Rep. Nancy Mace, a Democrat from South Carolina, criticized a proposal to ban trans women from using the restrooms of the Capitol
On Monday an exhausting Republican from South Carolina, Representative Nancy Mace, announced plans to introduce a measure that would bar McBride and any other trans women working in the Capitol from using women’s restrooms there. Speaker Mike Johnson said that on the Capitol side of the House, there will be single-sex facilities for females and males only, and there will be locker rooms that match their gender identity.
Mace glues the juvenile urge to gossip about people’s privates to the assumption that men will commit sexual violence when in women’s bathroom. Demagogues prey on Americans who are inexperienced with trans identity and use them as scapegoats for their own fears about being attacked.
Johnson stated in his explanation that women deserved women’s-only spaces. It evidently does not matter to him that one woman — McBride — will be excluded from them.
Women on the right can dress themselves in pseudofeminist cloth and not do any work of feminism if they were to cast women like her as others instead of focusing on men who have been accused of perpetrating sexual violence.
There is no evidence that suggests that trans women perpetrate sexual violence when they use the women’s restroom. These sorts of policies aren’t about reality but about cultural posturing and fomenting division between L.G.B.T.Q. people and cisgender straight women.
Today’s patriarchal systems need amateur Phyllis Schlaflys to spread traditional ideas about gender that distract women from their relentless pursuit of dignity, equality and freedom. Mace’s recent dog whistle-filled social media rant and the scrutiny it provoked to see this particular culture were all a result of the legislators being loud in exchange for breaking through a noisy political environment.
Mace introduced a measure that would have banned women from using the restroom that was used by a gender other than theirs.
“What they are talking about there on day one is where one member out of 435… is going to use the bathroom,” said Rep. Katherine Clark, D-Mass., who serves as House minority whip. “That is their focus.”
A number of prominent House Democrats have spoken out about Mace’s proposal and several party leaders criticized it during their press conference on Tuesday.
Capitol bathroom rule bans Nancy Mace before her trans colleague arrives: a GOP lawmaker introduces a Capitol rule before her colleague arrives
Trump has repeatedly addressed transgender rights, saying that under his tenure public schools, hospitals and health care providers will no longer receive federal funding if they promote ideas about gender transitioning or perform gender-affirming surgeries or care to minors (which 25 states have passed laws barring).
While voters consistently listed immigration and the economy as their top concerns this election season, Republican candidates — from President-elect Donald Trump to House and Senate hopefuls — spent a lot of time and money focusing on trans issues and seeking to portray Democrats as too extreme.
I’m not involved in a bathroom debate. It’s not what I came to Congress for,” said Rep. Tom Cole, R-Okla. Disaster relief and appropriations bills are things we should be doing.
We do not look down upon anyone. Johnson said that they treat everybody with dignity and respect. Appropriate accommodations will be provided for every member of Congress.
During a press conference with House Republican leadership, Johnson did not confirm whether he would include it in the rules package and instead struck a more united tone.
In order to get the measure through without a vote, Mace has alternatively lobbied for putting it in the House rules package, a move she said House Speaker Mike Johnson agreed with.
A measure governing access to facilities in the House would only need a simple majority within the House of Representatives in order to take effect — no Senate passage or presidential signature required. The only way for the GOP to get bills passed in the House is if they lose many votes.
Source: A GOP lawmaker introduces a Capitol bathroom rule before her trans colleague arrives
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“America is fed up with the trans ideology being shoved into our face,” he told reporters. “For some time, women have been the victims of this garbage.”
“I believe that when we give up on openness to collaborate, we won’t be able to have a democracy even if we wanted to,” said McBride.
She spoke to NPR about her plans for legislating across the aisle, which she said would start by moving past issues that are in the headlines, that are on social media.
In her victory speech after being elected to Delaware’s lone house seat, she said that she “ran not to make history but to make a difference.”
“We should not be manufacturing culture wars, but trying to bring down the cost of housing, health care and child care,” McBride wrote. “Delawareans sent me here to make the American dream more affordable and accessible and that’s what I’m focused on.”
“I know how vulnerable women and girls are in private spaces,” she said. “I’m going to stand in the way of anyone who wants to go to a women’s restroom, locker rooms, changing rooms, and I will be there fighting them every step of the way.”