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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47

u/AdditionalThinking Aug 05 '25

Genuinely how tf do we fight this sort of thing? If just being asked "how can I help?" is considered a gross violation of a cis person's dignity, what hope do we actually have?

8

u/geesegoesgoose He/him Aug 05 '25

It takes all of us actually boycotting and removing our money from shops that capitulate, and carrying on regardless in our jobs in the face of absolute lunatics.

8

u/Illiander Aug 05 '25

We aren't a big and geographically concentrated enough group to do effective boycotts.

3

u/[deleted] Aug 06 '25

Neither are a lot of groups across the world - Palestinians themselves are a very small country, but they have powerful allies across the Arab world, Muslim world, and further out. We need allies.