Comment: Has Nancy Mace ever been in a women’s restroom

By Monica Hesse / The Washington Post

Every time I write about transgender issues, I get angry emails from conservative readers informing me that the left talks way too much about transgender issues. These readers say that they were forced to vote for Donald Trump precisely because the left talks too much about transgender issues. They say that nobody else cares about transgender issues.

You know who seems to care a lot? Republicans. You know who’s talking a lot about trans issues? Nancy Mace, a Republican congresswoman from South Carolina.

For those of you who have remained blissfully ignorant: Earlier this week Mace introduced a resolution that would ban transgender women on the House side of the Capitol from using restrooms that do not comport with the sex they were assigned at birth. This oddly specific legislation, according to Mace herself, had a target of one: Sarah McBride, who was elected Nov. 5 to represent Delaware in the House and will become the first openly transgender person to serve in the U.S. Congress. Now the full machinery of the House has lurched into motion to decide where one person gets to pee.

“We are standing up for women, protecting their spaces, and restoring a bit of sanity to Capitol Hill,” Mace said in a news release Monday. She later broadened the legislation so it pertained not only Capitol facilities, but also to all federal restrooms and locker rooms.

Just so we’re all on the same page, here’s how public bathrooms work for women: Each restroom is cordoned off into multiple private stalls. Each stall has its own door, which fully shuts and locks. Each door either goes all the way to the ground or — more commonly — stops approximately 12 inches from the floor. This is not an open-plan urinal situation, is what I’m saying. This is a situation in which the most flesh anyone typically sees is a scandalous, tawdry swath of … ankle.

If, somehow, a sex pest were to infiltrate a women’s room and do something creepy — like attempting to spy under a stall — then the women using the restroom would and should call security to have the sex pest removed. That would be true whether the culprit was a cis woman, a trans woman, a man or six koalas in a trench coat. Creepy behavior should be policed; mere existence should not.

Just so we’re further on the same page: McBride does not appear to be a sex pest. She has been serving in the Delaware Senate for three years; she had a high-profile job with the Human Rights Campaign for several years before that; she was the student body president of American University when she first came out as transgender in 2012. I do not think she has come to Washington to use public restrooms as a vehicle to harass her fellow members of Congress. I think she would do what all of us do in women’s restrooms, which is quickly apply a fresh coat of lip gloss and occasionally warn incomers: “FYI, the stall on the left is out of toilet paper.”

I would be surprised if Mace were actually worried about McBride, or any other trans staffer who would become the actual victim of this resolution. Each member of Congress already has a private bathroom in their own offices. Mace, if she wanted to avoid McBride, could presumably rely mostly on her private bathroom. And if she found herself unavoidably heading for a communal restroom at the same time as McBride, she could do what office drones have done for decades when we want to avoid a colleague: stop and pretend to tie her shoe.

Logistics aside, it doesn’t even seem this is an ideological issue for Mace. In a 2021 tweet, unearthed this week, Mace posted a heartfelt Pride message to her constituents: “The pandemic kept all of us from fully celebrating Pride here in the Lowcountry in 2020. But hopefully, as we finally begin to open back up, we can all come together to celebrate the challenges our LGBTQ+ has overcome, and the bright future ahead.” In March 2021, she told the Washington Examiner, a conservative paper: “I strongly support LGBTQ rights and equality. No one should be discriminated against.”

The “T” in both instances, of course, is for “transgender.”

Why do I think Mace is preoccupied with bathrooms now? I have no idea what is in her heart or mind. But if I had to speculate, it might have something do with the fact that in the 2024 election cycle, conservatives successfully identified transgender issues as a distracting, fearmongering wedge. In the final push to the polls, ads were run with taglines such as “Kamala is for they/them. President Trump is for you.” The playbook seemed to be that conservative politicos would threaten transgender folks, either via legislation or slurs, and then progressive candidates would protest the discrimination, and then conservatives would accuse progressives of giving special treatment to trans folks while harming cisgender women.

As my colleague Philip Bump phrased it in a recent analysis of Mace’s communication strategy: “Mace has mastered the approach that worked so well for Trump: framing an attack as a defense.”

The media is a useful tool for this and; dang it, I walked right into that one, didn’t I?

But you know who didn’t walk into it? Sarah McBride. “I’m not here to fight about bathrooms,” she wrote in a statement Wednesday. “I’m here to fight for Delawareans and bring down costs facing families. I will follow the rules as outlined by Speaker Johnson, even if I disagree with them.”

It was a smart move. First and foremost, it positioned her as a measured lawmaker; one who is more interested in her constituents’ needs than her own.

Second, have you seen a picture of McBride? She has shoulder-length brown hair and curves. She wears dresses, ballerina flats and tasteful makeup. I cannot imagine that the current speaker of the House, or any other congressman, will be excited to pee next to her; because she is, in fact, a lady. Perhaps McBride plans to exclusively use her private bathroom. But if she were to walk into the men’s room, she would look like a lady. And when cameras capture that moment, it will succinctly illustrate — better than I could here — that Mace’s policy provides safe spaces for absolutely no one.

Follow Monica Hesse on X @MonicaHesse.