Representative Nancy Mace’s latest attention grab has gifted the world something it never asked for: bathroom-themed merch.
The South Carolina Republican has spent the majority of her week advancing a bill with the aim of banning one person from using toilets on Capitol Hill: Representative-elect Sarah McBride, the first openly transgender person to be elected to Congress.
“The Left wants to NORMALIZE balls in women’s stalls. Hell no. I’m NOT backing down,” Mace—who said she supported LGBTQ rights as recently as 2021—wrote on X Thursday night. “Every purchase will help FUEL MY FIGHT to protect women and girls across America. HOLD THE LINE!”
But it’s hard to imagine who would be attracted to Mace’s debut clothing line, which brazenly feature the women’s bathroom logo alongside the text “Come and take it”—a tag line that sounds more akin to an invitation for sexual assault than an alleged mission to thwart it.
Statistically speaking, the threat that transgender people pose to the sanctity of public restrooms is zilch. A 2018 study from the Williams Institute at UCLA School of Law found that bathroom-related nondiscrimination laws pose practically no risk to women, and that claims to the contrary are little more than myths that are “not empirically grounded.”
Even Mace’s own ex-staffers have gone nuclear on her over the transphobic stunt on McBride. On Wednesday, the lawmaker’s former communications director Natalie Johnson said that Mace’s attacks on McBride were little more than a “ploy to get on Fox.”
“Tweeting 262 times about a bill that applies to like .00000001% of Congress in 36 hours is definitely about protecting women. It’s certainly not just a ploy for media attention,” Johnson tweeted.
The attention-seeking congresswoman has openly acknowledged that the stunt is a direct attack on McBride, telling reporters on Monday that it was “that and more.”
“Sarah McBride doesn’t get a say. I mean, this is a biological man,” Mace said, adding that the newly elected Delaware congresswoman “does not belong in women’s spaces, women’s bathrooms, locker rooms, changing rooms, period, full stop.”
In another interview, Mace claimed that the mere thought of a trans woman walking into a women’s locker room “feels like assault.”
But the whole charade appears especially hollow in light of the fact that Mace and McBride both have private bathrooms in their offices. The only people that the bill will actually hurt will be the nonelected trans employees of the U.S. Capitol complex, who apparently have—until now—been using the bathrooms that correspond with their gender identity with no issue.
