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Feminism: Sex and gender discussions

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"

69 replies

ResisterRex · 02/10/2022 07:52

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."

OP posts:
SeaRabbit · 02/10/2022 21:57

I haven't read the full thread, but I would say that I did recently, for the first time in ages, buy something in Marks & Spencer's, because I was staying away from home, it was cold, and I needed some warmer clothes. I told the assistant this, and that I hated shopping in Marks now because they allowed men into the fitting rooms that I would use. And that I shopped very much less online than I had in the past because I felt the contempt in which they obviously held me as a woman.

I think we all need to do this – eventually they will get the message. I can't believe that our individual boycotts don't show up in the sales figures.

TalaTheStoryteller · 02/10/2022 21:57

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TooBigForMyBoots · 02/10/2022 22:34

ImherewithBoudica · 02/10/2022 18:28

all the other scenarios in which you would want to mandate single-sex provision (eg hospitals, prisons, rape crisis centres etc). That would entail amending the Equality Act, which would be a big undertaking,

yup and that is exactly where this is by necessity heading.

All this is slapping sticking plasters with jolly faces over an increasingly gaping and rotting wound. It's not going away. The evidence that this does not work for females is stacking up daily. The exclusion and subordination of females is increasing, and they're tax payers, voters, this is male supremacism by the back door.

I have zero patience for it's all a bit tricky and messy and a lot of male people will kick off and send flying monkeys. People have been warning about this right from the start when it would have been a whole lot easier to manage.

But damn straight, we now need legislation that female humans have a legal entitlement to their own spaces for hospitals, prisons, rape crisis, anywhere in fact where they are vulnerable, regardless of whether or not male people agree or are happy about it. Because frigging male people are not the frigging owners and overseers of female people and need to get a fucking grip.

And now we have male people this entitled, this badly behaved, this determined to openly remove privacy, dignity, autonomy, language and everything else from females lacking any conscience or good will in doing so, and apparently absolutely no basic social contract or boundaries? Yes, it will have to be fixed in law. And gatekept by law. However long that takes.

Hear hear.

TalaTheStoryteller · 02/10/2022 22:38

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Brefugee · 02/10/2022 22:41

I will start this by saying that i think that in many instances single sex spaces are essential.
Having said that: here in Germany in most places (department stores, small shops, large shops like C&A, H&M etc etc) all have mixed changing areas. And i have never encountered any of the behaviours described above. So either i've been lucky or something weird is going on in some countries and not others.

IndiGlowie · 02/10/2022 22:42

They will just remove all fitting rooms and be done with it . It's what they want because they want people to buy online .

TooBigForMyBoots · 02/10/2022 22:56

"For too long women's spaces have been compromised by the tens of thousands of men invading our spaces..."

Like paedophile men put in women's prisons and rapist-non-rapistConfused men on women's hospital wards. Rapists gonna rape🤷‍♀️ so I'd rather they were kept the fuck away from women's spaces.

TalaTheStoryteller · 02/10/2022 22:58

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CherryGenoa · 03/10/2022 07:43

Female humans need their own spaces as someone said above. Some of my friends simply won’t use mixed sex facilities. Why should they be excluded because of male entitlement?

Owlplant · 12/06/2023 21:24

Horrible surprise at H&M yesterday. Took my 12 year old daughter into the changing rooms, I was sat on a stool opposite her cubicle. A man of I'd say 50 came out of the next cubicle with an arm full of men's clothes that he'd been trying on. Now, I didn't know the changing rooms were now unisex. Why didn't he go the changing rooms upstairs where the men's clothes are anyway? How can it be a good idea to have a half dressed daughter separated from this man by just a bloody curtain. It's knocked me sick to be honest. Won't be going again. I nearly let her go in on her own. I only went in because she asked me to.

PomegranateOfPersephone · 13/06/2023 07:12

That is horrible @Owlplant I’m sorry for you and your daughter. We seem to have scrapped the old social contract for a creeps’ charter. I had a similar experience with my young teenage daughter in New Look a while ago. A young man just sitting in the changing rooms keeping company with his girlfriend apparently. We haven’t been back. I remember days, only a few of years ago really when men would have sat outside the changing rooms.

Owlplant · 13/06/2023 08:01

True, bring it back!! I can't shake the feeling that I very nearly put her in a dangerous situation. I was happy for her to go in on her own as she wants to be more independent. I've got the guilt. I'll complain, but I'm just expecting the party line.

Owlplant · 13/06/2023 08:02

And thanks, I'll add New Look to the list. I'm well pissed off.

dimorphism · 13/06/2023 08:14

But damn straight, we now need legislation that female humans have a legal entitlement to their own spaces for hospitals, prisons, rape crisis, anywhere in fact where they are vulnerable, regardless of whether or not male people agree or are happy about it. Because frigging male people are not the frigging owners and overseers of female people and need to get a fucking grip.

Well said. We need to fight this NOW because we don't have to look far geographically or in history to find a time/place where male people very much are/were the owners and overseers of female people.

This is what's at stake

It needs to be fought hard because it's a slippery and fast slope back to that

Ask the women of Iran

Justme56 · 13/06/2023 08:29

@Owlplant A few months ago my DH and DS went to H&M. They went to try some clothes on in the men’s department but all the changing rooms were closed. They were told to go downstairs. The only changing room open was next to the women’s clothes. There was a queue of young women outside. My DH and DS (teenager) gave the clothes to the assistant and left and haven’t returned.

Owlplant · 13/06/2023 08:43

Yes I suppose it could have been closed. My dad would have done the same as your husband and son. He just wouldn't feel comfortable. I hate this.

FrancescaContini · 13/06/2023 08:55

Thank God this is finally being acknowledged. The women and girls who have already been pestered or upset in what should always be a private space - this should never have happened to them.

SeatonCarew · 13/06/2023 09:49

Brefugee · 02/10/2022 22:41

I will start this by saying that i think that in many instances single sex spaces are essential.
Having said that: here in Germany in most places (department stores, small shops, large shops like C&A, H&M etc etc) all have mixed changing areas. And i have never encountered any of the behaviours described above. So either i've been lucky or something weird is going on in some countries and not others.

Germany has always had a different attitude to nudity, eg with mixed sex saunas.

SeatonCarew · 13/06/2023 09:57

PS I'm not saying I agree with it, just saying it is less of a stretch over there.

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