To think we should all boycott John Lewis until they respect their female employees

[Lovelyview]

https://grahamlinehan.substack.com/p/resignation-letter-from-a-john-lewis

This is a letter from a female employee of John Lewis's Cheadle branch. John Lewis told its female employees that they have to share toilets and locker rooms with trans identifying men. The employee says this is having a terrible effect especially on colleagues who have experienced trauma relating to men or who have religious reasons to not want to share a space with someone who is the opposite sex.

Oh I see. Thank you. It's not a term I like much in either direction.

The deletion of posts is ridiculous.

You’d think a site for women would support women.

You would think so.
But sadly, it seems as though MNHQ has been caught up in the current protection of fantasies and fetishes.

It’s depressing but eventually reality will prevail.

No, I agree

I'd like to encourage everyone who's engaged with this thread to watch the new transwidows film. It's beautifully filmed. The link is in the OP of the thread below.

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5151159-premiere-of-trans-widows-film-on-friday-30th-aug

Transwidows and children of transitioners are groups of people who are also excluded from shops that centre the wants of transwomen to enter women's spaces over the needs of everyone else. Even when third 'gender neutral / mixed sex' spaces plus truly single sex spaces are an option that would include all groups.

I note that all an abusive man has to do is say 'I identify as a woman' and in JL he can follow his abused victim into the toilets. It used to be the case that these were spaces abused women had some breathing space because you could call out a male entering without being accused of being a bigot and being reported for wrongthink.

Well said 👏

Didn't M&S have a transwomen working in the women's underwear department a few years ago.

Yes.

That isn't fair - MN has been one of the few places that you could actually talk about this stuff. As well as the Times, to some extent.

For myself, I would rather be deleted for voicing opinions about women/ childrens rights than consistently pushing to get men into womens spaces.

I wonder WHY some men are determined to get in knowing it will upset women and children?

Is it:
A power trip?
A"win"?
Jealousy?
Curiosity?
Never got told NO by their mothers when growing up?

What is it exactly?

Imagine being a man and spending your days upsetting women by constantly saying we're going to come into your toilets.

The men I know think this is weird.

Same here. The misogynist apologist men really stand out as not giving a shit about women and girls. It's not the majority view in this country that men should be accessing women only spaces, whichever way you slice it.

We’re talking about trans women. Who are women. Which is why we’re not answering questions about men’s feelings.

They're not women in any sense. Male people cannot be women. Women are female. That's just what the term means, an adult female human being. Gender identity ideology is a quasi religious belief system. You are free to hold whatever implausible beliefs you like. You're not free to force others who do not share them to validate them. Women's facilities are for the benefit, privacy, dignity, safety of female people, not male ones.

What is going on at a societal level? Well, gender identity ideology doesn't make sense, and everyone knows that. But predictably some males and their supporters are seeing how far they can push it, for a whole host of reasons. And the reason they are succeeding to the extent that they are is due to sexism and misogyny. Who cares what many most women feel, after all? Like JK Rowling, I've never seen misogyny as clearly as I do through this issue.

And I would caution women to in general beware of any man, of any gender identity, who wants to have his say on what rights women should be allowed to have. The idea that misogyny is confined to the political right wing is a very naive one.

From the letter.

Married, male colleagues, with full male genitalia, not transitioning to female, who live as husbands at home but choose to dress as women at work, assuming female names, and expecting full access to toilettes and locker rooms which were previously female-only employee safe spaces. This regardless and without one moment of thought or consideration for any negative effects and consequences on their female colleagues.
Female colleagues who I know to be triggered, caused anxiety and mental distress by these men’s presence in previously safe female spaces.
Female colleagues who live in fear of dismissal if they speak out. So just like home they put up and shut up and acquiesce to the demands of men.

Why are these women not worthy of consideration exactly? I think it tells us quite a lot about the nature of gender identity ideology.

I think it's just selfishness. They know they will get funny looks and possibly judgement in the men's. Maybe they will in the women's too, but of course it's far less threatening.

Maybe for some; but I don't think all. I think there are a range of reasons. All of them disrespectful to women and girls.

It tells us all we really need to know. It is about valuing male people above female people. As more of society understands the discrimination against female people that is the outcome of policies such as this, the less people will accept this.

A solution could have been found that did not require any person to be harmed. A solution could have been found that didn’t require staff to comply with someone’s philisophical belief or political activism as being material reality.

A solution could have been found that did not require any person to be harmed. A solution could have been found that didn’t require staff to comply with someone’s philisophical belief or political activism as being material reality.

Disbelievers cannot be tolerated.

"trans women don’t offend at the same rate as men, no, trans women in women’s loos don’t endanger women, no, single sex loos would not make women safer - quite the opposite"

This post is remarkable.

Please post the evidence that "trans women don’t offend at the same rate as men'. Actually, scrap that. For an adequate safeguarding risk assessment, for that group of males to have been granted access into the female single sex spaces, the correct comparator is that that group of male people commit sex and violent crime at the same rate as all female people in the UK.

Please dadjoke, you have been in these discussions for a very long time now. You should have these statistics at hand, or you should have studies that show this.

"trans women in women’s loos don’t endanger women"

There has been incidents already where including male people in female people's 'loos' has indeed endangered female people. And plenty where they have been harmed by this group accessing female people's 'loos'. Privacy and dignity do matter as well. As does female people excluding themselves from public toilets, leading to exclusion from public life.

"single sex loos would not make women safer"

Please do give details how including male people with gender identities in female single sex loos makes female people 'safer'? This is a logical fallacy. Because if those male people are so targeted in life, then by that logic, including them in female single sex toilets will just add to the risk for female people. After all, aren't we being told constantly that abusers will just 'walk right in'.

But I am all for seeing your reasons for this remarkable statement. Please clarify with details so we can understand.

Here are some places to start with that evidence that this group of male people commit sex crime and violence crime at the same rate as female people so you can make that correct comparison.

Here you go, someone worked it out using the census data too.

There are 48,000 transwomen.

Of that 30.4 million women, 125 are currently incarcerated as serious sex offenders.
1 in 243,000 Of the 48,000 transwomen, 82 are currently incarcerated as serious sex offenders.

1 in every 585.

https://x.com/mar2vickers/status/1611484662093828127

And here you go, this was presented to parliament and I don't believe anyone has ever shown the information to be false.

https://committees.parliament.uk/writtenevidence/18973/pdf/

Ministry of Justice 2020 Data

The question of whether transwomen match male or female patterns of criminality is specifically addressed by the 2020 FOI referenced by Fair Play For Women (who have submitted evidence to the Committee). This is first time there has been official data to compare the rate of sex offending in 3 different groups. Men vs women vs transwomen. The hyperlinks below link to the FOI spreadsheet.

MOJ stats show 76 of the 129 male-born prisoners identifying as transgender (not counting any with GRCs) have at least 1 conviction of sexual offence. This includes 36 convictions for rape and 10 for attempted rape. These are clearly male type crimes (rape is defined as penetration with a penis).
Here is the number compared with figures for sex offending rates in men and women over the same period.

Comparisons of official MOJ statistics from March / April 2019 (most recent official count of transgender prisoners):

76 sex offenders out of 129 transwomen = 58.9%
125 sex offenders out of 3812 women in prison = 3.3% 13234 sex offenders out of 78781 men in prison = 16.8%

and here

Michael Biggs, ‘The Transition from Sex to Gender in English Prisons: Human Rights and Queer Theory’, SocArXiv, 17 May 2020

https://osf.io/preprints/socarxiv/43f2t

I am looking forward to someone posting the evidence that this group of male people should be treated any differently for safeguarding purposes for the safety of female people than ANY OTHER MALE PERSON.

In fact, I would welcome someone posting the evidence that a male person at any stage of their transition has the same or lower risk of committing a violent or sex crime as ANY OTHER FEMALE PERSON. And if you cannot post this evidence, why do you believe that this group of male people should be accessing ANY female single sex space.

And it is not just about safety. It is also about privacy and dignity as I and many others have said.

Male people have form for using female people as resources for their own needs of validation, acceptance etc. Not just in prison but this can be extrapolated to be the case everywhere.

https://discovery.dundee.ac.uk/en/publications/she-was-just-like-a-lassie-analysing-the-views-of-cis-women-in-cu

And while we are on the topics of 'loos'.

Just a reminder that toilets are there for the many unique needs of female people, needed because of their female body.

No male can ever experience life as a woman. They can only ever experience life as a male person who believes they are a woman.

Even when they 'act' like a woman, they are acting as they believe a 'woman' should act. Which is fucking misogynistic!

Even if they are treated 'as a woman' by some people, they are being treated as a 'male who presents as a woman and believes they are a woman'. Because their every reaction is based on that. Not on them being female in any way.

The only way a person can experience life as a woman, is to have a female body, formed around the production of large gametes, even if it doesn't produce those and to navigate their life based on the decisions they and society makes that revolve around them having that body.

A male can conceptualise what it might be like to be a female, but that is all it ever is. They may do it because they don't feel they fit into how they conceptualise how a male person interacts with the world (ie. their own stereotypes around being male) or they do it because they want to be seen as a female (using their own stereotypes of how a female navigates life).

How can the material reality be any different? This is why someone's gender is only based on someone's philosophical belief. And philosophical beliefs are fine for people to hold, but not one person in the UK has to comply with another's philosophical belief.

Using single sex spaces should never have been about someone’s philosophical belief that they are male or female.

If you choose to share a male person’s philosophical belief that they are somehow a female with the same needs as female people, that is just your belief.

It is fine that you have it.

No one else needs to comply with a belief that cannot be backed with credible evidence in anyway.

And of course, it is important to note that this is not just toilets, it is changing rooms as well.

These threads always focus on toilets as it's easier to handwave away women's objections.

Good for JL recognising trans women are women. If any employees have trauma to such an extent they can't use a toilet that may also be used by a trans woman (which would rule out shared disabled loos for starters) and are unable to be alone in a room with a male without exacerbating trauma then they need to see their GP ASAP to explore mental health treatment and be given workplace adjustments in the meantime. The solution is not to try and impose your own narrow view of gender and sex on others, who have every right to use the facilities that align with their own gender.

If JL expected trans women to be excluded from women-only spaces because of the small number of cis women who have an issue with it would be bigoted in the extreme.

I don't usually shop there but I might have a browse next time I'm nearby and start getting my cosmetics from there rather than the usual shops I frequent :)

This is great!!!!

So traumatised female people need to reframe their trauma, get the fuck over it and shut the fuck up, get help for their ‘mental health’. And male people should just have their philosophic belief demands complied with, in case they feel unhappy….

Well done in capturing the inherent discrimination against female people so well in your post.

Thank you!

Apologies if I have missed it, but has this been verified?