“I don’t see what the fuss is all about,” one of my few-remaining non-TERFy friends said to me this morning. “I’ve been listening to it on the radio. One man called in who used to be manager of an M&S lingerie department decades ago. It’s nothing new to have men working in that department. And he was just asking if she wanted any help. Just like any employee might do. All the fuss is just because he’s trans.”
It’s true that the initial hyperbole that sprung up surrounding this case spread like bindweed. Rumours flew that this guy had popped up uninvited in a changing room, demanding that a worried child allowed him to fit her bra. Other rumours claimed that a poor innocent woman (who just happened to be trans) had meekly offered assistance in passing (which he clearly didn’t, geddit?) to two customers- just doing a job- and had ‘her’ head bitten off by an evil lurking TERF with nothing better to do than promote bigotry and embarrass her child.
“TERFs literally don’t want trans people to have jobs,” commented somebody on some-platform-somewhere that I can’t find now. “They’ll only be happy when we have to hide in our homes.”
There were virtual nods of agreement all round. But behind the hyperbole, what really happened?
The girl’s mother emailed a complaint to M&S after she and her daughter visited a store, planning to schedule a bra fitting. The sales assistant in question had approached them in the lingerie department, asking if they needed help. The complaint continued:
“Imagine (my daughter’s) horror, then, when the person to approach us and ask if we needed help was a transgender ‘woman’, ie, a biological male. This is obviously the case: he is at least 6ft 2in tall… My daughter recoiled, so I politely declined the offer and we left immediately. She was visibly upset and said she felt ‘freaked out’.”
On the 4th August, the Telegraph ran an article featuring M&S’s apology to the girl and her mother.
M&S told the woman it would ensure her daughter received ‘assistance from a female colleague’ if she returned to the store, adding, “Thank you for reaching out to us and sharing your experience… We deeply regret the distress your daughter felt during her visit to our store… We understand how important this milestone is for her, and we are truly sorry that it did not go as you had hoped.”
The girl’s mother told the Telegraph that the reply fell “significantly short of the response that was required to satisfy me that M&S takes seriously the safety and dignity of women and girls”.
JK Rowling shared the article and suggested that it was time for “women to vote with their wallets” and boycott M&S until it complied with the Supreme Court ruling.
One woman in the comments scoffed that ok, the girl might have felt uncomfortable for a few minutes, but so what, when trans people feel uncomfortable all the time?
(Not so uncomfortable, however, that they don’t think it’s ok to approach teenage girls in the underwear department and ask if they want help. Doesn’t sound very self-conscious to me TBH, but hey, what do I know?)
“Show me a girl who is not self-conscious about her body at that age and I will show you a liar. It doesn’t matter how open you have been as a parent, it is all, as the kids say, “awks”,” wrote Suzanne Moore in the Telegraph.
“There have been a few occasions where I have asked for help in a store while my eldest curled up in embarrassment beside me. But a sales assistant has never approached us, nevermind a big unit in the shape of a 6ft 2in transgender woman, aka a biological man…”
Others- notably those who think some kids need medication to stop the trauma of puberty altogether- disagreed, and scoffed at the idea that a teenage girl might feel self-conscious in a lingerie department. The mum was already an Evil TERF, speculated others. Maybe she planned the whole thing? Why wouldn’t she want a massive bloke in make up to fit her kid’s bra anyway?
This last sentiment was echoed when handmaiden Victoria Richards leapt forward a few days later, fuelling the fire and excelling herself with an article in the Independent, titled: ‘Of course I’d be happy for a trans employee to fit my daughter’s first bra.’ (Archive link here.)
Her logic? Girls are insanely embarrassed at a bra fitting, whoever is doing it, so who cares? She also mentions “Gen Alpha’s greater understanding and empathy towards those around them”.
Remember, the bloke who approached the mum and daughter in M&S was not offering to fit a bra. But there are plenty of people out there who want us to believe that if he had been, it would have been absolutely fine.
Victoria’s daughter, it seems, would put the feelings of the LARPing bloke first and would be happy to be a prop in his fantasy. This mum thinks her daughter’s lack of boundaries is fabulous, and we should all learn from the teen pronoun police. Also, this man didn’t pass partly because he was so TALL- obviously this means that all tall women will now be mistaken for men and subject to bigotry etc etc.
The Independent ran the article with a link underneath to an M&S YouTube video, explaining how easy a bra fitting is. Look how happy the woman in the video is! It’s fun, fun, fun all the way!
The overall vibe was that it was all a lot of fuss about nothing. When shared on social media, the article was accompanied by an AI picture of a pretty, vacuuous blonde in a bra. Who knows if this was meant to be the teenage girl or the 6ft bloke, because obviously… er, apart from this time… WHO COULD TELL?
TERFy twitter sprang into action, with some nifty graphics being run up by Total Titter.
…and some pretty funny jokes from the usual suspects:
Within a couple of days, one of the ‘Titter’ graphics had been made into a sticker by some enterprising women.
“M&F. It really is that simple. Stop allowing men in women’s fitting rooms. Keep males out of female spaces. M&S. Make it safe.”
It wasn’t long before the sticker started popping up in and around M&S stores across London.
You can always rely on StickerWoman to get a job done!
Meanwhile, TRAs, including the fragrant India ‘Jonathan’ Willoughby, were ganging up on the girl’s mother on Twitter, where she had started an account. Weirdly, India seemed to feel the need to pretend she had claimed those involved were naked. Others said they hoped her daughter would disown her when she was older.
“I don’t mind the person working for Marks & Spencer- I just don’t want him approaching teenage girls in the lingerie department. It’s not difficult.” she tweeted.
Within days of opening the account, the girl’s mother had been accused of being a troll, a lying bastard, spreading hate, grifting, being a terrible parent and being a bigot (of course). Not just any old bigot but a stinking bigot, a fucking bigot, despicable, pathetic, hysterical, lying; cooking up bollocks, being attention seeking & over the top, and a nasty little woman victimising a minority. She was also called a nonce, and warned she would ‘get her just deserts’.
That’s just the tip of the iceberg, collected off Twitter in a few minutes. There’s pages of this stuff.
“Grown men will have meltdowns over being “misgendered” and unaffirmed. Yet a child is not allowed to feel upset. We all know what is going on here.” observed Ruled by Corgis.
So M&S, what now?
There are multiple issues here, none of them is new and they all tie up together.
Firstly, there is the issue of a man, clearly masquerading as a woman, offering unsolicited underwear-related help. M&S say that lingerie was not this employee’s department and he wasn’t trained to fit bras. So why was he even there? It makes his offer of help seem a little more disconcerting. Especially, as pointed out by more than one person, when does an M&S sales assistant ever approach you and offer help?
We all know (yes, yes we do) that this person is not a woman, and that he enjoys dressing as a woman. Are we supposed to believe that it was entirely without guile that he found himself offering help to a teenager in an underwear department, a department that was not even his? I suppose it is possible.
So that’s the first issue. But how did such a situation arise?
It may well be true that in the past M&S had a male manger of a lingerie department, but that’s not the point. What it didn’t have was a policy of pretending that a man in a dress and makeup was actually a woman. And once you start pretending that, everything changes.
Finally, there is M&S’s continued policy of allowing men who say they are women to access the women’s changing rooms. These issues may initially seem related only tenuously but it is M&S’s continued championing of men in women’s spaces that emboldens those who believe their masquerade must be enabled. It is the enabling of the masquerade that leaves some women and girls feeling vulnerable, knowing that they may be confronted with a man claiming to be a woman- whether on the shop floor or in the changing rooms.
Back in 2019, Jean Hatchett tweeted about a friend and her daughter who were confronted by a man in the changing rooms at M&S. Other women on the thread shared their stories. Just a few days ago Cas, who used to work in HR at M&S, said she had received complaints from women who felt uncomfortable having to measure men for bras. M&S expected them to comply with this. Their solution was to work in twos so they didn’t have to be alone in the fitting room with a man.
It is a fact that there is a small demographic of men who get off on hanging out around women’s underwear stores.
The internet is full of tales from women who work in lingerie shops and departments: tales of how the older women keep an eye out for the younger ones; how women are asked to ‘model’ for men; how at the end of the day, creased ‘panties’ are found on hangers and on the floor with a strange inexplicable gooey substance on them…
Lingerie shops are a magnet for male weirdos, the majority of whom are your gros, pervy straight guys. This is not news.
But it’s not exactly a gargantuan intellectual leap to realise that many of these men are autogynephiles- men who are erotically aroused at the thought of themselves as women. This particular demographic of men are not only allowed in M&S changing rooms – they are positively encouraged to enter.
“I had a lovely experience with M&S recently when going for a bra fitting. The person seemed to have had experience with trans people before cause she was aware of the whole second puberty thing.” gushed one reddit user.
“A MISSION OF REASSURANCE”
In August 2019, M&S ran an article on their website featuring employee Kelly, who went along “with a bra fitter” to a meeting of trans group ‘Unique’, with a mission to encourage men to come along to M&S for bra fittings.
“We discreetly went around the group explaining that we were there to help, that M&S is a friendly place which welcomes customers whoever they are, and that they shouldn’t be frightened to come into our stores.” said Kelly. “I guessed correctly that there was a stigma coming into a store like M&S, so I suppose it was a mission of reassurance.”
Yes, you got that right, the men at that group had had reservations about invading women’s spaces, but M&S literally sought them out and encouraged them to do so.
One of them got a job at Kelly’s branch of M&S, and told her, “to be an M&S girl is a dream come true”.
The article has now been removed from the M&S website, but the internet never forgets and it is archived here.
In 2020, the Telegaph ran a piece claiminng that M&S changing room policy could put girls at risk, after Baroness Nicholson wrote to the company expressing concerns.
‘Since changing of clothes can lead to voyeurism, newer legislation (the upskirting law) calls this laxness of provision into question” she wrote. “‘I believe you may wish to follow the Government’s line and resume single- sex spaces for the changing rooms in your stores.”
In response, reported the Telegraph, “M&S said it had assured Baroness Nicholson its fitting rooms provide secure and private spaces with individual lockable cubicles.”
Let’s be clear, over the years M&S has repeatedly been made aware of the concerns of women and has insisted on prioriting the feelings of men.
And in 2025?
In the light of the Supreme Court ruling, we might expect M&S to have issued new, clear guidelines concerning changing rooms, and yes, bra fittings too.
We all now know that, in law, a facility that is described as for women must only be for actual women. A company refusing to comply with this clarification of the law is likely to face a lawsuit, and M&S should be sharply aware of this going forward.
But what of a changing room that is described simply as a ‘changing room’? What of a bra-fitting service that takes place in a space described only as a ‘fitting room’? Is M&S planning to continue circumnavigating its responsibility to provide a safe and comfortable place for women to buy underwear and try on clothing?
The company’s response to recent events has left no one feeling happy. TRAs are calling for a boycott of M&S for not ‘supporting’ their employee and calling it a ‘a matter of human dignity, workplace safety, and legal protection’. They’ve even started a petition.
TRAs on Reddit have written to M&S claiming ‘this incident has led to more hate and violence against trans people, as well as to the spread of transphobic misinformation’.
Women’s rights activists feel that clarification and compliance with the Supreme Court ruling are long overdue.
As JKR suggests, “If stores like M&S continue to flout the Supreme Court ruling on women-only spaces, prioritising the wishes of men who want to undress near, or help fit bras on teenage girls, a boycott seems appropriate.”
I’d add that M&S, and numerous other organisations out there, need to realise that the genderwoowoo is getting stale, and continuing to hitch their carriages to this particular woowoochoochoo is likely to leave them with a cold reality of dwindling customers and pricey lawsuits.
