It’s official; Marks and Spencer have fallen, the sequel.......

[MrsSnippyPants]

First thread getting full and and I continue to be interested in responses received to people’s emails and store visits.

Just had my phase 2 email - this is the start

“While I am afraid it is difficult for us to add in a helpful way to our previous comments we have noted your concerns and we will start to process your request for us to delete the personal data we hold on you”

The response seems to be ‘we do have care’. I’m done with them they’ve had time to formulate a response to this issue they just seem to expect it to fizzle out and women to put up with it.

I've written to them and told them that I'm having an M&S-free Christmas this year and will encourage everyone I know to do likewise. Those years we have family to stay I often end up spending £300+ on food alone there.

You don't piss off your prime consumers for the sake of a few noisy gender activists.

Response from Alice

Dear Alice,
You have not responded to a single point in my email.

As a business, we strive to be inclusive and therefore, we allow customers the choice of which fitting room they feel comfortable to use, in respect of how they identify themselves.
I feel comfortable in a changing room for women only. You have excluded me and thousands of other women who feel the same way

This is an approach other retailers and leisure facilities have also adopted.
Completely irrelevant to my complaint. They are also wrong

We understand your concerns
Clearly you do not, as you have not addressed a single one of them

and I want to make it clear that if any customer was to act inappropriately or cause intentional offence, the necessary action would be taken.
Locking the stable door after the horse has bolted. You are failing women by not giving them the protection of a single sex space, you are actively putting women and girls in danger of assault by men. I linked to the evidence

Thank you again for your email.
This is quite clearly sex discrimination. The reason you have single sex changing rooms is to enable women to access services despite their vulnerabilities. By making changing rooms mixed sex you are discriminating against women

Not good enough M&S, nowhere near good enough

I got the same standard reply.

I emailed back.asking how.the men.having 2 changing rooms and the women having none is.inclusive

Thank you, MrsSnippyPants - awaiting the response to my second and more detailed email but this will really help sharpen up my third communication.

I was just talking to a friend on fb about my letter and said
"I know it's long, but to be fair I was just fighting the urge to write FUCK OFF WOMEN HATERS in bright green crayon on a pair of their shoddy knickers and hang them outside the nearest store."

Still tempted.....

Surely the best way to hit them where it hurts is not to buy anything from them? M&S is on its knees anyway.

If each of us here can persuade five women to boycott M&S and they can persuade a couple more to do so, and so on, we can really make a dent in their profits at a time they need it most.

I also got the stock copy and paste reply, from Liz. Have drafted a second email but can't bring myself to read over it again right now. Honestly I'm so depressed about all of this. Not just M&S but women's sports, puberty blockers, women's prisons etc etc etc.
how do you balance wanting to fight for women's rights alongside the needs for your own mental health? I'm a single parent to a toddler with a disability, my mother is a narcissist and I can't stand to be around her and my dad enables her so I've got very little emotional support as it is. I've got so many issues going on that i feel I can't change and I just want to run way from them all with my toddler and live in our own little bubble. But there is no escape

Have also received a generic reply. Have pointed out the many major issues for female people with generic reply. Will await next generic reply.

The plan is that female people will moan a bit and then get used to living without the dignity, privacy, freedom from abuse and assault etc and being used as props by more important people. And the ones who have issues like trauma, disability, faith and culture, will just quietly stop using public spaces.

This is where we have to make it very clear we will not go away, we will not get used to it, our spending power will not quietly creep back over time, and we'll be telling everyone in words of one syllable, this is sexist, exclusionary, disablist, anti women and in particular anti women of minority faith, and there is nothing virtuous or inclusive about it.

Inclusion is a solution that meets everyones needs. Not just some needs at the expense of others. That merely makes value judgements on which groups to exclude.

Submitted through their website earlier today. Added a question re safeguarding of own staff. No reply so far.

I agree that the action most likely to get this outrageous policy reversed, is:

(a) completely boycott all their services
(b) tell the CEO why you are boycotting
(c) spread the word to as many other people as possible, and ask them to boycott it too. Do this via word-of-mouth and leaflets left in public places (not just in M&S itself)

If we all make a huge effort to do these things, it hopefully won’t only be M&S that take notice - other companies will think twice before introducing mixed sex changing rooms.

how do you balance wanting to fight for women's rights alongside the needs for your own mental health?

Raindrops17 that sounds tough. I think you just do a little bit here and there if/when you can manage it, but if it starts to feel too much, immediately have a break. There are many women trying to fight this, some of whom will have easier circumstances than you do at the mo. So don’t be hard on yourself if you don’t have the reserves to join in. But of course, don’t buy anything from M&S

Just to add - there's clear evidence that this claim that all their cubicles have lockable doors is a complete LIE, isn't there?

Leaving aside the issues of such cubicles not having floor to ceiling walls and doors, of course.

The one that I went into on Friday (Oxford street) had doors - but a gap at the top, and the lovely large disabled one (I was impressed) just has a curtain (so not very private).

I will be trying the one in the mens dept next week (which is next to the kids dept) so will have a nosey around.

Someone - go to companies house and get the names and contact addresses of those high up. Also write to the lawyers and ask for their risk assessment.

I’m a bit tied up atm...

Institutions like M & S are being advised by Stonewall that there are no such things as biological, scientific or legal facts - as Simon Fanshawe - one of the founders of Stonewall - explains below. Stonewall don't recognise any biological rights won by women based on their sex, or reproductive status. They only allow social identity Therefore everything that women are expecting - the right to privacy, safety and dignity is dismissed as "transphobic" and bigoted (as on the previous thread a Mumsnetter found out when she spoke to an M & S store manager).

All our institutions that have aligned themselves with Stonewall are told the same thing. Thus we're all bigots. That's why there will be no addressing of the issue by M & S. Because if they had to acknowledge the reality of women's sex based discrimination, then they would be in conflict with the Stonewall (and other lobby groups) core belief in social rather than biological identity.

I have no idea how this will pan out - I have a steely determination not to put any more of the household budget their way - accounts have already been cancelled - in the hope that if enough of their customers withdraw custom, a financial imperative might take over. But until the catastrophic impact of magical identity politics unfolds and the power of some of these groups recedes a bit, I feel quite pessimistic. If you haven't read this article, it's well worth a read.

www.holyrood.com/inside-politics/view,cofounder-of-stonewall-calls-for-calm_14648.htm?

Some of the letters drafted by PPs are amazing- well done!

I have gone with the short and sweet approach (direct to Steve Rowe)-

“Dear Sir

I am in search of advice. I understand you have recently amended your changing room policy to allow people to use whichever changing room they feel most comfortable using. I only feel comfortable changing, taking my daughters for bra fittings etc in changing rooms used exclusively by women. Which changing room should I now use? Assistants in your shops have, to date, been unable to find an answer to this issue.

Many thanks for your help in this matter.”

Not the most elegant, but was hoping that by asking a single, direct question it would be harder for them to hide behind a wall of buzz words and platitudes.

I purchased last week quite a few items for work, but after reading what M&S have done I was furious, so today took every item back into the store.

As the assistant was talking asking if there was anything wrong with the items, I explained to her as long as M&S have the ridiculous situation that they have decided upon with the changing rooms I will not buy another item from M&S. I must admit she did appear to be taken back by this, but immediately told me there was a manager in the store, which she promptly asked her supervisor to get.

The female manager did come over to see me, I explained my concerns and everything really that was wrong with the whole sorry idea, did I feel I was taken seriously? No not really, but she did say males would not be allowed in the lingerie changing room, but on asking how that would be policed and given males would probably kick up a fuss , she did not know how it could be dealt with. I also mentioned the cubicles themselves are not all lockable with gaps above and below, again not much of a comment with regards to this. I also asked if there would be signage outside the changing rooms informing customers of the chance of males being in there, again no answer.

I did inform her some of my more mature relatives would no longer feel safe or comfortable in the changing rooms if men are allowed, so would no longer shop there, but also mentioned as its a day out for many they also pop in for lunch or maybe a tea cake later, so that income would also be stopped

But did get lots on we are trying to be inclusive and cater for all, blah blah blah....and that the press have gone overboard with the story....

Well you have lost another customer M&S.

LGB Alliance would be advised to contact all the businesses and companies (and their lawyers) advised by stonewall and explain the little inconsistencies with Interpretation of the equalities act that they have been ‘sold’ and how it is breaking the law and opening them up to law suits.

I've submitted my suggestion for a separate crossdresser's section with its own fitting room to Archie Norman and and Steve Rowe and had the stock cut and paste from Kristine Kempster. Yep, Kristine, your name is going to come up a Google search, just like Lauren and Liz.

Dear Mr Norman & Mr Rowe

Given there is clearly a thriving existing market for males buying womenswear for themselves, can M&S not tap into this by introducing a sub-brand of feminine clothing cut for the male torso (longer, broader shoulders, XL footwear etc) and market this in a separate section with its own changing area, rather as Per Una used to do? Other suitable items from the current range of women’s clothing, in appropriate sizes, could be introduced to enhance both the choice and their shopping experience.

From what I have read on cross-dressing platforms, it takes a lot of courage to go shopping in the traditional womenswear section, and some men feel compelled to hide their choices under an item of menswear before heading into the male fitting rooms, so clearly they are unhappy at the status quo too.

I would suggest that in order for M&S to be seen as a truly progressive, inclusive company, which might want to widen the bandwidth of what it is to be male, this new section should be allocated off menswear – but I can see that might be a problem with your existing male customers.

So, in the spirit of compromise, perhaps you could allocate a section in your vast womenswear floor space, screened off (or not) as discreetly as your customers want. This way there would be no need for males to use the traditionally-accepted female fitting rooms, so women and girls could retain their own sex-segregated area, particularly in the lingerie section, as allowed for in the Equality Act 2010. The crossdressers could, at last, be out and proud too, as their specific shopping requirements are seen to be catered for by a mainstream retailer.

And what if there were male customers who still insisted on using the female fitting rooms, despite this perfectly reasonable compromise? These, I would suggest, are the males who should immediately raise some serious red flags about their motivations for wanting to access a female-only space. They are the ones that women REALLY don’t want changing alongside them, be it potential voyeurs with camera phones, sexual fetishists or individuals who seek validation by challenging female boundaries, and none of which - presumably - M&S, its female customers and shop floor staff should feel obliged to accommodate.

Hoping you will give this your serious consideration

I wonder whether their staff changing rooms are segregated by sex or feelz?

Good one Artesia
Be interesting to see their response.

Because I am quite prepared to email them every day for weeks with
each. single. question. I. have.

the press have gone overboard with the story....

Translation: the bloody press told people, it was supposed to be a secret.

So companies like M&S have paid Stonewall etc to come in and provide training to alienate their core market??

Stonewall management consultancy for when you want to do a Ratners but can’t quite make yourself slag off your business.

Translation: the bloody press told people, it was supposed to be a secret

The Times, the Daily Mail, the Sun, the Mirror and the Independent so far, and all in the last three days.

I'm looking forward to the Telegraph picking this up, as they undoubtedly will. It's an irresistible story on so many levels.

"They were only supposed to blow the bloody doors off"