In an election that saw a convicted felon — who vowed to put an end to the so-called “gender insanity” of letting transgender people actually having a small handful of rights in the United States — actually winning the presidency, there was one small, bright spot for the transgender community: Sarah McBride won her bid to represent Delaware in the United States House of Representatives.
McBride has been a part of Delaware’s State Senate since 2021, and is now the first openly transgender person to serve in Congress. It’s a big deal.
In better times, I would regale you with her story: how she staffed several campaigns in Delaware. That she interned at the White House. How she ended up a friend of President Joe Biden and his family. I’d likely be unable to resist mentioning my own all-too-brief visit with her when she came through my area for a signing of her book, “Tomorrow Will Be Different: Love, Loss, and the Fight for Trans Equality.”
These aren’t better times.
No sooner had the dust settled on the election than Nancy Mace, a representative from South Carolina, went on the attack. Mace, who in 2021 had said, “I strongly support LGBTQ rights and equality. No one should be discriminated against” had clearly changed her tune.
Labeling McBride as a “guy in a skirt,” Mace pushed to bar transgender people from using restrooms inconsistent with their sex assigned at birth. After Speaker Johnson pushed for a rule change that served the same purpose. Mace doubled down, crafting a bill designed to bar “Biological Men from Women’s Spaces on All Federal Property.” This would prevent transgender people from accessing restrooms in much more than Congress, including National Parks, museums and airports.
McBride, meanwhile, has meekly accepted the rule change, treating it as the distraction that it is. “I’m not here to fight about bathrooms,” said McBride. “I’m here to fight for Delawareans and to bring down costs facing families.”
Nine years ago, votes in Houston, Texas voted to overturn the Houston Equal Rights Ordinance (HERO), after a campaign that included some of the first modern anti-trans propaganda from the winning side of the bill. Indeed, even though the bill was focused on banning discrimination for a host of classes ranging from sexual orientation to military status, the bill was pushed by its opponents as a “bathroom law” due to HERO protecting the right of transgender people to use a restroom consistent with their gender expression.
Since the HERO repeal, the power of the transgender bathroom panic has waxed and waned. It was all but forgotten in recent years, after a stinging rebuke in the wake of the repeal of North Carolina’s House Bill 2. Anti-trans forces largely moved onto sports bans and such.
Yet, in the wake of the election, it has come roaring back.
According to AdImpact, nearly $215 million was spent on ads depicting transgender people as a threat. That works out to about 134 bucks per transgender person.
While the ads were largely targeting Kamala Harris for supposedly supporting “taxpayer-funded sex changes for prisoners” — and while candidate Donald Trump was pushing a ruse that children were receiving gender confirmation surgery in their elementary schools — the specter of transgender people in bathrooms was not far behind.
Now, the issue is right back at the forefront, at the heart of Rep. McBride’s new position.
I don’t want to spend too much time blaming the victim. I can’t help but think of the treatment of Hiram Revels, the first Black senator, elected during the Reconstruction, and how he was treated. In more modern times, I also consider how Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar — the first Muslim congresspersons — have been treated. Congress is rife with bullies seeking to take down their newest members, especially if they do not fit a very narrow band of identities.
I do wish she had done more to stand up for herself and, what’s more, I want her to stand up in the light of Mace’s further attacks on trans rights. Both McBride and Mace will have private restrooms in their house offices, so this will likely have little effect in their day-to-day lives. It will, however, cause harm to any transgender or gender nonconforming person who visits Congress and doesn’t have access to such facilities, let alone the facilities that would be so barred across the country.
Likewise, for Mace, she has been positively gleeful over the attention she’s gotten for this move, high-diving into the new cycle post-election, and making a big political splash. This is exactly what we could expect from her, or most other GOP congresspersons.
Yet, I cannot help but once again see the silence of the left. Aside from Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez calling Mace “disgusting” and calling this a ploy to “make a buck and fundraise,” as well as Rep. Hakeem Jeffries stating that Mace “clearly needs an intervention,” the Democratic Party has met this with all-too-characteristic silence.
After all, it’s what they did all election, so why stop now? If they cannot stand up for one of their own, then how can we expect them to stand up for any of us.
We are indeed in a time of “gender insanity,” but it’s not coming from the trans community. If Sarah McBride is unsafe, and if so few of her colleagues will stand up to defend her, then I fear there’s not much hope for the rest of us.
Gwen Smith has used a Congressional restroom before. You’ll find her at www.gwensmith.com.