Posted on 02/12/2025 4:44:38 AM PST by TigerClaws
In this op-ed, LGBTQ+ news and culture writer Samantha Riedel discusses Nancy Mace’s use of anti-trans slurs in Congress and questions why the Democratic Party hasn't done more to stop it.
Note: This article contains discussion of transphobic slurs and hate speech.
Amid the authoritarian typhoon of Donald Trump’s first month in office, the Democratic Party is attempting to position itself as the front line of anti-MAGA resistance. But how are any of us supposed to take Democrats seriously as the party of principled anti-fascism when they can’t even respond to open hate speech in Congress?
South Carolina Rep. Nancy Mace has gleefully embraced transphobia since the November 2024 elections: After filing legislation to ban trans women from Capitol Hill women’s facilities, a move she proudly declared was targeted at Delaware Rep. Sarah McBride, the first out trans woman to serve in the U.S. Congress, Mace’s favorite far-right virtue signal has become simply saying the T-slur in public as often as possible. During a Republican-led committee hearing on February 5, Mace once again decided to deploy slurs while denigrating various USAID grant programs, querying whether it was appropriate for USAID to be “paying for trannies in Guatemala to the tune of two million dollars.”
After Mace’s time expired, Democratic Ranking Member Rep. Gerald Connolly somberly stated that “the gentlelady” had said “a phrase that is considered a slur in the LGBTQ community and the transgender community.” Mace immediately interrupted Connelly to hurl the slur three more times, receiving applause from fellow committee member Rep. Lauren Boebert: “Tranny, tranny, tranny. I don’t really care. You want penises in women’s bathrooms and I’m not going to have it. No, thank you.”
Mace’s outburst should have come as a surprise to precisely nobody. Having opened the T-slur floodgates weeks before across myriad posts on X, to the point that even the Elon Musk-owned platform moderated her account for hate speech (albeit briefly), Mace is now known as the House’s proudest slur-hurling TERF on the Hill. Given the representative’s previously centrist stance on trans rights, her current position — one that allows her to smear activists with assault allegations, while appointing herself and Boebert the Keystone Kops of women’s toilets to hunt trans women who were never there — is likely either a façade, or an indication that she holds no real principles regarding trans people at all. It doesn’t really matter which; in both cases, Mace and her throng are bigots who delight in their own repugnance, in causing as much harm as possible through rhetoric and policy. That is, after all, the express intent of Trump’s MAGA movement.
“Complacency towards hate speech is not simply “taking the high road,” but rather another step toward normalizing bigotry and dehumanization — one that’s not only upsetting, but dangerously naïve.” But by the same token, Connelly’s limp, cowering response was a microcosm of years of Democratic failure to meet the moment. In a cringe-inducing display of deference to procedure, Connelly addressed committee Chair Rep. James Comer, a Republican, to contend that “a level of decorum requires us to try consciously to avoid slurs,” and to “ask [for] a parliamentary inquiry whether the use of that phrase is not in fact a violation of the decorum rules.” Comer, openly smirking and chuckling at the situation, told Connelly that he was “not up to date on my politically correct LGBTQ terminology.”
“We’ll look into that and get back to you on that,” Comer said. “I don’t know what’s offensive and what’s not. I don’t know much about pronouns or offensive terms.”
Connelly’s only response was to “thank the chair for his willingness to further engage in this matter.” The proceedings then continued with Rep. Eleanor Holmes Norton, who read a prepared statement and did not address anything that had just occurred.
At any other time, Mace’s repeated and malicious use of a well-known English slur would cause widespread Congressional outcry, at minimum. Yet Democrats have remained largely silent on the incident in the days that followed, just as they have had little to say about the avalanche of anti-trans executive orders and actions raining down from the White House since January 20. Prior to Trump’s inauguration, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez encouraged fellow Democrats to learn how to “throw a damn punch” and win on trans issues, and bemoaned members of the party who voted for a Republican anti-trans sports bill. “Trump hasn't even been sworn in yet, and if a little bitty sports bill was gonna make Dems defect, we're not in good shape,” she told The Independent last month. She was right. Instead of providing much in the way of helpful or even unified messaging, Democrats have spent months scoring own-goals on trans rights or ignoring our peril entirely. Most baffling was House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries’ January 26 post on X that struck a nauseatingly complacent tone: “Presidents come and Presidents go. Through it all. God is still on the throne.”
“At any other time, Mace’s repeated and malicious use of a well-known English slur would cause widespread Congressional outcry, at minimum.” It might be one thing if Democrats were (once again) failing to deliver a coherent message, but were exhausting every opportunity to oppose, delay, and reverse the MAGA agenda. But on that front, too, the party has seemingly failed to learn a single lesson from Kamala Harris and Tim Walz’s failed embrace of conservatism, instead tripling down on calls for bipartisanship and traditional procedure during an administrative coup. Despite mass outcry for Dems to hold up every Trump nomination for as long as possible, the Senate unanimously confirmed Marco Rubio as Secretary of State on January 20, clearing the way for Rubio to immediately implement Trump’s anti-trans plans across State Department offices nationwide. Ahead of that confirmation vote, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer proclaimed that Democrats would “neither rubber-stamp nominees we feel are grossly unqualified, nor oppose nominees that deserve serious consideration,” calling Rubio “a qualified nominee we think should be confirmed quickly.”
It’s not fair to expect Rep. McBride to shoulder the responsibility of denouncing Republican transphobia by herself, especially when she is only the first trans woman to ever serve openly in Congress and released one of the party’s more strongly worded statements on social media last week. At the same time, however, even McBride herself has appeared to downplay the overall importance of confronting bigotry in the halls of power, often repeating her stance that that Republican transphobia is a ploy to “distract” voters from their lack of policy ideas and that she did not seek office to “fight about bathrooms.”
To be sure, Republicans absolutely concocted a false moral panic to smuggle their agenda past millions of voters. But just because conservatives like Trump and Mace are grifting on bigotry does not mean that Democrats as a party can afford to simply allow their dangerous rhetoric to go unchallenged. That the party so easily vacillates between silence and “distraction”-based rhetoric while Republicans revel in the most venomous kinds of anti-trans hate is nothing short of enraging. Complacency towards hate speech is not simply “taking the high road,” but rather another step toward normalizing bigotry and dehumanization — one that’s not only upsetting, but dangerously naïve.
Democrats have, in fairness, shown a few glimmers of willpower of late: Fifteen attorneys general promised to oppose Trump’s plans to ban gender-affirming care this week, and members of Congress attempted more fervently to stall Trump’s nominations, or at least vote as an opposition bloc. But this is the same party that has only found its ability to call the genocide of Palestinians “ethnic cleansing” now that Trump is in office (with Mace advocating to “turn Gaza into Mar-a-Lago”); the same party that abandoned its pledge to protect trans athletes and lost the election anyway — the same party that’s doubled down on losing strategies since the 1970s, promising reform while delivering less than nothing to people whose very lives are lived in danger.
Let’s be clear: In this moment, nobody expects the Democrats to become the far-left revolutionaries that Republicans falsely claim they are, or to magically stop Trump’s agenda from advancing overnight. But in their willingness to confront, denounce, and vocally resist far-right bigotry, trans activists like Raquel Willis, Chelsea Manning, and Evan Greer have proven they have more courage in their toenail clippings than many of our elected officials will ever display in their lives. Trans people all deserve better — but while Democrats keep fetishizing Robert’s Rules of Order instead of taking this shit seriously, we’ll just have to keep showing up for each other instead.
Sample of anti-trans slurs:
1) You were born a male and you are a man.
2) You were born a female and you are a woman.
Just say transvestite or gender dysphoria.
Can’t argue with medical terms.
If that doesn’t work, call them mentally ill.
See how that goes over.
I always thought they liked being called trannys.
I like the way you talk.
Wish we were neighbors.
Tables turn, the rules allow congress members to say anything in Congress! Kinda tough to use their own tactics against the Democrats, huh?
Trannys are pervs!
.... So what does “TERF” stand for?...
Don’t feel bad, I suppose I can never retell the story of the time I blew the tranny in my 72 Chevy pickup.
I couldn’t make it through that grievance screed.
What’s pathetic is men’s schlongs in women’s bathrooms. Their “Tranny” fetishes have no respect for women.
No such thing as a trans women or trans man fact just cross dressers with kinky ways.
Human freaks in action.
I"m always happy to learn a new slur. It keeps me young.
Any LGBTWRSTUVWXYZ freak show with an add on Phobic is a complete scam. No one is afraid of these freaks they’re just sick of BS and those spewing the phobia can’t handle reality.
If trannies were appropriately placed in residential mental hospitals they wouldn’t be exposed to every day normal life (which sometime involves hearing things that may be unsettling).
Pretty soon, we won’t be able to call faggots, freaks, and other goofballs what they are...
Somehow, I don’t think Nancy Mace gives a care...
Yes. I thinks she gives zero care.
Let’s see now...
Tranny
Cross-dresser
Femboy
Shemale
Sissyboy
Homo
Gender-bender
Bent
He-She
Drag Queen
It seems like Rep. Mace was exceedingly kind and civil.
She could have been much more explicit.
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