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We’ve all said something stupid at one point in our lives. Ignorance is bliss… until you’re suddenly on blast in front of your friends, colleagues, or family. Most of us take a gut-dropping moment like that and learn from it, adding new words, information, or skills to our catalog to ensure we don’t ever look like a fool again.
But Republicans like Nancy Mace simply don’t function like that. They are seemingly incapable of learning information that clashes with their beliefs, and even less capable of altering their behavior to benefit others. The South Carolina Senator cemented her Stone Age views on the congressional floor this week, going on a hate-fueled rant — despite being told her verbiage was beyond offensive.
During a Committee on Oversight and Government Reform hearing, Mace kicks off her question by comparing Elon Musk’s position as a “special government employee” to George Soros, very diplomatically telling her colleagues from across the aisle to “take their salty tears and sit down.” The paragon of maturity launches into a question about USAID allegedly sending $2 million to trans-led organizations in Guatemala. “Does this advance the interest of American citizens paying for tr***y in Guatemala to the tune of $2 million dollars?” she asks before continuing down her list of grievances.
Once she yields her time, Gerry Connolly, a Democrat from Virginia, starts a parliamentary inquiry, saying, “The gentle lady has used a phrase that is considered a slur in the LGBTQ community and the transgender community.”
Mace petulantly interjects. “Tr***y, tr***y, tr***y,” adding, “I don’t really care. You want penises in women’s bathrooms.” Connolly persists, “To me a slur is a slur,” he says with the enthusiasm of drying paint. “Here in the committee, a level of decorum requires us to try consciously to avoid slurs…. We can have debate and policy discussion without offending human beings who are our fellow citizens.”
“I won’t be counseled by a man over men and women spaces,” Mace pouts before going off on yet another anti-trans rant, insinuating that “extreme gender ideology” undermines biological women and yelling about “man-splaining.”
Mace’s rant confirms what we already suspected: she’s absolutely grotesque on the inside, and her inability to simply accept she’s a hate-filled bigot shows it.
The word has been considered a slur since the 2000s. Lance Bass, gay icon and former member of N’Sync, was publicly shamed for using it. Bass, like many others, had heard the term used on RuPaul’s Drag Race. The show’s drag queen contestants throw the word playfully like some Black Americans throw out the N-word. It’s easy then, for some people to see the convivial way it was used and assume it is socially acceptable for everyone. But it’s fallen out of favor with much of the community; even the annual Tranny Awards was renamed the Transgender Erotica Award after the trans adult community pushed for a shift away from the word.
Not everyone feels that way. Drag Queen performance artist Justin Bond told The Fight that banning the word does nothing for the community.
“banishing the use of the word TRANNY they will not be getting rid of the transphobia of those who use it in a negative way. What it does do is steal a joyous and hard-won identity from those of us who are and have been perfectly comfortable, if not delighted to BE TRANNIES.”
RuPaul himself has asserted that he feels the crackdown amounts to unfair censorship. He told Advocate, “You know, I can call myself a n***er, f***ot, tr***y all I want to, because I’ve f***ing earned the right to do it. I’ve lived the life…”
Even as someone who is a part of the gay community, there are discussions I have no place in. Who am I, a lesbian, to tell trans men and women what words are, or aren’t, offensive to them? It’s the same as the much reviled b****. I, personally, love that word. But while I sling it around like other people say good morning, I have plenty of female friends who find it beyond insulting. And you know what? Now that I know, I don’t say it around them. It’s as simple as that.