By banning transwomen and transmen from Capitol restrooms and threatening them with assault, all on International Transgender Day of Remembrance, the GOP has brought America to a new low.
From ABC News:
It's unclear what will happen with South Carolina GOP Rep. Nancy Mace's bill.
Mace said Tuesday that the bill she introduced to ban transgender women from using women's restrooms at the U.S. Capitol was "absolutely" in response to Rep.-elect Sarah McBride entering Congress.
"Yes, and absolutely. And then some," Mace told reporters at the Capitol.
"I'm not going to stand for a man, you know, someone with a penis, in the women's locker room," she said.
Well, actually Nancy, Sarah published her autobiography in 2018, with a forward by Joe Biden, and if you bothered to even Google it you would learn she had gender confirmation surgery in March 2014.
From the London Times:
In March 2014 she underwent a four-hour operation: “A step I knew was necessary to bring me peace.” The procedure is sometimes known as “bottom surgery” (as opposed to “top surgery”, which involves the chest). She had been thinking about the step for two years and had to schedule the operation a year in advance. “I don’t usually talk about this aspect of my life,” she says. “Transgender people are too often reduced to their body parts.”
Today is the 25th anniversary of the annual Transgender Day of Remembrance, started in 1999 to remember the transwomen or transmen murdered every year at the hands of those who discover their transgender status then kill them because of it. Their murderers often use the “trans panic” defense, claiming they were so appalled they had no choice other than to assault the victim, which is exactly what Marjorie Taylor Greene said she would do, if she ever met McBride in the bathroom.
From Politico:
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene in a private House GOP conference meeting indicated she’d fight a transgender woman if she tried to use a woman’s bathroom on the House side of the Capitol, according to two people in the room, as Congress' first openly transgender lawmaker is set to assume office in January.
Greene, when asked about the comments after the meeting, didn’t explicitly confirm the remarks but said she “shouldn’t have to.”
“It's pretty aggressive for biological men to be invading our spaces,” Greene said.
Separately, she said that Speaker Mike Johnson has backed her up on the point that “biological men” shouldn’t be using women’s bathrooms.
Well, she’s right that Speaker Johnson clearly agrees with her, and while Rep. McBride has made it clear she sees this issue as a distraction, the GOP is using it as a clear way to demean and insult transwomen in particular and when I see bigoted words and actions like this, I need to call it out. While Speaker Johnson claimed on Tuesday, “we treat all persons with dignity and respect”, telling a woman, who is legally a woman, she is “not a woman” is the opposite of treating her with respect.
When he announced the bathroom ban for transwomen today he made clear how he sees her.
From Axios:
"All single-sex facilities in the Capitol and House Office Buildings (like restrooms, changing rooms, and locker rooms) are reserved only for individuals of that biological sex," Johnson said in a statement.
From the London Times:
“Women deserve women-only spaces,” said Johnson, who has control of practices in the legislative chamber under House of Representatives rules….
On Wednesday, he issued a statement to clarify his response, saying that he had a well-established record of believing that “a man is a man, and a woman is a woman”. He added: “And a man cannot become a woman.”
...“I’m a victim of abuse myself. I’m a rape survivor. I have PTSD from the abuse I suffered at the hands of a man,” Mace said. “So I’m absolutely, 100 per cent going to stand in the way of any man who wants to be in a women’s restroom, in our locker rooms, in our changing rooms. I will be there fighting you every step of the way.”
And we will be right there too defending the rights of transwomen to exist as equal human beings.
Here is the statement from Rep. McBride, the only one acting with any respect at all on this topic.
From Twitter:
This is a blatant attempt from far right-wing extremists to distract from the fact that they have no real solutions to what Americans are facing. We should be focused on bringing down the cost of housing, health care, and child care, not manufacturing culture wars.
Delawareans sent me here to make the American dream more affordable and accessible and that’s what I’m focused on.
