out of the changing rooms ----

Yes. They are awful. But have you heard of availability bias?

It's not just a safety issue. It's about privacy and dignity too. If I have to talk to the M&S assistant in the fitting room about the fit of bras I'm trying on, cupsize etc, I don't mind if the other women in the changing room can hear. We've all got boobs.

I do NOT want to talk about the size and shape of my boobs and how they fit and look in bras in the hearing of any man other than possibly my DH. I don't want to do it in the hearing of men I know to be lovely like my FIL, my friend's husband or my DS's best mate. I certainly don't want to do in the hearing of a man I don't know who may be getting off on it.

@RicksTheHunk

no offence to your dad but I feel more driven to protect the feelings and sensitivities of women than your dad

@RicksTheHunk

no offence to your dad but I feel more driven to protect the feelings and sensitivities of your dad

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/unisex-changing-rooms-put-women-in-danger-8lwbp8kgk#:~:text=Unisex%20changing%20rooms%20are%20more,less%20than%20half%20the%20total.

I know women who don't go swimming any more because of mixed sex changing rooms and I don't think they are hysterical at all.

The situation with a disabled woman needing help to try on clothes could surely be accommodated with the help of a sales assistant. Making changing rooms mixed sex seems an extreme solution to me.

Have you read the Primark articles? They aren’t locked cubicles.

Spy cams in locked cubicles is resulting in unsuspecting women turning up on porn sites.

police officer sticking a phone under a cubicle wall.

these are meant to be private safe spaces.

@GCWorkNightmare there are barriers - locked cubicles. Shall we ban men from swimming pools too? The beach?

@user65754 we don’t have to make it easier for them though!

Come on in perverts. Women in various stages of undress are all yours with no barriers. Enjoy!

The only type of mixed-sex changing room I ever used to encounter was in shops where they did not have space for a fitting room, and so only had one cubicle, perhaps two. Never did I go anywhere with multiple cubicles designated as for both sexes.

That's because voyeurism has been a known fetish for centuries, and management took it as read that they should not facilitate voyeurs to target their customers.

I’m actually interested to hear all sides but some posters are coming across as hysterical. Mixed swimming changing has ever been thus. ‘chasing’ out of a changing room. No you didn’t.
I feel for my poor dad trying to help my mum in M&S nowadays. As for waiting outside for partners to finish shopping, I think you need to get over yourselves.

@NeighbourhoodWatchPotholeDivision This isn't a new phenomenon though, is it? People with voyeuristic tendencies have been committing these crimes for years - they're not suddenly committing them because M&S have changed their policy. I've been flashed on the street, upskirted in the middle of a crowded bar... Wherever these crimes take place, they are clearly wrong and need to be dealt with accordingly.

My point is that unisex changing rooms have existed for a long time and have been used by most of us for many years without question. The man OP was referring to wasn't a voyeur - he was called into a unisex changing room to assist the person he was shopping with.

Another one in Primark.

A CCTV image has been released after a man was seen trying to film two women using a Primark changing room.

The women were left "shaken and distressed" after spotting a mobile phone appearing under the curtains of their cubicle at the store on The Moor in Sheffield, police said.

South Yorkshire Police said the voyeurism incident happened on 18 July 2022.

continues at BBC news

We haven't even got on to the installation of tiny hidden cameras. It's the 21st century now, after all. Mixed-sex changing areas provide easy access for voyeurs who are organised enough to make plans as onerous as "buy spycam and hide it".

I see various posters have stated their ease with mixed-sex cubicles.

You know, when it's mixed-sex, all men are allowed in. When you were a 14 year old girl, would you have trusted every single one of your male classmates not to deliberately brush a curtain aside for a "larf"? I would not, because I was not a fool and I had met them.

Not all boys grow out of that, and the ones that didn't now have camera-phones.

Let us return to the news coverage from last year after an incident in a Primark mixed-sex changing room. This is not a one-off, merely the incident most widely reported. MNers, including me, predicted that men would exploit Primark's new mixed-sex fitting areas like this. No-one listened.

extract

A Met Police officer who was caught secretly filming a woman in a Primark changing room, before being found with indecent images of children, has been given a suspended jail sentence.
Former PC Swaleh Chaudhry, 36, was seen filming a woman as she was getting changed in the clothes shop in Southside Shopping Centre, in Wandsworth, south west London.

^The woman looked down after hearing a “rustling” and found the device pointing up at her from the next cubicle, a court previously heard.
Police were called to the shop just before 5pm on Wednesday 30 March and Chaudhry, who was off-duty, was arrested at the scene and suspended from duty.^

During the course of the investigation, electronic devices belonging to Chaudhry, who was attached to the Met’s Taskforce, were seized and forensically examined.
He was found to be in possession of extreme pornography and indecent images of a child.

Article continues Met PC who filmed woman changing and made indecent images of a child walks free

I can't get worked up about floor to ceiling solid lockable doors in a manned changing area.

The stores with flimsy curtains that don't close fully should absolutely have separate male, female and neutral changing areas. Or invest in proper doors where everyone can feel safe.

Our local M&S has always had one changing room for both men and women, for as long as I can remember, as do the majority of smaller clothing stores. It's never been a problem.

I agree, not very clear. If she was just asking her husband to come into the cubicle for opinions/help I have no problem with it.

Presumably because you only ever expected there to be women in there, who are highly unlikely to want to peep at other women.

Now it’s a free for all for men in lots of places, weirdly a lot of us are concerned enough to boycott the retailers entirely.

"Chased" 😂
Click bait there OP.

"I questioned whether a man should enter a changing room and he voluntarily left."

None of the partitions between the ordinary cubicles reaches the ceiling so I imagine it would be perfectly possible for someone to stand on the bench and peep over to the next cubicle, if they were so inclined
This is the way cubicles have always been though, and in all my 4O odd years I've never not gone in a cubicle to get changed because I'm thinking someone could be peeping over the top.
With that mindset, you'd never do anything "just in case."

My local branch of M&S has fitting rooms on all 3 floors. Each fitting room has one disabled cubicle and those only have curtains, not a lockable door.

None of the partitions between the ordinary cubicles reaches the ceiling so I imagine it would be perfectly possible for someone to stand on the bench and peep over to the next cubicle, if they were so inclined.

See I think these things can be double edged though- what about a young girl out shopping with her dad? I'd rather my dh be with my kid than them go alone into any toilets so at least it's more appropriate for parents with opposite sex children with them to keep them safe. Especially since kids often don't like locking toilet door.

OP said it would be harder if it were a transwoman (man) but we need as women to start speaking up so others will join us.Then it will be easy to chase these men out of our single sex spaces
And laughing publically at these men is very important as it breaks their fantasy and trans euphoria. They can jog right back to the men's where they belong.

My local M&S has one changing room. It is next to the women's underwear and from experience it seems that its women who use it most often but it's not women only. The larger city store has 2 changing rooms, each on a different floor.

So they've decided, now that they welcome men into the women's fitting room, there's no need to provide privacy for either sex. With fewer fitting rooms to staff they can make savings on staff costs.

This wasn't a man trying on underwear (it would have made no difference to me). It was a man joining his partner so he could view her 'outfit'.

Just as I don't care how the man identifies, I don't care why he was in there. Men should stay out of spaces where women may be undressed.

The only exception to this would be if a disabled woman needed her male partner's support. In which case the courteous thing to do would be to let the other women using the space know that he is there, and for him to be as discreet as possible.

Well done

I kinda feel like OP's intent with her post has been entirely missed by a fair few posters here tbh?

The point and question for others was about how easy it felt to call out that a man shouldn't be in there when it was just a man, "No harm done".
But then in contrast how she imagines she would have felt "far from able to speak out" had this man identified as a woman.

The only difference here in being able to speak vs feeling unable to speak is how the man identifies.

Maybe I'm wrong, but I think that was the conversation OP was trying to start more than anything...