Sarah McBride And The Terrible, Horrible, No-Good, Very Bad Criticism
Seriously, people? What even is up with y’all?
As every loyal Wonketteer already knows, Sarah McBride, first ever Congressmember-elect to also be out as trans, has been catching some shit. Rep. Nancy Mace (R-Terflandia) is only one of a number of hostile cissies who can’t even even with all their lack of even at the very idea of trans people on their own front porch. But, sadly, the media whore gets a few more electrons today because she’s relevant to this story for having launched a rule change restricting gendered bathroom use on Capitol Hill’s House of Representatives-controlled areas on the basis of gender assigned at birth. Wonkette has already taken her to the woodshed on that one and on the followup which proposes to turn the House rule into a law restricting bathroom access in every federal building in the country.
All that is certainly bad enough, but when Mace went loud and proud with her cissexism, declaring that rule change was specifically targeting McBride (which is no surprise since trans staffers, lobbyists, and visitors have been using House-controlled bathrooms with no problems for years), a significant and vocal minority of actual, real live trans people made it worse by, and we kid you not, criticizing McBride.
After Mace’s attack and House Speaker Mike “I Can’t Control My” Johnson’s endorsement of the new rule, McBride stated that she would follow the rule. The Advocate covered her statement:
“I’m not here to fight about bathrooms,” McBride said in a statement that has sparked widespread debate Wednesday. “I’m here to fight for Delawareans and to bring down costs facing families. Like all members, I will follow the rules as outlined by Speaker Johnson even if I disagree with them.”
Immediately some trans people began to equate these words with a will to fight that could only be described as French:
Natalie Boedecker, a 39-year-old IT manager from Maryland, expressed deep disappointment with McBride’s approach, emphasizing the broader implications for the transgender community.
“I think McBride’s capitulation here sends the wrong message to the GOP and to the larger trans community,” Boedecker told The Advocate. “The reaction I am seeing from prominent trans journalists and activists is extremely negative. They are seeing this as a betrayal.”
The Advocate also records a few other negative examples,
“I feel like I just got pulled right under the wheels of the bus by someone I thought was trying to pull me out,” one transgender woman who asked not to be named told The Advocate on Bluesky. […]
“This will not stop with bathrooms,” [Alejandra] Caraballo told The Advocate. “The next thing they’re going to do is enforce a dress code on her, force her to wear a suit, and ensure that she’s misgendered on the House floor. If she already caved on this, what’s to stop her from caving further?”
Oh, sweet tagliatelle. I love you my peeps, but this is just wrong. To keep things simple, let’s number the errors.
One. This attacks the victim.
Caraballo correctly identified some of the stakes when she told the Advocate, “This is essentially going to push out trans staffers and interns from working for congressional members.” But McBride is not the one threatening their livelihoods. Remember, Mace has been clear that she is “absolutely” targeting McBride specifically. When a group of 200 bullies attacks a security guard, even if the security guard turns tail and runs it’s still wrong to blame the guard for not somehow winning a fight when outnumbered 218 to 1.
It’s even wrong to blame the guard knowing that the guard has a responsibility to keep others safe from the bullies. The guard has to survive the damn attack if she’s going to keep us safe. If we want McBride to make it in Congress long enough to defend trans lives, it’s up to us to back her up, not tear her down.
If McBride is caving in fear (and Yr Wonkette does not think she is), that’s not McBride’s fault. That’s the fault of 200 House Dems and 200 million Americans who oppose anti-trans bullying and could choose to step up (or step up more) but don’t. Nancy Mace and her gang of 218 wouldn’t be attacking McBride at all if they thought hundreds of millions would go full Spartacus. Attacking McBride for not responding to bullying the way that we think she should is just proving to the Republicans how easy it is to divide us and how safe it is to attack us.
Don’t like what’s happening? Don’t attack McBride further for being bullied, hold the bullies accountable instead.
Two. She hasn’t caved.
The statement said that she would follow the rule as written. That’s not at all the same as saying that she won’t fight.
Seriously, people, think about this. What is going to happen when a dozen people see, out of the corners of a dozen eyes, someone in a dress enter the women’s room? Nothing.
What is going to happen when a dozen people see, out of the corners of a dozen eyes, someone in a dress enter a Capitol Hill men’s room?
Fucking. Pan. Dee. Monium.
Even better, trans people have worked on the Hill for years. While I hate the idea of staffers, lobbyists, and visitors being forced to use bathrooms that wound their sense of self, let’s face the fact that for the most part trans men pass as cis extremely well. Trans women pass as cis reasonably well also, though not always as successfully as the bois. When we use the bathrooms consistent with our genders, we are ignorable. Sometimes people know who we are and that we are trans. Other times people might correctly guess. (Though they’re going to guess wrong more often.) This leads to the occasional bathroom freakout.
But that is absolutely nothing compared to the level of visibility trans people would acquire using the bathrooms of our sexes assigned at birth. In case you haven’t noticed, FtM guys growing beards is kind of a thing. (No, seriously. Check out the pics. Those dudes are hot.) Trans women wearing colorful dresses into the men’s rooms and trans dudes wearing beards and suits into the women’s rooms is going to be un-fucking-ignorable.
In the 1990s some Lesbian Avengers friends and I deliberately used both men’s and women’s bathrooms in places like Powell’s Books and the Lloyd Center Mall. We held a kiss-in at Clackamas Town Center. The entire point of those actions was to provoke the very gendered panic that would put the lie to conservative arguments that society didn’t need to change. But when we did it, we risked arrest every time.
Now imagine that you can gather up your trans crew, bring your beard trimmers into the ladies lounge, and loudly ask, “Where the cis women at?” And when security comes for you, they can’t do fucking shit because you’re right where Nancy “Thinking Things Through Is Hard” Mace asked you to be.
McBride said that she was going to comply with the rule. She didn’t say she was going to make things comfortable for Republicans. If the people criticizing McBride had half the brains that they think they do, they’d be lining up for the chance to visit the Capitol.
McBride is not dumb. She knows that compliance is not the same as capitulation. If you believe Reddit, compliance can even be malicious. The Republicans have created a no-win situation for themselves, and our first trans member of congress is fucking here for it.
Three. There is no one way to fight.
The truth is it takes all kinds. I’ve written about this before, the classic story being Oregon’s Kevin Mannix who in the 1990s wanted to ban unmarried women’s use of IVF because, and I quote, “Single women don’t have to ask anybody” before getting pregnant. So of course there oughtta be a law.
First out lesbian legislator Gail Shibley opposed the bill and tried to convince her colleagues that the bill was outrageous and extreme and should be tabled. No luck. As an out queer, other legislators considered her “fringe, radical Left” and thus not worth taking seriously.
Then my friends and I organized a Lesbian Avengers protest at Oregon’s capitol building. The group chanted, “2 4 6 8, it’s all right to inseminate; 1 3 5 7, fuck you and your bill, Kevin.” And when we left, the bill died.
Did the Avengers kill it? No. Did Shibley kill it? No again. Rather the Avengers were willing to take up the mantle of the fringe radical Left so that Shibley with her law degree and power suits could assume the role of respected insider whose voice was important.
Without the Avengers, Shibley would have remained sidelined, unheard. Without Shibley, the Avengers’ protest would have been just another reference to Will Wigglestick’s Tempest.
The point here is that even if McBride eventually does cave to Republican pressure on one issue or another, those of us on the outside need McBride to be a voice in the room. She won’t be, she can’t be a true outsider voice. She had to have a certain amount of respectability to raise funds and win the Democratic nomination. But she can be the voice of a trans insider.
And McBride needs us. This is a cooperative effort. Yes, it’s disappointing when your member of Congress doesn’t do exactly what you think you would do if you were elected, but that’s how representative democracy works. Personally, I think McBride is in this fight to win and her statements are strategic rather than cowardly. But even on the off chance that she’s only going to be fighting for the things she campaigned hardest on like reproductive rights and universal health care and the PRO Act guaranteeing rights to worker organizing, she’s still better not only than Republicans in Congress, but also no small number of Dems.
So let’s give McBride a chance to work, a chance to develop reputation and influence. She needs to do some very careful relationship building now. Instead of sabotaging that or criticizing her for being a politician considering politics, we need to either support her against the very personal attacks she has faced or at the very least get the fuck out of the way.
Being an outsider isn’t McBride’s job anymore. She can’t swear and make dick jokes and be Wonkette’s Legislative Cussmouth Of The Year the next 7 years running. It’s up to us to be the ones chanting “2 4 6 8, Republicans are full of hate; Jack, Queen, King, Ace, fuck you and your bill, Mace!”
Previously on whatever the hell this is!
Your friendly, neighborhood Crip Dyke also writes Pervert Justice!
By the by, if you want to know how cool our own Trix is, she didn't bat an eye when I included the word "bois". She trusts her subject matter experts to be subject matter experts. There are reasons I love it here.
This angers me so much. Cruelty for attention. It doesn't get more cynical and disgusting than this. And, of course, they feel very comfortable being out loud bigots now. Because it was never about the economy, stupid.