My letter/email, shamelessly plagiarised form many of the fantastic responses already posted here.
Feel free to copy mine or copy bits of it. Sending it to M&S this afternoon.
Dear XXXXX
I write to you both as a customer and a shareholder.
I read recently that you have changed your policy on changing rooms. In reply to feminist campaigner Jean Hatchet, who queried a man being present in a female changing room, you stated on Twitter that you“allow customers to use the fitting room they feel comfortable to use in respect of how they identify themselves”.
Given there is evidence that women are more at risk when there are mixed sex changing/fitting rooms, and that 98% of sexual crimes are committed by males, why are you finding it so hard to understand there are real concerns here? Men are more likely to commit sexual crimes in mixed sex facilities, and businesses should take steps to prevent it from happening, not make it easier for them. Why should women just accept this? Why do you think single sex facilities existed in the first place?
www.independent.co.uk/life-style/women/sexual-assault-unisex-changing-rooms-sunday-times-women-risk-a8519086.html
womanmeanssomething.com/1034-2/
Women and girls require safety, dignity, and privacy when in a vulnerable state, e.g. when partly undressed in a changing room.
SAFETY
To be absolutely clear, women are the female sex, determined at conception and observed at birth. Men are the male sex, also determined at conception and observed at birth. Like most people , I do not care how someone 'identifies'; I care what SEX they are, because knowing that allows me to assess how much of a threat they may pose to my safety.
DIGNITY
Are you aware of the large number of men who have sexual fetishes around being in women's private spaces? Who like to masturbate onto toilet seats, onto women's clothing, in the hope that some unsuspecting woman will come into contact with their semen? Sorry to be frank, but women know these things, we know of the thousands of cases of tiny cameras being discovered in toilets and changing rooms, planted by men. Why is giving men easier access to do these things a sensible policy? Can you imagine how these girls and women feel to know that their images have been shared over the internet as pornography for perverted men?
PRIVACY
Not just bodily privacy, but the privacy to discuss with assistants the right kind of nursing bra, post-mastectomy bra, first bra for a girl beginning puberty. Knowing there are only other females around us, maybe overhearing us, tends not to worry us, because we know other women have empathy on those issues. But do I want to discuss any of those issues in the hearing of men I do not know? I do not. Especially as there are men who are sexually aroused by hearing these things discussed, who are even sexually aroused by hearing women urinate in toilets.
As to your assertion that 'everyone else is doing it', well you sound like a teenager who wants to be allowed to go to a party on a school night. It is a ridiculous assertion. Yes, lots of other stores ARE doing this, and women are complaining to them too, and boycotting them.
Center Parcs have managed to reassure their female customers, and provide suitable facilities for people who consider themselves 'transgender'. They are following the law. Why can't you do the same?
You should know men don't want this either. Men are wary of being labelled as peeping toms, creeps, perverts, they don't want to be in enclosed or confined spaces with other people’s children especially little girls. It leaves men open to false accusations.
Exactly what kind of man WANTS to access spaces where women and girls are vulnerable? There are only three reasons: predation, fetish, or validation of their desire to present as a sexual stereotype of a woman.
As you are so keen on inclusion, have I missed your explanation on how this policy includes women of faiths that do allow them to share intimate spaces with men? Or those women who have mental health issues, even disabilities due to male violence? How are you 'including' them?
And what of your female staff who fall into these categories? Are they to be forced to measure men for bras? To help men adjust their underwear for a proper fit? In fact what about ALL your female staff; what training have you provided in challenging inappropriate behaviour?
I think the Chief Executive and his fellow male directors should volunteer to serve the men who want to 'comfortably' try on clothes in the lingerie changing rooms, including measuring up. Let them experience a little bit of life on the shop floor.
The safety, comfort and opinion of women and girls matters. Sometimes the comfort of a small minority of individuals cannot and should not be held in higher regard than that of the majority. Women should not have to compromise our safety, dignity, and privacy to accommodate all.
Finally, I would ask, have you advised your insurers that you are reducing harm prevention measures for girls and women on your premises? That you have increased the risk to girls and women by removing single sex facilities? Because the fact that many customers have made you aware of this risk yet you went out of your way not to mitigate it will surely not play well should a claim for damages occur.
I would really like answers to my questions though I doubt I shall get them. But until you give women and girls the right to single sex changing rooms (a right they have under the Equality Act 2010, and a right YOU have to provide them, because the act allows the utilisation of exemptions to facilitate single sex spaces) I will no longer be a customer, nor will many of my friends and family who do not have the time to write to you, but feel the same way I do.
Yours, An ex-customer, and a shareholder considering her options depending on your response to women's concerns.
P.S
Guess which legally protected characteristic is NOT included in this policy, available on your website? (Page 6, in case you are not familiar with it)
‘Gender’ seems to have been put in there instead of SEX . Have you been lobbied, ‘trained’ or been given ‘legal advice’ that you should do this?
Advice that may have been adopted, like so many others have done, purely on trust - not adopted on basis of legal fact?
corporate.marksandspencer.com/documents/policy-documents/code-of-ethics.pdf