Donald Trump’s cabinet picks so far include a growing number of men (and, to be inclusive, women) accused of sexual misconduct. As Slate accurately notes, “Being accused of sexual harassment, abuse, or assault is no longer disqualifying; on the right, it has been normalized. It may even be an asset.” There was a time when allegations of sexual assault would have been disqualifying, or at least brought cries of outrage from members of Congress, and apparently those days are over.
Instead, today, there’s a new era of outcry. Congresswoman Nancy Mace, ironically the first woman graduate of the Citadel (and author of In the Company of Men, A Woman at the Citadel about how tough it is to be the first person in a space to do something) has launched a transphobic red herring that will impact the halls of government for years to come, particularly the life of Delaware’s Sarah McBride, incoming U.S. Congresswoman and the highest-ranking transgender elected official in United States history.
Nancy Mace once championed LGBTQ rights, stating:
“I strongly support LGBTQ rights and equality. No one should be discriminated against. I have friends and family that identify as LGBTQ. Understanding how they feel and how they’ve been treated is important. Having been around gay, lesbian, and transgender people has informed my opinion over my lifetime.”
Fast forward to the past week where she, admittedly targeting McBride, introduced legislation to ban transgender women from bathrooms in the Capitol, a measure that Speaker Johnson passed in a resolution this week on Transgender Day of Remembrance, recognized annually to memorialize trans people who died due to anti-trans violence.
I lost my transgender brother to a heroin overdose, so I’m unapologetically non-objective on this issue. I believe that it’s no one’s business, least of all the government’s, what anyone does in their bedroom or with their body. I find it interesting when conservatives are hypocritical in screaming about not wanting the government near their decision-making ability when it comes to, for example, vaccines, yet wants to dictate the bodily autonomy of the LGBTQIA+ community, or women from the time they get their periods. I’ll forever hear the midwest accent of Tim Walz in my head: “Mind your own damn business.” If only.
Mace hasn’t minded her own damn business. She’s singled out, bullied, and created a hostile environment for an incoming colleague. To her credit, McBride responded to the attack professionally, stating she’d abide the speaker’s rule. Members of Congress have their own private bathrooms anyway, further indicating the ridiculous nature of the faux outrage. McBride will do what she was elected to do and focus on issues that impact people, while unfortunately also having to respond to imaginary fear-mongering.
The politics of fear are partly what won the election. But the politics of fear are a sham. The so-called “men in girls’ bathrooms” are a transphobic fairytale used to scare people into justifying hatred. In reality, the only ones endangered in bathrooms are trans kids. If Mace had done any research she’d know that for over a decade experts including law enforcement officials, government employees, and advocates for victims of sexual assault have debunked the right-wing myth that sexual predators will exploit transgender non-discrimination laws to sneak into women's restrooms, calling the myth baseless. Study after study has shown that straight sexual predators are the issue, not trans women.
What’s needed is simply education—oh, right, but the department of Education is about to be eliminated and/or run by someone with her own sexually deviant past. Fabulous.
What is the right’s creepy, undoubtedly projection-based fascination with sex, sexuality and sexual identity, exactly? AOC is partly right in stating that it’s a fundraising lure, but it’s more than that. When people are satisfied in their own bedrooms, they don’t go poking around under the sheets of others’. Is Mace just pandering to her new culture of sexual deviant leadership? Seems like she should be more worried about the accused and convicted sexual predators who surround her than a post-surgical trans woman who doesn’t even have the penis she’s making a fool of herself about. Former Waffle House waitress Nancy should go back to focusing on her life’s work in Congress: worrying about UFO’s.