Man who claims to be a woman protests after restaurant refused to let him use female washrooms

UK: A transgender woman has slammed Primark after staff refused to let her use their female changing rooms.

Joni Bendall, 26, was born a man but now identifies as a woman.

She was shopping in Primark in Ipswich, Suffolk, on April 30 when she took two items of clothing to the female changing room "like any other woman would".

But Joni, of Ipswich, was told by the sales assistant that the men's changing rooms were upstairs.

Miss Bendall said: "I paused to take a breath and said: 'I'm not a man'. And the assistant turned around and kept folding clothes."

Miss Bendall said she reported the incident to the store manager, who was apologetic and advised her that the female facilities were downstairs.

She added: "I ended up leaving the shop.

"It made me feel dysphoric [a state of unease] and it made me very aware of being the way I am, which is not very pleasant sometimes.

"Shopping for clothes is a difficult thing anyway.

"It really messes with my head and all you need is for one person to confirm that all the bad things that you think about yourself are true."

A Primark spokesman said it was its policy to allow all transgender customers to use the fitting rooms of their choice in its stores.

He said: "Primark takes all customer complaints seriously and expects all its staff to provide considerate and respectful assistance to customers shopping and trying clothes on in store."

Miss Bendall, who runs a trans-network at Suffolk's lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) hub in Ipswich, said she faced discrimination on a daily basis.

She said last week she was abused five times during a 30-minute walk, with one person shouting "he-she" at her for five minutes straight.

Joni said: "We are viewed as being weird or different or overly-sexualised and it's just not like that.

"We are just ordinary boring people who want to shop like anyone else does.

"But trans-people should be able to walk into a shop like anyone else because they are like anyone else."