Bagging Saks?

Sorry for the delay in answering my mail! First of all- our Cyrsti's Condo post on the Sak's transgender discrimination debacle stirred up several great comments:


The first from Mandy Sherman who mentioned her trips as a youngest with her Mom to Saks and then commented:   Saks management apparently doesn't believe that we, as a group, have sufficient disposable income to patronize their stores. Thus they make it known of their scorn for us, and they can't see that they are suffering any harm from their actions.... If they treated us right, I (for one) would prefer shopping in the manner Mom did, with all the attention she got from clerks. (Obviously not as often as she did, but then, I'm not an executive's wife!) 


The second from Alana Jane:  I suspect that it's because of Texas and their neo-con far right evangelical beliefs. I say if you want a good shopping experience go to Nordstroms or Bloomingdales. You can get a personal shopper to assist you. That said, a judge needs to slap these Texas yahoo's with a sever damages penalty. 


And the "Fabulous Connie Dee" added:  Sure, Sak's can get by without making sales to transgender people, but they are really concerned about losing sales because of having a transgender employee. They should recognize that this negative publicity may cause them to lose much more than a transgender employee ever could. We, as a group, can boycott, but we really need to expose these people and their ideals [sic] for what they are - [SICK]


Last but far from least -Pat:  It would seem to me that they have the wrong team of high priced, white shoe, lawyers handling this case. From my experience there are some lawyers who will habitually 'over-lawyer' the case and throw every gauntlet down. A defense lawyer should keep in mind that he is a simple and humble defense lawyer. The job is to parry the thrust of the plaintiff's case, not to strike back and enrage the opposition.


I took excerpts from all the posts due to length constraints but you read them in their entirety here.  Good job ladies (and Connie) for providing every idea from geographical bias, to legal angles, to financial considerations on this story.  I'm a firm believer if you follow the money, you will discover the true basis of many decisions.  Like Mandy said, if you can indeed afford the Saks shopping experience-you can afford not to shop there.

If I Don't Exist-Can I Buy at Saks?

Bobbie posted a reason why I can't-I don't exist at all!


"Saks could have fought Jamal’s suit by insisting that her claims of harassment are false, or that she was terminated for reasons unrelated to her gender. But instead, Saks has claimed that it has a legal right to discriminate against trans employees based on their trans status.
This tactic is quite odd, for two reasons. First, it is morally repulsive. Saks mis-genders Jamal throughout its filings, referring to her as “he” and “him.” Even worse, when Saks quotes Jamal’s own complaint, it adds a stinging “[sic]” after every reference to Jamal as female, as if to assert that Jamal’s identification as a woman is factually incorrect. Saks, then, not only appears to condone discrimination against trans people; it also seems to refuse to accept the validity of a trans identity at all."

This story seems so out of sync to me for a couple reasons. First, why would Saks let this happen at  all and two, why would they hire (or retaining) such an ignorant out of touch legal team?  Saks' sales must be way up since they don't need any additional dollars from the transgender community?  Or maybe they called Chick Fil-A for ideas?