'Republicans pounce!' Bathroom battle falls prey to the media's dumbest cliche
For some in the Washington press corps, the news is rarely the real story. The real story is whatever Republicans are doing in reaction to it — the classic “Republicans pounce” cliche.
We saw this worn-out gimmick again this week when members of the press rushed to characterize Republican affirmation of standard bathroom etiquette as a shocking new offensive in the culture wars.
More specifically, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) announced this week that Congress would continue to follow the centuries-old norm that men should use the men’s room and women should use the ladies’ room.
“All single-sex facilities in the Capitol and House Office Buildings — such as restrooms, changing rooms, and locker rooms — are reserved for individuals of that biological sex,” Johnson said. “Women deserve women’s only spaces … Let me be unequivocally clear: a man is a man, and a woman is a woman. And a man cannot become a woman."
In a normal, healthy society, such an announcement would confuse everyone. Well-adjusted people would wonder why the Speaker felt compelled to say something so obvious.
But it turns out Johnson’s announcement was not made without reason. Two weeks ago, Delawareans selected a transgender activist to represent them in the U.S. House. Democratic Rep. Sarah McBride of Delaware, a biological male whose given name was “Tim,” will be the first-ever transgender person to serve in Congress.
If the name “Sarah McBride” sounds familiar, especially as far as the transgender bathroom debate is concerned, it should. In 2016, McBride achieved viral fame for snapping a selfie from inside a North Carolina ladies’ room after the state had passed a law explicitly barring biological males from women’s restrooms.
In that light, Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) decided last week to introduce a two-page resolution barring House members and staffers from "using single-sex facilities other than those corresponding to their biological sex." Mace, who revealed in 2019 she had been raped when she was 16, said her resolution is aimed directly at McBride, the 2016 bathroom selfie internet sensation. (As a member of Congress, McBride will have access to a private bathroom and multiple unisex bathrooms throughout the Capitol complex.)
To reiterate, the election of the first-ever transgender member of Congress reintroduced the broader issue of the presence of males in women’s spaces and of first-time exceptions and accommodations. Republican legislators and leadership chose simply to maintain the status quo.
The alternative would be to push for unprecedented first-time accommodations. And for not doing so — or at least not acquiescing to something new, strange and extraordinary — Republicans are being pilloried in the press as reactionary, hateful and small-minded.
“When Representative-elect Sarah McBride, a Delaware Democrat, won her race for the House this month … she knew she would face attacks from hard-right Republicans over her identity,” reported the New York Times. “She just didn’t expect they would start before she had even been sworn in.”
The Washington Post, meanwhile, published the following headline: “GOP effort to police trans bathroom use could extend to D.C. schools, agencies.” This was referring to a second bill Mace introduced, which, as the Post put it, would “ban transgender people from using bathrooms that align with their gender identity in buildings owned by the federal or D.C. governments. Such a bill, the Post opined, was "thrusting the nation’s progressive capital onto the front lines of a conservative culture war.”
“Police,” “front lines” — such interesting ways to characterize Republicans simply maintaining the status quo. And, yes, it may all seem trivial, but, again, it’s worth noting that Republican lawmakers didn’t bring us to this point, contrary to what the Washington Post and New York Times report.
“A normal society doesn’t police bathrooms because a normal society doesn’t have a significant number of men claiming a right to use ladies’ rooms,” my former Washington Examiner colleague Tim Carney noted this week. “Deny the fact of male and female, and the unspoken — never-even-considered — norms of society start to fray in ways small and big.”
Mace, for her part, is leaning hard into her role leading on this issue.
“Your mental illness will not become my new normal,” Mace said. “If … being a feminist makes me an extremist, I’m totally here for it. … I’m not going to stand for a man, you know, someone with a penis, is in the women’s locker room — that’s not okay.”
National Review, where I also write, published a brief article titled, “Speaker Johnson Announces Males Will Be Banned from Women’s Bathrooms on Capitol Hill.”
Nevada Independent editor Jon Ralston grumbled in response, “OK, National Review. Great, if you want to be part of a senseless culture war designed to fuel intolerance and hatred. The Mike Johnson-Nancy Mace Genital Patrol. Serious people.”
But Ralston’s critique suffers from the same problem as the others.
Somehow, it’s not a “culture war” to demand that biological males who identify as women be allowed to use the ladies’ room. It’s only a “culture war” when you notice it’s happening and say, “No, thank you.”
Becket Adams is program director of the National Journalism Center.