The acceptable face of discrimination.

As a trans man and a trans rights activist, I have watched a news story unfold today with a familiar sense of dread. A customer assistant working at Marks and Spencers – identified only as a trans woman by the customer’s assumptions – politely offered to help a mother and daughter. The mother, triggered by the employee’s presence, took to anti-trans friendly news outlets, supported by supportive social media accounts, to express her disproval. The story exploded.

This is not an isolated incident, but a predictable chapter in a much larger story. The anti-trans media ecosystem, aided by its acolytes (including a certain writer whose name will not be mentioned), immediately jumped on the story, depicting the employee as a threat, a predator lurking in a “safe space”.

The absurdity is staggering but sadly not unfamiliar. The anti-trans groups are asking us to believe that a trans person offering help as part of her job is a legitimate cause for alarm. But this isn’t just one bad news story. It’s a calculated strategy, and the facts, as reported by Pink News, quickly destroy the narrative being pushed. 

The first thing to note is the only person who has identified the employee as a trans woman is the mother who made the complaint. This has not been confirmed. The customer’s assumption is that because the employee was tall, they must therefore be trans. Sigourney Weaver, you’ve been outed! And no, I’m not transvestigating my most favourite actress in the world, I’m simply showing the absolute absurdity of stereotype-driven assumptions.

The employee did not offer a bra fitting as some headlines and articles have implied, she just offered help. This was a simple, polite act of customer service which has been twisted into something sinister. 

As another mother, Victoria Richards, rightly argues in a piece for The Independent, the store’s apology was a betrayal of their employee not a service to the customer. 

The complaint was from March 2025, yet the headlines didn’t appear until August 2025. The timing feels too deliberate to be accidental. It can’t be ignored when one considers the recent UK Supreme Court ruling in April 2025, that offered a restrictive interpretation of ‘sex’ under the Equality Act.

The way this story has re-emerged suggests anti-trans groups are using it to amplify their own message of removing trans people from certain spaces and to capitalise on the legal uncertainty, especially in light of the EHRC interim guidance.

What occurs to me is that the same media outlets and public figures feeding this frenzy, would not tolerate or rather be so open about, attacking other marginalised groups. Can you imagine the backlash if the same level of deliberate misrepresentation and targeted harassment were directed at an employee from a different minority group? This is NOT at all to undermine the levels of discrimination that other minority/marginalised group encounter, but for trans people, open slurs and discrimination are being broadcast on the front pages of tabloids and in the heart of government.

As Victoria Richards writes “What would you say if you heard, for example, that a person of colour working in M&S had approached a teenage customer and politely offered assistance, only for the teenager to feel uncomfortable, the parent to be outraged and complain about their “distress” – and the store to write an apology?”

This manufactured, moral panic creates a climate of fear, where trans people are not seen as individuals but a collective threat to be legislated and protested against.

We are not a debate. We are people.

We are your neighbours, your family members, your colleagues and yes, quite possibly a customer service representative in a store asking a mother and daughter if they require help.

The fight for trans rights is not about winning some argument. It’s about demanding the simple right to exist. It’s asking society to look in the mirror and confront exactly why it holds trans people to a cruel standard.