Misinformation correction: M&S Staff

[BeeSourianteAgain]

M&S have responded to people's enquiries, here's one:

https://bsky.app/profile/dpdormouse.bsky.social/post/3lvuzitrplc2f

As expected the staff member was just doing their job, something that happens thousands of times a day in shops all over the country.

As per normal, the trans panic was manufactured.

I fully expect all the GCs and media pundits who were pushing all sorts of hate to apologise, but as a person on their second LGBTQ moral panic I know very well how it goes.

It is abusive posting. It might not be aimed at individuals but it is abusive none the less.

I think the excellent post showing the DARVO highlighted it well.

We can retain the posts in our own for coherency, but why should women have to think we accept this abuse to make our points when we don’t have to?

Yep agree on a personal level (and may report on that basis) but the posts involved were rather generic yelling at the sky type 👀 so its always down to the readers choice.

I agree that it's better to Let Them Stupid, but MN has spoken, so hey.

I've been driven back to my old Chambers Twentieth Century Dictionary (1983 edition, so obviously old-fashioned, but language sits on its foundations).

Thelarche: the word used by the now-deleted poster to describe the process of breast development. Not there at all, evidently a medical coinage either very rare then or not yet in use (Chambers is generally good on technical terms, if it was in regular use it would have been included).

Gender: noun; kind: grammatical; a distinction of words roughly answering to sex; loosely or jocularly; sex.

So that's that. As we have pointed out, there is a new usage to go with the new word. Orwell thou shouldst be living at this hour.

and further:

Accost: verb; to approach and address; to speak first to, to solicit as a prostitute.

Approach: to bring near, to come near to in any sense, to come into personal relations with, to resemble.

So that's why I didn't use approach - it carries a connotation of not necessarily speaking, of stealth. Accost is honest and direct, and describes what happened without value judgement.

Yes, this was like a toddler having a tantrum, rather than targeted abuse.

DeanElderberry · Today 11:26
Accost: verb; to approach and address; to speak first to, to solicit as a prostitute.
Approach: to bring near, to come near to in any sense, to come into personal relations with, to resemble.
So that's why I didn't use approach - it carries a connotation of not necessarily speaking, of stealth. Accost is honest and direct, and describes what happened without value judgement.

Nit pick

To approach and address is what the man did.

Accosted is the lived experience of the girl.

So both are correct in the correct context of describing what happened in the M&S underwear department.

My point is that to 'approach and address' I needed to use 'accost'.

'Approach' on its own could just be his coming near to her and standing there. Also creepy.

What is interesting Dean, is that the poster on the now deleted thread tried to parse egg production as only being the cellular stage developed inutero in his satire / spoof like post.

I would say that is bollocks. Because significant effort is expended our bodies to get those eggs to maturity. To limit ‘production’ the way he did was nonsensical. I mean the entire post was but i am comparing it to the use of thelarche and the idiotic statistics and the complete lack of understanding on how girls progress to ‘bras’.

Yes. A sense of someone with a slightly morbid interest in young female bodies doing a lot of web searches and then getting it all a bit wrong. I'd have been charitable and said maybe it was someone with a young female body, but the goof about 14 being an unlikely age for first bra fitting blew that out of the water.

Yeah… I mean… eggs in microscopic undeveloped form are all that is apparently needed for human production, girls are unlikely to get first bra fittings at 14 because ‘development’ starts so much earlier, women is a word that can be used to describe females any other species apparently. It all sounds like someone who takes particles of truth and never reads further. But it is all book learning at a superficial level knowledge.

Those are two different questions.

My argument is that to an extent we have to keep them, to show 'being fragile' to the point of needing censoring for that level isn't necessary. It's not ok, and we will belittle it but censorship for censorships sake doesn't work and it causes its own issues. Otherwise we just end up needing rooms away from politicians because our egos can't cope like other muppets.

In this particular case, it was very much a case of 'we got this, and can deal with it on our own terms' without needing mnhq's intervention.

There's far worse that should be deleted and isn't imho.

Again, good way of putting it.

It felt like squcreaming and squcreaming to try and get own way.

And then the use of toddler logic (or a 6 year old who thinks they've just got one over on adults) with gametes.

So I guess I haven't felt it as 'abusive' in the same way as other stuff. It just feels utterly infantile.

I think we all have our own boundaries on this and obviously mine are more sensitive and I don’t agree that abusive posters should be allowed to keep posting.

Ooh, look, in news to some drive by posters, we're not a hive mind or echo chamber! And that's just fine.

Based on how thoroughly the poster was nuked, I'm assuming a ban evader. And some of the phrasing seemed familar, though I'm not sure from where.

What a weird poster though. I can understand the theory that it was AI, but AI wouldn't achieve that kind of "creepy Big Bang Theory character" personality.

I rarely report posts myself, except when it's a personal attack, and even then it's rarely successful, so my instinct probably leans towards keeping them up.

And such a fabulous signature!
misses point of thread
goes off to practise grown-up signatures

Has anyone written to m and s to ask about the policy? From a Reddit thread it appeared those who believe the mum is making things up/think the approach is ok have been active about complaining to the company over their initial apology.

Marks and Spencer’s subsequent public statement leans towards supporting men offering children help with bras, but they are still on the fence. They’re putting both employees (eager one in the lingerie dept and the woman who acknowledged him as a man) at risk of identification, while not clarifying the firm’s position or policy. Both employees represent the company, yet the company isn’t supporting either of them.

If this store employee has been trained or encouraged to approach young teen girls to offer help with bras, m and s aren’t saying that, to clear up confusion and criticism and outline the store’s policy for staff and customers. Not clarifying this means they aren’t standing by their employees.

As for customers it doesn’t appear there is any empathy for the child in question or any children in the past, present or future who may not want a man singling them out to offer help while they quietly look at bras.

The firm could say “we apologise for any distress or confusion caused to the child in store. However, we fully support all our colleagues to approach anyone in our stores as they see fit. Children who come into our shops may be asked if they would like help with underwear by any of our employees, this includes men. Employees may not approach all customers to offer help, but occasionally the ones they do ask may be girls looking at our underwear.”

peckish now. My hot weather default lunch this summer has been peach, or, better, nectarine with blue cheese. I was using Cashel Blue earlier in the year but have just upped the game to Roquefort.

To me this part was particularly telling

If the mother felt uncomfortable, for whatever reason, all she had to do was say "No thank you, we're fine", same as for any offer of assistance which isn't required. It didn't need this drama, this circus surrounding it.

This reads as if it was only the mother that was freaked out / creeped out / embarrassed and not the child.

It also places the level of harm at 'the mother feeling uncomfortable', the child was apparently, at worst, entirely neutral.

Also the use of the term 'the mother' seems a little odd to me - as if 'the mother' is some sort of an object rather that a concerned mum. What's wrong with 'the girl's mum'?

It makes me think back to the earlier linked twitter post expressing the opinion that 14 year olds (minors by law) were practically fully grown and, by trying to protect them, parents were guilty of infantilizing them.

As I said in response to the previous poster - this all seems a little like a PIE or abuser's justification of why minors should be treated as adults. To me, any attempt to ignore, circumvent or minimize safeguarding should be treated with suspicion.

I view David Tennant's 'You are safe with me' badge as a similar attempt to circumvent the rules of safeguarding.

Where some posters seem to think that this drive by scolder is child with a child's opinions, the comments seem much darker and more calculated to me.

Obviously! I took DD1, 22, for her first bra fitting last month - I’m a neglectful ovulating person

The stuff about the stages of breast development had a whiff of PIE too. I get a strong sense that the girl's mother's instinctive response was spot on.

Fair enough.

I get it.

I do think it causes more problems than it solves unfortunately.

There's a group of twitter people who are saying very similar at the moment and are all retweeting each other using phrases like 'tall women' and suggesting that 14 year olds are responsible for their own actions.

All older males. To legitimise older transitioning as normal.

As I've said previously it very much suits their agenda for children to transition - so saying they are responsible to without parental consent is part of that. There's a huge amount getting children to consent against parental wishes. Is it PIE like? I don't know.

I foolishly looked up DT's 'You are safe with me badge'.

Struck me that it is probably something that Fleming's child catcher would wear to work

I didn't have a effing clue at 14. About anything.

Got ya.
I would always conjoin(?) the approach with the addressing
As they are 2 actions with 2 choices.

In this case a third choice was made as it was to offer help with underwear selection