Male teen and Monsoon, and apparently a discussion about non binary gender and intersex.

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skirted84
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Male teen and Monsoon, and apparently a discussion about non binary gender and intersex.

Post by skirted84 »

Good that Monsoon have apologised but an all too familiar case of men getting agro for trying on "womens" clothes in store.
https://metro.co.uk/2022/04/12/birmingh ... -16452430/
Last edited by skirted84 on Mon Apr 18, 2022 3:22 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Stu
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Re: Male teen and Monsoon

Post by Stu »

I don't buy into the "non-binary" idea, but this is a ridiculous story! My nearest Monsoon store has proper fitting rooms facing the shop floor, with solid wooden screens and solid doors with locks on the inside. Users have full privacy and security.

People visiting clothes shops are all customers selecting which merchandise they wish to purchase. Their sex is not relevant to the staff. Trying to stop one set of customers trying on garments while allowing others to do so on the basis of a "protected characteristic" is unlawful. Would they refuse to allow a Jewish person or a gay person etc to try on a garment? I am glad this young man won his argument and is to be recompensed - and I hope other retailers learn from this. Customers are customers - end of.
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Re: Male teen and Monsoon

Post by skirted84 »

Even if women only changing rooms are lawful you wonder if they still have to make male provision available. I heard of some other fashion chain marketed to young women that have one mens cubicle in case one so chooses. Its a sad state of affairs if a man presenting as a woman (not the ethos of skirtcafe) gets a pass but other men don't.

I do agree on the non binary thing though, thats why the "non binary" women with him had no trouble.
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Re: Male teen and Monsoon

Post by rivegauche »

I'm going to defend Monsoon here. I have tried on dresses in Monsoon in Inverness (now closed), Elgin and Edinburgh and received nothing but friendly and helpful service. This guy just got someone on a bad day.
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Re: Male teen and Monsoon

Post by STEVIE »

rivegauche wrote: Fri Apr 15, 2022 10:29 pm I'm going to defend Monsoon here. I have tried on dresses in Monsoon in Inverness (now closed), Elgin and Edinburgh and received nothing but friendly and helpful service. This guy just got someone on a bad day.
We also don't know how this "guy" and the buddy were behaving at the time.
If it was like silly little children, they deserved it, male, female or any of the other 57 flavours.
Let's bust an old myth, the "customer" is not always right!
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Re: Male teen and Monsoon

Post by Pdxfashionpioneer »

We also don't know how this "guy" and the buddy were behaving at the time.
If it was like silly little children, they deserved it, male, female or any of the other 57 flavours.
Let's bust an old myth, the "customer" is not always right!
Steve.


Steve is absolutely right; we don't know how those two young people were behaving and there is nothing to suggest they were misbehaving so I can't understand why you put that out there.

Too bad that young person is taking such a hard line on this. At their age I probably would have done the same thing, but with a few more decades experience to go on, if all of that had happened to me, I would definitely take them up on their offer of the free gown because 1) brand new gowns are expensive and you can just bet I would start looking for the most expensive dresses first to see if any of them appealed to me and 2) watching someone who treated you poorly gobble down heaping helpings of crow is one of the more entertaining of life's little pleasures. You could just bet I would make a point of tracking down the associate who had treated me so shabbily, announce who I am and that I was there to pick up my free gown and be the very most demanding customer that I could be. And if that person didn't live all the way up to my expectations, before I left for the day, I would insist upon speaking personally to the manager on duty to report each and every one of the person's shortcomings.

Stu said
I don't buy into the "non-binary" idea


I don't know how things work on your side of the Atlantic, but here in the US, college and university department heads and deans take student evaluations seriously when considering whether to promote, keep or release faculty members. Assuming you value your job, I suggest you drop by your university's psychology department and find their specialist in gender studies and have them get you up to speed.

From everything you've posted it is clear that you are still stuck on the Gender Binary. The current understandings in physiology, psychology and all of the other affected disciplines all come to the same conclusion: the Gender Binary is overly simplistic to the point of being erroneous and hopelessly out of date. But don't take my word for it. You've got a whole university campus's worth of experts at your disposal, go ask them.
Last edited by Uncle Al on Sun Apr 17, 2022 2:58 am, edited 1 time in total.
Reason: Fixed quoting format
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Re: Male teen and Monsoon

Post by STEVIE »

Having worked in a retail environment for some considerable time I feel kind of justified for making that statement.
Certain groups of customers can be a real pain in the ass for a variety of reasons.
Boisterous teenagers regardless of gender can be really distracting and disruptive and to a frazzled shop worker, the final straw.
Judgemental, sure it is, but the assistant was maybe of a similar age and probably paid minimum rate so why should they have to take any "c**p"?
The tone of the article suggested to me that our two heroes were oh so severely oppressed and victimised by the big bad Monsoon ogre and yes, I put out an alternative.
There was a comment that Monsoon, donate a dress as recompense for the suffering, hmmmm, I am so surprised?
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Re: Male teen and Monsoon

Post by Pdxfashionpioneer »

I’ve worked in retail as well and there was nothing to suggest the young person was acting inappropriately. Your remarks are coming across as bashing a person because you object to how they identify themselves.
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Re: Male teen and Monsoon

Post by STEVIE »

Pdxfashionpioneer wrote: Sat Apr 16, 2022 6:01 pm I’ve worked in retail as well and there was nothing to suggest the young person was acting inappropriately. Your remarks are coming across as bashing a person because you object to how they identify themselves.
You will have to clarify because I very specifically stated that my view was not based on gender or any expression of it so "bashing"?
As the article was written from the "young person's" point of view one would hardly expect it to describe them as acting like complete jackasses.
Maybe the shop assistant was having a bad day and snapped, that is hardly a capital offence either.
Finally, I try to treat everyone with the same degree of respect and courtesy regardless of how they identify or present themselves and merely expect the same in return.
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Re: Male teen and Monsoon

Post by Pdxfashionpioneer »

Fair enough, apparently I inferred something that wasn’t there.

It still strikes me as odd that you’re so insistent on defending indefensible behavior by the shop personnel with your speculating that the young people were misbehaving, when there was nothing in the facts presented to support those speculations.

As far as that goes, there wasn’t anything in the article to suggest your “bad day” thesis because the store personnel claimed they were responding to one woman’s complaint. The Monsoon management’s response strongly suggests to me that the store personnel responded in contravention to the chain’s policies.

I’m not sure how you define “capital offense” but they created international negative publicity for the chain that’s probably gone viral as well. If that’s not a capital offense, it’s certainly worse than a typical mistake.

It looks to me like the store associates who treated that teenager so shabbily were acting on their own agendas rather than their employer’s best interests. I can’t imagine you would tolerate that in any business you owned, now would you?
David, the PDX Fashion Pioneer

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Re: Male teen and Monsoon

Post by STEVIE »

I am defending nothing, especially what may be deemed "indefensible"!
All I was trying to suggest was that there may have been more to the tale of woe.
As for agendas, you cannot know either if the alleged victims did not have their own.
The retailer's reaction simply adds a further layer to what in essence may just have been a storm in a teacup.
I reckon that on this point, we should agree to differ?
Steve.
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Re: Male teen and Monsoon

Post by Stu »

Pdxfashionpioneer wrote: Sat Apr 16, 2022 12:44 pm
I don't know how things work on your side of the Atlantic, but here in the US, college and university department heads and deans take student evaluations seriously when considering whether to promote, keep or release faculty members. Assuming you value your job, I suggest you drop by your university's psychology department and find their specialist in gender studies and have them get you up to speed.

From everything you've posted it is clear that you are still stuck on the Gender Binary. The current understandings in physiology, psychology and all of the other affected disciplines all come to the same conclusion: the Gender Binary is overly simplistic to the point of being erroneous and hopelessly out of date. But don't take my word for it. You've got a whole university campus's worth of experts at your disposal, go ask them.
University "gender studies" people are simply agents of a specific type of propaganda that is at best pseudo-scientific. I trust nothing they say because it originates in the ideas of postmodernism and critical theory, which is 100% nonsense. In some establishments, even questioning of this is considered heresy akin to the obsession some centuries ago with witchcraft - and every bit as unscientific. Consequently, I don't need "bringing up to speed" with anything and the only thing I am stuck in is reality. 99% + human beings are unarguably either male or female.

I like the way you say "Assuming you value your job". That perfectly demonstrates the issue - intolerance of beliefs that do not conform to the hegemony of the establishment. Those who dissent will be erased, just as happened in the old Soviet Union and still occurs in modern China. People who have principles are willing to stand up to that and say what they believe. That is especially important in universities where freedom of thought and expression should be paramount.

Lastly, as for beliefs being "out of date", that again perfectly categorises the sickness our society suffers from. A belief is either true or it is not. If it is true, then it can be proven to be true using rationality and regardless as to how long it has persisted. The truth is always the truth: whether speaking a particular truth is in or out of fashion should never be a consideration for the rational mind.
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Re: Male teen and Monsoon

Post by pelmut »

Stu wrote: Sun Apr 17, 2022 12:46 pm ..A belief is either true or it is not.
If you draw up two rigid categories and then fit everyone you meet into one or the other of them, you will find that your binary belief is true because it is self-fulfilling.  If you look at what people really are and discover that there is range over which they are spread, you will find your belief is false.  Which are you doing?

Believing sex and gender to be binary is about as useful to understanding them as dividing substances into Air, Earth, Fire and Water is to understanding chemistry.  It isn't a matter of fashion, it is a matter of having more recent knowledge and a better understanding because of it.
There is no such thing as a normal person, only someone you don't know very well yet.
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Re: Male teen and Monsoon

Post by Stu »

There are two sexes. The whole purpose of sexual dimorphism is that we have male plus female, sperm plus egg - and they equal reproduction. There is no third or interim biological sex and reproduction requires two people who are physiologically and biologically of the opposite sex. That's just reality for humans and just about all animals and no scientist worth his or her salt would attempt to deny that. Those who deny that are deluded and now some are insisting that others buy into their delusion - even with threats against their livelihood. Now if you are talking about gender as opposed to biological sex, then it depends on precisely what you mean. The word "gender" seems to have become a word which means whatever the speaker wants it to mean. If you take the view that gender means masculine or feminine, then I totally agree that is not a binary - it is a gradient. Some men are more masculine than others and some women are more feminine than others. Some males have or adopt feminine traits and some females masculine traits. If we are talking about that, then I am happy to accept the premise that "binary" is simplistic. But people are either male or female - a he or a she.

Of course people are able to switch their social gender by attempting to live as the opposite sex and they experience varying degrees of success in that regard. That is achieved by changing one's signifiers with regard to what others detect about them, e.g. their physical appearance, dress, hair, cosmetics, accessories, speech and voice, gait and so on. To make people feel comfortable when they have done this, we switch gendered pronouns, so we say "she" instead of "he" or the reverse, and that's good. Those who do this are still wholly subscribing to the gender binary, though: they are certainly not denying it.
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Re: Male teen and Monsoon

Post by rivegauche »

Strictly speaking biological sex is not binary. People are fixated on the belief that there is only XX (female) and XY (male). In fact there is a range of other variations including XXY, XYY and even XO. These might be assigned at birth but the biology might develop differently because the appearance at birth was not actually representative of the baby's endocrine biology. They might not be viable for reproduction but lots of XY and XX people never reproduce. It is not justifiable to classify people's whole lives on reproduction potential when reproduction is not obligatory. Though the numbers are small they are proof that sex is not binary. This is biology, not trendy psychology.
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