TL:DR: As the Speaker of the House of Representatives bans transgender people from using bathrooms that match their identity, we explain why bathroom bans harm all women, because they reduce people to an assessment of their appearance based on gendered norms, and give excuses to those who want to inspect people's genitals.
House Republicans this week set out to restrict Capitol Hill bathrooms by "biological" sex in an action that will specifically target the US's first ever transgender Representative-elect Sarah McBride.
Speaker of the House Mike Johnson announced the policy on Wednesday, which is designed to bar transgender women specifically from women’s bathrooms and changing facilities on Capitol Hill - them
The policy was able to be announced by him unilaterally because under current house rules the Speaker has “general control” of facilities - The Hill
McBride, has called on Democrats to ignore anti-Trans rhetoric, and focus on the issues that matter to voters, however, saying:
"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." - Delaware Online
The move stemmed from a clip of South Carolina Representative elect Nancy Mace adding a 'biological' sign above a women's restroom, and then campaigning to refuse to share a bathroom with McBride.
Multiple social media accounts retweeted the already viral clip to comment on a white southern woman revelling in an action that allowed her to segregate bathrooms.
Analysis: Bathroom bans harm everyone, especially women
The trouble with bathroom bans is they don’t do what they purport to do. The argument is they're created to 'protect women', but they usually do the opposite.
The most prominent case study remains North Carolina's in 2016, which was repealed after it was found the law was making women more likely to be the victim of harassment.
“Bathroom bills reduce people to their appearance – when it's peoples’ behaviour that deserves the attention,” Trans Media Watch's Helen Belcher told me when planned UK single-sex laws were shelved under Liz Truss's time as Equalities Minister - QueerAF
"Women start to get singled out because of their appearance. It’s ultimately a law enforcing gender stereotypes.”
Or, as Democratic congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez set out, because they prime women and girls to be victims of assault.
"People are going to want to check [women and girls] private parts to suspect who is trans and who is cis," she told reporters after the policy was announced this week, adding: "All it does is allow these Republicans to bully any women not in a skirt because they think they don't look 'woman enough'"
Meanwhile - the most robust communication from all of this came from McBride herself who employed the strongest strategic communication tool possible, leading with the truth and not repeating their lies.
She argued to win voters' hearts and minds, we need to focus on what matters to voters - not Republicans.
And that's exactly what she's promised to do, despite this adversity, and represent Delawarians as she has been elected to do so.
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