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.

Well at least the OP plopper managed a post without the word ‘seething’ 🤣
Palpable desperation.

😂😂

I mean, if M&S do have it in their job descriptions to permit employees to approach lone teenaged girls in the bra department, they need to change this pronto.

Though if they have it in their job descriptions to approach shoppers browsing then the entire staff of every M&S I've ever shopped in needs sacking. Staff just don't hang around on the shop floor and approach shoppers. There are plenty of shops that do that, M&S isn't one of them. If you want help finding something you have to hunt a member of staff down and ask them.

And even if it were policy, of all the customers to pick on to approach, a lone teenager shopping for bras shows at best gross insensitivity.

No man should be approaching a teenage girl in the underwear section, staff or not. Common sense would know they would feel uncomfortable.

This trans woman wasn't working that department so definitely shouldn't have been there.

I do all my underwear shopping in M&S, and never once have I been approached by staff, male or female. When I have needed assistance, I had to go searching for staff.

It wouldn't have made national press if an actual male member of staff had done this

Have you misunderstood? That's exactly what did happen. Unless you're arguing he's not an employee?

We used to keep a bosun whistle beside the phone for the creepy perves. Funnily enough they only ever called once 😁

I recently met a chap whose job involves answering a helpline for trans people.

He said the helpline gets lots of calls from heavy breathers/perverts (no way to know from the call if the callers have undergone a process of gender transition as defined in EQ10 or intend to undergo such a process, of course).

I shall suggest he invest in a bosun whistle.

Here one time years ago we had a run of dodgy phone calls (had to change our number); I had a referee's whistle, with a pea in it. Top Tip, stick your fingers in your ears first.

Yep, that would take the lead out of the pencil!

I was a bit disappointed when he hung up. I was just getting started! I wasn’t scared so he wasn’t getting the power trip he wanted.

Putting the man approaching a lone 14 year old in the lingerie section to one side.

I was pretty shocked when an earlier poster pointed out that they'd received complaints from female shop staff who had ended up in the situation where they were providing one to one bra fittings with biological males.

What is the M&S position on this? Are they fully trans women are women? - if so how can an employee refuse to do this sort of fitting?

I think the Supreme Court ruling should have made it possible to make bra fitting a single-sex service available to females from females and males from males. Which raises the question of fitting room availability.

It is a male shop assistant, and they are batting an eyelid.

No man, cross-dressing or otherwise, should be approaching teens to ask them about bras.

Quite. And what if the man in question has AGP? And is getting sexually excited from having a bra fitted?

People seem to have collective amnesia about cross-dressing fetishes.

Suzanne Moore has a good piece in the Telegraph that pulls no punches. Many of the comments are spot on (and would generate a host of deletions on here) 😄
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/08/06/young-girls-bras-marks-and-spencers-trans-workers/

Archive link:

https://archive.ph/XqT76

My first post was along the lines of " can we call transwomen men here?" I was banned in minutes.

Some changes have happened since the Upton case in February. It is selective but sometimes we can now call that group men and sometimes even use male pronouns. I tend not to risk it and play it cautiously. But it has changed.

Maybe something we can all raise with M&S.

Or it could be that the board of M&S are happy for their partners/wives/young teenage daughters/female relatives to have their bra fittings with male employees.

I forgot about the ‘fearless young things’ advert. M&S are seriously pissing off their core customer base.

M&S need to get a grip on Child safeguarding and protection training because at the moment they seem to be quite happy to sacrifice children over the rights of adult employees.

Ah yes - to be fair the Telegraph article doesn’t say the staffer was male. They quote M&S saying the staffer was “not female”.

You might be happy but not a young teenage girl.

FWIW My dad used to work at a high street fashion store - for years. On the tills, on the floor etc. Suddenly he was put on changing room duties, just as female employees were. Shop sold male and female clothing and the store changing rooms were of the layout of a corridor and curtains in front of each bay kind of off the handbag department. It would be staffed at the entrance of the corridor and if you needed a different size etc that staff member would sort that out for you. It was rare men would use the changing rooms.

You can imagine how uncomfortable he was, and no doubt the customers would be too - except for some that actually wanted to flirt/intimidate. It really bothered him and he asked me to help him raise a complaint with HR. Ultimately it was a case of tough luck, as he was being treated the same as everyone else (who happened to be female). Strange though that he was the one who had to do all the heavy lifting and it would stay there til he was next on shift because, well - man.

Going back a good 15+ years ago here. And no, it wasn't M&S.

My point is, he was doing as he was told and actively tried to object that it was unreasonable to expect a man be on changing room duties with predominantly female consumers. He ended up handing his notice in after over a decade there - this was one of the reasons as to why. It was ruining his mental health and making him dread work. The looks he would get, and the pass agg comments from customers as if he had chosen to do that specific job would cut him deep. He died before his p45 landed.

Not for one second taking a "side" here. Just pointing out that his employer treated a man the same as a woman where it suited them, regardless of protests and/or questionable circumstances.

My gran suggested a whistle but my mum advised total silence… no reaction whatsoever and put the receiver on the hall table the. Creep away. Leave for 2 hours or so… royally buggered up his planned evening of perming because he couldn’t disconnect the call and it ran up a good bill. Never called back 🤣 Unfortunately any reaction is a positive result for these sorts of blokes

Sorry to break it to you but many trans women look exactly like … women!!