Almost every time Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) opens her mouth to speak, I’m reminded of this New Republic headline from earlier this year: “We Must Now Wonder: Is Nancy Mace Right in the Head?” Between her obsessive support for former President Trump while simultaneously claiming her party is too extreme on abortion, and her almost comedic approach to making former Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s ousting last year all about her, Mace is one of the weirder members in a House quite literally teeming with weirdos.
And at a Thursday House Oversight Committee hearing that was supposed to concern gender and race-based workplace discrimination, Mace managed to top herself. While questioning the president of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, Maya Wiley, Mace veered into a wildly offensive and predictably stupid anti-trans rant. It started when Mace baselessly claimed that “biologically male” trans people will enter women’s spaces and hurt them, and led to Mace claiming she’s been “rape-shamed by the left,” because she stands with Trump… who a civil court found liable for sexual abuse in 2023.
“It is absolutely disgusting that we’re redefining what women are and allowing men into women’s private spaces, and by the way, Ms. Wiley, I am a survivor of rape. I was raped at the age of 16. I am not going to put other women and girls into unsafe situations where biological men with their willy-nillies [????] out, putting women and girls at risk,” Mace said. “It’s absurd. It’s disgusting.” Before Wiley could so much as get a word in, Mace incoherently continued, “And I have one minute and 50 seconds left of my questioning. Do you believe, Ms. Wiley, that you need to have a Ph.D. in biology to know what a woman is, yes or no? Is that a yes or no?”
Wiley then attempted to express remorse over Mace’s experience with sexual assault, but Mace interrupted her again, blurting out, “I’ve been rape shamed by the left, and I’m not going to allow that stuff to happen today. It is absolutely disgusting.”
I… ??? I’m admittedly still processing all of this, starting with Mace’s use of the term “willy-nillies” to describe trans people’s genitals. It’s not exactly a shock from the woman who is openly obsessed with Hunter Biden’s genitals, too. But still weird—very, very weird!
As for Mace’s claim about being “rape-shamed by the left,” if asked to expand on this, I highly doubt she could—at least coherently, that is. Her “logic” (and I use that word very loosely) is that, because people questioned how she could support a presidential candidate legally found liable for sexual abuse, all while vocally positioning herself as a rape survivor, she is being “rape-shamed.” Of course, no one is shaming Mace for being raped. Her political views don’t have to lean one way or another simply because of her identity as a survivor. But she frequently acts as if she speaks for survivors, broadly, rather than just herself—you know, just like she did at Thursday’s hearing. So, it’s a fair question why she’d then aggressively go to bat for a presidential candidate that a jury found to be a credible abuser.
Following Mace’s deeply bizarre comments, Ranking Oversight Democrat Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) used his time questioning Wiley to set the record straight: “Back on the transgender point, there seem to be some suggestions from our colleagues that transgender individuals are posing the threat of rape to American women. Are most American women who are raped, raped by… heterosexual cis men or by [trans people]?”
“What I have seen… is that as transgender people are more likely and more often disproportionately victims of sexual violence,” Wiley said. “We have not seen any increase in sexual violence because of protecting the rights of transgender [people].” She continued, “I will say without fear of being contradicted that the overwhelming majority, if not all rapes in America, are conducted by men who are heterosexual, cis men. This complete paranoid conspiracy theory, mythology, [is] meant to undermine the progress of civil rights law.” Similarly, at another point in the hearing, Rep. Maxwell Frost (D-FL) rightly said, “Research shows that it’s trans folks who are in danger. Trans folks are more than four times as likely as cisgender people to be victims of violent crime, including sexual assault.”
It’s ironic that all of this discourse unfolded during a hearing on misconduct in the workplace. Because if I were one of Mace’s colleagues, I’d make a beeline to HR and file a grievance for being forced to hear her say the word “willy-nilly.” It’s not trans people who are making people uncomfortable at work—Nancy Mace, whose own staff walked out en mass last year, has that locked down on her own.
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Still here. Still without airbrushing. Still with teeth.
