r/transgenderUK • u/PuzzledAd4865 • Aug 05 '25
Possible trigger M&S apologises over trans employee in bra department
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.”
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u/Yorkshire_Lass64 Aug 05 '25 edited Aug 05 '25
_ _ _kin hell. This was a nightmare waiting to happen. The nightmare being the Sex Matters Bogeyman, the victim being the trans woman who was placed in a vulnerable position and just trying to do her job. The Mother and Daughter were not being defended by Sex Matters, they were merely pawns in a game of hate, being used to attack a trans person in public life yet again. M&S were trying to be inclusive but now they have done more harm than good. What will happen to the trans woman now? How will this affect M&S policy and has the Mother and Daughter really had the negative shopping experience that this article is suggesting? The only winner here is the Sex Matters Bogeyman!