John Lewis 'allows trans women into bra-fitting rooms' as retailer hit by furious gender row

That is truly disturbing.

There’s one near me in Prestwich. Some years ago, in 2003, a trans identifying male attempted to rape a female assistant in the shop and was imprisoned. Then he was lauded by the Labour Party.
It’s very interesting how the language used by the BBC in reporting this at the time is very different to what you'd see these days.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/manchester/3161209.stm
https://transcrimeuk.com/2017/10/30/karen-lawson/

John Lewis - You are dead to me.

John Lewis, a brand
with a man’s name.
A brand, strong and proud,
A brand, men allowed,
John Lewis, a brand
where men gain,

and women don’t matter.

I'm going to go against the grain here: female staff need to feel safe and if they don't then their employer needs to provide appropriate support for them (a second staff member on hand?) but (especially new/young) trans women may need help with bra fitting just as much as a young woman. If bra fitting is part of the shop's offering then it should be made available to all shoppers with breasts, and the shop should make sure that the staff are protected/supported.
If we are concerned with safety and dignity then it should be made available to all.

In M and S in the city near us a transwoman works on women's clothing. He looks like what he is, a man dressed as a woman, wearing make-up and a woman's wig. It is a ridiculous situation. Can we all decide what we want to be and as long as we wear a uniform with the 'dress-up identity' go to work in that role?
DS2 (5) wants to be a dinosaur - we trailed him round on Saturday with him wearing a dinosaur costume underneath his 9 year old brother's football strip. Perhaps he could get a job at John Lewis or M and S .

On what basis? We have the right to freedom of speech/thought/written word. She has not been abusive or insulting or posted untruths.

Both M&S and JL have hired TW as bra fitters.

Exactly, there were other things about his behaviour which were as a minimum attention seeking so I had clocked him before he approached us.
To be fair I don't know he was measuring anyone, he might just have been working in that dept.

Why the FUCK would a man want a job like that? Just why? Even if they were "genuine" they MUST know that they would be making women and girls extremely uncomfortable in that setting AND that's before even offering to measure them.
I'm sure a lot of people say Yes because they are fearful of the consequences of saying no, so a quick 5 minutes of embarrassment is preferable to being labelled a bigot or a terf.
It's utterly abhorrent.

So now they can not only be permitted to do what 15 years ago a man would have been ARRESTED for doing, they can do it as a job and get PAID to do it.

Fuck this world.

The one I mentioned earlier approached me and Teen DD in the underwear dept and asked if we needed help

Could you ask the ‘woke senior leader’ for an assurance that a John Lewis bra fitter could refuse to serve a trans woman who was making her uncomfortable, without fear of repercussions, @ReadingWorm?

I have to say that, given how they are clearly prioritising the wants of the trans lobby over the safety and dignity of their female staff and customers, I can completely believe that they would discipline any staff member who didn’t feel comfortable fitting a bra on a trans woman.

Ah, I see, so a young nervous, vulnerable girl just getting fitted for her very first bra now has to contend with seeing men parading about in her space in the bra fitting area? Fantastic, and well done to John Lewis for such progressive thinking and their TOTAL disregard for not only grown women, but girls going through one of the big events in their puberty at a highly emotional time in their lives.

Seriously.
Fuck you John Lewis.

And fuck you every man who goes into a female changing room.

Good grief.

I’m torn between feeling like I ought to know this stuff and quite liking my ignorance……

Males with this paraphilia have written that they find it extremely arousing just to put a pair of tights on.

Autogynephelia. Walking around in public in women’s clothes turns them on.

I’m so naive. Why does ‘Kim’ get from walking around JL like that? Is it just being out in public trying to look like a woman?

Exactly.

These men are inevitable, and yes, tedious and gross.

What is not inevitable is their fetishes being celebrated by policy, and women being forced to participate, told not to complain, etc.

@ArabellaScott I'm so tired of these men.

That’s JL off my list of shops and online stores then. Sigh, where to get my new lamps now….

'In John Lewis at Bluewater Again'

In which 'Kim' visits the ladies' toilets, and films himself in mirrors, in the children's department, changing into a 'shorter skirt' at one point.

Surely Bras that are designed to be worn by biological women are very unlikely to fit a transwoman. The ratio from back / shoulder size to cup size would be completely different.

No, no-one's rights trump anyone else's, which is why transwomen should stay out of female fitting rooms.

I think you will find plenty. Just quote anything said about JKRowling, also the writer who lost her job (and became a lorry driver instead) after just liking a JKR tweet etc.

What I said was lowly shop assistants DON’T have the luxury of refusing to serve customers if they are suspicious that they are sexually aroused. Why would I be able to evidence that with a link? We are not talking here about men who have their erections out on full display, we are talking about men who are getting their kicks from making women feel uncomfortable with comments or looks or being in places they are not welcome. I’ve worked with the public for my entire life and it’s just the way of the world that you occasionally get men that you have to deal with whose slightly odd behaviour is probably sexually motivated. It’s never overt enough for you to refuse to serve them and obviously if it’s a man pretending to be female nobody dares say a thing because in today’s trans obsessed culture everyone is scared shitless of being outed as transphobic.