The Ignorant Hurtfulness of Nancy Mace

She uses the coming of Congressional newcomer and first openly transgender representative Sarah McBride to spread hatred, ignorance, and bigotry

The hypocritical and disingenuous South Carolina MAGA Republication Representative Nancy Mace is perpetrating social hatred, bigotry, and ostracization of transgender persons as she welcomes newcomer Sarah McBride to Washington. The Delaware Democrat is the first openly transgender person elected to Congress.

Mace and other Republicans are trying to ban her from using women’s restrooms in the Capitol. They say she isn’t really a woman and should use another restroom. Mace uses her experience as a sexual assault survivor, arguing cisgender women are less safe when a transgender female uses the same restroom. 

The resolution would ban persons “from using single-sex facilities other than those corresponding to their biological sex.”

It might surprise Representative Mace that there are actually two major sex organs. Both the genitalia and human brain are dependent on the sex hormones for normal development in either the female or male direction during pregnancy and puberty. So is it our genitalia or brain that makes us identify as one gender, or the other, or someplace in between the two polarities (as so many people do today in the case of the latter)?

In fact, the major sex organ that determines gender identity is the human brain. The genitalia are the first of the two organs to develop during pregnancy. They do so under the influence of a burst of the sex hormones in either the male or female direction, depending upon the balance of testosterone and estrogen molecules whose effects occur at concentrations measured in the parts per trillion. The human brain also develops in the male or female direction under another later burst of the sex hormones..

But for myriad reasons, including exposure to synthetic endocrine-disrupting chemicals (EDCs) in foods, cosmetics, personal care, cleaning, and other consumer products, the balance of of sex hormones can be altered.

These minute alterations can have profound impacts. From the perspective of gender identity, scientific studies show that male babies exposed during pregnancy to EDCs are born with smaller penises, less sperm, and shorter anogenital distance, the measurement between a boy’s phallus and the anus, usually twice the distance of a female. It would be naive and dangerous to public health, however, to conclude this is where the differences end. This is just the beginning of the ways that we are messing up our children with out of control toxic chemical exposures.

Other researchers have found that boys with high normal exposures to endocrine disruptintg chemicals (EDCs) exhibit a tendency towards feminized behavior; what’s more, forensic researchers in the Netherlands have found that male to female transgender persons’ brains are remarkably identical to other women, and these changes appear to be independent of the use sex hormones to aid their transition.

Transgender persons have been with us since the beginning of time. We all know that, and that’s nothing new. Our sexuality and gender identity have always developed under the influence of our environment, but what’s novel about the last few decades is the explosion of EDCs into our environment and, hence, our bodies.

We’re all being impacted. The influx of EDCs however is like a wild card, increasing the frequency of some of our natural variations. Society’s increasing number of children identifying as LGBTQ+ is but one example. Our brains are changing in relation to the plasticity of our environment, and so are our concepts of sexuality and gender identity. This is just the beginning.

Mace admits her resolution is “absolutely” in response to McBride’s imminent arrival. It’s so sick and manipulative to argue that transgender women using the public restroom for females is going to increase anybody’s risk for sexual assault. If she was really concerned about the issue, she would be publicly criticizing the president-elect, found guilty of sexual assault, for nominating a whole host of men, who have been accused of crimes against women, to the nation’s highest offices for justice, health, and the military.

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