Trans Rights Are Not a "Distraction"

Trans women and men have been using restrooms at the U.S. Capitol without notice for some unknown amount of time, but because the first trans representative has been elected to the House (and she's a Democrat, let's not forget), Republicans like Nancy Mace are making it an issue.

Today is Trans Day of Remembrance, which makes the introduction of this hateful bill all the worse. Mace's bathroom bill is not a marginal issue. As Ashley Cooper said on BlueSky today,

This Trans Day of Remembrance, the only message I have is: It's not enough to remember us, you need to support us while we're still here.

Abolitionist Mariame Kaba, who goes by the name Prisonculture on BlueSky, made the connection across past examples of discrimination:

I don't think the bathroom bans are "distractions." Sorry I really disagree with that framing. They are EXCLUSIONARY and INTENDED TO OPPRESS. Not distractions at all.

Were whites-only fountains "distractions?" Or were they explicitly a way to say that Black people had no right to free movement and were inherently second class? Come on. If some Black people said it was a distraction, that's an opinion. But STRUCTURALLY it was NOT a distraction.

Louisa @louisathelast.bsky.social made a different parallel connection:

I am old enough to remember that when I was a kid/teen the moral panic was over *lesbians in the locker room* and it’s all the exact same fucking playbook

Other writers pointed out the obvious hypocrisy (not that such ever matters to Republicans) of saying you care about the "safety of women" while nominating people like Matt Gaetz to the cabinet (and others Trump has put forward):

Love to ban trans women from capitol restrooms in order to “protect women and girls” while suppressing a report about the incoming attorney general paying for the statutory rape of a minor while in congress and showing women’s nudes on the House floor
Laura Bassett @lebassett.bsky.social

that the house GOP is covering up evidence of sexual predation by a former member and nominee to higher office while simultaneously smearing a trans woman as a potential predator without any evidence beyond base bigotry are two sides of the same coin
Julia Carrie Wong @joolia.bsky.social

Shout out to folks who identify as Christians who are more enraged about which bathroom stall a member of Congress uses than the presence of adjudicated sexual predators in the highest reaches of our government. You definitely haven't lost the thread of Jesus' teachings.
Peter Flax @pflax1.bsky.social

They should take a straw poll of women working in the Capitol and ask if they feel safer around Sarah McBride or Matt Gaetz.
Molly Knight

Radley Balko took a more sarcastic tack on the topic:

BREAKING: House Speaker Mike Johnson announces that male Republicans neutered by Donald Trump may continue to use the men's bathrooms.

David Kaib offered this guiding principle:

Power comes from knitting together our different struggles. There is no power in ‘what polls best.’