To alert you to the fact that Topshop just changed its policy to let men into the women's changing rooms

[YouStoleTheBowlFromTheRoom]

Been made aware of this today: a 'gender fluid' man having a pop at Topshop because he wasn't allowed to use the women's changing rooms at their Manchester store:

twitter.com/travisalabanza/status/927198660089339904

Topshop have now been quoted as apologising to him, and saying they've changed their policy to get rid of sex-segregated changing rooms altogether.

Another shop to strike off the list. Am I the only one worried this is past the point of no return?

So bored if this entitled shit. That's the reason I won't be found in Top Shop ever again. We haven't even got our full rights as women yet these gender fluid folk and their flying monkeys can't leave us the fuck alone. He's unsafe in the men's - but women can't say they're unsafe around him. Fuck off with that

Travis is an artist, an actor. He is just about to star in a new production of Jubilee, seems he’s off on a press junket tonight for it. All this publicity and articles in the likes of Buzzfeed must be really awkward for him as this might be a big break for him.

There is research to show that people chose their own gender identity as much as they do their sexual orientation or organs. Gender identity is formed by the age of three, caused largely in part by hormones and biochemistry.

Can you link to this research? Genuinely interested in where it comes from. The insinuation appears to be that gender identiy is effectively born into people. I find it hard to believe that its formed by aged 3, given 3 year olds have no concept of gender. And that all evidence shows that most young people who suffer it 'grow out' of gender dysphoria as a rule.

I already only use changing rooms with secure locking cubicles, not really for this reason but for the fact that some women seem to think it's ok for their male partners to come into the women's changing area to help them. This won't make any difference to me (not that I shop at Top shop now anyway).
It's the customers choice really. It's up to us to decide where we spend our money, and if a particular shop doesn't meet our requirements we are free to go elsewhere.

@Datun maybe we could have someone guarding the entry to the changing rooms. Asked what is your favourite colour if you answer "pink" you're allowed into the women's changing rooms, "blue" >>> off to the men's you go. Foolproof

I’m a lesbian and I go in women’s changing rooms all the time...

Erm. Since lesbians are female people, its entirely correct for you to use the womens changing room? Why wouldn't it be?

Unless you are a 'male-lesbian'. Those do not actually exist, given a lesbian is a female attracted to females.

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5051383/Mayfair-s-Savile-Club-bends-150-year-old-men-rule.html

Don't know whether this has been shared, but predictably, it seems that trans-identified men are allowed to keep their membership in men's only clubs.

It's almost as though everyone "knows" they are men when it really counts for something, isn't it?

It would be interesting if men's facilities were changed to gender neutral and the women's remained female only. Something tells me that wouldn't be good enough for someone like Travis. I also don't think many women would want to use the gender neutral room if there was a women only one available.

This whole issue is, to me, almost the biggest assault on women's rights. It saddens me that my teenage Dd now sees no difference between women and men who identify as women. I'll accept them as women when they have female genitalia and not before.

If women were announcing on a large scale that they identify as men and wanted all the faculties that are exclusively male to be gender neutral then there would be uproar.

Thank you Datun I have to say I have seen a lot of your posts on this subject and you put my feelings across on the subject so much better than I could.

I really really don’t want unisex changing as the norm. I don’t feel particularly threatened by the general presence of men but I also want to keep hold of some of our safe spaces! I feel this is a slap in the face to any woman who has suffered abuse.

Equally, (promise I am not jumping on the NAMALT brigade) but I do also think it has the potential to put men in a bit of a vulnerable position also. I know my dp would not be happy trying on clothes with a load of teenage girls running about (when I was a teen, we would change with the doors open and be rubbing in and out of each others cubicles having a look at what each outfit looked like). He just wouldn’t be comfortable with it. Neither would he want to his presence was making any woman feel uncomfortable and unsafe.

*running ^^ we weren’t rubbing the cubicles

Kokeshi123
Transwomen trans activist types are women when they want to play thr victim from the scary men but men when they want all the privileges that having a penis affords them.

They want to be seen as women, but also want to be able to dictate how things go and keep women in their place.

In order to get maximum victim points they now invent terns like gender non binary and transfemme. What amuses me is that normal transmen/women just get on with life with some being all 'look at me'. I've never seen a nonbinary person who hasn't been dressed flamboyantly to shock or provoke discussion and yet thry are perpetually offended by people staring when they wear unicorn leggings, organge crop tops ans a fur coat out shopping.

The article is a bit confusing, given the use of ‘they’ when talking about an individual. But it sounds like it was a group of friends wanting to try on outfits. So this wasn’t one transwoman, trying to pass as a woman who wanted to discreetly use a changing room. It was 3 or 4 loud, flamboyantly dressed, attention-seeking persons who were trying to invade a changing room that they were clearly the wrong sex for.

Personally I think it was all easier before we started using the word gender instead of sex. If gender is a social construct then we can just ditch it. If a man wants to wear dresses, then he can & shouldn’t feel that he has to pretend to be a woman to do it. If someone wants a sex change then they have the hormones & operations and do it properly, then they can use the facilities of their new sex. But the facilities are segregated on sex, not ‘gender’, because gender is becoming a meaningless term.

Going off on a tangent but policies like this will lead to job losses and shop closures because women will just do all their clothes shopping online.

As has been mentioned in this thread already Target in the USA had to reverse their unisex changing room policy because they lost sales and their share price dropped.

If you are on Twitter, please do tweet Topshop, we need to get our voices heard!

OP what you said is EXACTLY how I feel about it.

‘The issue I have, sailorcherries (can't speak for anyone else) is that women-only spaces are being redesignated 1) on the insistence of men 2) against the wishes of many women, who feel like they're not being listened to, and 3) without any wider discussion/debate

The changing rooms this guy tried to access were for women. He was told that, and directed to the men's room. He kicked up a fuss, and now Topshop are declaring all their changing rooms are unisex. Men are eroding women's boundaries - for me, that's a major problem.’

My teen dd loves topshop. She’s at a very body conscious stage and sometimes gets me to fiddle with with curtains on changing rooms, pulling them across to make sure she can’t be seen. Now SHE is going to feel even more self conscious and nervous about changing because there will be men in the women’s changing room. I certainly will be instructing her to steer clear unless she has friends with her and I will be telling friends/family who want to give vouchers for Christmas to NOT buy Topshop ones. I encourage you all to do the same.

To be fair to Travis - Top Shop policy seems to be that you use the CR you feel comfortable with - gender wise. So looks like he was following TS policy and staff overrode that. It’s TS that has to be clear on what the rules are.

Bam You’re right that there’s confusion. However, if you look down the thread on twitter, you’ll see screen grabs of emails from Topshop responding to complaints in the past, and saying that their changing rooms are gender specific.

What that actually means, it’s hard to know, given sex and gender are now used interchangeably 🙄

Either way, they’re saying their policy has changed - to me, that seems to imply that before, there was segregation and now, there isn’t.

The issue I have, sailorcherries (can't speak for anyone else) is that women-only spaces are being redesignated 1) on the insistence of men 2) against the wishes of many women, who feel like they're not being listened to, and 3) without any wider discussion/debate

This ^^^ 100%

I know on the surface it may seem progressive and contemporary to make women’s spaces also trans spaces but delve closer and it actually seems a misogynistic move

Just don’t use the changing rooms then? Buy them then try them on at home?

tinysarah1985 shame no-one suggested that to Travis

I have no issue with this.

TinySarah Ok, assuming I do that (I don’t feel I should have to, given that I’m a woman and Travis isn’t), what do we do in the case of other women’s spaces? Do we just cede female spaces to men whenever they demand it? Isn’t that going back to where we started, when all public space was for men, and women just stayed at home?

And there, right there, is what we can all sense is the basis of all this.

Women, get back in the kitchen. Shut up, go home, AND STAY THERE.

How about we just share the spaces?