Oh I agree, though I don’t know how this person looks or acts. I think my problem here is that there are so many black and white cases of troon overreach that I don’t want people to overreact to gray area cases like this. We already have the public on our side, and we’re winning.
Most people in western societies want others to a) have access to fair housing b) ability to work and c) be left alone, even if they look like freaks. Most people are normies and not TTD like us, so we don’t want to hand the troons any legitimate discrimination cases or reason for the general public to feel sympathetic towards them. I don’t want people to start tuning us out when we bring up more legitimate grievances.
If the guy specifically asked if he could give the teen a fitting, that would push this into a black and white case for me. If it’s just a retail worker asking if someone needs help, that’s not damning enough for people who haven’t spent the past few years reading r/MTF or Reduxx.
I think the responses to this are affected by cultural differences between how shops work in the UK and in the USA.
Here,* shop assistants don't approach people. You might be given a basket when you go in, but otherwise you are left alone. If a shop assistant comes up to you, most people would assume you're being suspected of shoplifting.
M&S is a massive chain of department stores across the UK where British women traditionally buy our underwear and have bra fittings done (as well as nice but overpriced food and drink, school uniform, sensible old-lady shoes, homewares etc.). The shops are huge and have loads of different departments.
I've shopped in M&S for decades and i've never, ever been approached proactively by any shop worker there. (The struggle is to find someone to help you if you do need it.) It's also where bra fittings traditionally happen, although there are other options now.
British women know immediately from experience that this is weird, fucked up behaviour from this bloke, because *no one comes up to you when you're looking at underwear in M&S*.
Lots of Americans don't get this because your 'retail culture' is very different.
There's also long-running issues around M&S to do with its 'support of Israel' (an antisemitic dog whistle because one of Marks and Spencer (the founders) was Jewish) and the fact that they have let troons change in women's changing room for the last few years. It's a real cornerstone of UK culture, extremely female-centric, and it's an obvious target for that reason.
*obviously i am currently in Luxembourg, which is how I can access the site.
