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 have emailed M&S. I hope you all do too.

Adult males should not be approaching young girls to help them with underwear.

Just had a peek and they are positively raging on Reddit about this story, and later comments by JKR, but especially the M&S apology. Both the transgender subreddit and the Labour one, which has TRA moderators heavily biased towards shutting down any consideration of other perspectives. Mostly obvious men commenting.

They are ringing up M&S too to harangue them about “trans rights”.

More details from the mum who is anon on X.

Moonlighting?

All too predictable

A class A creep

My thoughts exactly @TheKeatingFive

👏👏👏

Or just because it gave him an erection and plenty of fantasy material to type one-handed onto reddit later.

So the girl was on her own when he initially approached her. Even worse.

When will these people realise that if you create a self selecting sacred caste of males that can enter any female space it wants, shitty men will self select into it? They've been known to take cloth, train as teachers, run for office and organise community events to get access along with associated protection to get around safeguarding, and you lot think they won't put on lipstick and call themselves Ellen?

It is a safeguarding fail for M&S in terms of child safety.

Granted the staff member may have been well meaning but the mother sad the girl was distressed. What made he think it was appropriate to approach a young teenager?

Well done to the mother for raising this as an issue with a major retailer who, let’s face it, needs to remember that the bulk of its profits comes from the decisions made by women not men. I can just as easily get food from somewhere else, there are other coffee shops, and I can easily steer DH into Next for his clothes.

Well they definitely don’t need anymore diversity training! M&S employee need child safeguarding training!

The problem is, this employee approached the 14yo offering help. The employee did the approaching and that is the issue here. If your girls asked a transwoman for help, that would be different.

I do partially agree with you that on this website, there is a lot of anti trans stuff, dressed up as feminism. When it is in fact pretty hateful. The problem is that ordinary trans people ought to be left alone to live their lives. But there are a minority of trans people who act in way that is unacceptable. And they cause problems for everyone by doing that.

In this case, what happened was absolutely not on. This employee should not have offered a female child help with bras.

I went into M&S lingerie with my teen dd a few weeks ago. There was a trans woman (customer not employee) wearing a short pink dress - height around 6ft3 or 6ft 4. I have to say, I was uncomfortable. I don't care about men shopping with women when women are buying a bra or whatever. But this particular individual didn't actually need a bra (no boobs), and didn't buy anything either. Was just wandering in the bra section. I didn't buy anything and I felt quite uncomfortable.

Bra shopping, especially for a young teen, can be very embarrassing. M&S of course should employ trans people without discrimination - but it's pretty obvious that the bra section isn't the place for a trans woman employee. It's a bloody department store - so many places to work other than bras.

I do partially agree with you that on this website, there is a lot of anti trans stuff, dressed up as feminism. When it is in fact pretty hateful.

Can you give some examples of what you're talking about here?

I do partially agree with you that on this website, there is a lot of anti trans stuff, dressed up as feminism. When it is in fact pretty hateful. The problem is that ordinary trans people ought to be left alone to live their lives.

Trans people can - of course - live their lives, as long as they're respecting the law and that includes single sex spaces and the rights of others.

If you see "anti-trans" stuff, report it to MN. But disliking what is said doesn't make it "hateful" or "anti" anything.

I do partially agree with you that on this website, there is a lot of anti trans stuff, dressed up as feminism. When it is in fact pretty hateful.

I would also like to see some specific examples of you what you find to be "anti trans stuff, dressed up as feminism" and/or hateful.

You said there's "a lot" - so it shouldn't be hard to point to several examples?

Let's suppose for a minute that this transwoman is harmless, has no fetish, has no desire to embarrass or harass anyone, and is just trying to be helpful.

We can still say that he has absolutely no idea what it's like to be a woman, because women do NOT want random male shop assistants offering to help find them underwear. It's even worse for teenage girls, who tend to find the early days of wearing and choosing bras very embarrassing and awkward.

It’s what all the Labour bros commenting don’t understand either.

They get kudos and head pats for being liberal and progressive, all while giving away rights that aren't theirs and cost them nothing. Sexist pigs.

They’re fucking awful.

The problem is that ordinary trans people ought to be left alone to live their lives. But there are a minority of trans people who act in way that is unacceptable.

Let's address the unacceptable behaviour that you mention. Here it is: It is unacceptable for trans-identifying men to appropriate and invade female-only services and associations. If trans-identifying people avoid doing, this then everyone here will be delighted to leave them alone to live their lives.

You will form an opinion of whether it's a majority or minority who act in this unacceptable way. From my perspective it doesn't matter if it's one, or everyone. It's unacceptable.

posters on the Pink News Facebook page are suggesting that the girl should toughen up and be more resilient. Yes girls/women, budge over for the men.
Ignorant fuckers.

I don’t think that was appropriate, whether he was pervy or not, unless there were no female nurses available and it needed to happen then. Just as it isn’t appropriate to have male nurses doing smears or mammograms as a matter of course. Nurses have far more vetting than shop assistants to try to weed out people with inappropriate motivations, nevertheless they do commit crimes and male nurses are far more likely to commit sexual assault than female nurses. A teen is particularly vulnerable as often feels less able to speak up and is more likely to have any concerns or discomfort disparaged.

And regardless of possible perving, plenty of women and girls do not want intimate care from men. It’s totally normal in our culture to not want men doing this when there are alternatives (and totally uncontroversial if you survey the population as a whole).

Well that’s typical.

It shows a total lack of understanding about young teenage girls. It doesn’t matter how pink your lipstick is or high how the skirt or heels are, if you haven’t had those emotions etc growing up from a young child to an adult woman, you will never really understand what it means to be female.