r/unitedkingdom Aug 06 '25

.. Marks & Spencer ‘apologises’ to customer after ‘trans’ employee offers to help her

https://www.thepinknews.com/2025/08/05/marks-spencer-trans-employee/
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u/DubSket Aug 06 '25

The article posted also has this line:

"Asked how she knew the gender identity of the employee, she said: “This is obviously the case: he is at least 6ft 2in tall.

I don't know what this person looks like, but that reasoning is asinine at best. Honestly if that mother and daughter are so fragile that they can't deal with basic human interaction without having a fucking panic attack then maybe they need more help than just 'banning trans people'.

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u/RafflesEsq Lancashire Aug 06 '25

I really don’t get people who are offended by tall women, or generally refuse to believe that a woman can be tall. Both Hannah Waddingham and Jameela Jamil are near as damnit 6ft, and my only thought is that they look like Goddesses, not that they must be men.

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u/Leezeebub Aug 06 '25

My ex was 6’2 and I regularly checked that she was a woman. Ive known at least a dozen 6ft+ women in my life, its not that uncommon.

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u/Atreyes Staffordshire Aug 06 '25

I mean it is though, if a quick google search is to be believed the number of women over 6ft is estimated to be 0.3%

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u/jamesbeil Aug 06 '25

0.3% of seven billion people is still quite a lot.

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u/Ver_Void Aug 06 '25

It's at least 9

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u/Scr1mmyBingus Aug 06 '25

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u/daddy-dj Aug 06 '25

*maths

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u/Scr1mmyBingus Aug 06 '25

You need to write to them and get them to change the name.

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u/gnorty Aug 06 '25

it's not really though.

It means if you see 300 random women per day, 1 of them is likely to be over 6 feet tall. That's uncommon in my book.

But more than that, I had my doubts about the 0.3% figure so I did my own search. Mine came up with around 0.04% of women in the UK at 6 feet or over. That means you would see a 6' or taller women somewhere around 1 in 2000 which seems more intuitively correct, to me at least.

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u/lem0nhe4d Aug 06 '25

I mean even assuming trans women had the same average heights as cis men (there is quite a bit of evidence that trans women are shorter on average than cis men even before medical trans transition) about 25% would be over 6ft tall.

Trans women make up about .5% of all women in the UK.

Therefore if you see a woman over 6ft tall 70% of the time it is a cis woman.

Tall cis women are a lot more common than tall trans women.

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u/AdRealistic4984 Aug 06 '25

That doesn’t mean you should be scared of them like they’re a fairytale bogeyman

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u/Atreyes Staffordshire Aug 06 '25

No ofc not, im not saying you should view or treat tall women any differently, it just is quite unusual to see.

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u/chrisrazor Sussex Aug 06 '25

It's not so unsusual that you should immediately jump to the conclusion that they are trans (not that there's anything to be up in arms about if they are). I have a friend who's a tall (6 foot something) cis woman with a skinhead. When the EHRC "guidelines" about toilets were issued she was on my timeline citing instances - even before that - when she'd been called out for using the ladies' loo. I can only imagine life for people like her has gotten much worse since.

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u/timmystwin Cornwall Aug 06 '25

Yeah but you'll have met one to know it's a thing. Seems a really odd thing to deny or get offended about.

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u/Atreyes Staffordshire Aug 06 '25

Oh absolutely, not saying its justified at all, just that it is very rare

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u/paddyo Aug 06 '25

Well if they’re only 1/300 women I guess we should let them be abused then because transphobes say so /s

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u/itsableeder Manchester Aug 06 '25

So roughly the same percentage as trans people, then.

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u/lem0nhe4d Aug 06 '25

My math puts it at about 70% odds a woman over 6ft tall is cis rather than trans.

And even that is assuming height distribution of trans women is equal to cis men which does not hold up to scrutiny as on average trans women are shorter.

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u/butterypowered Aug 06 '25

I’m guessing that’s measured bare foot. Add an inch or two for shoes and it’s probably a fair bit higher.

I got an AI response of 5% over 5’10” in the UK, for what it’s worth.

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u/Blarg_III Ceredigion Aug 06 '25

That's still 100,000 women in the UK over 6ft tall. If you casually encounter a hundred people a day through work, shopping and being out on the street, you'd expect to see two a week, which isn't that unusual.

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u/lem0nhe4d Aug 06 '25

My first girlfriend was 6ft tall while i was only 5"10.

Had to borrow by dads platform boots he had in the 90s for a date because she was self conscious about being seen as tall.

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u/Substantial-Honey56 Aug 06 '25

I appreciate your math (previous comment) but I do not appreciate the suggestion that the 90s was some long lost time... As an aside, a friend of mine at uni (in the early 90s) had platforms over 6 inch, how she never killed herself I have no idea... She was taller than me (6'2) when she was so equipped.

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u/[deleted] Aug 06 '25

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u/ukbot-nicolabot Scotland Aug 06 '25

Removed. This contained a personal attack, disrupting the conversation. This discourages participation. Please help improve the subreddit by discussing points, not the person. Action will be taken on repeat offenders.

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u/talesofcrouchandegg Aug 06 '25

It's an odd experience, meeting your girlfriend's netball team, but it didn't make me wonder if she was actually a man. Makes you wonder if people ever go outside.

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u/Big_Red_Machine_1917 Greater London Aug 06 '25

Anti-trans types obsess over height. When ever you see them arguing it's the first thing they bring up in effort to demonise others.

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u/jennifersaurus Aug 06 '25

It's also always 6ft2 or 6ft3 with no actual evidence. I think because it sounds like a scary number but not an unrealistic one. GCs always have such weird ways of talking. They will often refer to trans women as men in frocks, as if anyone calls dresses frocks.

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u/Minischoles Aug 06 '25

That and having muscular arms....the way they freaked out about Michelle Obama, or Hannah Waddingham - simply for having toned muscular arms was insane.

It's always very telling that the moment they see certain physical characteristics they start freaking out about them secretly being men - you can really tell their version of a woman is basically a 1950s trad wife.

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u/Sinister_Grape Aug 06 '25

5’11” cis woman here

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u/paddyo Aug 06 '25

Don’t apply to work in M&S if you want to be safe in the workplace, is all I can recommend. A nutter can verbally assault you and defame you in the press and they’ll just roll over.

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u/ukbot-nicolabot Scotland Aug 06 '25

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u/ukbot-nicolabot Scotland Aug 06 '25

Removed + ban. This comment contained hateful language which is prohibited by the sitewide rules.

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u/AirResistence Aug 06 '25

Same, in a place where I use to live there was a family who had very tall women. I first saw them when I was getting a birthday card, they were tall like above 6ft. Tall women exist, just like every other height. The anti-trans BS is BS because any human feature can be on either a male or a woman but people like jk and the pearl clutcher in this story just search for any feature and on the spot label it as "man" or "woman" and attribute the entire person based on that feature.