Mail on Sunday: "MPs are urging major high street stores to scrap unisex changing rooms following a surge in women suffering traumatic encounters with men"

[ResisterRex]

Article on investigation revealing trauma of women using changing rooms. Miriam Cates is quoted:

"Nobody is saying all men are a risk but if you are a predatory man you now have an open door – literally – to vulnerable women in a state of undress. I really hope these big companies wake up to what they are doing because it is not safe."

Also Rosie Duffield:

"It’s completely unacceptable for major retailers to deny women and girls a right to change in private."
Maya and WPUK feature too.

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11270459/Feminist-campaigners-demand-unisex-changing-rooms-scrapped-amid-reports-traumatic-encounters.html

Examples given include the following, with virtually zero public support for mixed sex spaces such as these:

"One mother said that while taking her teenage girl to M&S for her first bras, they encountered a man emerging from a cubicle with his testicles exposed.
Another mother tweeted how at another M&S store, in Exeter, a man left open the door of his cubicle in the ‘gender-neutral’ changing rooms, exposing himself as he tried on trousers without any underwear.
A woman complained and the man was then escorted out, while protesting.
Another mother said she had banned her 13-year-old daughter from going clothes shopping alone after discovering her local H&M provides only unisex changing rooms.
On Mumsnet, a woman recounted how she had been secretly filmed in a unisex changing room.
Our investigation has uncovered many criminal cases involving sexual assaults, voyeurism and harassment in unisex changing rooms.
This year a Met Police officer was given a suspended prison sentence for covertly filming a woman in a Primark dressing room.
H&M, John Lewis, M&S, Monsoon and Primark no longer offer female only spaces after transgender activists called for unisex changing rooms – despite a survey showing that 98 per cent of the public wanted single-sex spaces."

Push back? Good

What survey? The article doesn't say.

Don't know what the survey is either MP but those of us who are women and talk with women and girls all know that none of us want to undress, toilet, shower or sleep in front of random men - no matter how they're dressed.
But as women are never asked, all the predators and useful idiots get to remove our privacy and safety.

Good to see the fight back continues - as all the offences continue to escalate, this won't go away.

Good. Women being forced back into their houses is infuriating and so wrong. I think we should be boycotting all shops that refuse to respect our right to privacy. The whole thing is utterly infuriating.

The trouble is that I am unaware of any shops I could use which genuinely to want to protect their female customers by having women’s changing rooms which unequivocally exclude men who claim to be women. So yes avoiding the high street altogether and shopping online appears to be the only way to keep myself and my children safe.

They claim they are giving their customers choice of where they are comfortable, but it is actually only choice for males. Women are not comfortable with males around, and have said so persistently. The 98% are ignored for the benefit of the 1%.

Good.

But as any MNetter would tell them, it's a pointless surface gesture.

Two minutes on Twitter would show that the massive majority of male people who wish to use female only spaces regardless of how female people feel about it, and have dragged the genie out of the bottle that any male of any appearance and any degree of transition and any behaviour towards females has absolute entitlement to enter that space and do what they want there are reassuring each other that this doesn't mean them and they can crack on.

No. It was these males who started this, caused this mess and have no ability to think or care about females or anything but their own self interests.

Females want biologically male-free spaces. Regardless of how any male feels about this. The males who want alternatives to male single sex spaces need to be provided with these without removing single sex spaces from females. Because a lot of us need them.

So go on MPs. You let this happen on your watch. Face up to this. What are you going to do about it so that there is an equal society where all needs are met?

Also: wouldn't it be nice if MPs and shops and so on actually cared about women communicating exclusion, inaccessability and experiences of harassment, voyeurism and assault?

You know, as opposed to only making public gestures when an incident escapes into the press?

Some people really don't want women to be safe. It doesn't actually need a survey MargaritaPie. The examples of predation tells you all you need to know.

And now that article is telling the entire country.

Great stuff.

Indeed. The lack of comment and care for women's safety from these businesses is so noticeable. Presumably they're making a such a fortune from what might be called the "predator's pound" to not need the income from women?

I suspect it's the misogynist belief rife across society that the TQ+ political lobby pinned their hopes on at the start of this:

that they're only females, they'll moan a bit and then they'll give up and just put up with being assaulted and harassed and having no privacy and dignity and being involved as non consenting props in male people's agendas, and it'll become their new normal. Especially if we teach children from the start to not ever get used to privacy, dignity, autonomy or the idea of sex based rights.

However we're about a decade into this now. Women haven't shut up and given up so far, there are more and more of us standing up to point out the appalling attitude towards females and how very dimorphically sex based it is, and the supporting evidence mounts daily.

There was a thread started here just a few days ago by Nicola Williams from FPFW asking for women's experiences in mixed sex changing rooms, it disappeared within a couple of hours.

Agree with all of the above.

What will probably happen (if anything) is that changing rooms will be taken away altogether.

Oh really? I missed that. Regardless, it's like others say. No we don't want male people in our changing rooms. And no I don't think it's good enough that women are then forced back into the home because they can't guarantee being able to shop without men flashing their bollocks at them or their girls. This one really leapt off the page:

"One mother said that while taking her teenage girl to M&S for her first bras, they encountered a man emerging from a cubicle with his testicles exposed."

It's unacceptable. It's predatory behaviour.

I don’t use changing rooms in shops anymore. Sadly, this means that I am returning lots of items, therefore making the whole process a pain in the arse for many people; me, retail staff, the company as a whole.
I usually mention this when I return items in store. Most do not want to engage in a conversation about this (understandably) but you can tell that they have heard it before or are aware of what I mean.

good

Was there a deletion message FOJN? Any idea why it was zapped?

Good. Why retailers ever thought we wanted them to be woke, I'll never know. Taking twitter seriously is probably the reason, come to think of it.

I've been boycotting M&S, it's difficult though as I've been shopping there for years. The fact they have made all their jeans longer is helping though as they look stupid on me now

Thing is, a man would still be able to 'identify' as a woman and use the woman's changing rooms wouldn't they?

The deletion message was that MN didn't permit research in this way and for Nic to contact HQ.

The reports however would have been made by those who find it too uncomfortable to see evidence of harm to females and listen to female voices about it. It is unwanted. It is unhelpful to male freedoms.

It was interesting to see on two pages the commonality of experience for females; the same things coming up over and over. Exposure, groping, cameras through doors.

Primark have backpaddled and are changing their stores.

corporate.primark.com/en/newsroom/corporate-news/important-changes-to-our-fitting-rooms-in-the-uk/n/98cec44a-542f-40b9-8a88-618831aeddc0

Why are MPs urging when they should be legislating?

Not sure on this one, but there was certainly evidence out there a few years ago when this piece was published that nine out of ten changing riim sexual complaints relate to incidents in unisex facilities.

Chilling isn't it? If only they'd listen to women, right?

Because legislating on an issue like this is quite complex.