John Lewis 'allows trans women into bra-fitting rooms' as retailer hit by furious gender row

[IwantToRetire]

High street giant John Lewis is at the centre of a furious row amid claims its controversial trans policies put the safety of female staff and customers at risk, it can be revealed.

The retail group is facing claims its inclusive transgender policies – claimed to have been unilaterally imposed on staff – are "dangerous" and relegate women to "second class employees".

Lesley Pickup, who quit her job as a "selling partner" in John Lewis' Cheadle branch, allowed her resignation letter to be published on TV comedy writer and women's rights campaigner Graham Linehan's Substack platform, "The Glinner Update". In her letter, she insisted "female colleagues live in fear of dismissal if they speak out".

Ms Pickup said that for the past 20 years, she had been "involved with female victims from all faiths, cultures, ethnicities, and backgrounds who have been subjected to domestic and sexual violence and psychological abuse by men".

For some, she said, work offered "the only time in their lives where they should have guaranteed female-only safe spaces free from the demands of men regardless of who those men claim to be".

Full story https://www.scottishdailyexpress.co.uk/news/uk-news/john-lewis-allows-trans-men-33622299

Not her femininity, no.

And Women are not trying to exclude teenage girls from fitting services.

Or expected to prove her feminity with an inspection before being allowed in?

Literally no one is requesting "genital inspections" but it's amazing how much this straw man comes up.

So because a female that you know, who looks so much like a male (what, even after speaking?) that they get mistaken for a male on the regular, this should be a reason to let males into women’s spaces?

Please make it make sense.

Exactly, and not by women not wanting males in females spaces.

They certainly appear to.

Claiming men are secretly violating women's spaces isn't generally seen as a positive !

It's such a floppy one, too. One minute we're being accused of wanting genital inspections, the next minute we're being told that nothing else will do because we can't tell without them.

I think they just like typing the word genitals.

You can't tell!

Well, we're just telling men they need to stay out

Well they won't!

Ta da!!!

😄

I'm speaking from a position of naivety. I assumed all women got their bras properly fitted so that they get a decent fit. That's what my wife does. So if a trans woman has boobs and would like a properly fitted bra, it makes sense to me that they would go to the same place that my wife goes to.

thats Not the point though is it?
the point is - you can’t deny people access to spaces, based on individual opinions of what people should and do look like.

therefore, expending such huge amounts of energy on petty shit like changing rooms and signs on toilets has absolutely no impact on anything of importance in the real world.

perhaps if you spent less time online petitioning your right to ring fence your middle of the lane, middle class spaces, like John Lewis (ffs let’s all get a grip), and actually focused on pouring some energy into real issues like domestic violence offending, sentencing for rapists and fiscal policies that marginalise marginalised women then we might have some actual traction on women’s safety.

however middle class mumsnet who don’t actually want to challenge the status quo so focus all their pent up bile on a minuscule section of society who for the vast vast vast majority don’t bother anybody at all (other then their obscenity of existing as per these vile threads) and make up their own language to give themselves some kind of special status as advocates for women.

yuck.

Men have all sorts of ways of predating on women and upsetting them for enjoyment you know.

Do you take this approach to paedophiles - they’ll abuse children anyway so why bother to try to control it?

Well they don't. Lots of women don't even wear bras.

But it's hardly the point.

Men don't need to go into women's changing rooms, bras or no bras.

They’re not denied based on what they look like. They’re denied based on their sex, which you keep ignoring. If an 18 year old passes for a 15 year old would that be ok? To access spaces just for 15 and under? I mean they look it so what’s the problem?

What are you doing exactly to tackle male violence?

Single sex spaces are predicated on sex - not on clothing or hairstyle.

Everybody understands what sex is, and they also understand that women's toilets are for women and girls.

If someone wilfully transgresses this boundary - they know they are doing it. Decent people are respectful of such boundaries - and if not then social disapproval or negative consequence tends to deter them

Women and girls and their dignity, integrity, comfort and safety have importance in 'the real world'.

The obvious solution to meeting everyone's needs is third spaces and open categories

oh get off your soapbox.

John Lewis is symptomatic.

It's not standalone.

You talk about prisons, how about not putting male rapists in with female prisoners?

How about not letting male misogynists run rape refuges?

How about not allowing mediocre male athletes to ruin the careers of women?

I think many trans widows would agree about DV especially when being abused by their APG partner. And I also agree about rapists, those women with penises that commit rape should clearly be placed in the female prison estate,
Ate you a bloke btw? Because your misogyny is radiating out of you in your post.

thats Not the point though is it?
the point is - you can’t deny people access to spaces, based on individual opinions of what people should and do look like.

lol, my elderly mother doesn't care what the person who does her intimate care looks like! She cares that they're female.

I'd like to know how you intend to address male violence if you categorise people on their clothes and appearance??

Get off your soapbox and submit women. The new “lie back and think of England”.

Er, no.

I’ve been a domestic violence social worker for twenty years.
as well as a volunteer sexual assault advocate for the last 12.

I can assure you, transgender men shopping for bras are not the problem.

It's a fairly common tactic.

Claim we can't tell, claim it's all about appearance, claim that women shouldn't be bothered about it because it's trivial, and then tell them off for not doing something else instead.

Male rapists in women's prison?

Rape crisis centres that refuse to provide a woman only service?

Does that bother you at all?

What is truly " Yuck" is people who show such flagrant disregard and lack of empathy for female dignity and integrity. If people identified with women, rather than as women they would understand the strength of feeling involved in standing up for women and girls.

Many of us have long been involved with women's issues in the real world, for the reason most of us are women, and have therefore been girls. And we're not all middle class either.....and any way, what if we were? We come from all sorts of backgrounds and regions; engage in all sorts of occupations.

I, for one, absolutely do not need anyone to instruct me on women's issues or what to do about them.

Here's the thing Ramen if men, no matter how they identify and including the ones who demand we call them women, would just f.o out of our spaces and give us all our stuff back then you wouldn't need to drop by and deliver a scolding of the kind that's tiresomely and predictably seen on the regular here.

Then you could get back to all the important stuff that you accuse the folk here of not doing.

It took longer than expected for the genital inspection hyperbole to pop up,but we got there eventually.

Well then you should be aware that sexual assault in mixed gender spaces and changing rooms is more common than in single gender.

https://fairplayforwomen.com/unisex-changing-rooms-put-women-in-danger/

https://www.thetimes.com/life-style/sex-relationships/article/unisex-changing-rooms-put-women-in-danger-8lwbp8kgk

Exactly it