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.

😁

Don’t let us also forget Teal’s excellent contribution yesterday that apparently plastic surgery is so good that there is no difference between a surgical cavity inserted into the groin of a male person and a vagina. So those male people become ‘female people’ instantly.

When is it normal to have a male try to sell underwear to teen girls?

In the UK children are even taught the PANTS rules.

Privates are private
Always remember your body belongs to you
No means no
Talk about secrets that upset you
Speak up, someone can help

Out of interest, which part of you is broadly GC? Because it doesn't seem to be your writing hand.

The two start points of this story are:

Adult males should not accost young teenagers.

One of M&S's good points is that its staff do not accost customers of any age.

Which should have added up to making the mother's feeling that taking her young daughter there for her awkward first bra purchase (not fitting, purchase, 'find your way around the sizing and styling parameters' time) was a good safeguarding choice.

But an opportunist male decided that he was entitled to cross normal societal boundaries (the two listed above) because he had adopted a gender identity.

The question has implied terms though doesnt it?
The context adds meaning:

• being “in the bra department”
• staffer “not female”

Therefore the implied question is actually more like:

Do you want any help selecting underwear?

100% this

he wasn't doing his job. He was supposed to be elsewhere in the store and it's not m&s policy to approach customers browsing. He approached a teenager, despite of that, in the lingere department, who appeared to be alone.

red flags everywhere

Ah.

The 14-year-old wasn't made to speak about her bras, she could always say no.

Indeed, same way those stupid 'me too' women all should have just said 'no'. Or really 'no thank you'. They should be polite.

Women are shocking really, the way they carry on about the least little thing.

And Maddy, what if she said ‘yes I need help’?

What part of a discussion about the product she is standing in front of would not involve discussion about style, size and usage of a bra?

You can continue to dismiss this all you want. However, those who of us recognise safeguarding breaches will continue to point them out. M&S need to address the issue instead of defending their what seems to be poor policies or poor training. It certainly could be both.

While you, personally, might be very comfortable to discuss bras with men, you don’t get to consent to a policy on behalf of all female people. If you cannot recognise behaviour where a male person is acting inappropriately, maybe you should ask yourself why you have poor perception of appropriateness of behaviour. Why do you have such low boundaries about what is appropriate behaviour towards you and others and what is not appropriate?

Either way, no male member of staff should be seeking to start a discussion with a 14 year old girl about bras. That is inappropriate behaviour.

No one should have an expectation to only meet people who fit their own standards of acceptability and get upset when they don't.

This is always a funny (wots that you said??? type ) argument to take when debating the application of safeguarding.

Safeguarding is based on setting a minimum standard of acceptable behaviours.

People are then trained to higher their personal standards if they fall short of the minimum standards.

They are also trained to be "upset" if other people fail to meet the minimum standards.
Their "upset" sometimes obliges them to involve the police and other State agencys.

Members of the (adult) public are actually asked to be "upset" and to judge some very low personal standards of acceptability and to decide if these low standards should result in the individual loosing their liberty or other rights.

That's a good point, you would only offer to help if you knew what help to give, and what help could a man give to a teenage girl, or a women for that matter, about bra's or period products.
Randoms on Bluesky claiming to know the 'truth' is hardly a correction.

I’ve posted similar elsewhere, but for the lurkers and for all those who think this interaction was fine and people are being really mean…

Please, do not ever approach a young teen on their own and engage them in conversation. It is never appropriate. It is especially inappropriate in a lingerie section, changing room, swimming pool, gym…
If they need help they will choose who to approach.

Don’t do it. It will save you and them a world of pain. Don’t.

There’s no problem with the employee being trans in other parts of the shop but obviously there will be heightened sensitivity for female customers in the underwear and changing areas. Everyone knows this is controversial whether or not they agree.

Maybe you’ve never been “one of the onlys” in a situation? I’ve frequently been the only woman in the room at work and it automatically comes with extra scrutiny. I have had to be on my best behaviour and steer away from anything controversial in order to just get on with my best life. If this trans employee had done the same there would be no problem.

Unfortunately they managed to a hat trick of unusual actions which are guaranteed to get a lot of scrutiny:

• to approach a customer - when M&S policy is not to approach clients.
• to approach a lone minor
• to offer help to initiate a conversation about underwear

If it’s not an error of judgement then it’s creepy and decidedly male pattern behaviour of the sort that many women recognise and don’t like.

Unfortunately thats what makes it national news-worthy - because there’s a lot of public interest in emerging policy (a lot of which is unlawful) and we are repeatedly told that TWAW and arent like other men…

Had this staff member behaved like any another M&S staffer and followed policy to not offer help, we would know nothing about this and everyone would be happily going about their business with no problem. No slippery slope and nothing to see….

This is an adult man coming out of the department he was supposed to be in and approaching a 14 year old child, who appeared to be alone, in the lingerie department. The “trans” issue isn’t relevant.

No its not.
The story is creepy man goes into department that he doesn't work in, isn't trained to work there, he sees what he presumes is an unaccompanied 14 year old girl looking at bras and asks her if she wants his help (M&S staff are trained not to approach customers but to wait for them to approach the staff).
So the story is not about a man doing his job its about a man breaching his employers rules of behaviour in a department he doesn't work in and whilst acting in what can only be described as a predatory way towards what he believed to be an unaccompanied 14 year old who was looking at bras.
Question for you @Maddy70 and @sadmillenial why are you so determined to defend a clearly predatory man behaving in a wholly unacceptable way to a 14 year old girl? Even his employer has accepted that he behaved inappropriately and apologised but you two just keep minimising and excusing his behaviour why do it why not accepte that trans or otherwise this male employee was 100% in the wrong?

Don’t be ridiculous - saying no makes her transphobic doesn’t it?

You do realise that M&S admitted that hes not female ie hes male so not a she but a he

“The 14-year-old wasn't made to speak about her bras, she could always say no.”

is all too similar to the posters who come out with

“if a girl doesn’t want to see a penis in their communal changing room, they should just keep their eyes somewhere else.”

It’s the mother’s description on Twitter after the story went viral, so yes it is “how it was described by the people involved” @sadmillenial

I wonder why? Did you perhaps suggest human beings couldn’t change sex?

I’ve just posted the awful Peter Dunne quote about “non normative bodies” (penises as equivalent to breast cancer patients who’ve had mastectomies) to the AIBU thread about single sex spaces.

And the working across departments is PR BS.

Managers are just as lazy as anybody else.

The Manager or whoever is doing up the roster is not bringing in 10 staff of the 20 who could be rostered to work "somewhere" each Monday, 12 each Tuesday etc.

They need someone in underwear to do all the tasks and any check that need to be done without being trained by the Manager (20 employees +++ ?new hires ) or having to be closely supervised or having to be told about all the issues the prior 19 staff have told the Manager about.

When roster time comes around
Jane gets rostered to household
Mary gets rostered to underwear
Every single time because the Manager needs to fill the role with an available employee.

If Mary is not available Jane may be asked to take on some of the role in underwear if the two departments are next to each other.

Jane will not get rostered to household and underwear if they are on two different floors because then Janes Manager has to run up and down the stairs to supervise Jane or find Jane when there is a product quiery from a customer.

Do you think that its appropriate for a man however he identifies to go into a department that he doesn't work in, breaching his employers rules around approaching customers and targeting what he believes to be an unaccompanied 14 year old girl who is looking at bras and asking if he can help her?

This is not the slippery slope that you think it is. This is about a man behaving in a predatory fashion towards a child.
There are plenty of jobs that men should not do and that list of jobs doesn't change just because the man claims to identify as anything other than male. So yes there are jobs that trans people shouldn't do and what they are depends on whether that transperson is biologically male or female and its the same list as it is for the rest of their sex class. That's not discrimination because of their gender but because of their sex and its perfectly legal and appropriate.

I can't believe people are still trying to defend this guy's actions.

M&S staff are not supposed to approach customers unnecessarily.

He was not working in this department.

He approached an apparently alone 14 year old

There's so many red flags waving but some people only seem to see the trans flag.

It’s not the gender that’s important here, it’s the sex. Any male approaching a woman in the lingerie department to offer unasked for assistance is crossing boundaries they shouldn’t. The issue isn’t that the employee was trans, it’s that he was male. It isn’t that he was being helpful, it’s that he was intruding into a situation where the vast majority of women in the UK would find a male’s attention uncomfortable and quite possibly threatening. In part because it’s not something men know anything about, but also because it’s a situation that has been exploited in porn and male fantasy time and time again, leaving women feeling objectified and vulnerable.

This isn’t controversial if you ask the general public. Women overwhelmingly dislike men being around in these sorts of situation and, while men might quite like the idea of being there, they overwhelming understand why.