Republican Representative Nancy Mace placed a label reading “biological” above a sign for a women’s bathroom in the U.S. Capitol, just weeks before the first openly transgender member of Congress is sworn in.
Mace, a South Carolina Congresswoman, filed a bill this week seeking to ban transgender women from using women’s bathrooms at the Capitol.
Writing on X, formerly Twitter, she said: “I never thought we would need a sign for this, but women’s restrooms are for BIOLOGICAL women. Not men.”
It comes after Democrat Sarah McBride became the first openly transgender person to be elected to Congress two weeks ago. She is the member-elect for Delaware’s at-large congressional district.
Newsweek has contacted Mace and McBride for comment outside of normal working hours.
Mace, who is serving her second term, introduced her bill on Monday night seeking to prohibit people from “using single-sex facilities other than those corresponding to their biological sex.” It would charge the House sergeant-at-arms with enforcing the bill, but it remains unclear exactly how this would be carried out.
“I wanna make sure that no men are in women’s private spaces and it’s not gonna end here… this shouldn’t be going on any federal property, if you’re a school or an institution that gets government funding, this kind of thing should be banned – I think it’s sick, it’s twisted,” Mace said on Tuesday.
“If being a feminist makes me an extremist, then I’m totally here for it… I am not going to stand for a man, you know someone with a penis in the women’s locker room – that’s not okay.
“I’m a victim of abuse myself, I’m a rape survivor. I have PTSD from the abuse I’ve suffered at the hands of a man and I know how vulnerable women and girls are in private spaces. So I’m absolutely, 100 percent gonna stand in the way of any man that wants to be in a woman’s restroom, in our locker rooms, in our changing rooms.”
AP
Mace’s bill did not mention McBride by name, but she said on Tuesday that it was “absolutely” in response to her election.
“Sarah McBride doesn’t get a say. I mean, this is a biological man,” Mace told reporters on Monday. She added that Mace “does not belong in women’s spaces, women’s bathrooms, locker rooms, changing rooms, period, full stop.”
McBride appeared to acknowledge that the legislation targeted her arrival, while calling on her future colleagues to show “kindness” when she joins Congress in January.
“Every day Americans go to work with people who have life journeys different than their own and engage with them respectfully, I hope members of Congress can muster that same kindness,” she wrote on X.
“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.”
Multiple studies and reviews have found no evidence to support the claim that transgender women or individuals pose an increased threat to safety in bathrooms.
The largest study of its kind, the 2015 U.S. Transgender Survey, revealed that 12 percent of 27,715 transgender respondents reported having been verbally harassed when accessing a restroom over the course of the year. A further nine percent reported having been denied access to a restroom, and 59 percent said they avoided using public bathrooms because they were afraid of possible confrontations.
The survey also revealed that nine percent of respondents had been physically attacked over the course of the year because of being transgender, and 47 percent reported having been sexually assaulted at some point in their lifetimes.
Meanwhile, polling suggests that Americans are broadly in favor of protecting transgender people from discrimination, but are divided on specific policies.
A Pew Research Center survey of 10,188 U.S. adults in May 2022 found that around eight in ten said there was discrimination against transgender people and a majority said they should be protected from discrimination in “jobs, housing and public spaces.”
