Anti-trans Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) attacked her transgender colleague, Rep. Sarah McBride (D-DE), whose presence in Congress inspired Mace to launch her national hate campaign against trans rights.

In response to a speech McBride made criticizing Republicans for focusing on culture war issues rather than improving the lives of American families, Mace wrote on social media, “You are a man and wear a dress. Stop it.”

Related

Nancy Mace flees speaking engagement after she saw how few people showed up

While McBride is, in fact, a woman, men who wear dresses are also allowed to participate in civic life. Mace’s response proved McBride’s point that Republicans are hyper-focused on what people are wearing and where they go to the bathroom rather than on issues that actually affect the majority of Americans.

“We will not take a lecture on decorum from a party that incited an insurrection,” McBride said in her speech at the House Democratic Issues Conference. “I appear to live rent-free in the minds of some of my Republican colleagues. I wish that they would spend even a fraction of the time that they spend thinking about me thinking about how to lower the costs for American families.”

Insights for the LGBTQ+ community

Subscribe to our briefing for insights into how politics impacts the LGBTQ+ community and more.
Subscribe to our Newsletter today

“I wish they would spend a fraction of the time that they spend thinking about me figuring out how to make government actually work better, rather than making it work worse in order to prove that government can’t work.”

She called them out for being “obsessed with culture war issues,” saying the focus is “weird” and “bizarre.”

“The American people deserve serious legislators, serious elected officials who are focused on bringing people together to deliver real results for the American people, not to play games and not to engage in schoolyard taunts.”

Mace has used McBride to boost her own political career, launching a crusade against McBride’s right to use the women’s bathroom at the Capitol after she was elected to Congress.

In the months since McBride’s win, Mace has posted several messages a day to her social media accounts opposing trans people’s rights. She has referred to McBride as “it,” used anti-trans slurs in committee hearings, and threatened to fight Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-TX) for calling out her transphobia.

Mace has misgendered and deadnamed McBride; claimed that McBride, trans people, and their allies are a threat to the safety of women and girls; repeatedly discussed McBride’s genitals on national television; and called her “mentally ill.”

McBride’s reaction to her colleagues’ anti-trans abuse has divided the trans community. Many activists have expressed disappointment that she has decided to ignore it rather than actively resist it, but McBride continues to defend her approach.

In November, she said she would comply with the GOP’s vicious ban on trans women using women’s bathrooms at the Capitol and cautioned Americans not to be deceived by the right’s obsession with her.

“I think we are all united that attempts to attack a vulnerable community are not only mean-spirited but really an attempt to misdirect,” she said on Face The Nation. “Because every single time we hear the incoming administration or Republicans in Congress talk about any vulnerable group in this country, we have to be clear that it is an attempt to distract… from what they are actually doing.”

McBride emphasized throughout the interview that her focus would remain on serving the people of her district and that she would not let Republicans divert her attention from their attempts to roll back key benefits for the American people.

“Every single time we hear them say the word ‘trans,’ look what they’re doing with their right hand. Look at what they’re doing to pick the pocket of American workers, to fleece seniors by privatizing Social Security and Medicare. Look what they’re doing undermining workers…. Every bit of time and energy that is used to divert the attention of federal government to go after trans people is time and energy that is not focused on addressing the cost of living for our constituents…. There is a real cost for the American worker every time they focus on this.”

She also recently spoke on Ezra Klein’s podcast about the need for the trans movement to rethink its approach to changing people’s minds. “We’re not in this position because of the movement or the community, but clearly what we’ve been doing over the last several years has not been working to stave it off or continue the progress that we were making eight, nine, 10 years ago.”

“We became absolutist — not just on trans rights but across the progressive movement — and we forgot that in a democracy we have to grapple with where the public authentically is and actually engage with it,” she said.

Politicians, she continued, have a duty “of walking people to a place,” rather than forcing them to catapult there.

Subscribe to the LGBTQ Nation newsletter and be the first to know about the latest headlines shaping LGBTQ+ communities worldwide.