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

What is the law is that clothing stores mustn't advertise a space as if it were single sex and then actually operate it as mixed sex.

They do advise their changing rooms facilities as single sex on their storefinder page.

Good grief that’s awful!

Ours has that and I would not expect men to be in there! It’s a women’s shop ffs. And those chairs in the middle are not for them to wait about on

I guess I’m interpreting that differently to you. I just see it as they’re providing fitting rooms for both men and women - with no reference to how that’s structured. But agree that’s only my interpretation.

in reality though, if you arrive at the store and it’s just labelled fitting room, you’re well aware it’s not single sex and can make a judgement at that point whether you’re happy to use it.

In no way does the disappointment that someone might feel that it wasn’t as they’d expected, make it OK to take that out on someone probably making minimum wage, who has absolutely 0 control over the policies/store layout. Compare it to the opening times being advertised as 9-5 on the website but being told the store is closing at 4.30 when you get there. It wouldn’t be OK to start recording the staff and following them round the shop floor because they couldn’t keep the store open til 5 for you.

I don't buy clothes or underwear in m and s since they started this misogynist nonsense. In fact i barely go near m and s any more, they don't deserve my money any more given how badly they treat women, the biggest group of their customers. Plus their clothes are frumpy and expensive, their underwear is not good quality any more and their food is ludicrously expensive, so it's an easy boycott. Interestingly though their toilets are always Men or Women. The only reason i ever go into their stores.

I don't really even see why this was a problem or why that young man deserved to be doxxed and harassed. I think this whole episode has done immeasurable damage to the Gender Critical cause and its image in the public eye. It makes us look unhinged and spiteful. Already I see people saying this behaviour was fun for the woman who took the video and it's hard to disagree having watched it. She sounded like a gleeful bully not a person genuinely concerned for their safety. Is this really what we've come to?

There are many reasons why I only shop online now, and this is one of them.

Having worked in a large department store I would never buy anything directly from them. I've seen dogs wee and poo in areas, I had to appease men wanting to try on dresses and underwear (and if any woman objected, the company policy was that the complaining woman had to leave), and unclean, smelly and unhygienic people trying on beautiful clothes. I've seen people pick up £300 dresses off the floor and roll them up in a ball. No thanks!!

Men in changing rooms behave like they do in the toilet. After they have left the place is littered with their shit (tissues, dirt from shoes, any other crap they want to offload), they roll the clothes into a ball, leave all the hangers and clothes on the floor. After they have left we had to spray the place because it stank of pheromones and BO. As mentioned, if you wanted to try on any ladies wear or children's items, you had to use it too as there were no staff to open another one. In fact, if you look at changing rooms now in most shops, they are not staffed.

I window shop, then I buy online. It is easy to order and return at your own leisure.

What she did was totally unfair on that bloke. He is a minimum wage (+ a bit probably) retail worker. The policies of M&S are not his fault.

If she has a problem she should write to her MP and the company, not join the league of people who think that retail staff are there as the whipping boy for all their frustrations.

It takes huge bravery for a woman to speak up about our rights. We all know that women have lost their jobs and their reputations for pointing out that transwomen don't belong in our spaces. There's no symmetry of risk at all.

And the manager is a big bloke who is clearly very condescending. He has no idea that women and girls are 9 times more likely to be assaulted in mixed sex spaces. He'll probably get a pay rise from the misogynists at M&S. To suggest that the woman sounds 'gleeful' is a bit desperate. I doubt any woman enjoys being falsely accused of abuse.

Unisex changing rooms put women at danger of sexual assault, data reveals | The Independent | The Independent

@ICameISawIPlanked the average wage for an M&S manger is £42,300 a year. He should be trained to listen to women when they raise safety concerns.

Do you honestly think that if a transwoman had said he felt unsafe, the manager would have dismissed his concerns so rudely and then told him to leave the store?

Marks & Spencer Manager salaries: How much does a Marks & Spencer Manager make in the United Kingdom? | Indeed.com

The direct analogy would be a TW filming him, following him round the store while shouting about misgendering because he'd been told not to go into a women's space and shouting why he had to change in front of men.

In neither scenario does the person filming come off as the more reasonable party.

Im not sure if the video alone is quite in 'humiliating him publicly' territory, he was prissy and dismissive and should have dealt with fairly basic questioning over store policy better. What I did not like was the subsequent doxxing of his personal details which is straight from the TRA handbook and to be honest, I thought 'we' were better then that.

@FinchiePink again you're minimising his poor behaviour.

If he'd taken a minute to listen to her entirely reasonable concerns, she probably wouldn't have felt worried enough to start filming, and there would be no reason for her to post it.

It's only gone viral and been watched by millions of people because he arrogantly pretends that mixed sex changing rooms are 'perfectly safe' and then strides away.

If the manager had behaved reasonably it would be a complete non-story.

Actually it's fortunate that so many people are talking about it because it will have alerted a lot more people to the dangers of mixed sex changing rooms.

I'm one of many women who has had the misfortune to be spied on in a mixed sex changing room. My friend and I were getting dressed after swimming, heard a strange noise and looked down to see a man had wedged his head under the gap and was audibly masturbating. In retrospect we're lucky he had his hands full because at least he didn't film us and post it on the internet.

Thousands of women and girls have not been so lucky. There are entire websites dedicated to footage of women and little girls being spied on while they undress. For this manager to claim mixed sex changing is 'perfectly safe' demonstrates that he simply doesn't take women seriously.

Yeah new look ones are horrid in a circle like that with just curtains.

We doesn’t know what happened before the clip so his reaction might be reasonable we don’t have the full context. The video in my opinion was humiliating as the comments about his sexuality are bigoted and homophobic.

Going into someone’s workplace and filming without permission should be illegal and I hope the government change the law here or companies take it into their own hands and pursue people who do this. This does nothing for any cause people think there is.

I might have been sympathetic to the cause, but now I’m just turned off and about to go shopping in M&S….

If he'd taken a minute to listen to her entirely reasonable concerns, she probably wouldn't have felt worried enough to start filming, and there would be no reason for her to post it.

First of all, it's clear to anyone who's seen it that this interaction had been ongoing for some time before she started filming. It's clear he has been listening to her for a good few minutes.

Secondly, she wasn't worried. There is absolutely nothing in her behaviour that suggests that. This person is well known on X for being a bit of an agitator and has posted many videos of interactions. I'd bet the farm she went into M&S looking for a fight.

Thirdly, even in the film he has listened to her concerns, and directed her to head office.

How long, exactly, would you as a customer service rep keep going around in circles telling a customer they needed to speak to HO before bringing it to a close and walking away? How many minutes would you keep that going? Even when they started filming you?

Exactly. The contempt M&S is showing for women here is disgraceful

Have you seen the comments about him on social media... I would call that public humiliation - disguising comments about his manner, his sexuality and they are very homophobic. No one knows how he feels, people pointing out how rude and badly he behaved. I hope he is getting some support as this kind of thing could have serious impact on his mental health...This is why in my opinion filming without permission should be illegal. I hope the man is being supported by his workplace.

I don't agree. I prefer and trust women's changing rooms and that's what I want from my shopping experience. I was at Uniqlo when it first went mixed sex, and a seemingly respectable man opened a curtain on a young woman next to me and laughed it off in a way she clearly felt she couldn't challenge. There's no way it was accidental. I don't want to be in there thinking that only the door lock keeps shit like that from happening.

Then that's your choice to shop elsewhere - with no judgement from anyone else. But what that doesn't translate into is giving someone the right to film an employee in their place of work and attempt (and in this case, succeed) to humiliate them by posting one sided footage online.

That's a separate issue, which I didn't comment on. But I think it was fair for her to challenge the employee and record it - we should see what the staff are trained to say so we can challenge store policy effectively. Unpleasant for him yes, but his attitude was unacceptable imo

She could see (hear) what he'd said without recording him. She could even at a push have recorded him if she was unable to remember what he'd said/thought he'd deny it and not published it online to humiliate him.

If she really felt she had to record it, she ought to have recorded the whole conversation from the minute she approached him, not halfway through missing out the part where perhaps he had responded patiently before she started following him.

I've no problem with it. She didn't do it to humiliate him. She did it to show that unacceptable practices are in place at M&S. It's important.

This is my local Marks.
A. Each department has its own changing rooms. Mens, lingerie and women's. Three in total, I have NEVER seen a man in the changing rooms of either the lingerie or women's clothes.
B. Each changing area has cubicles with lockable doors and a member of staff.

I feel incredibly sorry for this member of staff, the women here was clearly baiting him and filming without his consent. Arsehole move. He is now being targeted on social media.

My recent experience of M&S CR was at Fosse Park. CR by women’s clothes was unmanned. It was unusual as the one local to me always had someone to collect clothes or change sizes but not this one.