Nancy Mace shouldn't be sending anyone to look down anyone's pants
Why all parents should be concerned about the new SCOTUS case re: trans kids: a state of vigilante gender surveillance where failure to be "feminine" can turn bodies into subjects of investigation.
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The news was dominated late last week by a certain Congresswoman who is obsessed with what’s happening with another woman’s private parts.
Nancy Mace, a South Carolina Republican, introduced a bill barring trans women from using women’s bathrooms — directly targeting Sarah McBride, the new U.S. representative from Delaware and the first out trans person elected to Congress.
House Speaker Mike Johnson made the it official policy on the Capitol — forbidding transgender women from using the bathrooms that match their gender identity.
Mace said she’s looking to keep women safe. This, from a person whose political party is considering at least four known sexual predators for cabinet positions in the next administration.
“If Nancy Mace really cared about women’s safety she’d propose a bill outlawing Matt Gaetz from bars, restaurants, schools, and medical spas. God knows he’s had enough Botox for one lifetime,” Lyz Lenz wrote.
Of course, Mace and Johnson and their supporters are not doing this to protect anyone. They’re doing it to draw bright red lines between who counts as a woman and who doesn’t. A state of constant vigilante gender surveillance is a means to further control and degrade women, when failure to be "feminine" can turn bodies into subjects of investigation and scrutiny.
And on December 4, the Supreme Court will consider a case that takes discrimination against transgender people even further.
In U.S. v. Skrmetti, three trans kids from Tennessee and their families are challenging a Tennessee state law that bans transgender youth from receiving medical treatment from their doctors, including puberty blockers and hormone replacement therapies.
Keep in mind: Pediatricians have been using puberty blockers safely for decades for kids who are undergoing puberty too early, or too quickly. And in Tennessee, lawmakers have said it’s absolutely fine for cis-kids to use these treatments. But trans kids: Hard no.
This should be terrifying for all parents — not just parents who have trans kids.
“All parents should be offended when our leaders put our children’s existence up for debate. They deserve to learn and thrive, and, yes, grow and change — exactly like other high schoolers. But unlike other high schoolers, my child’s bullies have podiums and gavels,” wrote a mom of a trans child in Arizona.
Since 2021, 25 states have bans on gender-affirming medical care for trans youth.
Americans remain ambivalent about issues related to transgender people. While the majority of us don’t think trans people should be discriminated against, about half think that issues of gender identity are changing too quickly. This is according to research conducted in 2022.
Is it too soon for kids to be making medical decisions that could impact the rest of their lives, parents wonder. Will they suffer if they one day “change their minds” about their gender identity?
But multiple surveys have shown that the percentage of people who regret receiving gender affirming care is exceptionally low. (And puberty blockers, to be clear, simply slow down the onset of puberty, to give kids and their families more time to understand who they are, and who they are becoming.)
Plus, all the handwringing about regrets ignores the pain that trans kids and teens are dealing with right now when their families and peers refuse to affirm their gender.
I keep thinking about American’s shared belief in “hegemonic masculinity” — ideas about what makes something masculine lead to support for patriarchal forms of dominance.
And so it goes that fixed ideas about what makes something feminine — or someone a woman — would also give cover to patriarchal dominance.
The bottom line is that I don’t want Nancy Mace and Mike Johnson sending anyone to look down anyone’s pants.
And I don’t want any lawmakers making decisions about my health care, my child’s healthcare or your child’s care, either.
If the Supreme Court agrees with Tennessee’s ban, “there’s nothing stopping states from banning or restricting other kinds of health care – like what gets covered under Medicaid,” Michael Ulrich, an associate professor of health law, ethics and human rights at Boston University, told the 19th.
This is familiar territory – as with abortion care, right-wing politicians are deep in the business of telling women and girls what they should be doing with their bodies. Gender-affirming care and abortion care are inextricably tied together. And in both instances, bodily autonomy is on the line.
“I’m terrified. What we learned from Dobbs is that these attacks won’t stop with abortion,” said Sruti Swaminathan, an ACLU staff attorney who is counsel in U.S. v. Skrmetti. “Banning abortion seems to be one pillar of an effort to write outdated gender norms into the law.”
Trump and Vance, and other right-wing politicians have a clear agenda that links all these issues together, New York Times columnist M. Gessen wrote recently.
“Roll back trans rights, lesbian and gay rights, reproductive rights and women’s rights, all in the name of making America great, straight and white again.”
MATRIARCHY REPORT is written by Lane Anderson and Allison Lichter.
Lane Anderson is a writer, journalist, and Clinical Associate Professor at one of those universities for coastal elites. She has won fellowships and many SPJ awards for her writing on inequality and family social issues. She has an MFA from Columbia University. She was raised in Utah and lives in New York City with her partner and young daughter.
Allison Lichter is associate dean at the Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at the City University of New York. She has been a writer, producer and editor at New York Public Radio and the Wall Street Journal. She was born and raised in Queens, and lives in Brooklyn with her family.
I don’t want Nancy Mace and Mike Johnson sending anyone to look down anyone’s pants.
Amen!
Great piece! I'm writing one about rape culture in the White House right now. Horrifying.