We face critical problems. We’ve got the whole climate thing to deal with and not much time to do it in. We’ve got poverty and racism. We’ve got dangerous aggressors on the world stage. We’ve got disasters natural and man-made, and some of the natural ones are man-made too. We need serious leaders who are not afraid of rolling up their sleeves and getting to work.
Instead, we have Nancy Mace. Ms. Nancy, U.S. House Representative from South Carolina, and a fierce, square-jawed woman of vision, has introduced a bill barring transgender women (or, as she calls them, “men”) from using the ladies’ toity in the Capitol. America is being invaded by transgender people and only clear-eyed gladiators like Nancy are standing in their way. It might seem like a fairly narrow focus for a House bill but you have to start somewhere.
I would have suspected the only people at any risk in the ongoing potty wars were transgender people themselves, who often have to weigh urinary urgency against the possibility of being pummeled to death by ignorant and insecure men, but I don’t want to be unfair to Ms. Mace. After all, when you’re completely full of shit and have to push it out in increments the girth of a needle, you’re going to be spending a lot of time in the bathroom, and you want to be comfortable.
Nancy positions herself as the defender of women and girls who are “so vulnerable in private spaces.” Their private spaces are vulnerable also, especially in states like Texas, but according to Ms. Nancy, “This is the last war on women and I aim to stop it.” I’m not exactly sure what she’s afraid of, but I don’t think it’s anything that couldn’t be solved with enough petticoats. We should bring those back.
It’s a relief, actually to learn the war on women will cease once we send them trannies out to pee in the parking lot. We women are in much better shape since the Republicans have restored legacy misogyny, allowed vulgar debasement to flourish, and relieved us of the burden of determining our own futures, assigning that responsibility to the state. Even rapists and creeps are being quarantined for our safety in the highest posts of the new administration. With the advent of Christian nationalism and men’s promise to protect us from themselves, we have nothing to fear but Sarah McBride herself.
Oh. Sarah just got elected to the House from Delaware and she’s bringing her personal flagrant transgendery to the Capitol right soon, along with her Agenda of bringing down the cost of living, health care, and child care. So this is not just an abstraction but a real threat. I know I’m going to feel safer when the twat squad is posted at every restroom in America. Drop your drawers and let’s see what you got, they’ll say.
Okay then, Adolph! No, that’s not a tiny penis, that’s my middle finger, and I really have to go!
Well, I have only my own experience to go on, but I’ve been alive 25 more years than Ms. Nancy, and I’ve been in a lot of seedy bathrooms, and even shared one with a drag queen, and the only threat I’ve ever felt in one has been microbial. In fact, I can’t offhand think of much of anything that is less threatening to me than a transgender person, but plenty of Americans, unfamiliar with the reality, are horrified by the concept. Although they are usually referring only to the ones who transition to female, a.k.a. people who are born male but are in recovery. The other cohort can expect rough justice at the hands of real men, sometimes after the exacting of specific favors. So they’re less of a problem.
To no one’s surprise, Marjorie Taylor Greene is aroused by the subject. “America is fed up with the trans ideology being shoved into our face,” she told reporters. I have had things shoved into my face against my will, and it’s no fun, but I never realized it was trans ideology.
I don’t even know what trans ideology is. The transgender people I know have the same general concerns as everyone else—the cost of living, the death of the novel, and not getting the shit kicked out of them on the way home.
The extent of the transgender invasion of America came to light only after Republican strategists using focus groups discovered that of all the problems facing America, only two polled strongly in favor of the Republicans. Those concerned a trumped-up threat of immigrant crime, and the completely manufactured threat, previously existing in thin air, posed by transgender individuals. Undergoing hormone treatment and surgery is a pretty drastic way to get yourself into ladies’ locker rooms to ogle the scenery, but that just proves how determined those freaks are.
I’m a simple girl. I’d prefer to focus on punishing actual criminals and rapists, rather than rewarding them with positions of power over us. On the other hand, if history be our guide, being in Trump’s cabinet might be punishment enough.
In places like dance clubs and sports stadiums, the line for the women’s room is usually long, whereas the men’s room has no line at all. So when that dynamic is at play, I use the men’s room. I don’t gawk at the guys at the urinals, just keep going on to a stall. The men don’t seem fashed about it. In one primarily gay dance club men’s room, they actually applauded me. There was a restaurant in Philly called Chifa, which had Peruvian tapas. They had a unisex rest room: no urinals, just stalls.
This is all a Trumped-up “issue.” (See what I did there?) The GOP is using things that no one is actually concerned with to divert our attention from what we DO care about. (Or SHOULD.)
As to migrant workers, people are complaining about food prices NOW. Just wait until there is no one willing to work on a farm. Some things must be picked by hand. You think Anglos are going to do it? I know someone who has a small farm. She has to hire citizens first. They quit when they find out how hard it is. The Mexicans she’s hired have been there for many years.
Well. Yeah.
We took our high school age daughter to France with us—at the first cafe where we stopped for lunch, she wanted to use the restroom. The sign for the ladies’ room led her through a room full of urinals, in use, and on to the room with stalls. No one was harmed or traumatized by this arrangement.
I have never run into that arrangement, even during the whole three weeks of my life I’ve spent in France! So, there wasn’t a chalkboard for rating?
This is one of your best. Why are you not sending this to the Washington Post or the NYT?❤️
Oh thanks. I’m not sure they want essays from unknowns and it’s too long and weird for a Letter to the Editor, but in any case–I suck at getting myself out there!
It boggles the mind that legislators can push through all kinds of nonsense, but can’t get around to voting on bills that actually are needed to become laws.
They sure had no trouble putting the kibosh on the (bipartisan!) immigration bill, huh?
Republicans are gross. They cannot seem to separate urination from a sex act.
Well, to be fair, urination can be a sex act. I’ve heard Trump might be familiar with that.
“toity”! I haven’t heard or read that in decades!
I don’t care who uses what toilet as long as there is a stall available when I need one.
Good one Murr–you nailed it! The DT admin will try to divert attention from the really important issues by inventing controversies while they make deals and change the rules in the background. “Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain…” Lies don’t seem to matter any more. At least Gaetz was tossed out of the clown car cabinet “so he could spend more time with his lawyers” as Colbert put it.
This bullshit has been tested and proven and it’s all lube for the ascendancy of the oligarchs.
And here I was thinking it was the Democrats fault. Or Obama’s.
No, no, no. You’re thinking hurricanes.
Great Essay! I think the Onion would live your contributions to literature. And by the way, Ms Mace had probably already shared a bathroom facility with a transgender person, she just wasn’t aware, it’s not like they would announce their intentions. When you gotta go….