J. Crew is getting caught up in its own
controversy today. No, the retailer didn’t throw away perfectly good unsold
garments or claim its clothes were organic when in fact they were genetically
modified. Instead, transgender activists are accusing the retailer of
prejudice. Make
the Road, an organization that promotes the rights of
transgender people, spearheaded its own undercover operation recently to test
out which retailers were accepting or discriminating of those who have changed
genders. The worst offenders in a series of businesses tested were J. Crew and
Dean & Deluca.

So, how were they tested? Yo (Yozmit) Smith, a
39-year-old transgender performance artist from Brooklyn, applied at dozens of
shops in Manhattan
as “an openly transgender person,” says the New York Daily News. “At the same
time, a nontransgender person evenly matched in age, race and experience
applied for the same jobs.” While Smith failed to receive a single offer from
any of the places she applied, her competition received 8. The group has
already filed a complaint with the state attorney general’s office.

Tolerance has taken a beating these last few
months. Back in September, Abercrombie & Fitch was fined $115,264 for
discrimination against an autistic girl four years after the original complaint
was filed. Prada, in the meantime, was suedjust last week by workers who were
fired for being too “old, fat and ugly.”