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.

shop assistants on an m&s floor doing their job. They were not offering bra fittings.
They were on a retail floor selling clothes. They asked a customer If they needed any help.
Do you think trans people shouldnt sell clothes?

I would have thought a transwoman employee would have had the social awareness that aproaching a teenage girl in the underwear department was not a good idea - maybe just avoid that section of the shop completely

Same as a lone adult with no accompanying children shouldn't go and sit on a bench in a kids play park - they may be there perfectly innocently but it isn't a good look and could lead to misunderstandings about motive.

No, we think men shouldn't approach what appears to be a lone 14-year old girl in the lingerie section when the store has a known policy of not approaching customers to ask whether they need help. Their beliefs about their gender have nothing to do with it. The fact that they are male do.

Nice of you to join us.

If you had read the thread, you'd be able to find the answer to your question.

Its not well hidden.

Reading is a skill worth developing. You learn so much more than just shouting at people on the internet with a prejudice that everyone who posts is doing so out of 'hate'.

After a disasterous year at school I'm doing some extra comprehension testing at home with DS as its such an important life skill.

Maddy do you grasp that what you would call a transwoman is a man, a male? And that he approached a lone, young teenaged girl, in a department he was not detailed to work in? And that M and S have apologised to Mum and child for his frightening behaviour?

But more to the point, how could the girl even tell? I mean, you just don't know what someone's chromosomes are. Transphobe.

I bought a new bra from a very large branch of M&S recently, the only staff member I saw in any of the clothing departments was on the door of the fitting rooms - even the tills in the lingerie department have now become fully automated!

it’s a good bra, flexi fit, full cup, reduced by 50% in the sale. I was going to return for a couple more colours but I have now found the same on eBay (presumably factory cabbage/over stock) instead of buying directly.

At this rate the only bra customers they will have left will be male fetishists.

Adult men should not accost lone teenagers, either girls or boys.

Adult men having a gender identity does not stop that simple rule from applying to them.

Lucky that the girl's mother was so close by and could step in.

I'm simply waiting to judge until I have ALL the facts.

If it turns out to be dog okay! I'll be the first to say Good Doggy!

Bingo is fun!

Trans person aside, the average teenager is likely to find the whole bra buying process extremely embarrassing and will not want a shop assistant male, or female, trans or not, offering help, talking about bras or anything else.

Going up to a teenager in the lingerie section and offering help is not part of a M&S sales assistant's job. In fact M&S sales assistants do not typically offer help to anyone in any department, unless approached first.

Not if they're bras to teenage girls, no.

Why? I'm quite happy to be served by a man, trans or female

Can I help you?

Yes please I'm looking for a size 34d in this ...

I'll just check if it's in stock.

Or alternatively. No thanks I'm ok ...

Normal interaction

Bra fittings are different but that's not what happened here

Absolutely this.

When I was growing up, there was a rash of nuisance calls from a man who liked telephoning teen girls who’d been in the local newspaper. He guessed their numbers out of the phone book and would call to ask “what kind of panties are you wearing? Are they white or are they blue?”
The police got involved because in those days men wanting to talk to teens about undies was understood to be a problem. I imagine these days the girls would be convicted of a non crime hate incident for putting the phone down on him

Another person here who has never ever been approached in M&S.

Grown men should not be approaching children without a good reason. This person didn’t have a good reason.

Sure. M&S selects bluesky land of TRAs to correct the misinformation. What a load of crap.

it’s a good bra, flexi fit, full cup, reduced by 50% in the sale. I was going to return for a couple more colours but I have now found the same on eBay (presumably factory cabbage/over stock) instead of buying directly.

i haven't had cabbage in my bra for years! (good for mastitis)

I haven’t read any evidence they were in the changing room. Why can’t they offer help on the main store floor? From what I have read (happy to stand corrected) the girl was shopping with her mother.

I really hate the way some posters assume ill intent at everything - including using words like ‘creepy.’ In a changing room, I would agree it’s ill advised to approach a teenager, but I don’t agree a trans employee (or anyone for that matter) should stay out of the lingerie department entirely for fear of offence. That’s totally ludicrous.

Awaits being shot down in flames…

READ THE THREAD.

YOU ARE STILL MISSING THE POINT AND ARGUING A STRAW MAN.

BINGO.

And another one.

bollocks you would have said this to a man who thinks he's a woman when you were 14.

Because a man who doesn't work in lingerie approaching a 14 year old girl bra shopping to offer "help" is creepy. If you can't understand that you can't be helped.

Pushing all sorts of hate?

What does that even mean?

Of course they won't apologise for manifacturing outrage about a (maybe) trans staff member politely asking 'Do you need any help' while in a lingerie department. It wouldn't have made national press if an actual male member of staff had done this - possibly someone might have complained to the shop that they weren't comfortable with a man in that part of the shop, but for some reason no one would have been interested in reporting that.

Are you really a sex realist just fanning the flames OP? M&S's opinion that it is all fine and normal is largely what the original controversy is about. It's not like their position that it was just a staff member doing their job was hidden or something. It's what the mother was publicly complaining about.

Because it is not fine for male staff to approach teen girls in the lingerie department. In 50+ years I have never had a male employee approach me in any lingerie department, even female staff rarely approach unasked. It is obvious that on the whole women are going to prefer female assistance and that unasked for male intervention would be likely to make many women feel subconscious.

The mother of the girl in question also made it clear that it wasn't just the approach that was a red flag here, it was also that when it became obvious to the employee that the girl was not on her own but was accompanied by an adult, he slunk off. Which is exactly what creepy guys do to girls.

M&S trying to brush this behaviour under the carpet as normal and just what their staff are supposed to be doing, instead of taking the safeguarding of girls seriously is despicable.

And if it really is their policy that male staff members should approach women in the lingerie department and ask them if they want help, they need to rethink that. Though it's possible it's just not something they've ever had to spell out before because most men either have more respect for women, or they realise it'll look like they're perving and don't think they'll be able to get away with it.