A few weeks back, I wrote about the problem of Marks & Spencer’s “inclusive” policy on unisex changing rooms—or more specifically, how those policies offer an advantage to predatory, opportunist men at the expense of female safety.
Unfortunately, incidents that prove this point do not seem to be in short supply. The latest such incident comes courtesy of a young lady on Tik Tok. As you can see in the video, a very distressed young girl named Charlotte is describing a traumatic incident she experienced in a Cambridge Primark:
According to Charlotte, whilst using a “unisex” changing room, two different men peeled back the curtain of her cubicle at separate times in what she believes to have been a coordinated and intentional invasion of her privacy. And furthermore, Primark security informed her that this “wasn’t the first time” this had happened.
The trauma of what happened to this young girl is plain to see. And what makes the whole thing even more upsetting is how she seemingly feels compelled to defend the ideology of ‘inclusion’ that helped to create this outcome.
She appears to be a good person that wants to do the right thing. And when it comes to gender ideology, the ‘right thing’ for women to do is consider their own safety and discomfort as less important than the hurt feelings of biological men. This is how she can have been made to feel so scared that she needed chaperoning to her vehicle yet also praise Primark and their “inclusive” unisex changing rooms.
The ultra-charitable interpretation of course is to accept the possibility this was a genuine mistake. A mistake committed by men from the same group. Twice. It will be interesting to see the conclusions of an investigations that are made. However, I don’t see how increasing the likelihood of accidental invasions of privacy is a good thing either.
Twitter user Suzzan Blac has documented a long string of disturbing crimes carried out in numerous Primark changing rooms across the country, as you can read in the below Twitter thread:
These crimes include instances of voyeurism, sexual assault and rape. You also have to wonder about the incidents that didn’t end up in newspapers or posted social media.
The issue of single sex spaces always has, and continues to be about one thing: opportunist male offenders. And the cries of “transphobia” towards any reasonable concern about this problem do not make any sense. As I previously wrote:
Those of us arguing for the necessity of single sex spaces will often be accused of demonising all transgender people as rapists, perverts and voyeurs in waiting. But this does not make sense for one simple reason: the exact same safeguarding concerns that should apply to transgender people also apply to me as a non-trans male—for exactly the same reasons. And I do not consider myself a threat to women, nor do I feel I am being defamed as some sort of deviant when prohibited from entering the women’s changing rooms.
The safeguarding system is designed to protect women from the statistically significant number of men that wish to do them harm or violate their privacy. Of course I do not think that this system was made specifically with me in mind, but I also know that to be allowed to simply opt-out of it is to render the whole system of safeguarding completely ineffective. Put more simply; it’s not about me.
Safeguarding will not prevent every warped male opportunist on the planet from accessing female spaces of course, but it certainly narrows down the window of opportunity far more than any policy devised around the idea of self-identification can. And that’s the point.
And I’ll ask the same question of Primark that I asked of Marks & Spencer: Do their ‘inclusion’ policies on changing rooms make their female customers less safe?
Please let me know your thoughts in the comments.
Primark: Another safeguarding failure in the name of "inclusion".