Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) spoke on conservative commentator Benny Johnson’s webcast yesterday, where she threatened to sue journalists who bring up doubts about whether she exaggerated or made up parts of the attack she says she was the victim of. And, in the process, she used the slur “tr***y” again.

As she ranted about the media not believing her, she said that she received a “threat” that said that  “pro-tr***y people online were going to organize against me.” Even while she was in the middle of an anti-trans screed, it was jarring to hear her drop a slur like that.

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Nancy Mace tried to sell transphobic wrapping paper & failed miserably
She then spent the weekend attacking trans people and calling them slurs.

Mace knows that word is a slur. She has been using it for a week now, has been called out online, and acknowledged being called out.

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She has decided to be the most flamboyantly transphobic member of Congress going into 2025, outdoing her colleagues like Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) and Greg Steube (R-FL). She is not going to stop any time soon.

And, in all of this, where are the Democrats?

Usually, I’m the last person to point a finger at Democrats when Republicans behave badly. It’s something of a running joke in American politics, that when Republicans do something bad, the press rushes to blame Democrats for not stopping them instead of blaming Republicans for their misbehavior.

Here, the blame for Mace’s use of slurs falls squarely on her. She knows that the word demeans transgender people. It dehumanizes them. It justifies violence and discrimination against them. Of course she knows these things — that’s why she’s using the word!

Her fellow Republicans, high off their electoral wins in November that came in part due to their party’s transphobia, aren’t going to call her out. They should, and it’s a sign of their deeper moral rot that they refuse to. But, frankly, a lot of them are probably using all sorts of slurs behind closed doors.

Democrats though? They don’t have a majority in the House. They can’t stop Mace’s and Speaker Mike Johnson’s (R-LA) bathroom nonsense with votes. They can’t even seem to get their entire caucus to oppose the transphobic version of the NDAA that passed yesterday.

But could they say something about her use of slurs? Anything?

It’d cost them nothing. Unlike the NDAA — which funds the Defense Department as well as, for many of Democrats, projects in their districts — calling out slurs is free. Mace isn’t even a part of Republican leadership; it would be easy to portray her as an extremist within her own party.

And while it wouldn’t give anyone healthcare or better legal protections from discrimination, it would get people to start thinking of transgender people as an oppressed minority, a group of people that faces rampant discrimination and bias.

The key to anti-LGBTQ+ discrimination is getting people not to think of us as a group of people but instead as an idea or an action. Anti-gay activists often say that being gay isn’t an identity but a set of behaviors. They say this because they know that Americans, in general, don’t want to perceive themselves as being unfair to a group of people. “Hate the sin, love the sinner” is a way to get people to turn their consciences off, to think that they’re just against what some people do, not what some people are.

This is why anti-trans activists have adopted the “gender ideology” catchphrase. They don’t want Americans to see transgender people as a group of people that happens to be different. They want Americans to see trans people as different in terms of what they do or the ideas in their heads.

That way no one notices that they’re punching down. That way no one feels bad about the punching down.

And that’s where Mace slipped up. People don’t use slurs to refer to people based on characteristics that are not a part of their identities. Now would be a perfect time to capitalize on that, to show people that, no, she isn’t fighting to “protect women and kids” — something she said on Johnson’s show, an accusation that anti-LGBTQ+ activists have used for decades against all of us. She is fighting because she just really doesn’t like a group of people, a people that has contributed just as much to this country as any other group of people but who she hates because they are different.

Last week, trans advocates protested at the Capitol, and one of their chants was, “Democrats, grow a spine, trans lives are on the line!”

Democrats deserved the taunting.

Again, for most things, Democrats aren’t going to be able to do much over the next two years because voters chose not to give them the House, the Senate or the White House. But Democrats can set a baseline of respect for others and exert moral and cultural power, even if they lack institutional power.

If the past month is any indication, the next few years are going to get mean. We can and should expect Democrats to use their platform to remind Americans what it means to treat one another with respect.

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