AIBU to want to boycott M&S?

[thatdamnwoman]

Marks & Spencer has made its changing rooms unisex because it is striving to be inclusive and it wants everyone to feel comfortable in whichever changing room they want. Which means that a woman like me, who wants to try on clothes in an area where I know I won't encounter men if I step outside the cubicle to see how a garment moves when I walk, is now excluded from M&S.

There's evidence that when facilities are made unisex the number of sexual incidents goes up:

www.independent.co.uk/life-style/women/sexual-assault-unisex-changing-rooms-sunday-times-women-risk-a8519086.html

I think most ordinary men are horrified at the thought of unisex facilities. They're worried that they might cause offence or be mistakenly accused of predatory behaviour. On the other hand the changing rooms will be a magnet for all those men who get a transgressive thrill from going where they shouldn't and being just a few inches away from where a woman's changing her clothing.

I've contacted M&S and they just say they want to be inclusive and if anything happens to anyone in the changing room they'll take appropriate action. But why should anything inappropriate have to happen?

This year we're having guests for four days over Christmas and I would normally be spending at least £200 at M&S. This year I'll shop elsewhere instead. And I won't be buying gifts or clothes or home stuff from them either.

Will anyone join me in a boycott?

And the numbers of men with a female clothes fetish are obviously huge.🙄

No, and neither should the female assistants have to ‘help’ someone who is getting off on their having to be forced to play along with that fetish. They should not be expected to have consented to this by default simply by virtue of working in a shop, in a female fitting room.

@Pinkpeanut27 same! I don’t see all men as perverts either

It’s bullshit dressed up as progress and being open minded.

THIS ^

easy. change in cubicle, come out. show friends. go back in.

But why should we 2020? If only one woman needs/wants to come out semi-dressed to ask an assistant to fetch an item in a different size, why shouldn't she have that right?

And as others have pointed out, the cubicles aren't soundproof - many women don't want to discuss their personal body needs in the hearing of men.

And of course - cameras in the cubicles. Cameras hidden in cubicles, held under the bottoms of cubicles, held over the tops of cubicles . . .

These things may not yet have happened M&S, but they have happened in other sops - why make things easy for perverts? What has happened to safeguarding?

Oops a lot of lady-gender crime is now recorded as crime by women, if not most of it.

Ah yes forgot Fat Face too. Often unmanned in my town. Never been an issue.

oops, my understanding is that it is registered as a female attack if the perpetrator is a self id female.

Hopefully someone can prove otherwise.

All men are not perverts. No one has ever said that on any of these discussions, ever.

But a sizeable contingent are. And they are a direct and proven danger to women and girls.

They do not belong in our spaces.

Predators come in both genders

But predominantly in one sex 2020.

Male.

Not hard to boycott as far as I'm concerned. Nearest store is 40 miles away and gave up ordering online years ago when it became clear that the quality of clothes was lower standard than stuff in Asda, Sainsburys etc.

Supermarkets have unisex changing rooms that are rarely manned.

Check your privilege, V1daw It's screamingly loud.

@Pinkpeanut27 it’s not gender neutrality though, it’s making the women deal with it all in M&S’s case. In answer to your question, my teenage very woke kid is not against the whole trans movement but is quite anxious about the narrative of some trans activists and any self identifying men perhaps seeing her half undressed in a changing room if she is expecting that changing room to be a female space.

Funny how things like this tend to happen in unisex spaces:

www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-essex-48647089

And it's not an isolated incident too.

No a sizeable contingent aren’t.

One thing that puzzles me is that if there are incidences of self-ID transwomen assaulting women in mixed sex changing rooms (or anywhere) then do police have to report it as a crime committed by a woman, because they have self ID’d, and thus skewing stats, or by the person’s actual sex? Or the fact they are self IDing?

They're already skewing the figures oops

If the police insist on allowing people to be called by their preferred gender, then they need another ticky box for "sex as identified at birth"

Privilege due to pointing out that unisex changing rooms are being used up and down the land already.🙄

To all those who think a lockable cubicle is safe - it’s not. You could be pushed in there by a man and he locks the door behind you both, his body blocking the exit. Harder for you to be heard, virtually impossible for you to get out.

Some of you are so naive. In a single sex area he’d have been challenged before he got anywhere near the cubicle.

Mark my words, this is bad news.

V1 not in all cases.

During DDs fitting the assistant talked of developing breasts, breast tissue, nipple.

During my own fittings we've talked about wardrobe malfunctions too.

Can you honestly say it's appropriate for a strange man to overhear this detail?

Any thoughts from you as to why these men can't stay in the lockable cubicle in the area designated for their sex?

Or why the dignity of a fitting assistant doesn't matter?

I think any man who takes advantage of this policy probably does have a fetish, actually.

I thought the stat was 98.4% of sexual crimes against women were by men ?

YANBU OP.

I'm doing the same thing.

The privilege of blissful ignorance, V1person Possibly faux, who knows?

I have never used a unisex changing area in a swimming pool, the ones I have used have always been strictly sex segregated.

I'll repeat what I said on another thread:

Why do single sex spaces exist in the first place?

My rights, privacy, safety and dignity aren't men's to give away.

Lockable cubicles in mixed sex spaces strike me as more dangerous, not less, for the reason above.
Curtains are easier for a voyeur, but not as easy for a man who wants to assault a woman or girl.
The safest way is so clearly single sex.