M&S Colchester claim mixed changing is ‘completely safe’ for women.

[PeachOctopus]

How is it that M&S can continue to flaunt the high court ruling and do not offer single sex changing rooms?

Abouterf in this video confronts the store manager and is fobbed off and told that it’s head offices policy:

Colchester @marksandspencer I asked where the women’s changing room was to try on swimwear. Manager Andrew (he/ his /him) says gender neutral changing areas are “completely safe” for women and girls. For asking him this question, he told me to leave the store.

Abouterf x account

So vote with your feet and don’t shop there. It doesn’t need any more than that. If people have repeatedly made it clear how they feel via the right channels and they have no interest in changing (because under the law they aren’t compelled to provide single sex changing rooms) turn shop somewhere that aligns with your views.

there is nothing you can say that will make me think filming an employee with no control over the situation and plastering him online as a sacrificial lamb is the right course of action.

i don’t care if someone’s loud or quiet - I care that they direct it at the right person. And this wasn’t it.

would you have been ok if it was a man taking up the cause by following a woman around at her place of work filming her?

He didn’t ignore the law. They had unisex changing rooms. The law says that where single sex changing facilities are provided, access can lawfully be restricted on the basis of biological sex. It does not say businesses are required to provide single sex changing rooms in the first place.

And he didn’t rape anyone. Trying to justify filming and publicly posting him based on a hypothetical crime is absurd. The only situation where I could even partly understand her reaction is if he had allowed a male into a women only changing area while she was using it. That didn’t happen. She was in no danger, so there was no justification for filming him and putting him online.

Do you have to get fully undressed to try on a pair of shorts?

Why do you even need the privacy of a fitting room if you are keeping your knickers on?

Honestly, what a fuss.

I’ve worked in retail, I’ve worked large changing rooms. I am not a supporter of trans women.

However, during the 6 years I worked in a large department store, on both men’s and women’s fitting rooms everyday, I never once encountered a problem.

What I find is that we all get riled about this online, often whipped up by the media, but in real life we don’t really care that much. I saw TW all the time at work and they gave me no more issues to deal with than the average man or woman.

I’ve never seen an incident with a man/ woman in a changing room. The doors are full length and private, and there’s a staff member at the front.

Honestly, with all the issues I had to deal with, this isn’t up there in my shortlist.

Just because you havent seen it doesn't mean its has never been a problem for others. Surely you get that?

And ultimately it's the principle of the thing. This is one of the biggest women's retailers in the country. They have no interest in delivering what their female customers actually want. They are ridiculing and demeaning those who question them. It's just so deeply depressing that women are being treated like this in 2026.

If a man took a pair of trousers into the changing room in the lingerie department would you think it odd?

They have no interest in delivering what their female customers actually want.

This is the heart of the issue.

As they are one of the biggest retailers they must be delivering what many women actually want.

No they clearly aren't. This is hardly rocket science.

There are many reasons why women would continue to shop there, but the dismissal of their concerns to pander to men is a pretty disgraceful move.

Really? You're unaware of M&S's financial struggles over recent years?

M&S makes less than half its takings from clothes, beauty and homewares compared with food.

So if many of them still specify sex
segregated changing rooms, they're caught lying and they're going to have to come out, in public, and say well that's not the case any more, all our female changing rooms are changing to mixed sex.

And it's not quite true that that's completely non-discriminatory.

The Supreme Court said that not providing a female only space in certain circumstances could be indirect discrimination towards women.

I can't wait to see the publicising of the reviews of men wanking onto women's knickers and saying they like the little pleat because their cock fits in it nicely.

Very effectively showing that, yes, unequivocally, women do need their own changing room. And yes it is discriminatory not to provide them.

And sure, in an ideal world, no one wants to upset a retail worker, but this is not an ideal world because men who want to access vulnerable women and ejaculate on shop underwear have fucked it right up.

Their "pandering to men" (presumably by providing unisex changing facilities) was a predictable and predicted consequence of the AWS judgment. A company the size of m&s will have tested which approach was better for their business.

That the company makes more from food does not negate its share of sales as a clothing retailer.

Lastly, obviously, we are not in ideal world but that circumstance is no reason to upset and bully someone who has no control over the policy of a whole company.

M and S been asked repeatedly to sort their changing room policy out so it does not disadvantage women. They've ignored women.

It was always going to come down to the shop worker. That's on them, their stupid policy, their lack of spine, and transactivism.

Their "pandering to men" (presumably by providing unisex changing facilities) was a predictable and predicted consequence of the AWS judgment.

M&S's policy of not having single sex fitting rooms predates the AWS judgement by a long way. Below is a reply to a, by then, former customer in 2022.

"Our fitting rooms consist of individual lockable cubicles, typically managed by a colleague to provide assistance and ensure customers’ privacy. They are located within our womenswear and menswear departments and therefore are mainly used by customers of that gender, however in line with most other retailers we will generally allow people to use the fitting room they prefer, with our colleagues exercising discretion and common sense."

Nonsense. Plenty of companies make stupid decisions they live to regret.

I expect the pandering to men (and let's be clear, pandering to a subset of men with very dubious intentions) will ultimately result in lawsuits coming their way. Bring it on.

“there is nothing you can say…"
Why ask me a question to engage when you have already announced your mind is closed?

Women campaigned and fought for single-sex spaces in order to be able to take part in public life. I will leave you to continue centring men.

And yet they still promote they have:
Fitting Rooms (men) and Fitting Rooms (women)

If this was not true then they could easily update their online store guides. It looks like they want to have their cake and eat it.

💯

And Sex Matters getting involved at the beginning of it. M and S bosses need to pull up their full briefs, they're going to need all the support they can get.

Trying to be all things to all men ("men" in its former meaning of "humans").

Trying to appear, for the majority of their customers who want them, as though they have single sex fitting rooms. But still pandering to genderists by relying on "generally allow[ing] people to use the fitting room they prefer". And no doubt claiming, wide-eyed, that the words men/women in brackets refer merely to the womenswear and menswear departments.

Cant they just cater to all - at least in the largest stores? Why not keep the changing room in lingerie as female sex only and have the general fitting rooms as mixed sex. They need to ensure that signage is clear.

It might but that still does not excuse the shitty way in which he has been treated. Two wrongs don't make a right.

You have to take the public with you on a cause you can see this from the history of social change. Tactics like this against a shop worker will not do that. And patronising other women who have a different view to you isn't going to help either...

Perhaps he could reframe his trauma?

The public is already with women's rights being respected. It's M&S that's out of touch.