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

Feel really sorry for her daughter
What a dreadful mother

My questions were
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?

Your reply:

You: customer was looking a bit lost.

The 14 year old girl
• was not lost
• was in the correct area of the shop for the product she was looking to purchase
• was not looking for a staff member to help her.

Have you any facts which proves any of the above statements to be factually incorrect?

You : standard question from a retail worker, especially if a customer was looking a bit lost.

Again on Facts

A number of regular shoppers on this thread from various parts of the UK ( some life long customers) have stated that M&S employees do not make first contact with customers. That employees expect the customer to make the first contact with them.

It is just not their business model to employ staff number to allow them to offer that type of service.

Have you any evidence to offer that M&S have a policy of asking staff to engage with customers who are not first asking for assistance?

And my other question

You: 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?

Is this a fair breakout of your reply?

Can you explain why you think
● it is socially acceptable

You: Yes it would be very awkward and frowned on for a teenage girl to be asked about her bra size by a man

You accept it is not 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

You: but this employee wasn't doing bra fittings and like I said we have no evidence that the asked about bra size

You accept he approched the girl?

• seek to speak to her about underwear generally and specifically about her bra size?

You: There's plenty of potential ways to offer help which are none product specific.

Can you explain what you mean by "help" when you say the male member of staff offering to help the customer who is standing the middle actively shopping of the underwear section?

What kind of help can he be offering which is not product related?

Or another way to put the question is:

Why would the male employee not expect to discuss about specific products if he goes up to a customer and offers to help that customer?

Much as the media are painting this as a left/right issue it’s really not. JK Rowling has always been left leaning, for example. I’m a lefty academic and I’m also TERF. These sorts of arguments obfuscate the real debate here, about whether it’s ok for a transgender woman to offer a service to a 14 year old in a lingerie department. And I’m going with no, it’s not. He should have understood that would not be welcome in the same way that if a man offered help in the same situation it would be weird and uncomfortable.

Respectfully I suggest you read the thread.

I would find out more about the variety of motivations men may have for calling themselves women. These range from the terrible - kidnapping an 11 yr old, holding her hostage and raping her for several days, or utilising a trans identity to gain access to the ladies toilets and sexually assaulting a young girl at knifepoint to the slightly less terrible but still sexually motivated. The men who post pictures of themselves in ladies toilets with an erection, the men who post covert pictures of women using the toilet, the men who raid the sanitary bins, the men who like taking pictures of their naked genitals in public places like department store cafes (I think linked upthread). The one who steals pictures of people’s babies from the internet and converts them into sexualised cartoons. A short time on the social media if these men who are very open about the sexual motivations in their identity is informative. The effeminate homosexual who has suffered from homophobic insults all his life and sees it as a way of escaping.

We don’t know which the ‘good’ guys are and which are the perverts. They don’t all announce their intentions (tbf some do).

We listen to trans people and they tell us all this stuff. We need to treat every man the same re boundaries of privacy around women and girls. Men with a trans identity should be treated no differently. If it is inappropriate for Pete the plumber to approach a teenage girl and offer to help her in the lingerie department (and I really hope you agree that it is otherwise that is a major issue), then it is inappropriate for ‘Delia’ the man in a dress to do the same for the same reasons.

The only way of identifying the few trans identifying males that are not potentially as safeguarding risk are by observing the ones like Fionne Orlander or Miranda Yardley who steadfastly keep away from women’s spaces and presumably situations like OPs precisely because they know they are men and it is inappropriate to do otherwise.

Some people seem to have lost all understanding of what safeguarding is. Please read the thread and the rest of this board so you do understand.

The answer is that women arent allowed to object and say certain things to men who get hurty feelings, but men can say whatever the fuck they like to whoever they like without question.

Agree. Norman Tebbit predicted this and no one in their right mind would call him left wing.

Why do people think virtue signalling cancels out poor boundaries on behalf of your children?

Its turning into one of those situations that never happens, but if it does its really good that it did.

A TW would never approach a girl in the bra department, but if they do, its exceptional customer service.

I also suggest you read this thread properly.

Because this male employee was allocated to two other sections on a completely different floor, as per letters to the mother. The male employee was not working anywhere near the bra department. They were supposed to be on a completely different floor.

No male person should be approaching a teenaged girl to ask them anything while they are shopping in the bra department. Robust safeguarding training should have kicked in to any male M&S employee.

"I cannot see the safeguarding issues that wouldn't fundamentally mean that men can't be employed in shops or interact with the public generally."

IT IS A BRA SECTION! Why would there be safeguarding issues in offering to help in one of the food aisles? This is another false comparison that you are now using catatrophisation to defend. ie. you just introduced that no male person should be employed in shops or interact with the public generally as some false equivalence to no male people should be interacting with teenaged girls in bra sections.

Do you see the emotionally manipulative tactics in that statement you posted?

Have you asked yourself why you feel the need to defend this male person's behaviour?

So, Lun82 & the other apologists on here…… Let’s say I’m a woman working in M&S, I don’t work in the boys clothes section. On my way to lunch I see a 14 year old child, a male, standing looking at male underpants.

Is he asking for help? No
Is there any suggestion he needs or wants help? No
If he wants help, does he want it from me, a stranger, a woman, who’s going to make him feel awkward, embarrassed & anything else he’s entitled to feel? Absofuckinglutely NO!

Fortunately, because I understand safeguarding & I don’t trample over other’s boundaries because I’m not a selfish, entitled creep, the above scenario would never happen.

Let's say you really are so slack jawed that you honestly, truly, sincerely don't understand why a man in a dress shouldn't cross shop floors to offer unsolicited help to a child in the bra section. Let's say you have lived under a rock and you really do think that this is absolutely fine.

Why, once a whole load of people who have actual experience and knowledge of this have explained the problem to you, at length, numerous times, would you still claim it's ok? What could your motivation be? What are you prioritising over what? Once you no longer have ignorance as an excuse, what is left?

The safeguarding concern I was thinking about was the one where adult men should not accost lone children. Anywhere, any time, for any reason.

No adult men near lone children. Ever. For safeguarding reasons.

Children in this case means under 16s, though responsible adult (over 20) men should avoid accosting even older lone teenagers.

I don't think you've replied to my post. I'm clarifying.

It wasn't about the news report. I like many others can "observe" transwomen. They are someone who is biologically male but is presenting as female such as by name (all staff wear name tags in M&S) clothing and hairstyle.

R.e. doing their job, no they were not to an acceptable standard. Their job is customer service that doesn't mean approaching all customers to ask if they need help.

Other male M&S staff never approach women or girls in the Lingerie department browsing underwear and ask if they need help. M&S only employs woman in the Lingerie department.

I worked there. Male staff entered sure. But they all understand approaching a girl about their underwear browsing is inappropriate, as underwear covers private parts.

Sometimes its as important to post for the reader who is told "NoDebateBeKind" because they see it too and once they begin to see it its harder to ignore.

The same as the TRA who trot out the same old lines as they ignore the fact that a male is acting in a way which should be questioned and condemned by any reasonable person.

P.s. If they looked lost, they could mention it to a female Lingerie employee.

You work in banking and can not see a problem ......

Pop in to the insurance sales section and find a policy which covers you for any legal fees arising from your job as either your company failed to train you on basic information management or the training failed its objective (which TBF is more likely).

Speaking of fucked up reactions:

https://x.com/latsot/status/1953097967038070792

This is a screenshot of a tweet from a male person declaring that a child must be a bigot if they were upset. And declares that it is creepy and wrong to safeguard a 14 year old girl.

And the tweeter of that statement wanted to be a candidate for an electorate in Scotland.

Victoria’s Secrets in Orlando had a male wanting to be female staff member trying to foist fairly inappropriate underwear on my DD who was looking for something relatively plain (VS possibly not the best of places for that admittedly).

M&S policies and procedures don’t seem too watertight, I imagine the customer service person who replied to the mother with the apology and facts about where the staff member should have been working has got a right rollicking for what is now a very public admission of guilt. Interesting to watch how this will run for the company. The mother’s comments on X are interesting too.

In. Plain. Fucking. Sight.

How can people not see what it is yet?

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?

Is that the one that dresses as a school girl at protests? Or am I thinking of someone else?

And the hash tag about tall women is seriously worrying as I know why they want you to think that they're just tall.

It is one with the partner who likes to photographed on the floors of airport disabled toilets while dilating. A process that they admitted took 20 - 30minutes. So, they took up an accessible toilet for all that time and photographed themselves doing it.

It is Molly, the singer who brags about using female toilets and called for harm on JK Rowling.

A quick search of MN tells me this is 'nipple clamp Molly' who threatened to sue and got deselected as a candidate for the greens after bringing the party into disrepute.

Yeah I'm not sure Sophie Molly saying anything about safeguarding is going to help the argument for the M&S worker much.