Changing Room fiasco at my workplace

[pink85]

My workplace has just told us because of customer feedback and incidents that they are reinstalling women's only changing rooms with a few the other side that are non binary/men's. Great! However my make manager also said we're not to direct people to them they can choose which one to use so if someone wants to use the women's and he obviously meant a male, we're not to say anything (and keep our mouths shut like good little girls) I'm furious. I've never felt so trodden on that I can't speak my mind. My female colleague was all for mixed changing rooms and I don't know how the others feel but how is this better for women when any man can still use the so called women's.

Where there are carefully labelled women only rooms that male people are freely welcomed to use, those rooms and the women in them are serving no other purpose than what I might euphemistically describe as therapeutic support purposes to males.

Fuck that. Frankly.

Might as well call it the service humans space.

They are deceiving their customers if they imply changing rooms are single sex when they’re not. It won’t go down well.

Well if this is Primark, I guess we need to continue fighting because their words mean nothing.

Pointless then if males can still use the womens. You must be so frustrated. Xx

Out of interest what does the policy say ref changing rooms?

I can understand why employers don’t want minimum wage staff challenging people. And if I were on minimum wage, I’d not be tackling a grown ass man either. They’ll probably leave it to herd dynamics and hope customers themselves will police it. The problem is the cat is out of the bag now - it’s a free for all and we are phobic or hateful if we say a word.

Great publicity for them though. And that’s all this is. A sham gesture.

@limitededitionbarbie Thank you X It is really frustrating and also it feels like a lie if I have to reassure women I feel very stuck and know I can't express my views there

Exactly a sham gesture ugh 😩 And I'm not sure of the policy @limitededitionbarbie But this update is beyond ridiculous. I'm glad I don't work in them.

I feel sorry for any staff who work on the changing room to be honest.

I wouldn't want to tell a man he couldn't go in there. You just don't know of your going to be recorded or whatever then all over fucking Twitter or some such. Like that dickhead what was his name?! He was literally going round salons in Canada I think trying to find salons that wouldn't wax his balls because he identified as a women. What was his name? There were loads of threads about him.

They are in a no win situation. They shouldn't have to deal with this.

The customers didn't want mixed sex changing rooms. There were "incidents" (?) related to the single sex changing rooms. So they've changed the policy and now there will be women's, men's, and a few mixed sex.

But anyone can use any changing room. So, they are all still unisex. All they have done is taken away the signposting. If they agree with the evidence that women are at extra risk in mixed sex changing rooms, then they are INCREASING that risk because those who would have avoided mixed sex will unknowingly use them. It doesn't surprise me, but it's a direct contradiction of the reasons they claim led to the change. This seems like a very sensible question to ask: how does this help address the stated issue? How do we mitigate the risk and harm of misrepresenting the new single-sex areas? A logical person with no background on this subject would almost certainly think the manager must have misunderstood or misinterpreted the new policy.

Not directing customers to a specific changing rooms fine, but the attendants have to have the ability to turn people back, even if that means calling security. It's always going to be messy to confront male privilege AFTER it's been encouraged and enabled to run rampant, but if they agree that having NO same sex facilities causes discomfort and danger to (some of) their customers they have to step up and deal with the backlash. They can't (logically) have it both ways.

So are you expected to lie if a woman asks you if they are single sex?

It's actually a worse situation. A mixed sex changing room does what it says on the tin. I can choose to use it or not, knowing full well it is mixed sex and doesn't pretend to be anything otherwise.

A changing room purporting to be single sex but allowing anyone in is just a lie.

It's the approach the NHS have been desperately trying.

As in 'you cannot have been raped despite all the evidence because only women are on this ward'.

Frantic denialism.

What will in fact happen is that there'll be the men's changing rooms, the male dominated changing rooms where the women go who don't mind taking the risks, and the rest of the women will just have to leave that space.

Females successfully excluded from the female space so males have more choice and freedom and self expression.

Jonathan Yaniv (now calls himself Jessica)

Retailers have facilitated this with decisions they made to be 'inclusive' while deliberately excluding the 51%.

They knew we didn't want this but they thought being able to show the rainbow flag would make them lots of money. They underestimated the strength of feeling that woman have.

I would be tempted to speak to HR. If you ignore it, and let a male use the female space (which immediately sets of alarm bells) are you facilitating a potential assault.

I'm not sure what the answer is, but your manager is wrong. Something will happen, a retailer will be taken to court, and I hope the staff member doesn't get caught up in it. They will throw you to the wolves.

They will throw you to the wolves.

I realise that this might be difficult to obtain but could you ask for a written version of this policy?

I would also ask for it to be in writing.

There should be an official company policy and potentially training on how you should handle situations like this which will occur more and more frequently.

The retailer needs to take responsibility for their policy.

I don't have time to find it but the Equality Act says you (the employer or service provider) cannot make someone (an employee) do something which is against the Act.

Obviously single sex spaces are not technically required as such, it's clear that labelling them "women's" would mean that people understand that to mean a female as that's the definition in the Act.

So if the space is labelled in a misleading way, then I would say that HR need to be clear as to whether the employer is asking you to do anything that's not right legally or that would be misleading to the public and likely to generate a complaint from a woman saying she didn't know she would be sharing a mixed sex space. With all the knock-ons that situation has.

I would try and do it by email to HR so there is written correspondence of your request.

This is going to come back and bite some retailers and some poor sods who are only doing their job.

I would also argue that this is a case when Trans Woman or anyone identifying as female can be excluded.

There are gender neutral alternatives available that woman can us so there is no reason that transwoman can't use them.

This is a additional space being brought in for females only due to incidents that have occurred in mixed sex spaces.

This is an example where TW should not be treated as their assumed gender.

This has got me really het up this morning 😃

I agree that you should ask for a written copy of the policy. You could also cloak your request by asking for guidance on how staff should deal with aggrieved customers who complain about men in women's changing rooms.

I also agree with previous posters who say that the policy you describe actually increases the danger to women because we're being led into a false sense of security and our guard will be down.

@NancyDrawed thank you it's been doing my head in I couldn't remember his name.