Nancy Mace, Mike Johnson Are Bullying Trans People and Sarah McBride on Trans Day of Remembrance
images: Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images; Photo by Matthew J. Lee/The Boston Globe via Getty Images; Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images
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South Carolina Rep. Nancy Mace (R) is celebrating Trans Awareness Week by openly bullying her new Congressional colleague, Delaware Rep.-elect Sarah McBride (D). Today, on Trans Day of Remembrance, she introduced a bill to ban trans women from using bathrooms on federal property. Speaking of pieces of sh*t! (Sorry not sorry, if Nancy Mace is gonna make me use my one precious trans life to write about bathrooms, this is what we get.)
Mace alleged that House Speaker Mike Johnson promised to include a provision targeting trans women’s access to bathrooms in the House rules for this session. On Wednesday, Johnson announced his support for the policy. Axios cites two House Republicans as overhearing Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene misgendering McBride and threatening to fight her if she sees her in the bathroom. Johnson told the press on November 19 that he hoped Greene will be “more involved” in the future of the party, suggesting that Mace and Greene are, at the very least, not on the fringe of the party’s stance on trans rights.
I wonder if cis people have any idea how much time trans people have to spend thinking about their safety while using the bathroom, one of the most basic biological needs. I wondered after the death of 16-year-old Nex Benedict, who was jumped by girl classmates in a high school bathroom earlier this year, if there would be some recognition of that. Given MTG’s alleged threats to McBride, I guess not.
It’s yet another example of, as Media Matters’ Ari Drennen put it, the right’s tendency to speak from an “alternate reality where they're the victims of everything while simultaneously always making other people cry.” As trans journalists and reporters have said over and over for the last few years, this was never about “protecting kids” or youth sports. It was always a war on trans existence in public life. In some ways, it’s already working. Just look at the kids who have been driven out of their home states to escape policies like in Texas, where state agencies are directed to investigate supportive parents of trans kids for child abuse. Someone close to me won’t travel to Florida anymore to see family because she’s afraid of getting arrested for using the airport bathroom.
Democrats like Vermont Rep. Becca Balint (D) as well as journalists have attributed this development to Mace doing just about anything for media attention. (For example, that Mace seemingly waited to file this bill until there was a trans colleague to target with it.) That would explain why, amidst her diarrhea of anti-trans posting, she's uploading videos of herself taping the word “biological” on women’s bathroom signage.
It’s also a farce of a proposal since every representative has a private bathroom in their offices — though that’s not the case for trans staffers or other trans people who move through the buildings and will suffer if this goes into effect. Montana State Rep. Zooey Zephyr (D) posted on Wednesday about Speaker Johnson’s bathroom policy plan, “I literally just got out of meetings with members of Congress & used the bathroom on my way out.”
“This is part of her [Mace's] attention-getting fetish,” Rep. Maxwell Frost (D-FL) told Axios. “I just don't understand why bathrooms are top of mind for her, why she's thinking about where future members are going to piss and sh*t.”
Or why Mace is claiming to care about women’s safety while backtracking on her condemnation of Trump’s A.G. pick, Matt Gaetz, who is accused of having sex with a minor. Or why she supports an incoming president who's making appointments of people with such a long list of sexual misconduct allegations that The 19th has a tracker.
But there are a number of Democrats, like Massachusetts’s Seth Moulton, who have spent the days and weeks following their party’s disastrous November 5 losses blaming trans people. These electeds, as well as some commentators and political “experts,” claim the party was distracted by “identity issues,” a thinly veiled reference to trans rights.
While some Democrats refuse to touch trans issues with a 10-foot pole to evade the accusation of being obsessed with “identity politics,” Republicans are openly obsessing over trans people. Mace posted on X about trans people over 50 times in the 24 hours after introducing the bill targeting her newly elected colleague. And even though this would be a good opportunity for the party to shut down this line of thinking (they already lost the election, what more is there to lose right now?) that would be a change from the existing Democratic leadership approach.
In this op-ed, college student and contributor Alessandra Kahn calls on the Harris-Walz campaign to speak on trans issues just as much as abortion, especially while Trump keeps targeting trans rights.
In advance of Election Day, young trans people were calling the Democrats out on their cowardly approach to trans rights and health care. Even though the Dems failed to spend anything close to Trump’s spending on anti-trans campaign ads, LGBTQ+ voters turned out en masse for Kamala Harris. Indeed, the trans people I know, as well as those I speak to for my reportage, were terrified of a Trump presidency, stockpiling hormones out of fear Trump would enact his promised HRT ban.
Protesters have already shown up at Moulton’s office to protest his comments on trans girls in sports, a main talking point circulating right now. As I’ve written before, these people aren’t a threat to Democrats, they’re actually their base. Nonetheless, you’ve got people at the New York Times urging Democrats to move away from “pronouns and purity.”
The idea to turn away from trans people and focus on “working-class” politics is patently absurd while being pushed by cushy Democrat consultants and it also misses that trans people are “generally paid 68 cents” for every dollar a cis person makes, per Advocates for Trans Equality. That is if they can get a job in the first place (a McKinsey report put the unemployment rate for trans people at twice the national average). And when they do get jobs, for example in Amazon warehouses, they’re stuck using their own time to get access to the bathroom.
The goal behind anti-trans legislation is segregation. There’s no waffling or debating to be done. Next month, trans health care will be up for debate at the conservative-dominated Supreme Court. LGBTQ+ organizations once again have to spend Trans Day of Remembrance raising the alarm on deadly violence against trans people, while members of Congress launder the talking points that legitimize the violence.
Back in 2022, Gwendolyn Ann Smith, the cofounder of Trans Day of Remembrance, told Them, “You honored us yesterday, now what are you doing? How are you protecting us? Because honoring our dead is more than just lighting the candle. It's making sure there's not more next time.”
Originally Appeared on Teen Vogue
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