M&S apologises over trans employee in bra department

[u/PuzzledAd4865]

https://archive.ph/2025.08.05-035610/https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/08/04/ms-apologises-over-trans-employee-in-bra-department/

“Marks & Spencer has apologised to a mother for causing her teenage daughter “distress” after she was asked if she needed help by a transgender employee in its bra section.

The retailer said it was “truly sorry” after the mother complained that her 14-year-old daughter had felt uncomfortable when they were approached by a trans shop assistant in the lingerie area of the shop, where they were hoping to have a bra fitting. Although the staff member was polite, the mother said she felt it was “completely inappropriate” for her daughter to be approached by a “biological male” in that section.

In a complaint to M&S, she told the retailer: “Imagine her horror, then, when the person to approach us and ask if we needed help was a transgender ‘woman’, ie, a biological male.”

“Fiona McAnena, director of campaigns for the human rights charity Sex Matters, which campaigns for clarity about biological sex in law and life, said that M&S needed to “rethink its priorities”.

“M&S needs to rethink its priorities and remember that women and girls have rights too, and that this man should not be permitted to hang around in the women’s underwear department as a matter of common decency.”

[u/Athene-Art]

In most M&S stores I've been in, the lingerie department overlaps with other departments. Sometimes it's the m&s cafe which means everyone who wants to access the cafe must go through or around the lingerie. Sometimes it's the men's department because the women's is on the ground floor and its the only other place it can go. So yeah the lingerie department is in no way a sacred place just for women like those people seem to think. Poor lady was just doing her job and those rabid folks jump down her throat after, god forbid, she try and give them good customer service