M&S Colchester claim mixed changing is ‘completely safe’ for women.

We only see a bit of the interaction. Obviously the bit that does him no favours.

It is sad how people are happy to excuse shitty tactics like this there really is no defence here.

The threat isn't a hypothetical prediction either; it is an established pattern. We already have high-profile court convictions, and police appeals from voyeurism incidents inside Primark changing rooms, including a case where a man was prosecuted for sticking his phone under the partitions to film women. It is a proven safeguarding risk. When Marks and Spencer and other retailers choose to operate unisex-by-stealth policies, they are actively ignoring these real-world crimes. They remove the basic visual boundaries that allow women to spot danger, and they make it impossible for staff to challenge a man hanging around the cubicles or those men literally using them, until it is already too late.

Even if you have the separate women and men's changing rooms, no company can say it is 100% completely safe, just safer. Boys being targeted by predatory men, for example.

But I haven't made any comment on whether I think mixed spaces should exist.

Maybe. Maybe not.

Individuals have and still are keeping these discriminatory policies in place and demonising women who speak up.

Those individuals will have to put their money where their mouths are - and that might mean their beliefs being made public sometimes when they don’t expect that. Just like GC people have feared in the past.

The filming started part way through the conversation when the employee had already been recalcitrant. The filming started to record his poor attitude. He wasn’t being entrapped

The filmed employee clearly agreed with the policy - at no point did he say you make a good point or i sympathise. Or I can see your POV. He said leave the shop - which is difficult to interpret in any other way than: we don’t want your type as a customer.

On the other hand I agree that filming someone is an aggressive move - and maybe it’s not what I’d do, but I’m not going to criticise this women for having done it. What I would say is that the employee missed a trick. She isn’t entitled to film him on private property and as store staff he could call security. Only in the public realm i think you can be filmed and not expect privacy? So he could have asked her to stop filming and said that M&S might take a dim view of that material going online, especially if any monetisation is involved.

Instead he walked off and suggested she leave the store - it’s his reaction and he should own it. He’s been seen to abide by M&S policy and he may get a few comments on social media but he’s unlikely to face any death threats or lose his job like the person filming might?

Different people will look at this same clip in different ways.

When I watched it I was struck by how he chose to walk away rather than answer a seemingly reasonable question. She only raises her voice as he’s walking off/moving further away.

Yes that one guy has been made a bit uncomfortable but he’s not lost his job and he’s been seen to follow M&S policy. He obviously agreed with the policy and decided that the woman filming wasnt a worthy customer.

His actions tell us all we need to know about M&S’ attitude towards women.

I’d stopped buying clothes there a while ago over this but it looks like I’ll need to avoid the food now too unfortunately

I'm not sure there's much point in pulling the GC side up on 'shitty tactics' given the absolute avalanche of such tactics on the TRA side.

In an ideal world, no she shouldn't have done it like that, but we certainly aren't living in an ideal world. I don't have too much sympathy for this man, he was terrible dismissive towards women.

I hope M&S take note. Their staff shouldn't have to go to bat for such awful policies.

Yes but it is more nuance than that and you know it. This was a shitty tactic and does nothing to help women's right being respected. And if you can't see that you are part of the problem.

Replying because you seem to have misunderstood, although it was a very short paragraph. Centring men by making public spaces mixed sex, which discriminates against women because of their specific needs.

This narrative is so tired. “Centring men” because I don’t think employees should be filmed and harassed at work?

I’ve been consistent from the start: if people disagree with a company policy, they should absolutely complain, campaign, boycott, contact head office, protest outside corporate offices if they want. Direct it at the people making the decisions.

What I don’t agree with is targeting a random shop floor employee who has zero control over company policy and plastering him online as a stand in villain.

That isn’t 'fighting for women’s rights', it’s misdirected anger. And if a man followed a female employee around filming her at work over a policy she didn’t create, people would rightly call it intimidation.

The public is already with women's rights being respected. It's M&S that's out of touch.

Perhaps he could reframe his trauma?

You have to take the public with you on a cause you can see this from the history of social change. Tactics like this against a shop worker will not do that. And patronising other women who have a different view to you isn't going to help either...

It might but that still does not excuse the shitty way in which he has been treated. Two wrongs don't make a right.

Cant they just cater to all - at least in the largest stores? Why not keep the changing room in lingerie as female sex only and have the general fitting rooms as mixed sex. They need to ensure that signage is clear.

Trying to be all things to all men ("men" in its former meaning of "humans").

Trying to appear, for the majority of their customers who want them, as though they have single sex fitting rooms. But still pandering to genderists by relying on "generally allow[ing] people to use the fitting room they prefer". And no doubt claiming, wide-eyed, that the words men/women in brackets refer merely to the womenswear and menswear departments.

💯

And Sex Matters getting involved at the beginning of it. M and S bosses need to pull up their full briefs, they're going to need all the support they can get.

And yet they still promote they have:
Fitting Rooms (men) and Fitting Rooms (women)

If this was not true then they could easily update their online store guides. It looks like they want to have their cake and eat it.

“there is nothing you can say…"
Why ask me a question to engage when you have already announced your mind is closed?

Women campaigned and fought for single-sex spaces in order to be able to take part in public life. I will leave you to continue centring men.

Nonsense. Plenty of companies make stupid decisions they live to regret.

I expect the pandering to men (and let's be clear, pandering to a subset of men with very dubious intentions) will ultimately result in lawsuits coming their way. Bring it on.

Their "pandering to men" (presumably by providing unisex changing facilities) was a predictable and predicted consequence of the AWS judgment.

M&S's policy of not having single sex fitting rooms predates the AWS judgement by a long way. Below is a reply to a, by then, former customer in 2022.

"Our fitting rooms consist of individual lockable cubicles, typically managed by a colleague to provide assistance and ensure customers’ privacy. They are located within our womenswear and menswear departments and therefore are mainly used by customers of that gender, however in line with most other retailers we will generally allow people to use the fitting room they prefer, with our colleagues exercising discretion and common sense."

M and S been asked repeatedly to sort their changing room policy out so it does not disadvantage women. They've ignored women.

It was always going to come down to the shop worker. That's on them, their stupid policy, their lack of spine, and transactivism.

Their "pandering to men" (presumably by providing unisex changing facilities) was a predictable and predicted consequence of the AWS judgment. A company the size of m&s will have tested which approach was better for their business.

That the company makes more from food does not negate its share of sales as a clothing retailer.

Lastly, obviously, we are not in ideal world but that circumstance is no reason to upset and bully someone who has no control over the policy of a whole company.

So if many of them still specify sex
segregated changing rooms, they're caught lying and they're going to have to come out, in public, and say well that's not the case any more, all our female changing rooms are changing to mixed sex.

And it's not quite true that that's completely non-discriminatory.

The Supreme Court said that not providing a female only space in certain circumstances could be indirect discrimination towards women.

I can't wait to see the publicising of the reviews of men wanking onto women's knickers and saying they like the little pleat because their cock fits in it nicely.

Very effectively showing that, yes, unequivocally, women do need their own changing room. And yes it is discriminatory not to provide them.

And sure, in an ideal world, no one wants to upset a retail worker, but this is not an ideal world because men who want to access vulnerable women and ejaculate on shop underwear have fucked it right up.

M&S makes less than half its takings from clothes, beauty and homewares compared with food.