M&S apologises over trans employee in bra department (Telegraph)

[WimbledonWhites]

How many “cis” male members of staff do you suppose would approach teenage girls in the lingerie department?
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/08/04/ms-apologises-over-trans-employee-in-bra-department/

https://archive.ph/nTDB9archive.ph/nTDB9

I had a proper fitting once with one with one of my pregnancies and was finding bras really uncomfortable. By definition, there’s someone touching your breasts - in my case, she was kind of manoeuvring my breast tissue into various bras.

I didn’t feel uncomfortable because she was such a matter of fact woman. No way in hell would I have let a man do it. Not even a man who pretends they aren’t one.

We are teaching our children to have no boundaries around their privacy and dignity, and those needed for them to keep themselves safe.

The boundaries also used to be supported with policies that had robust safeguarding at heart. But as soon as you allow even one male person to be treated as if they are female (especially for safeguarding purposes) and tell our children that those male people should be accepted as being female people those boundaries are dropped.

years ago there used to be someone of that description in the Bath store,

A transwoman should definitely not be approaching a teenager in the lingerie department to offer help. It is completely inappropriate. The thing that stands out though, is the M&S response which puts responsibility for avoiding a repeat of this incident onto the mother and daughter, rather than taking action to ensure that a transwoman is not present in the lingerie department in future. There are umpteen other departments that this person could work in. Suggesting that the mother should phone ahead for a future visit makes her look like an 'awkward customer', someone who requires 'special treatment' and that they somehow have to pander to this. Never mind all the future teenage girls who might be approached in the lingerie department by a 6ft 2in transwoman. Because they'll be perfectly fine with it. Won't they?

Just to say though, there are far too many posters grabbing an invisible baton and running to the next person with it. There is nothing in the article to suggest that the transwoman wanted to measure the teenage girl for a bra or to touch her in any way. Apparently he offered help. I don't think he should have. And I agree with other posters that it is very unusual for any staff member in M&S to offer help unsolicited. And for this reason I imagine there's a very strong possibility that he got a kick out of playing a role and being all 'girls together', which is of course absolutely revolting. But, again, there is nothing to say that he wanted to ogle the girl in a naked state or to touch her.

I wonder how many trans identifying female M&S staff make a point of asking male customers if they need any help with socks, ties and sensible jumpers in the menswear dept.

I quoted the bit from the report where it said he wasn’t a bra fitter upthread myself. I agree it’s best to be accurate - if M&S had trained him I’d blame them more, but as it is this isn’t about M&S management, it’s just a male not understanding women and girls’ boundaries and needs.

Well I, for one, am starting to suspect Pete has ulterior motives!!!!

He has reportedly been seen in an awful lot of women's toilets of late.

Totally agree that 'it’s just a male not understanding women and girls’ boundaries and needs.
You and I agree that he is not a member of staff who does bra fittings.
And I'm as unimpressed as you are by him being in the lingerie department and approaching a young woman/teenager (not to mention by M&S's lukewarm apology).
In response to my comment that 'posters saying he's trying to get his hands on young women through doing bra fittings are barking up the wrong tree' you said, 'They may or may not be [barking up the wrong tree].' But that was my point. They ARE.
At least one side in this issue needs to keep things factual and accurate.

I’ve been boycotting M+S ever since.

I’ve taken other things back - just not bras, since I haven’t needed to.

It's so depressing. This is a massive social experiment initiated by adults with a vested interest in removing safeguarding and eroding boundaries to allow those with a fetish to flourish. Women and girls are being trained to be compliant and accept the presence and interventions of trans identifying men in places where we could previously assume would be free from men.

Allegations of bigotry, hatred and hysteria are all used to enforce the rights of these men (even on this thread). I've no doubt any woman member of staff who tried to raise this behaviour as inappropriate would be speedily disciplined in the manner of NHS Fife and got rid of.

No
She does have the right The nhs can’t say a transwomen is a women

women have always had the right to a biological women if they ask
The nhs have never had the right to deny it

The ‘aggressive’ patient angle doesn’t work anymore for the nhs

Organisations that put the onus on the people that they are providing a service for to reject someone is a major part of the issue.

That is something that is missing now. And I think it is missing because to provide an ‘inclusive’ environment with today’s lens means not acknowledging that people’s transgender identities don’t reflect material reality. Yet society is expected to act as if those identities are material real.

People who have been shamed or taught to have low boundaries are not likely to reject the people who cause them distress. It is actually cruel to put people in that position.

It is like Dr Upton declaring that it is up to any female patient to reject him once he presents himself as their doctor after they have specified that they need a female doctor. With that female patient understanding that if they reject him there may be significant negative ramifications.

The only way around this is for organisations to stop acting as if a person’s philosophical belief about themselves reflects their body’s reality and allow sex to once again be prioritised.

It’s not hateful to be factual. And I pity the daughters of a woman who’d let them be measured for their first bras by a man.

It’s interesting that the believers are so unwavering in pretending there’s no difference between males and females and will justify something as obviously awful as this. Do we think they actually believe it when they say it or that the BEKIND is so firmly lodged in place it just stops all rational thinking?
It is all the pink angora?

I think it’s safe to say the GMC will be looking at his fitness to practice.

Thousands and thousands of complaints will have helped that

I hope so.

But I have my doubts. I understand that the NHS should also not treat any one negatively for rejecting these male people who have presented themselves when a female has been requested, however, we know that this is not the case.

The BEKIND mantra is used only to validate themselves

There’s absolutely nothing kind about allowing men in single sex spaces or bra fitting rooms.

Absolutely nothing
Theres only
be lazy I can’t be bothered to think about it
or
I don’t know what to say so I’ll go along with it ( Radcliffe, Thompson and Grint )
or
Im trans or support trans unquestionably

Nothing kind
Kind is caring about people. Caring for their dignity and safety. You’re not caring when you’re putting yourself above all else regardless

Fucking disgusting.

If Trans women were real women, as they claim to be, then they would completely understand why the majority of women have a problem with this.

This is sick and if one approached my daughter asking if she needed help in a lingerie section I would absolutely flip my lid.

In the past in a fog of Stonewall Ideology

Now we have had it all explained ( in the SC) for the stupid that didn’t understand already very basic and existing policy……

Exactly. M&S has never been the type of store where assistants approach customers to offer help.

Given men had been using women’s toilets then I dare say the high turn over has resulted in maintenance.
Petes a plumber after all
Watch out for his yellow cone

@Itsatrap5050 you have a very good point there

err that thought has
made my stomach churn
🤮

I know a number of trans women who just want to live their lives and what's happened recently re toilets and all that malarkey makes me really sad and makes our trans community really vulnerable. I personally wouldn't have a problem with a trans woman helping me and my daughter in the bra department, no one gets totally naked and I'd be supervising regardless of the gender of the staff. But last time I tried to get my daughter measured at M&S I was refused because you need an appointment. The member of staff I spoke to looked at my daughter fully dressed with her wrong sized bra on and said " try a 34DD" and she was spot on! So it seems unlikely that she would have been expecting to measure anyone up without an appointment.

Absolutely. Shoe stores, yes; electronics stores, yes; M&S, not once in decades.

I don't like men in the lingerie dept generally, but I can distinguish between the types:

• Men accompanying their partners, who look as if they'd rather be anywhere else
• Men shopping for a present for their partners, who usually look very confused and pick what they find sexy instead of what their partner might like to wear
• Knicker fetishists, who stand out a mile even if they think they're being inconspicuous

I don't know what it is with M&S, whether they actively put TIMs in the lingerie dept or whether they just gravitate there, but it seems to be a pattern in various parts of the country.