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

This narrative is so tired. “Centring men” because I don’t think employees should be filmed and harassed at work?

I’ve been consistent from the start: if people disagree with a company policy, they should absolutely complain, campaign, boycott, contact head office, protest outside corporate offices if they want. Direct it at the people making the decisions.

What I don’t agree with is targeting a random shop floor employee who has zero control over company policy and plastering him online as a stand in villain.

That isn’t 'fighting for women’s rights', it’s misdirected anger. And if a man followed a female employee around filming her at work over a policy she didn’t create, people would rightly call it intimidation.

Replying because you seem to have misunderstood, although it was a very short paragraph. Centring men by making public spaces mixed sex, which discriminates against women because of their specific needs.

Yes but it is more nuance than that and you know it. This was a shitty tactic and does nothing to help women's right being respected. And if you can't see that you are part of the problem.

I'm not sure there's much point in pulling the GC side up on 'shitty tactics' given the absolute avalanche of such tactics on the TRA side.

In an ideal world, no she shouldn't have done it like that, but we certainly aren't living in an ideal world. I don't have too much sympathy for this man, he was terrible dismissive towards women.

I hope M&S take note. Their staff shouldn't have to go to bat for such awful policies.

Different people will look at this same clip in different ways.

When I watched it I was struck by how he chose to walk away rather than answer a seemingly reasonable question. She only raises her voice as he’s walking off/moving further away.

Yes that one guy has been made a bit uncomfortable but he’s not lost his job and he’s been seen to follow M&S policy. He obviously agreed with the policy and decided that the woman filming wasnt a worthy customer.

His actions tell us all we need to know about M&S’ attitude towards women.

I’d stopped buying clothes there a while ago over this but it looks like I’ll need to avoid the food now too unfortunately

Maybe. Maybe not.

Individuals have and still are keeping these discriminatory policies in place and demonising women who speak up.

Those individuals will have to put their money where their mouths are - and that might mean their beliefs being made public sometimes when they don’t expect that. Just like GC people have feared in the past.

The filming started part way through the conversation when the employee had already been recalcitrant. The filming started to record his poor attitude. He wasn’t being entrapped

The filmed employee clearly agreed with the policy - at no point did he say you make a good point or i sympathise. Or I can see your POV. He said leave the shop - which is difficult to interpret in any other way than: we don’t want your type as a customer.

On the other hand I agree that filming someone is an aggressive move - and maybe it’s not what I’d do, but I’m not going to criticise this women for having done it. What I would say is that the employee missed a trick. She isn’t entitled to film him on private property and as store staff he could call security. Only in the public realm i think you can be filmed and not expect privacy? So he could have asked her to stop filming and said that M&S might take a dim view of that material going online, especially if any monetisation is involved.

Instead he walked off and suggested she leave the store - it’s his reaction and he should own it. He’s been seen to abide by M&S policy and he may get a few comments on social media but he’s unlikely to face any death threats or lose his job like the person filming might?

But I haven't made any comment on whether I think mixed spaces should exist.

Even if you have the separate women and men's changing rooms, no company can say it is 100% completely safe, just safer. Boys being targeted by predatory men, for example.

The threat isn't a hypothetical prediction either; it is an established pattern. We already have high-profile court convictions, and police appeals from voyeurism incidents inside Primark changing rooms, including a case where a man was prosecuted for sticking his phone under the partitions to film women. It is a proven safeguarding risk. When Marks and Spencer and other retailers choose to operate unisex-by-stealth policies, they are actively ignoring these real-world crimes. They remove the basic visual boundaries that allow women to spot danger, and they make it impossible for staff to challenge a man hanging around the cubicles or those men literally using them, until it is already too late.

We only see a bit of the interaction. Obviously the bit that does him no favours.

It is sad how people are happy to excuse shitty tactics like this there really is no defence here.

Ok what next murder in the name of the cause.

This kind of tactic is wrong. I would call it out whatever the cause it supposedly was trying to highlight.

You are part of the problem if you don't see this.

As I've said a few times on here two wrongs don't make a right. You should be better than that if you want change.

I never said two wrongs made a right.

I'm saying we are playing on a drastucallyunegen playing field.

But the man being filmed didn't create the playing field, nor did he dictate who can play on it.

Neither did the woman filming.

But the employee played his own role here in being extremely dismissive of her concerns.

There is nothing he can do himself except listen and invite her to complain to the people who make the policies, which he did.

That's not a reason to expose him to doxing by a barrister who should know far better or general ridicule, even if he were "extremely dismissive" (I don't think he was, even just in the edited clip shown which obviously didn't show the whole interaction)

People should be able to make relatively minor mistakes while doing their job and not have themselves destroyed on the internet for making them.

You can change the design to make it safer. You can have a 15cm floor to door gap so you can see how many people are in each cubicle and their proximity to each other from the outside. The slight decrease in privacy can even prevent crimes.

"I completely understand your point of view" goes a long way.

But then you'll have people saying you could slip a camera under the gap. Personally I'd rather be fully enclosed but it'll be subjective obviously.

Perhaps he said that prior to the start of her filming - this definitely wasn't the beginning of the interaction and it's unlikely he started off frustrated when he's in his place of work.

Speaking of toilets in particular, I was appalled that when visiting New York recently, that the public toilets (when you could find them) and even in massive tourist locations like famous museums and Central Park etc, actually had at least an inch gap down EACH side of the door frame. And I kid you not, the doors were more than a foot off the floor so you could see a lot of each person sitting there on the loo.
The kicker was the ones we went to that had GLASS doors. No I am not joking. You couldn't even rightly call it frosted glass. It was very very vaguely blurred, so much so that you could make eye contact with people at the sinks while you were there doing your business.
Which I didn't do as soon as I saw the set-up and could see other women sat with their garments round their ankles.

Absolutely mind boggling.

Give me a floor to ceiling fully enclosed lockable cubicle any day with doors that actually meet the frame.

Yep. They have up 30cm floor to door as well. If you get locked in you can slide out! I prefer our standard 15cm then the space above the door.

And that’s why the Health and Safety Executive say only single sex toilets within a single sex environment can have door gaps.

Single sex spaces are safer by design. If you want to design-in crime you make it a place where no one can see.

I have experienced this in a mixed sex loo in Stockholm. Hideous.