It's official, Marks and Spencer have fallen

[MrsSnippyPants]

I know we have 'known' this for a while, but this is now their official response. How many 'inappropriate' incidents will be necessary before they see sense?

#BoycottM&S

Emailed them to close my account. I will NOT put any more money their way - I spent nearly £200 with them last week alone but they really can piss off with this. Fortunately there are plenty of alternatives and not buying their over wrapped in plastic food helps the battle to reduce single use plastic.

Utter fools.

I really hope someone at M&S is reading this thread

but they probably don't care....

and yes I was going to get the beauty calendar this week but will boycot them now

TheHumansAreDefinitelyDead
Think you're right - they don't care, They have made a strategic decision that men demanding access to women's changing rooms are far more powerful (with the bullying Stonewall at their back) than ordinary women and girls wanting to undress without fear of intrusion, hidden cameras etc that go with mixed sex changing rooms.

It's quite deliberate.

I wouldn’t mind quite so much if, after taking this stance, they just labelled all changing rooms ‘mixed sex changing’. But I presume they are still labelled women’s and men’s? Which really says ‘we know people want single sex, we know most people aren’t aware of this issue, so we won’t draw attention to it and then let men in wherever they want’

I would much rather share changing facilities with all men, rather than only the men who have decided they want to go into the women’s.

BickerinBrattle’s excellent post is so powerful because like the Handmaid’s Tale, it all comes from things that have really happened. It’s not anyone’s paranoid fear of what some men (whether they identify as men or not) might do if single sex provisions for women are chucked away.

There’s even a thread on here collecting recent examples of how women and children have been affected by men in these spaces: www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3348290-It-will-never-happen-resource-thread

The thread is called ‘It Will Never Happen’ because that’s what women are told when they voice their concerns about what can happen to them and their kids with changes exactly like this M&S change.
Because the idiots with the power to decide to make everything mixed sex (ie let in any man who wants to get in), when women say they’ve been threatened or harmed by that, say ‘Oh but that never happens!’ And then do nothing about it.
They only want to please men. Or not anger men. They absolutely don’t care what happens to girls and women and boys that use women’s facilities. It’s shocking but it’s true.

Also another example: UK rapists being let into our women’s prisons to live in there in with the women, unsurprisingly the women got attacked:

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/3357845-To-think-a-rapist-shouldnt-be-in-a-womens-prision-to-start-with

Everyone is welcome to wear whatever they like and think of themselves however they want, but trying to force the rest of society to say that these feeling mean that someone really is a woman, unfortunately this then brings in a clash with the rights of all women.

Because if anyone who says so must legally now be treated as a woman, it means there are no longer able to be any environments without men present (ie without anyone with a penis being there).
All women know what that might mean for them. Our rights matter too.

That’s a fairly mealy-mouthed article TBH. “Feminist campaigner” “illegal to discriminate on grounds of gender reassignment” - reinforcing the image that I think a lot of the general public has which is of fully-transitioned transsexuals, and no mention that it’s also illegal to discriminate on the grounds of sex, and that it’s only me hating feminazi types who would object.

*MEN hating FFS. Thats two posts in a row where my autocorrect has developed a megalomaniac streak.

These lockable cubicles - ok for people in wheelchair users, people with arthritis in their hands (fiddle locks) or mobility issues, mums with prams and little kids, what about the agoraphobics?

‘Inclusive’ my backside. I find when companies, venues and organisations say that they don’t actually mean it.

M.and S do terrible bra fittings anyway. I was in the wrong size and miserable for years until I switched to John Lewis and Bravissimo. I know this isn't the point but if this means more women switch to shops which provide properly fitting bras it will be a win for women.

I read these threads regarding women's spaces being taken over and the theme throughout is women having to justify why they don't want men in women's spaces and TW are men no matter how much some might wish to pretend otherwise. So many posters present evidence of unwanted behaviours and actual incidents where women have been the targets of harassment and been made fearful or been hurt by the presence of men. We are forced to justify strenuously and present evidence for why we feel the way we do. I want to say that for me I don't care how harmless and well meaning the majority of TW might be. I don't. It's irrelevant to me. The fact is they are men and men never belong in women's spaces and that's enough. We shouldn't have to justify not wanting to share women's space with men. Most of us don't want to and that should be the end of it. Three spaces. Female, Male and Gender Neutral then you choose the one you prefer. Such a simple solution yet seemingly so difficult to achieve.

I'm a woman with a daughter and we DON'T WANT TO SHARE! And that should be enough.

This isn't a surprise to me, my local branch has an obviously trans person usually manning (no pun intended...) the tills but occasionally in the changing rooms, whatever you buy they always comment on it too

It’s hard to understand why M&S would go out of their way to annoy their female customer base but then again only one of their eight executive directors is a woman. Some more middle aged women on their board might help steer the company in the right direction.

The male domination probably explains why their women’s clothes are so poor. It took them years to do anything about the hideous Per Una range, despite there being plenty of threads about it on Mumsnet. Listen to us M&S, we’re a better focus group than your woke misogynist advertising agency and all the other people telling you what you want to hear.

Another retailer to boycott!

My local outlet store went mixed sex a year ago. Emailed m and s . No answer. Havent shopped there ever since.

There’s a phone number for feedback on the back of your till receipt Christmas if they’re making you uncomfortable. Customer service is about serving, not being intrusive.

M&S quietly removed the “men’s” and “women’s” from their fitting rooms signs a while ago. That made me alter my shopping habits.

I’m their typical customer, used them almost exclusively for years as don’t have a lot of time to shop around. These days I may go in to look at the odd cushion.

.@OhHolyJesus

Adding on to your boycott list:

M&S
Flora
Birdseye
Always
Cheeky Wipes
Kellogg's

All Proctor & Gamble products (Always for women hating, Gillette for virtue signalling bad dad ads). This does include some products we have been using for decades like Head & Shoulders and Fairy.

Tesco for the virtue signalling ads for their fake meat products. Indoctrinated child comes home crying from school about meat. Dad (ha ha ) caves immediately with no discussion of health or environmental consequences. Be a vegetarian or vegan after thoughtful consideration and planning proper meals. But not because Tesco wants to sell you some plant based slime at a huge mark up.

Get woke, go broke.

I'll leave this here for those saying "it'll never happen" -

Background: There is an almost complete lack of statistical data on the relationship between gender-identity policies and incidents of sexual violence in bathrooms and change rooms. Using Target stores as a case study, we analyzed 220 media-reported sexual offenses in Target stores from 2003 to August of 2017 to determine the association, if any, between their gender-identity access policy made public in April 2016 and reported sexual offenses in their stores

Results: Sexual incidents increased over the course of the entire timeframe of the media reports. In particular, voyeurism-related offenses (Upskirt and Peeping Tom) increased significantly after the publication of Target’s gender-inclusion policy in April, 2016. The three-season forced-category measurement found a 2.3x increase in the amount of upskirt incidents after the policy, and a 2.9x increase in peeping tom incidents after the policy. In a Poisson regression, using trimesters to control for seasonal variations in offenses, the fold change in rate from the four year pre-policy period to the post-policy period was 3.03 for Upskirt and 3.14 for Peeping Tom. Using a two year pre-policy period, the rate change was 2.16 times for Upskirt and 2.34 times for Peeping Tom

Conclusion: While media-loss remains a limitation in the analysis, the present study supports the theory that sex predators may take opportunities afforded by gender-inclusion policies to perpetrate sexual violence against women in public spaces. No other theory seems to account for the significant and precisely-timed increase seen in the Target reports. Further study would be helpful to compare police reports to media-reported crime and to geographically match Target with similar stores to investigate whether sexual offenses have increased elsewhere

Also M&S, so fucking what if your changing rooms have lockable doors? That doesn’t make any difference.

They’re not self-enclosed floor to ceiling spaces with a mirror inside. They can still be peeped over and under, they are not individually sound proofed so you can’t have a private conversation with a bra fitter in there. If blokes are around you can’t open the door and chat to your friend or see that your baby or child is OK on the pushchair outside. Sometimes we have to leave the door open.

Also the more men get access to women’s changing spaces the more we will find hidden camera devices have been installed.

So M&S I’m perfectly happy with the old-style curtains drawn across, provided its a female environment, monitored by female staff. Fact is I don’t want a strange man anywhere near me when I’m undressing or changing.

Judging by this thread a shed load of women feel the same.

Fact is, single sex changing rooms are already ‘gender neutral’. Women can already express their gender, (ie women can be as ‘feminine’ or ‘masculine’ as they wish to) in the women’s changing rooms.

Men can obviously be as ‘feminine’ or ‘masculine’ as they wish to be in the men’s. If other men won’t let them do that to their satisfaction or do so safely, then that is on MEN to sort out. Male changing room attendants at M&S will soon sort these issues out.

It’s not for women to have to sort out problems caused by men, especially when providing ‘the solution’ to the problem means that women actually just have to take on extra risks from men. Which women were not previously exposed to in a single-sex environment. Sort it out yourselves.

And some more for the "it'll never happen" brigade -

The majority of alleged sexual attacks at Britain’s public swimming pools and sports centres occur in unisex changing rooms, according to data obtained by The Sunday Times
Nine out of ten changing-room sexual complaints relate to incidents in unisex facilities — although they make up less than half of all provision.
Gender-neutral changing is growing as councils seek to cut staff costs and cater to transgender people. But one MP said it was a “magnet” for sex offenders and increased the risk to women and girls

The data emerged four days after Darren Johnson, a serial voyeur, was sentenced to 16 months’ imprisonment after stalking schoolgirls in the unisex changing area of Putney leisure centre in southwest London. Johnson was caught after two 14-year-olds spotted his smartphone poking through a gap from the adjoining cubicle. When police raided his house, they found 150 files of photos taken at the leisure centre. A second voyeur, Anthony Gomes, was caught in the same unisex changing area a few weeks later

Johnson was co-founder of the children’s soft play chain Eddie Catz, where he also filmed his staff and customers via peepholes. His was one of two cases of voyeurism in unisex changing rooms to come up for sentence last week alone

There were 134 complaints of sexual misconduct in sports centre and swimming pool changing rooms last year, councils said in their FoI responses. Of these, 120 related to incidents that took place in unisex changing rooms and 14 to incidents in single-sex changing rooms. As well as voyeurism, offences recorded in unisex facilities included harassment, sexual assault and rape

Is the problem that M&S don't want to provide any spacious, fully enclosed private unisex facilities that are suitable for all, including trans people who may be uncomfortable changing in their sex's facilities? They are trying to accommodate trans on the cheap?

Does anyone work at M&S head office?

I’d love to know the logic!

I’d bet 80% of the customer base is female, and what 2% claiming to be female?

Stupid decision, I usually buy uniform, I won’t be doing anymore.

I always buy mine and my kids’ underwear there, their uniform, sometimes my shoes, bags, coats, have done for years. Tights and socks. Also household food items most weeks because it’s near work to pop in. Oh plus food bits when visiting elderly family because they particularly like M&S food.

I’m not going to be doing that any more until this changes. I’ll be telling all those people why. Sorry M&S.

Not sure if this has been posted but this will be discussed on LBC radio at 0820 today. Jean Hatchet (original twitter poster) will be interview by Nick Ferrari.