The Marks and Spencer ‘Incident’ Marks a Terrifying Turn in Anti-Trans Hysteria

Who Gets to Exist in Public?

Photo by Fahad Waseem on Unsplash

Back in March, retail chain Marks and Spencer apologised for providing good customer service. One of their employees, finding themselves with little to do in the section of the branch they were patrolling, spotted two customers wandering about. Perhaps they were lost? Perhaps they were looking for the latest niche product blown up on TikTok? It didn’t matter. It was something to do.

The employee approached. A mother and daughter looked up. Remembering their training, the employee plastered on their ‘customer smile’, moulded their voice into a deferential politeness, and said the fatal words:

“Do you need help with anything at all?”

So why the apology? To understand that (or rather, make this situation even less understandable), I need to fill in the rest of the picture. The section of Marks and Spencer our play took place in was the lingerie section. The employee was a rather tall woman. The mother shopping with her teenage daughter had a lot of hang-ups. These hang-ups made her look up at this tall woman working in M&S and create the following train of thought:

This woman is very tall > This woman must be well over six foot > He must be trans > He wants to fit my teenage daughter’s bra > This biological man is a perverted sexual predator and a danger to my child.

Cue a furious email to Marks and Spencer’s customer service team, an interview in The Telegraph, and a call for a boycott by J. K. Rowling.

How did we get here? If you’ve been paying attention to the media, especially UK media, over the last five years, this molehill-mountain won’t come as a surprise. Any opportunity to smear trans people (especially trans women) through the mud is taken up with glee by rich people with nothing better to worry about in their lives.

I know how we got here. Now I’m terrified about what comes next.

Can Trans People Exist in Public?

Despite the apology from Marks and Spencer, our anonymous mother was unsatisfied. She demanded Marks and Spencer change their policy so trans employees are unable to approach “young women”.

Much of the mainstream discourse surrounding trans people is about their right to access ‘single sex spaces’. This is commonly defined as public toilets, changing rooms, and so forth. Basically, anywhere where one might get at least a little bit naked.

Unless you’re a very strange person, you’re not getting naked on the shop floor of Marks and Spencer. Not even in the lingerie section. Ergo, you should expect a diverse range of customers and staff in its aisles.

For your average bigot, however, that is never reasonable. They want a public space as curated as their Instagram feed, purged of people that don’t look or act like them. Besides the impossibility of catering to everyone’s different hang-ups about everyone else, being excluded from public life all but destroys your means of making a living.

If you’ve watched hit drama Pose, or Paris is Burning if you’re more cultured, you’ll know what happens to trans women who are denied mainstream employment. The late-night streets, and the men that cruise through them in their cars, welcome vulnerable women with open hearts and wallets. Seedy peep shows and strip clubs. Becoming the ‘kept woman’ of a rich man, depending on his sexual whims for your survival.

When cis women enter such trades, even of their own free will, we call it a tragedy. We write multiple think pieces about Bonnie Blue and how miserable she must secretly be with her millions. We intervene in ways that make sex work even more dangerous for women.

But when trans women are forced to scrape together a living from sex work, we shrug. Assume it’s inevitable. At least they’re not making “young women” feel uncomfortable with suggestive questions like “do you need a bag?” or “would you like some fries with that?”

Trans people have the right to employment and a public life. No matter how that makes you feel.

Can Any Woman Exist in Public?

When the Marks and Spencer’s mother was asked how she knew the employee she was talking to was a trans woman, her response was:

“This is obviously the case: he is at least 6ft 2in tall...”

That’s it. An estimated height led this woman to assume everything about the M&S employee, from her sex to her intentions. Not only is this the very definition of prejudice, it doesn’t bode well for any woman whose body falls outside social norms.

Gwendoline Christie is six foot three. Taylor Swift is five foot ten. I come in at the shorter end, at a couple of inches smaller than Ms Swift, but I often find myself towering over other women. My build can best be described as ‘plank of wood’ or ‘chicken carcass’. In the right clothes, especially in my increasing collection of funky men’s shirts, my body become ambiguous.

People have even accidentally used he/him pronouns for me a few times. It’s never something I’ve taken offence to; I either have a brief moment of surprise or a thrill at existing so fluidly, unable to be pinned down by wider society.

Now I’m wondering if there’s a risk. If the next time I’m misgendered, the ‘he’ or ‘him’ might come with venom, or a fist. I like to think I’m tough, capable of defending myself, but I shouldn’t have to worry about doing so just existing as I am. No one should.

Women, trans and cis alike, come in a variety of heights, weights, hair lengths, voice timbres, chest sizes, body hair growth, and more. Because we’re, you know, people. Sometimes we grow hairs on our chin. Sometimes our jaws are squarer than Clark Kent’s. Sometimes it’s not obvious we’ve grown breasts, especially if we’re wearing something baggy. Sometimes, God forbid, we like the practicality of men’s clothes. Sometimes we like our head hair short and our armpit hair long.

And yes, believe it or not, we can be tall.

Trans women don’t just have to worry about the male gaze when they leave the house. Hostile eyes can come from anyone; the women having brunch on the café terrace, the elderly lady edging away from you on the bus, or, indeed, the mother and daughter shopping at M&S.

If the attitude of the Marks and Spencer’s mother catches on, no woman will be safe. There will always be the worry of bumping into someone unhinged or too online making an assumption about your gender, turning that assumption into a perception of threat, then ironically becoming the threat themselves.

The EHRC guidance coming out at the end of August will no doubt encourage greater scrutiny on women’s appearances, even outside of so-called ‘single sex spaces.’ If you claim a certain demographic is a sexual threat, you don’t suddenly stop seeing them that way in public spaces, as demonstrated in an anonymous lingerie aisle in Marks and Spencer.

This ‘incident’ is a warning of what’s to come unless we challenge anti-trans hysteria; a world where prejudice and paranoia determine who gets the right to employment, to public life.

I don’t want to live in that world. Do you?