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

Indeed.

Apparently an entire floor away. But some people don't let facts get in the way of good hyperbole.

Unfortunately, just as reality is not determined by someone dictating it, even if they're really, really self righteous and self congratulatory about it, it's also not destroyed by someone else acknowledging it, even if they're as awful as Trump.

If you want to take support away from Trump and create a safer and fairer world, stop lying about material reality and expecting women to accept being thrown under a bus and then blaming them when they refuse. Of course, if what you actually want is to force women to think you're female because your sense of self resides entirely in what everyone else thinks of you (how very "authentic"), then by all means carry on. You'll continue to lose because you're fighting against reality, but your delusions are yours and unlike you, we don't care what you think as long as you leave women and girls alone.

Oh quit being so racist.

Apart from the fact it's inappropriate to appropriate a rights movement for a disadvantaged class, it's not even accurate to suggest that male people = black people in your analogy.

Trans people's rights - to fair treatment in employment, housing, etc - can be justly campaigned for without needing to hide behind other groups. This current iteration of trans activism does trans people no favours.

Lets see if your seething lizard-brain can answer the question :

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?

I’m going to ignore the stock rhetoric and unimaginative overuse of the word ‘hate’ and point out that nobody is trying to get a trans woman sacked for doing his job. The question is - was he doing his job? Or was he trying to engage a teenage girl in a conversation about bras in order to get a ‘girlie’ rush of inclusion or, worse, because it gave him a sexual thrill? It’s very difficult to prove. So in order to remove all doubt he needs to stay the fuck away from the women’s lingerie department. He can work anywhere else in the shop. It appears though, that he was very much stepping outside the boundaries of his job, even without the potential thrill element, as it is generally noted that staff in M&S do not offer unsolicited assistance. This is M&S’s problem to solve and it doesn’t have to involve sacking someone.

These sorts of questions are obviously the ‘wrong sort’ as they are never, and I mean never, answered.

I honestly think people should have to have a basic understanding of safeguarding before posting on FWR. It is so TEDIOUS.

You know when teachers, or scout leaders or doctors or TV stars or relatives commit child abuse? They manage to do it because they can exploit the situation. They have a reason to be there, in the room, with that child, closer than a "stranger" would be tolerated. They have a position of elevated trust either through relationship or status, so the victim is more likely to do as they request.

Those grey areas: "it's perfectly acceptable for me to be here doing this! I'm helping them!" are precisely the boundary that gets chinked away at. Don't you think more victims wouldn't immediately stand up and shout "NO!" if it wasn't this precise ambiguity that was being exploited, along with the power imbalance?

TLDR if you don't want to be accused of abusive behaviour, don't put yourself in a position where you could be. Understand power imbalances.

If you don't want your most favourite type of human accused of abusive behaviour, don't encourage them to violate boundaries. It's not that fucking difficult.

QUITE.

Its framed lazyly as 'just doing job'. Except this doesn't appear to be standard practice for female workers to approach a teen.

NOR

Has anyone demanded that some lose their job. The demand is for male employees to stay in their lane and leave women and girls in peace.

That's quite a difference thing.

The hyperbolic victimhood can be seen from outer space.

And once again it's the mean nasty women who have got it all wrong. Not the transwoman who is doing a safeguarding fail even if their intentions are innocent.

@BeeSourianteAgain
Your vocabulary is very limited. Could I perhaps suggest a thesaurus ?

Oh Bee, your creative imagination kicked in again 🤣

You will note that the mother has not called for him to be fired (and afaik no one on this thread has either). She has just requested that this doesn’t happen again so if you are suggesting the only way to prevent him leaving his designated department in order to perve on young girls is to fire him, that says a lot about your view of trans people.

it's all about the seething lizard-brain hate.

Our lizard brain enables us to spot a man at distance, yes. It’s not hate - that’s just in your head.

Your regular reminder:

These are people who regularly work in TV and therefore SHOULD have received safeguarding training.

The Ayr M & S store which is the store in question has women’s clothing and food hall on the ground floor, 1st floor is children’s clothing, ladies accesorios and lingerie.

Even if he was travelling between floors and thought he saw a customer who needed assistance in the lingerie department, and it was policy for staff to check if customers need help (which I’m not sure it is?), he could have notified a female assistant working on that floor instead of approaching himself.

A man approaching an adolescent girl in the lingerie department, offering help with selecting and or fitting bra’s, in a department he wasn’t allocated to be working in, is outrageously inappropriate. Most people can surely understand the optics of this? The man in question is 6.2”, what teenage girl wouldn’t feel intimidated in this situation?

I just took my 13 year old daughter to Boux Avenue for her first bra fitting, they were amazing but she was still mortified! She wanted to get in and out the shop / fitting room as quickly as possible, didn’t want to hold the bag when she got out the shop etc. 13 year old girls really don’t want any attention drawing to them in that was at that age, they find it uncomfortable and embarrassing.

Rob Rinder displaying a great grasp of how teenage girls feel. Who the fuck even is he?

The transwoman was not doing their job.

Nor was the transwoman doing a colleague's job.

We all (even me, a foreigner) have shopped at Marks and Spencer and we know that approaching customers and offering help is not one of the staff roles.

The transwoman was doing something outside their job description, and outside the rules of acceptable behavior.

edited to correct wrong pronoun

But (many of) the men do hate women. Germaine Greer told us that more than 50 years ago. She may not have embellished her prose with lizard brains, because she is a good writer who does not faff around with over elaborate imagery. But she got the hate bit right. Alas.

“girls really don’t want any attention drawing to them in that was at that age, they find it uncomfortable and embarrassing.”

Something that if you are male with a philosophical belief that you are female you will never have experienced or will understand. But apparently, a male will feel fully experienced to advise a teenaged girl about.

I mean, just look at the male poster on this thread. Lizard brain? I think the lizard brain award goes to any male person who thinks they understand the experiences and the needs of a female person just because they believe their identity is that of being female.

I think the lizard brain award goes to the person who immediately resorts to dismissing a safeguarding fail being pointed out being hateful.

Because to me, that is the very definition of a ‘lizard brained’ overly hyperbolic defensive reaction to not getting your demands accepted when your demands are additional privileges and not actually basic human rights.

Because to me, that is the very definition of a ‘lizard brained’ overly hyperbolic defensive reaction to not getting your demands accepted when your demands are rightfully seen as being red flag safeguarding risks.

@BeeSourianteAgain - quiet day in the Fife A&E consultants room?

Yes, I assume that was deliberate on the part of M&S.

It would be interesting to find out if he had made the journey down to ladies lingerie before.

What job in M&S entails wandering around the shop floor looking for customers to offer assistance to? That's not a job anyone has. But I don't know that anyone has called for the person to be sacked. Just to do the job they actually have appropriately.

I'm laughing at "seething", though. I think Bee imagines hordes of red-faced women furiously stabbing at their keyboards at the very mention of a trans person. I don't think I've ever seethed in my life!

It's a very classic male thing to try to invalidate what women say by painting them as hysterical man haters who are operating on pure emotion and no reason. It's a variation of how we are just making "assumptions"; basically, a lower effort version. After roughly 2000 years of it, I am rather bored. Just keep away from teenagers in the lingerie department and tell your mates to do the same. It shouldn't be a problem.

I think it’s projection and there’s a lot of seething going on at disobedient women. As I said, male dominated spaces on Reddit are RAGING at this story and the apology by M&S.

What a crock of manure. I simply can’t imagine any circumstances in which an ordinary man with any common sense of any age would think it sensible or appropriate to approach a young teenager in this way. And Rob Rinder has clearly never met an ordinary teenage girl looking for a bra!! Or at least one who hasn’t been inappropriately harangued or bullied or abused into not having normal boundaries.

Sorry guys - listen to the mums who raised you and tried to keep you safe from creeps and predators - or to teach you appropriate boundaries - this isn’t ok.

Choosing not to answer is its own answer 🤷‍♀️

I think we need to stop playing games in society...

There is no such thing as 'trans' you can not change from man to woman or woman to man - the sex you were born remains your sex.

This means that for anyone claiming this we need to understand why... e.g.:

• mental health reasons (e.g. body dysphoria)
• something perhaps more nefarious.

So, with this situation let us bring it back to reality and clarity:
A male member of staff (a man) working on a different floor chose to come down to the lingerie department to 'help' a young teenager with buying a bra - but left when he saw her mother was with her...

does anything about this raise any concerns? It should.

• It should raise safeguarding red flags.
• It should be forbidden in the staff handbook (no men to assist in the lingerie department would be very reasonable).
• The member of staff should have been immediately removed from duty and the situation investigated - if necessary, the police should have been involved.

Now factor in that this man was a man pretending to be a woman and that becomes even more of an issue, as it is a deliberate attempt to get the child to accept his presence - in any other form it is called grooming.

There is no innocent reason for this - no self-respecting man would take the above action, the nearest they might get would be if there anyway and ask the parent if they can fetch a female assistant, but to deliberately come down a floor, to target a young girl and then to acknowledge the issue by retreating on spotting the mother - it is not possible to see this in any light other than predatory.

At no point was it about 'legitimate concerns', just hate, raw seething hate.

It's absolutely true that I loathe predatory, perverted men who prey on young girls and will do everything in my power to stop them. That's why I'm on this board.

If there is anyone out there who isn't concerned about men preying on teenage girls, then that tells me everything I need to know about them.