Are equality laws clear on sex and gender expression at work? Kids Toy Shop AGP

[MyShyCat]

So yesterday I was in a local branch of a well known National Toy Superstore.

I needed to Click and Collect a large lego item for my daughters Birthday. I needed to be in and out as I was rushing to get back to set up for her party so i was already a little stressed thinking about getting stuck behind a long queue of people collecting random items and not being able to find their Order Number etc etc.

In the end, there was no queue and I was able to collect my item in record time.

However, I wasn't expecting to be served by a 6ft male member of staff with a receding hair-line called "Boudica" who had clearly "brought all of himself" to work that day. I wasn't prepared for the enourmous fake latex breasts that he was clearly wearing under his corporate uniform.

Problem is, what do I do? The teacher in me sees this as a safe-guarding issue (especially in a kids toy shop!) I don't believe for one minute that anyone has consented to be part of this mans fantasy.

Do equality laws actually permit this type of behaviour (even in a kids toy shop?) or am I just a big transphobe?

No because she would be told to dress appropriately by management who wouldn't worry about getting sued.

It’s the Entertainer not Smyths which is Christian owned and doesn’t open on Sunday.

he is imposing his sexual fetish on his colleagues and customers, many of whom are children. It’s non contact sexual abuse. I would write and be very clear with them. This man is a blatant red flag.

I find this insane attempt to make wholly inappropriate sexual fetish involving non consenting others - because this is sexual, performative, inappropriate and intended to shock and push other people's boundaries, it's a kind of flashing - actually genuinely transphobic.

Robin White and Victoria McCloud, professional men; India Willoughby, often interviewed on tv; Debbie Hayton, teacher, writer and also often interviewed; Miranda Yardley, writer and often has taken part in discussions with politicians and meeting groups - has anyone ever seen those men dressed inappropriately, sexually, in fetish gear in public? They choose skirts, dresses, feminine style, but they dress like any other normal professional person.

These are the men that are going to end up dragged into the image of a side movement that's now descending to a fetish circus pushing as far as it can before the general public finally has had enough of them and starts pushing back in earnest. Any normal person - trans, gay, vegan, Capricorn or otherwise - has boundaries and knows about appropriacy and respect for others. This is not a typical, normal part of transgenderism, this is plain inappropriate and unacceptable. Who benefits from trying to stuff every trans person into this sex addict behaviour, and useful idiots scolding and trying to pretend the problem is in the general public for not pretending they can't see? Who benefits from men like this taking advantage of the legal protections intended for people like White and Hayton, to push their sexual exploits as far as they can go, and trying to insist this is just what transgenderism is about?

I seriously wonder about those who defend this, and exactly what their agenda is, I really do.

This man should have been sent home to change on arrival at work, with a firm flea in his ear. His manager and co workers are likely either passionate useful idiots who haven't thought this through and are blindly clapping along, or are deeply uncomfortable and afraid to say anything because he's leveraging legal protections to their limit in ways they were never designed to enable. And I'll bet he knows all this and is loving it.

God it's DARVO.

It's is not a sexual obsession to think that men dressing in a way that women typically wouldn't because they'd been dragged over hot coals for their inappropriate clothing and disciplined for being it's overly sexualised and unprofessional is somehow therefore totally ok for men. In a situation where the customer base is children and that's your target market it's absolutely a safeguarding issue.

Telling people that they are not healthy minded for recognising this is not safeguarding. It's trying to normalise creepy men who want access to children and get their rocks off upsetting women wanting to safeguard their children. It is a display of male power and dominance.

Healthy boundaries require an environment where you are able to tell someone they are inappropriate and unprofessional without being shamed and smeared.

We see you.

Usernames are always a tell.

I don't think we want severe mental health problems around kids either thanks.

AGPs do not always dress in overtly sexualised clothing. That doesn’t mean they are not wearing ‘normal’ women’s clothing for that reason.

It is a display of male power and dominance.

In a nutshell.

And it's sexual power. Sexual dominance. Overt.

I would send the toy shop a version of this, @MyShyCat .

Plenty of organisations love having a complaint from a customer/service user as an excuse to start a difficult conversation with an employee.

One of the many problems with fetishes is that they escalate. Normalising his fetish will escalate him faster.

You are definitely coming across as though you are defending him, even if that isn't your intention.

It's a good point, I would also add the gaming industry and Anime/Manga as well, the women depicted in these often have very large boobs, that despite all sorts of acrobatic actions the characters make, never seem to fall out of the flimsy, to the point of a waste of time wearing, tops.

If a woman is wearing a dildo to work, and it's not visible, she should ask for her money back..

I contest your claim that 'lots of lesbians' use dildoes. Some do, but for lots of lesbians, dildos are the farthest far side of faraway form how they want sex to be. But it preserves a predictable measure of what 'sex' is - there has to be a dick or it's not real sex, right?🙄

Whether 'Boudicca's' [and BTW feck right off with appropriating Celtic female heroes, mate!] fake breasts are sexual, threatening, whatever, they are not appropriate workwear.

The idea of 'bringing all of you to work' is a nonsense: all anybody should bring to work is their professional self, behave professionally, dress appropriately, be professional with colleagues - just get on with it.
What you do in your private life is your own business, but leave it at home when you set off for work. The workplace is not for acting out your fantasies, and your colleagues are not your supporting cast.

I'm not convinced that his motivations actually matter. You could argue that the creepy guy hanging around the school playground offering the kids sweets might have the most benign of motivations. The point, as ever, is safeguarding. Society should not allow some men to do creepy stuff because they might be benign, because this acts as a cover for the worst of men to do it.

Yes, Debbie Hayden is a good example. He's been very open about getting a sexual thrill out of wearing women's tights/skirt (for example).

However, this is not the same thing as wearing giant fake tits as an employee in a children's toy shop. The whole point of that is to attract attention, cause confusion, lower boundaries for children. Its obscene behaviour, however you feel about garden variety AGP.

Erm excuse me @MNHQ

How on earth have I got a deletion from that comment?!

That is very poor form. There is nothing in that comment which warranted deletion.

The 'bring your fetish to work' movement has been one of the left's absolute worst ideas 🫠

This.

'Motivations' - ffs, this is nonsense. Anyone with normal boundaries can see this!

Quite. Pride advertising itself as family friendly while men in bondage gear and pup masks crawl around on all fours looking to be petted by children is perfectly normal behaviour.

Fake tits are used because ‘garden variety AGPs’ have already lowered the boundary.

Grayson Perry, who openly acknowledges he dresses up for a fetish, has even stated dressing up doesn’t give him so much arousal anymore as it is too mainstream.

I don't know if it was an idea of the left, or just one of the strands of the current Men's Rights Privileges Movement but I agree that it is an awful idea.

It's tough enough getting through a hard day's work in order to keep a roof over your head and keep the bills paid and food on the table, without having to deal with colleagues who demand their own pronouns, their own dress code, and appropriate other people's identity as their own...

There are so many cases of women with a long work history, years of just getting on doing their job, and doing it well, who are suddenly faced with a colleague who decides to 'bring their whole self to work', turns the workplace upside down, divides the workforce against itself, and usually against the woman who just wants to get on with doing her job.

After so many court cases and tribunals, the tide is turning against the idea that anything goes in the workplace.

"rather you can't assume someone has one by just looking at them "

In those cases, everybody can. It is clear as daylight and used to be understood by everyone until a certain movement came along and pressured everyone to not trust their eyes, to protect fetishists (not transpeople, they were/are just a vehicle for this).

Humans reflexively evade other humans that seem too far outside the behavioural norm, starting with someone violently coughing on the bus, and probably ending with a man with Double-X sized rubber breasts in a toy shop. It's protective behaviour, against germs, or against the possibility of dangerous and predatory behaviour (fetishs can escalate, and that used to be common knowledge before the year TRA, too).

Point in case, the OP is a man. He wouldn't normally be in danger by such behaviour, and would be able to defend himself against another man. Still, he feels deeply uncomfortable with the situation.

If it looks like a duck and quack's like a duck, I don't have to stop and consider if the duck actually thinks it's swan before I decide it's a duck.

If you mind is so open your brain falls out you might want to give making up your own mind a go, based on the evidence that if it looks like a duck and it quack's like a duck it is indeed a duck.

And a poster's on here defending him. Which is always revealing.

Wrt AGPs who don't wear over-sexualised clothing: there is an interesting Mr Menno podcast with Tanya de Grunwald where she wonders if the Mrs Doubtfire image is part of a strategy to avoid criticism and to get all the weak #bekinders on board.

As a woman with large breasts, I didn't choose it and if someone seems my chest to be sexual that's on them, not a fault of mine, even if I know they can be seen that way.

A man wearing large fake breasts also knows it can be seen that way, and makes the active choice to do so anyway knowing exactly what kind of impression he will leave.

It's not the same.

I think most likely its just that it gives them a thrill. Remember 'sissy' and humiliation fetish is also a thing.