On election night, Sarah McBride, a Democratic Delaware state senator, made history when she became the first out trans woman elected to Congress. And everyone knows just how much Republicans dislike history — and trans people.
So it’s both disgusting and predictable that some of McBride’s future GOP colleagues are discriminating against her because of her gender identity. McBride won’t even be sworn in until Jan. 3, but Republican Representative Nancy Mace of South Carolina rushed to introduce a resolution to bar transgender women from using women’s bathrooms, locker rooms, and changing rooms “in EVERY federal building, school, public bathroom, everywhere.”
”This is about women and our right to privacy, our right to safety,” Mace told reporters on Monday. “I’m not going to allow biological men into women’s private spaces. It is the height of hypocrisy.”
On Wednesday — which was also the Transgender Day of Remembrance — Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson, in a statement, said, “All single-sex facilities in the Capitol and House Office Buildings — such as restrooms, changing rooms, and locker rooms — are reserved for individuals of that biological sex. It is important to note that each Member office has its own private restroom, and unisex restrooms are available throughout the Capitol. Women deserve women’s only spaces.”
In her own statement, McBride said that she is “not here to fight about bathrooms” and that she would abide by Johnson’s new rule. But she added, “This effort to distract from the real issues facing this country hasn’t distracted me over the last several days, as I’ve remained hard at work preparing to represent the greatest state in the union come January.”
Even for someone as headline-hungry as Mace, her anti-trans women crusade is particularly vile and hypocritical. She’s yelping about women’s right to privacy and safety but has never spoken out against her own state’s ruthless ban on abortion at six weeks before many women even know they’re pregnant. That law endangers women’s health, invades their privacy, and ignores their bodily autonomy.
If Mace cared about women’s safety, she’d speak out against her former GOP House colleague Matt Gaetz who, until his abrupt resignation last week, was under investigation by a House ethics committee for multiple accusations, including having sex with a minor. His selection as Donald Trump’s next attorney general is facing significant pushback — but not from Mace.
If women mattered to Mace, she would balk at Pete Hegseth, Trump’s defense secretary nominee who was accused of sexual assault in 2017 but entered into a financial settlement with his accuser that included a confidentiality clause. And Mace would denounce having as the leader of her party a president-elect who was found liable for sexually abusing writer E. Jean Carroll and has been accused by more than two dozen women of sexual misconduct.
Mace is lying when she claims that McBride — or any trans women — is a threat to women because of their gender identity.
Here’s what’s important to know about McBride. She was twice elected to Delaware’s state Senate, the first out trans person elected to a state Senate. To win her state’s at-large congressional seat, she defeated Republican John Whalen III with 58 percent of the vote. In her victory speech, McBride said, “Tonight is a testament to Delawareans that here in our state of neighbors, we judge candidates based on their ideas and not their identities.”
But Mace is judging McBride based only on her gender identity, continuing a vilification of trans people that has been a Republican staple for years, including in this year’s presidential election. According to AdImpact, an analytics company that tracks political ad spending, Republicans spent more than $200 million on anti-trans television ads that ran during high-profile events like Major League Baseball’s playoffs and World Series.
(Not to be outdone, some Democrats, like Representative Seth Moulton of Massachusetts, are now blaming trans athletes who compete on school sports teams that match their gender identity for their party’s mostly dismal 2024 election outcome.)
Mace doesn’t want to protect women. She wants a distraction so Republicans can dodge real issues like the Gaetz ethics report that Trump, their lord and savior, wants them to bury.
Both Mace and MAGA loudmouth Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia have compared being in a woman’s bathroom with a trans woman to assault, a disgusting statement that diminishes real sexual assault. It’s just another version of Trump’s lies about pet-eating Haitians in Springfield, Ohio, the kind of inflammatory statement designed to foment hate against marginalized communities.
McBride is being punished for living her truth, something mendacious Republicans can’t begin to understand. If her record and voter support in Delaware are an indication, she’ll be a fine addition to Congress, unlike Mace or Greene. At a time when I’ve all but abandoned faith in American politics, I hope that somehow Mace’s anti-trans bathroom crusade, which is about hate not bathrooms, fails — and gets flushed down the nearest toilet, where it belongs.
This is an excerpt from Outtakes, a Globe Opinion newsletter from columnist Renée Graham. Sign up to get Outtakes in your inbox each week.
Renée Graham is a Globe columnist. She can be reached at renee.graham@globe.com.