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

Every warning sign you were ever forced to learn, every danger cue, every instinct for safety ... that's just assumptions. What we need is a bloke to push back against those assumptions, so we can accept bullshit approaches from men and be better people for it, preferably from the age of around 14 so we can be really properly trained out of our assumptions before we reach adulthood and you have to come onto Mumsnet to do it.

Read the room, @Lun82

I m aware they dont have on record people’s sex At the moment.
They will know if they’re trans though

We just need to complain and ensure single sex spaces are protected
It’s the law !! ( the SC ruling obviously help's now too )

Keep outing those that contravene the law
Complain Complain Complain and out in the papers or social media

Just like this mum

There is no question that the employee was male. M&S would have needed to apologise if he was actually female.

I guess you could argue that we don’t know whether he was trans or not, he may just have been a bloke dressed up as a woman. It’s hard to tell as we have no real definition of ‘trans’.

He wasn’t behaving like any other M&S retail worker as none of them approach customers to help.

We all know that the poor girl witnessing the creepy man will meet more of them throughout her life. This may be the first time and in a new space for her in M&S underwear thinking about bras for the first time she probably felt a bit unsure. What a sick man to approach her in that space and misuse his privilege of being a staff member.
Why on earth can't M&S keep the really obvious creepy men completely away from any women's clothing and consider their customers?

This is an echo chamber, if I can make it less of a one that's a good thing. Do I sympathise with a mother looking out for her daughter? Yes. Are creepy men hitting on teenage girls a problem, absolutely yes. This is not that. This is a retail worker asking a customer if they needed help, that's their job and they did nothing wrong.

M and S have admitted he shouldn't have been there.

Boundaries darling

The thing is this Mum doesn't want it to happen again and M&S aren't taking steps on that.

It’s not an echo chamber in the same way pro trans spaces are, you don’t get banned for dissenting. People just disagree, and they’re wise to men creeping on young women. You are free to be as naive as you wish, you aren’t convincing many people.

This is a creepy man who is abusing his position as a retail worker.

Our audit hasn’t identified any protected single sex spaces in the entire country.

I just think that KnottyAuty's statement needs to be bolded.

This is the whole of the United Kingdom - not just trans hotspots like trendy parts of London. So any woman in England, Wales, Scotland and N Ireland could be admitted to a hospital ward and find a man leering at her from the opposite bed, because he identifies as a woman and such men are given priority in the NHS.

It's insane isn't it?

Makes sense of the Peggie case mind you...

What is your basis for saying that this male retail worker has been tasked with asking customers if they needed help?

Are you a M&S manager or employee?

You have been told that M&S employees do not go up to customers and offer to help them randomly. There are a number of reasons that this is not the M&S business model

1. stores are designed to be self service as this allows customers to browse which encourages impulse buying.
2. staffing levels are kept low to save on costs.
3. stock is not stored onsite so only the items available for sale on the shop floor. Etc.

So what facts are you able to offer to support your statement that his conduct on the sales floor was on par with the conduct of other M&S employees?

This is a male retail worker approaching what he thought was an unaccompanied female child asking a customer if they needed help, that's not their job and they absolutely did nothing the wrong thing.

Fixed it for you.

Been buying bras in M and S for over half a century. No assistant has ever approached me to see if I need help.

The guy was being creepy AF

Absolutely this!

Dd (14) is having a horrendous time at the moment being approached almost daily in the street by men who should know better. It’s reached a concerning level that she worries about simply going out and about. If a male shop assistant approached her (whether dressed as a woman or not) inside the lingerie section of M&S I fear that would be the last straw.

What is wrong with these men? I’m sick of this total selfishness

You are a gross misogynist who puts the desires of predatory men above the needs of vulnerable young girls.

Disgusting

I’ve actually gone the other way, bras at M&S would never go near me when I was younger, now they are the only bras I feel comfortable in 36/38 GG & HH. Which irks me as I don’t actually like M&S.

Measuring though I don’t do, only once in my life has any bras shop measured me correctly and that was a shop that specialised in women who had mastectomies, I was referred there after having some medical issues and they actually knew exactly what they were doing.

We haven't got any confirmation that this employee was trans. What needs? She was looking around the shop and an employee asked if she needed help, she said no thanks, that's it, hat's all that happened. This isn't a single sex space or service, it's just a section of a shop floor.

God there really aren't any lows you won't stoop to, are there? 🙄

M&S corporate are going to have to decide whether they support women, or men who wear women’s knickers and/or like to transgress women’s boundaries by hanging out in the lingerie section.

I wonder which group they’ll choose?

The UK has never had a 'Bud Light' moment, and many have argued that those kind of boycotts are only possible in the US. But I still find it quite curious that otherwise risk adverse senior executives, including CEOs, seem to be willing to stake their careers on that premise.

It'll be the classic situation that Helen Joyce articulates so well.

Someone or multiple someone's in management will have transed their child. Or even like dressing in women's clothes themselves.

@Lun82 Underwear covers our private parts which are sex specific and not for public display.

No man should be approaching anyone female about the underwear they are browsing. It is particularly bad for an adult male to approach a teen girl about the underwear they are browsing.

Women and girls are most likely to be sexually harassed r.e. underwear - asked what colour they are wearing etc and so on.

I have worked in M&S Lingerie and although male staff sometimes did enter, at no point did any man approach any women or girls browsing underwear and ask if they needed help.

The staff member was reported as transgender because they were biologically male but presenting as female. That's what that means.

Although not UK specific, the Jaguar rebrand has probably been enough of a warning here. The fall out from that and the loss of sales resulted in some consternation and some employment changes, I believe.

I think M&S still suffered from women complaining about the reviews of female underwear on the M&S site by male people. This will cause further avoidance by the female demographic.