I chased a man out of the changing rooms ----

[betterchange]

M+S, ladies'underwear section. It's all cubicles and to be fair, nowhere does it say that it is a women-only changing room, but I think it's likely to be seen as such by most users since it's in the bra-and-knicker-selling section of the shop and there are other changing rooms elsewhere!

A woman came out of one of the changing rooms whilst I was queueing and beckoned a man in. I said, I'm sorry, I don't think you should go in there, this is for women trying on underwear. The woman queried this but I stuck to my guns and the woman behind me in the queue backed me up; the man apologised and left. (It probably helped that they sounded as though English wasn't their first language so they may not have known the "rules"! I think it was a genuine misreading/mistake on their part.)

Anyway, no harm done, but it made me think - that was easy, but if it had been a very obvious man-dressed-as-a-woman, I'm far from sure that I would have felt able to speak out.

In that situation (the man-dressed-as-woman), would anyone here have said anything?

Our local M&S has always had one changing room for both men and women, for as long as I can remember, as do the majority of smaller clothing stores. It's never been a problem.

I can't get worked up about floor to ceiling solid lockable doors in a manned changing area.

The stores with flimsy curtains that don't close fully should absolutely have separate male, female and neutral changing areas. Or invest in proper doors where everyone can feel safe.

I see various posters have stated their ease with mixed-sex cubicles.

You know, when it's mixed-sex, all men are allowed in. When you were a 14 year old girl, would you have trusted every single one of your male classmates not to deliberately brush a curtain aside for a "larf"? I would not, because I was not a fool and I had met them.

Not all boys grow out of that, and the ones that didn't now have camera-phones.

Let us return to the news coverage from last year after an incident in a Primark mixed-sex changing room. This is not a one-off, merely the incident most widely reported. MNers, including me, predicted that men would exploit Primark's new mixed-sex fitting areas like this. No-one listened.

extract

A Met Police officer who was caught secretly filming a woman in a Primark changing room, before being found with indecent images of children, has been given a suspended jail sentence.
Former PC Swaleh Chaudhry, 36, was seen filming a woman as she was getting changed in the clothes shop in Southside Shopping Centre, in Wandsworth, south west London.

^The woman looked down after hearing a “rustling” and found the device pointing up at her from the next cubicle, a court previously heard.
Police were called to the shop just before 5pm on Wednesday 30 March and Chaudhry, who was off-duty, was arrested at the scene and suspended from duty.^

During the course of the investigation, electronic devices belonging to Chaudhry, who was attached to the Met’s Taskforce, were seized and forensically examined.
He was found to be in possession of extreme pornography and indecent images of a child.

Article continues Met PC who filmed woman changing and made indecent images of a child walks free

Another one in Primark.

A CCTV image has been released after a man was seen trying to film two women using a Primark changing room.

The women were left "shaken and distressed" after spotting a mobile phone appearing under the curtains of their cubicle at the store on The Moor in Sheffield, police said.

South Yorkshire Police said the voyeurism incident happened on 18 July 2022.

continues at BBC news

We haven't even got on to the installation of tiny hidden cameras. It's the 21st century now, after all. Mixed-sex changing areas provide easy access for voyeurs who are organised enough to make plans as onerous as "buy spycam and hide it".

@NeighbourhoodWatchPotholeDivision This isn't a new phenomenon though, is it? People with voyeuristic tendencies have been committing these crimes for years - they're not suddenly committing them because M&S have changed their policy. I've been flashed on the street, upskirted in the middle of a crowded bar... Wherever these crimes take place, they are clearly wrong and need to be dealt with accordingly.

My point is that unisex changing rooms have existed for a long time and have been used by most of us for many years without question. The man OP was referring to wasn't a voyeur - he was called into a unisex changing room to assist the person he was shopping with.

I’m actually interested to hear all sides but some posters are coming across as hysterical. Mixed swimming changing has ever been thus. ‘chasing’ out of a changing room. No you didn’t.
I feel for my poor dad trying to help my mum in M&S nowadays. As for waiting outside for partners to finish shopping, I think you need to get over yourselves.

The only type of mixed-sex changing room I ever used to encounter was in shops where they did not have space for a fitting room, and so only had one cubicle, perhaps two. Never did I go anywhere with multiple cubicles designated as for both sexes.

That's because voyeurism has been a known fetish for centuries, and management took it as read that they should not facilitate voyeurs to target their customers.

@user65754 we don’t have to make it easier for them though!

Come on in perverts. Women in various stages of undress are all yours with no barriers. Enjoy!

@GCWorkNightmare there are barriers - locked cubicles. Shall we ban men from swimming pools too? The beach?

Have you read the Primark articles? They aren’t locked cubicles.

Spy cams in locked cubicles is resulting in unsuspecting women turning up on porn sites.

police officer sticking a phone under a cubicle wall.

these are meant to be private safe spaces.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/unisex-changing-rooms-put-women-in-danger-8lwbp8kgk#:~:text=Unisex%20changing%20rooms%20are%20more,less%20than%20half%20the%20total.

I know women who don't go swimming any more because of mixed sex changing rooms and I don't think they are hysterical at all.

The situation with a disabled woman needing help to try on clothes could surely be accommodated with the help of a sales assistant. Making changing rooms mixed sex seems an extreme solution to me.

@RicksTheHunk

no offence to your dad but I feel more driven to protect the feelings and sensitivities of your dad

@RicksTheHunk

no offence to your dad but I feel more driven to protect the feelings and sensitivities of women than your dad

It's not just a safety issue. It's about privacy and dignity too. If I have to talk to the M&S assistant in the fitting room about the fit of bras I'm trying on, cupsize etc, I don't mind if the other women in the changing room can hear. We've all got boobs.

I do NOT want to talk about the size and shape of my boobs and how they fit and look in bras in the hearing of any man other than possibly my DH. I don't want to do it in the hearing of men I know to be lovely like my FIL, my friend's husband or my DS's best mate. I certainly don't want to do in the hearing of a man I don't know who may be getting off on it.

Yes. They are awful. But have you heard of availability bias?

So you think disabled women should have to let a stranger see them naked, instead of a trusted carer? Where is the privacy and dignity in that?!?

So inappropriate and rude. It’s not your place to do that. You’re in a cubicle, why does it matter. I’d be mortified for the other person if I saw this happen, think about their feelings.

Nailed it. Perfectly.

Mixed spaces don't have to be dangerous for women. There are plenty of cases where men have planted tiny cams and watched at a distance while getting their jollies at the cost of women's privacy and dignity.

Allowing ANY man into female spaces allows them the opportunity to do this.

Why are you the one to determine what matters.

I always find it staggering when men say that single sex toilets/changing rooms don't matter, as if they can proclaim on behalf of women.

If they matter to OP, to a member of a religious faith, to a victim of assault or violence, or to me, they matter.

If they were to think about it shops that primarily to women should care more about what matters to individual customers, than what random internet people like Peony say.

Mixed sex changing villages are actually rather recent introduction, and men in adjacent cubicles sticking their mobile phones under and over the partition is an issue there, too.

I find it remarkable that you reflexively posted that you felt for your dad, instead of your mum. It would have been more convincing to argue that we needed additional mixed-sex fitting areas for the convenience of women who needed a male family member's assistance, than to appeal to the hurt feelings of your dad.

The vast majority – just under 90 per cent – of complaints regarding changing room sexual assaults, voyeurism or harassment reported at leisure centres and public swimming pools took place in unisex facilities. Of these, sexual attacks made up 67 per cent.

Until the 90s, swimming pool changing rooms were strictly single sex. Even when unisex 'changing villages' began to appear, the toilets and showers remained single sex.

@JellySaurus but this isn't about swimming pool changing rooms, it's about shop fitting rooms, which have always been unisex in many places.

I do agree that communal spaces where women are undressed, such as swimming pool changing rooms, should be single sex (or at least a single sex space should be available for those who want one).

The article you've shared doesn't really tell us much though, I think the claim the evidence is "unequivocal" is a bit of a stretch. Why were the sexual assaults that happened outside the changing rooms excluded from the percentages, thus distorting them? It is also not clear how many of the facilities had single sex or unisex changing rooms, which is important since it is a confounding factor. If there are more unisex or "gender neutral" facilities than single sex facilities, it goes without saying that more of these assaults would happen in the unisex/gender neutral facilities. This is why we need more academic study of these topics, so we don't have to rely on the data that has been cherry-picked by journalists to create a story.

The majority of sexual assaults happen in a public place, not a locked changing cubicle.

Since all the men seem to be gravitating towards the changing rooms for women the men's must be like the Marie Celeste, maybe we should all go and change in the men's.

In 2018, a thousand people signed a petition calling for the changing rooms at a Cardiff pool to provide separate male and female rooms, as they had before. Presumably the previous changing rooms were a figment of the users' imagination, because 'mixed sex changing villages have already existed', yes?

The leisure centre denied receiving the petition, which is absolutely on brand for the overall company.

one thousand people sign petition

I find it absolutely bizarre that people pretend mixed sex changing villages are traditional. Have they never been in a swimming pool built prior to 2000? For example, an old Victorian building?

*have always existed.