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

How could a man not understand that his (totally unprompted) overtures to a young girl in the lingerie department might make her deeply uncomfortable?

Come on. Be real here.

No we don't know.

We do know that safeguarding policies assume the harshest position in order to prevent the biggest harm.

Thus, we assume that all males should not do something because it might potentially be a risky situation for a vulnerable person AND to safeguard the person carrying out that role to stop them from being wrong accused.

The point is precisely that we can't tell the difference between someone being opportunistic and someone wreckless being nice but putting themselves into a situation that's questionable.

Nice person doing something that puts them in a risky situation is still a safeguarding fail for this reason. They should be disciplined even if their intentions were to be kind.

Why? Because otherwise it means we create a blurred boundary issue so we can tackle those who are acting inappropriately.

We are told to avoid x situation for valid reasons.

This has been stressed over and over and over and over and over and over and over again on this thread.

Yet still we have posters who can't be arsed to read the fucking thread and acknowledge just one of these posts.

Instead we seem to be stuck in a doom loop of people who need to go on a safeguarding course all repeating the same bollocks one after another.

I'm struggling to work out which thing in the above reality I find the most depressing aspect in this thread tbh. There are so many to pick from.

It's possible he's generally a bit dim-witted or has a deficiency in understanding others' feelings.

Relin
The salient point here is that he’s a male, not a female. His sexual orientation doesn’t come into it, only his sex.

The posters on here centring the female child are arguing from this starting point. Those centring the man, who in this case claims to be a woman, believe the trans proclamation wipes out usual safeguarding concerns. But they dress it up by name calling, belittling women’s concerns, misrepresentation & faux naivety.

A man presenting as male or a man presenting as female, the concern in relation to a female child in this situation is that he’s a man. It’s not complicated, despite what some posters would like you to think.

Then his managers should put him somewhere safe like the cheese aisle and ensure he doesn't wander into the lingerie section.

His potential lack of full cognitive function, which i don't believe for a second, he knew exactly what he was doing, doesn't trump safeguarding and other people's discomfort.

Whatever his chosen identity.

It’s appalling. How many times has this man done this before I wonder.

Yes they should.

Relin

It’s not about making assumptions, it’s about risk assessment. Think of the men you know. Would they put themselves, deliberately & through choice, in a situation where, even if only very possibly, they could make a female child feel awkward, embarrassed & anything else she’s entitled to feel? Hopefully not. If they chose this route people are allowed, & should, make a judgement about their behaviour.

But some men do, so we risk assess & say all men stay out where appropriate. This isn’t based upon assumptions, thinking the worst of all men, but upon cold, hard facts & statistics in relation to male behaviour towards women.

No doubt whenever and wherever opportunity presents itself.
What a win for him being able to work for M&S openly in cross dressing mode with easy access to young women around underwear.
He can say, "oh I'm not being a creep around a child, I'm helping I work here".
TBF to M&S at least they have apologised but have lessons be learnt?

But it doesn’t matter what his intentions are. It is inappropriate. Whether his approach was out of perversion or just social ineptitude/naïvety, he needs to not do it, or be told to find another job because this one isn’t suitable for someone who will cross a line like this. Do retail staff receive training in safeguarding? If not, they should, since they will come into contact with vulnerable populations in the course of their work.

I think risk assessments do have to use assumptions though. The assumption that people are stupid (health and safety is a good example here) and of bad intention. And mitigate as far as is reasonably possible against the worst case scenario on both fronts.

@Northofthebordermum r.e. your comment, at least when I worked at M&S there were only women employed in the Lingerie department.

However it's a general store and men including male members of staff did legitimately enter for various reasons (rarely happily 😂)

None to my knowledge ever approached a woman or girl to see if they needed help.

It's not M&S fault this happened it's strictly the fault of the man / transwomen who did this.

Thanks these are good points, I agree he shouldn't have been there, may have had malign intentions, and we need to assume the worst for risk assessment. But I think it is mostly the fault of M&S for not having a policy of keeping male employees out of the lingerie section.

I would like to imagine he's mortified at his actions and feeling shame at making her feel so uncomfortable. I'd hope the men I know would be. Then again he might be sitting there right now seething and ranting about terfs on reddit or bluesky or some other online hovel. Who knows.

I agree with this.

If anyone was wondering more generally about pervs in M&S Lingerie, yes there were a few.

Quite common to be asked to try on lingerie. 😂

There were also men asking for help with gift shopping, easy to tell if they were genuine tbh.

I wonder about the correlation of male cross dressing and autistic. With the latter not reading people and situations properly.

We dont need assumptions just a "reasonable person" test.

First a benchmark to see what you feel is reasonable:

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?

Once you have done that you can work your way through the logic of why this male person decided it was socially acceptable to do what he did.

Can you explain why you think that male employee thinks
● 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?

Now a more complex version of how that would change if he was gay....

Can you explain why you think a homosexual male employee would 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?

You can even pop the question for a heterosexual woman

Can you explain why you think a heterosexual female employee would think
● it is socially acceptable
• for a female 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?

Or how about a police officer or a teacher or anyone you can think of.

See once a base line is established people can work on safeguarding for both the nice ones and the creep ones.

Wait what, I thought he just asked if she and her mum needed any assistance. He was questioning her on her underwear and bra size? Is this what jappened?

*happened

Sorry typo

I’m amazed at the number of men I have seen defending a man eyeing up a young girl and thinking what lingerie would look good on her. It says a lot about those men….

Quite worrying. We shouldn’t be teaching our daughters to #be kind we should be teaching them #be safe.

I'm almost more concerned about the number of women defending them. I just can't see why.

The question is about his (and your) understanding of the current social contract.

(You ) We just don't know.

Situation
Q: risk assessment based on the current social contract.

She is engaged in a specific activity with no idea he exists.

He sees her.

(You ) He may have been genuinely trying to help.

What is the first step?
Q: What social contract rules apply?

What help is he thinking of offering once he gets a positive reply to the offer of help?
Q: What social contract rules apply?

Still a strong safe guarding problem. A homosexual male is still a man approaching a young adolescent female in the lingerie section. It remains a totally idiotic thing to do.