An Open Letter to Nancy Mace

Representative Mace,

You made a public campaign out of policing which restroom a colleague was allowed to use, as though the most urgent matter before the country was where one person washes their hands. You called it protecting women. So I will ask you plainly, as one woman to another: who did you imagine you were protecting, and from what exactly?

I have used public restrooms my entire adult life without incident, as have the overwhelming majority of trans people — quietly, uneventfully — while you built a press tour on the premise that we are a danger. The danger was never real. The spectacle was very real, and it was always, in the end, about you.

Dignity is not a sex-segregated resource that runs out if it is shared. There is enough of it for both of us. I would gladly share it with you. I am not certain you would do the same.