Abkarian: Nancy Mace’s Shameless Exploitation of America’s First Transgender Congresswoman

I understand that South Carolina Republican U.S. Rep. Nancy Mace is an attention-hungry partisan trying to make a name for herself as a culture warrior, demonization of the first transgender woman be elected to Congress.

And I understand what to give Mace’s proposal banning transgender women from women’s restrooms in the Capitol that have oxygen is probably exactly what she wants.

But I also don’t think it’s wise to let her fearmongering and demonization go unanswered.

Voters in Delaware did just that earlier this month. something important: They elected Democrat Sarah McBride, a transgender woman, to the House of Representatives. At 34, McBride, a member of the Delaware Senate since 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, she led her Republican opponent by as much as 16 percentage points.

Since then, Mace and fellow Georgia Republican U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene have waged a petty war against McBride, with the support and encouragement of House Speaker Mike Johnson, who announced Wednesday that transgender people in Capitol and House office buildings will only be allowed to use bathrooms that correspond to the gender they were assigned at birth.

Also on Wednesday, Mace presented resolution it would ban trans women from using women’s restrooms and locker rooms in federal buildings. Never mind that trans women have used women’s restrooms on Capitol Hill, the White House, and the Pentagon for years without issue. according to writer and trans activist Charlotte Clymer.

“I have post-traumatic stress disorder due to sexual abuse I suffered at the hands of a man.” Mays told Scripps News. “And I will tell you that the thought of a man in the locker room watching me change after training is a huge trigger and it is not okay to force and force women to be vulnerable in their personal space.”

Of course, we all want to be safe in private and public places.

“But there is a lack of logic and consistency,” said Andrew Flores, an assistant professor of government at American University. “According to the data analysis, there is no systematic relationship between allowing transgender people to use restrooms consistent with their current gender and experiences of predation. There is simply no correlation.”

In 2018, Flores, who is also a distinguished visiting scholar at the UCLA Williams School of Law, and colleagues studied the crime rate before and after Massachusetts cities outlawed gender discrimination in public places, i.e. bathrooms and locker rooms. They compared the rates in these cities to Massachusetts cities that did not receive such protections.

“We found nothing,” he told me, “no change in crime victimization rates, which are already vanishingly rare.” “At the end of the day, we were surprised by how many agencies had such difficulty providing us with data because they couldn’t find it.”

A CNN Poll, 2017 found similar results when asking 20 law enforcement agencies in states with anti-discrimination policies that cover gender identity. “None of those who responded reported any assaults in restrooms after the rules went into effect,” the network said.

To suggest that a trans woman is a sexual predator is not only outrageous and wrong, it is the same type of thinking that conflates homosexuality with pedophilia. Most child sex offenders identify as heterosexual or bisexual men.

Either way, I don’t know what’s more perverse – the obsession some Republican women have with being watched in restrooms and locker rooms, or the way they readily support their male colleagues in the Republican Party, even if they are found responsible for sexual assault of a woman in a department store locker room and brag about grabbing women’s genitals, allegedly had sex with underage teenagers or compensate women who accused them of rape.

On Tuesday, The politician reported that at a private House GOP conference, Greene “said she would fight a transgender woman if she attempted to use the women’s restroom on the House side of the Capitol.”

This possibility certainly corresponds to reality. As many might guess, and research shows, transgender people much more likely how cisgender people are attacked in public spaces because of their gender identity.

However, these facts did not stop Greene from telling reporters last week that “America is fed up trans ideology is shoved in our faces. Women have been victims of this garbage for long enough.”

I would suggest that Greene and Mace are punching “transgender ideology” in their faces.

As McBride herself put it: post on social networks“I’m not here to argue about bathrooms. I’m here to fight for Delawareans and reduce the costs families face. … Each of us was sent here because the voters saw something they valued in us.”

And, of course, Mace’s sneaky proposal obviously caused a backlash. “Men who want to use women’s restrooms are threatening to kill me because of it.” she told cable network NewsNation.

Now she can play the martyr. The skeptic in me thinks she was hoping for this all along.

Bluesky: @rabcarian.bsky.social. Topics: @rabcarian