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?

Yes, that's possible. Men seem to be able to make a fetish out of anything.

I wouldn't mind betting, though, that that the thrill of transgression is magnified by the ability to elicit support for it through the Mrs Doubtfire identity.

Only males or very naive females (who don't have big boobs) make the same parallels in my experience.

What is it about trans activists that they can never say "OK this one has gone too far" but always have to defend trans people regardless of how extreme their behaviour is?

There's a new post which might be of interest. Some people querying all the recent deletions on various threads. You could ask MNHQ or post on Site Stuff? I'm wondering if they have a new, "enthusiastic" moderator?

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5534114-quick-public-service-announcement

This activism movement is very tied up with anarchism and plain old boundary pushing. (In fact arguably a number are, there seems to be a kind of omnicause activism the last year or so where it's less about the situation or any real knowledge, but about the opportunity to meet personal needs by shouting, ranting, anger and antisocial behaviour).

It is eventually going to break it, unless saner parts of the activism have boundaries and are able to defend them, but I doubt it. The damage started years back when there was an absolute refusal to separate threatening sexual violence and murder to women from any rational or justifiable political demand.

Has EmilyinEverton gone, or would she like to respond to the idea that everybody, regardless of their private interests and behaviours, should act professionally in the workplace, which means bringing not 'your whole self', but your [one's] business-like, professional self to work?

If only to spare your colleagues the unwelcome burden of having to deal with somebody who hasn't read the memo about what's appropriate/inappropriate in the workplace.

I once worked in a place where there was a diehard Crystal Palace fan; he was an absolute pain - his mood on a Monday was decided by the results at the weekend, we had to listen to him going on and on about unfair penalty decisions, or how the Eagles had got their mojo back, or whatever was happening at the club at that time, ad bloody nauseam.

We all kept our heads down and hoped he'd stop.

There was nothing dangerous or dodgy or fetishistic about his devotion to Crystal Palace - but 'bringing his whole self' into work was not good for the workplace environment - he should have left his enthusiastic fandom at the door when he left for work.

Ditto 'Boudica's' fake boobs, I suggest.

Was just going to post this! It takes all kinds to make the world go around, blah blah, but you would think that trans-identified people wouldn't want fetishists shilling for their cause, it really doesn't do the movement any good!

EmilyinEverton
The same as women who get massive fake tits. Makes them feel more feminine which is expression of their individual personality inclinations, or just an aesthetic preference, to attract members of the opposite sex or maybe a fashion trend.

Well Emily is certainly following the AGP playbook, here. As written by an AGP, funnily enough.

Debbie Hayton, self confessed fetishist, admitted, on here actually, that he thinks women's breast size are a sign of their place on the social hierarchy amongst other women.

According to him, the bigger the breast, the more caché women had with their peer group. With the ample bosomed, presumably, dominating their social circle with every heft.

Fondly imagining regular women being consumed with jealousy over their porn addled version appears to be another theme.

Hardly surprising that a man with AGP would choose outsized bosoms, given their entire concept of womanhood is all about objectification.

OP, my experience, what people would really like is for you to present them with a solution.

So when you've come up with the reasons why you think this is a fetish, adding in the concept of children asking why that man has such big pretend boobies, offer the solution.

Which could simply be a dress code.

Personally, if it was me, I would specify not having fake, plastic bosoms, because I'd love to see the man defend it. But they could just say 'appropriate presentation'.

that's probably all it will take. And if it doesn't, let's hope the papers pick it up.

This is one of those cases where, for all its many, many flaws, the way the retail sector in the US works really works well. If you want to get rid of someone, you just fire them.. Sometimes you have to give them a bit of notice, but often you don't even need to do that. Just, "your services are no longer required, go home and don't come back."

I wonder if that employee dressed for his interview, wearing his enormous, fake breasts?

Consider the implications of that for a moment...

Quite. Not to mention, has any woman, ever, gone anywhere in enormous fake breasts? Why on earth would they? A woman might get a breast enlargement, occasionally a very large one, but going around with rubber prosthetics? It's about the same as turning up with an enormous rubber nose on.

Good point. Why do women not ever do this? Answers on a postcard.

Sorry, Tortoisel! Just realized that you started the other thread! 😂

There seems to be a certain fanaticism across many different types of activists when it is not possible for the ‘right’ side to ever do wrong regardless of evidence. You see it with the nationalists and SNP in Scotland.

Talking of rubber breasts - I presume they are actually silicone? And I also presume they don’t have a realistic weight to them?

Hi Everyone. It the OP here.

Thanks for everyones comments. I had created the post as a bit of an "idiot check." Just wanted to understand if my moral compass was still working - it has been a little hot for the last couple of days - was worried that the heat had gotten to me and i had turned into a massive big transphobe.

But NO.... I'm not an idiot, I'm all ok and actually one of the responsible adults in the room.

Can you believe that some people are actually trying to defend the indefensible? Bloody mental isn't it.

Wearing fake tits in a kids toy shop is just weird. Simple as that.

I will definitely be following this up with a letter to the toy stores HQ.

I'm going to leave the thread now but will return over the next few days when I have done a bit of digging and have roughed up a letter of complaint.

Thanks again to all who have contributed. The fight continues!

What the hell is "man face" in relation to butch women?

That’s hilarious. My social cachet has peaked and troughed over the years, by that metric! The reality I would say, is that women with really large breasts have to work harder to look smart for work, and are more likely to struggle to be taken seriously.
Except Dolly Parton. She absolutely rocks her look. The rest of us probably feel like we’re running damage control.

Yes, so would two of my three have done. The third would have asked me afterwards if that man had got something wrong with him. (I wouldn't have done either thing, because when i was that age nobody would have behaved in such an aberrant and abhorrent way; they probably wouldn't even have been able to buy huge fake titties to strap on and swelter in. And the local toy shop was owned and run by a family who wouldn't have stood for such nonsense for an instant.)

What I find interesting here is that it is so often the same people who assert that children as young as three are so in tune with sexual feelings and expression that they are able to identify themselves as trans, but at the same time children are unable to recognise sexual feelings and expression in deviant adults. It's a funny sort of doublethink being openly expressed – I suspect we are not supposed to realise. Once you have, though, you notice it all the time.

In my own experience of being an activist in a trade union (that’s not affiliated to any political party) the young members (under 28 years old) in our union are being whipped up and being used as a tool by the faction that is aligned to the Socialist Workers Party.

I consider my own politics to be anarchist (aka Left Libertarian), and I’m a pacifist. I take issue with you labelling these aggressive people as anarchists.

What I see is an authoritarian approach where young members are being lead by the nose by TRAs, MRAs, and divisive socialists who want to bring down civil society.

But they don’t often work in a toy shop around kids with their wares deliberately positioned so said kids can get an eyeful.

As I've come to learn over the years, through personal experience and all the wider discussion, when you remove vulnerable children from the mix, gender ideology has nothing but doublespeak.

Every argument has to have a doublespeak "counter argument" because obfuscation is all the ideology is built on, since it's all one big lie: that changing your sex is possible.

According to him, the bigger the breast, the more caché women had with their peer group. With the ample bosomed, presumably, dominating their social circle with every heft.

Really 😂, he thinks that's a thing, I can't wait until I meet up with the girls next and tell they we have to out compete each other with our boob's, She who has the biggest is in Charge. 🤣🤣🤣

You've got to hope that people vote with their feet and take their children and their custom elsewhere.

Again. Wearing it UNDER their clothes - NOT the same thing as wearing massive plastic tits that are clearly designed for everyone to see.
But are you now agreeing that the latter is a fetish?

But anarchy can also be a desirable outcome for gender ideology, especially that part of the ideology that embraces queer theory in its extremes (for example, the elimination of age of consent and the idea that very young children have "sexual awareness.") This takes us down some very dark holes, and I don't want to discuss THAT.

Just to say that although anarchy can mean "absence of government " and " a state of lawlessness due to due the absence of governmental authority", it can also mean "a utopian society of individuals who enjoy complete freedom without government [my bold]".

I believe that there is a very vocal section of gender ideologists who are working to achieve the latter, for their own, nefarious purposes, and they are influencing our children.