I realize that South Carolina Republican US Rep. Nancy Mace is an attention-hungry partisan, trying to make a name for herself as a culture warrior by demonizing the first transgender woman elected to Congress.
And I know that giving Mace’s proposal to ban transgender women from women’s bathrooms in the Capitol any oxygen is probably just what he wants.
But I also don’t think it’s wise to let his fear-mongering and demonizing go unanswered.
Earlier this month, voters in the state of Delaware did something significant: They elected Democrat Sarah McBride, a transgender woman, to the House of Representatives. At 34, McBride, a member of the Delaware state Senate starting in 2021 and a former spokesperson for the national Human Rights Campaign, will be one of the youngest members of Congress. Focusing on health care, reproductive rights and economic issues, he defeated his Republican opponent by 16 percentage points.
Since then, Mace and his fellow Georgia Republican US Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene has had a small fight against McBride, helped and abetted by House Speaker Mike Johnson, who announced Wednesday that transgender people in the Capitol and House office buildings will be allowed to. only use the bathroom that corresponds to the gender you were assigned at birth.
Also on Wednesday, Mace introduced a resolution that would ban trans women from using women’s bathrooms and locker rooms in federal buildings. Don’t forget that trans women have been using women’s bathrooms on Capitol Hill and in the White House and the Pentagon for years without a problem, according to author and trans activist Charlotte Clymer.
“I have PTSD from the sexual abuse I’ve suffered at the hands of men,” Mace told Scripps News. “And I’ll tell you just the idea of people in the locker room watching me change clothes after a workout is a big trigger and it’s not OK to make and force women to be vulnerable in their personal space.”
Of course, we all want to be safe in our private and public spaces.
“But the logic and coherence is a little lacking,” said Andrew Flores, an associate professor at American University. “According to the analysis of the data, there is no systematic relationship between allowing trans people to use the bathroom by gender and the current experience of predation. The correlation simply does not exist.”
In 2018, Flores, who is also a distinguished visiting scholar at the Williams Institute of UCLA Law, and his colleagues studied crime rates before and after cities in Massachusetts banned gender discrimination in public accommodations, namely bathrooms and locker rooms. He compared the city’s rates to those of Massachusetts cities that do not have those protections.
“We didn’t find anything,” he told me — no change in victimization rates for the already rare crimes. “At the end of the day, we’re surprised that so many agencies have trouble generating data for us because they can’t find it.”
A 2017 survey by CNN found similar results when it reached 20 law enforcement agencies in countries with anti-discrimination policies that include gender identity. “No one responded to report bathroom assaults after the policy went into effect,” the network said.
To assume that trans women are sexual predators is not only outrageous and wrong, it is also the same thinking that conflates homosexuality with pedophilia. Most child sex offenders identify as heterosexual or bisexual men.
Anyway, I don’t know what’s more evil – the fixation some Republican women have on being watched in bathrooms and locker rooms, or the way they’re ready to stand up to their male colleagues in the GOP, even when they’re held responsible for sexually assaulting them. women in department store dressing rooms and bragging about grabbing female genitalia, allegedly having sexual relations with minors or paying settlements to women who accused him. rape
On Tuesday, Politico reported that at a private GOP conference meeting, Greene “indicated that he would oppose transgender women if they tried to use the women’s bathroom on the House side of the Capitol.”
This possibility is always tracked with reality. As many people can guess, and research shows, transgender people are far more likely than cisgender people to be attacked in public places as a result of their gender identity.
However, that fact didn’t stop Greene from telling reporters last week that “America is tired of trans ideology being shoved in our faces. Women have been victims of this garbage for a long time.”
I would suggest that Greene and Mace shove “transgender ideology” in their own faces.
As McBride himself put in a post on social media, “I’m not here to fight about the bathroom. I’m here to fight for Delawareans and to reduce the cost facing families. … Every time we are sent here because the voters see what they think is important.
And sure enough, Mace’s outrageous proposal seemed to provoke a reaction. “People who want to use the women’s restroom are threatening to kill me because of this issue,” he told the NewsNation cable network.
Now he can pose as a martyr. The skeptic in me thinks he expects everything.
Bluesky: @rabcarian.bsky.social. Thread: @rabcarian
