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

There’s none so blind as will not see. Next we will be told there’s no proof that the teenage girl was not, in fact, a boy.

Oh dear, perfect storm for M&S. Pink News (which I don’t follow) came up on my Facebook feed reporting this. I had a look at the comments and there were quite a few asserting that they will boycott M&S for apologising to the mum (even though it was a shit non apology.) They were also pissed off that the mum assumed the person was trans. Christ, what planet are they on? Women KNOW a trans woman when they see one. There were also outraged comments that this person was ‘only doing their job’. So, yeah, lots of hate for M&S. They deserve this anyway for their general lack of respect for women’s spaces which has extended across a number of years. And now the men they’re so determined to pander to - and their cheerleaders - are turning on them. This is not just any gender bilge furore, this is a Marks and … (you get the idea!)

I know that you are choosing not to answer the question below.
(Dear Reader lets be honest we all know that Lun82 cant justify the actual act)

But:

Can you explain why you think
● it is socially acceptable
• for a male member of staff to approach a 14 year old girl (who was not looking for help from a member of staff ) and
• seek to speak to her about underwear generally and specifically about her bra size?

Lun82 demonstrates the same creepy, boundary breaking vibes as the bloke in m&s.

One of the things that I have been regularly reminded of is that whatever organisations do, unless what is done is exactly as dictated by activist groups supporting gender being prioritised over sex, they will be rejected by those groups.

There can be no way to support sex prioritisation while also providing additional support for those with gender identities in the eyes of those extreme groups. Sadly, those extreme groups were the ones who got their voices heard initially to get the changes through. And they still have a powerful grip.

Just look at the misinformation that continues to come through about being the most vulnerable and the most marginalised. And the leveraging of suicide and the insistence that there is some kind of objective reality behind a gender identity.

The constant denial that is ‘just doing their job’ and ‘how did the mum know the person was male/trans’ is all tired old trope. Sadly, denials such as this about red flags in relation to safeguarding are as old as time.

Anyone finding themselves using this denial in regards to excusing male behaviour should consider why they are excusing this male behaviour. Again, sadly, the message will be missed by those with no boundaries.

It is a good thing that the mum is very clear that what she wants is for job roles to clearly be changed that this incident is not repeated. How M&S is going to be do this now and not be taken to tribunal will be interesting to see. However, boundaries do need to be re-established and this incident will hopefully start this process.

So what exactly did M&S apologise for Luna?

You must think we were born yesterday to believe randomer on the internet over actual first hand accounts AND the subsequent corporate apology.

This was a man who identifies as trans, he should be sacked for inappropriate behaviour.

And all of this could have been completely avoided if we stop participating in the fetish of grown men pretending to be women, and allowing them to do that whilst working with the public. That young girl is just another sacrifice on the altar of this regressive, misogynistic, homophobic ideology.

@Lun82 It’s a good job that some of us understand safeguarding with attitudes like yours. Absolutely unbelievable level of denial.

To me it demonstrates the other half of the trans cohort - the context and mind blindness leading to total denial is something my autistic DS and DH do all the time. It’s totally infuriating and upsetting in equal measure but it’s part of the condition. Lun82 won’t be able to intuit the confirmation of the TIM from the M&S apology Telegraph article and can’t understand why we can.

Agree. I imagine it will all come out in a court case some day.

That’s a really interesting insight.

Its been said eleventy billion times already I know

M&S would NOT have apologised if it was a female member of staff

even if you think the mother and 14 year old are liars, or that Mumsnet if the most transphobic place in the planet you honestly have to be very stupid if you honestly believe a massive retail shop in the uk would apologise if they did not have to

its hard enough to get them to apologise as it is…they don’t apologise if accusations are unfounded

Sorry (not), stupid misogynist police, girls and young women with nice family backgrounds need to learn to say a firm, uncompromising, and if necessary outright impolite 'NO!'.

But of course, should not be put in the position when they have to do that in M&S when they are already coping with the confusion and embarrassment of their body changing into something new and unfamiliar. ffs

What is it with woke scolders coming out like a rash after 11pm UK time?

I understand the assumption that everyone's making is based on the fact that there isn't a specific denial of the fact that the employee is trans in the M&S response, The reason why I'm not accepting that as proof that the employee is trans is because it isn't, and jumping to conclusions based on assumptions is extremely harmful. This thread is full of people inventing things that were not in the original account, for example there's a post claiming that the employee asked about bra size, that's not mentioned anywhere in any account I've read, or the claims that the employee was trying to get her on her own, when nothing about the original account has a single thing to suggest that. The sequence of events in the articles I've read is 1) The mother and her daughter are shipping, planning a potential bra fitting. 2) A staff member politely asks whether they need help 3) They refuse politely because they believe it's obvious the staff member is trans and they think it's inappropriate for a trans woman to be asking a teenage girl whether they need help. The employee has done nothing wrong even if they are trans. This is a public area of the shop, they are an employee asking whether a customer needs help.

I rest my case.
Is that you DH? Why aren’t you at work already?

Just because it's public doesn't mean it's appropriate and the customer hasn't been distressed.

It's still an area of sensitivity.

Another poster pointed out this is recognised by another retailer who has safeguarding risk assessment for bra fitting. This might be for the actual fitting only, but they are identifying this is an area of particular issues and should be treated accordingly.

And yes the member of staff did do something wrong; a customer got upset. Being trans still means you need to be sensitive to customers. Perhaps extra so.

It's exceptionally poor customer service at best. At worse it's creepy as fuck and definitely has no place in a public place in a retail shop where a child should feel safe to be alone.

It's not providing a service that many many women demand. And yes there is a potential to use the Equality Act exemptions here even in a public area for a legitimate aim. The policy of male staff in this area in this way is a questionable one.

M&S have issued an apology. They understand and acknowledge there was a problem.

Finally M&S have a long history of not taking concerns about the lingerie department seriously. They've tried to erase women and women's concerns. This is a contributing factor to why women are pissed off and angry. It's part of a pattern of behaviour by the retailer itself.

This reflects public opinion. M&S's customer base in particular doesn't appreciate this bullshit.

Women are saying No. And they are allowed to and there is NOTHING disgusting about it.

We are sick to death of the smearing, the force teaming and being told to suck up behaviour that makes us feel used or intimidated.

The answer is still no.

Isn't it bedtime yet?

The male member of staff crossed into the bra dept and approached the teenager while the mother was standing apart from her and hidden from view. This is directly from the mother. Ie. That member of staff did not know the teenager was shopping with her mother when he approached the teenager.

She confirmed that M&S informed her by letter that the male member of staff was allocated to be upstairs and not anywhere near the bra dept.

And again, what part of asking if someone wants help in the bra dept would not have the expectation that that ‘help’ would entail discussions about size, style and usage. None of those are appropriate for a male staff member to be asking a teenaged girl. Even when with their mother there.

And your constant denial of ‘but they don’t know whether the person was trans or not’ misses the entire point. The point is that it was a male member of staff as identified by the mother and the daughter. If you, personally, lack the ability to identify the correct sex of a person through observation and interaction, please stop believing that this is the norm. It is highly likely that a female person will correctly identify the sex of a male person with observation and interaction.

You seem over confident in your very own interpretation of the facts and determined to excuse the harm caused to this girl. Why?

They've never set foot in M&S.

Facts?

The mother has confirmed that she was not with her daughter when the male member of staff aproached her daughter.

So the male member of staff only offered to help the 14 year old girl..

2) A staff member politely asks whether they need help

Can you explain what you mean by "help" when you say the male member of staff offering to help the customer who is standing in the middle of the underwear section?
What kind of help can be offered which is not product related?

Again I know that you are choosing not to answer the question below.
(Dear Reader lets be honest we all know that Lun82 cant justify the actual act)

Using your own facts:

The sequence of events in the articles I've read is 1) The mother and her daughter are shipping, planning a potential bra fitting.

Can you explain why you think
● it is socially acceptable
• for a male member of staff to approach a 14 year old girl (who was not looking for help from a member of staff ) and
• seek to speak to her about underwear generally and specifically about her bra size?

Marks and Spencer is not a shop where assistants approach customers and ask them whether they need help. It's more like a supermarket, where people don't get approached at the food shelves. Go in, select what you want, pay for it. That's how it works, that's what its customers choose and expect.

Anyone, man or woman, approaching this child anywhere in the shop and talking to her would be being weird.

Doing it in the underwear section makes it much weirder.

A man doing it, whether he was trans or not, was being weird and acting in a dangerous way (at the least, he was making the child think his weird actions were normal. They were not). Thank goodness her mother was near enough to spot it and intervene.

Grown men should not be talking to lone children. That is a very long-established unwritten rule.

They think they're really clever, and they think women responding to a clear red flag from a man is a baseless "assumption". They have no understanding of what it actually is to be female, no interest in finding out beyond the self image of a cross dresser, and a litany of excuses as to why it doesn't really matter when the stuff we knew would happen happens because it's the cost of freedom, by which they mean men doing whatever they want and women being corrected out of their thoughts about it.

Their free thinking challenging of assumptions, ignores the account of women who were there, the tacit admission and confirmation of the organisation, and indeed anything like pay gaps, workplace sexism (in its other forms) and racism and the like. They care only about driving home whatever narrative makes it ok for a man to do whatever he likes, including trying to inveigle himself into an encounter with a teenager looking for underwear, and dismissing all the women who've lived with this shit since they were teenagers themselves, as merely not as enlightened as they are.

The only question now is why.

Grown men should not be talking to lone children. That is a very long-established unwritten rule.

Especially not about their needs while shopping for bras.

The fact that people apparently need this pointed out to them shows us exactly how much our poor children are being groomed to facilitate predatory men. Pure evil.