First Transgender Congresswoman in Republican Crosshairs

Photo: Mark Schiefelbein Associated Press Sarah McBride is the first transgender woman elected to the U.S. Congress.

Adam Plowright – Agence France-Presse in Washington

Published at 9:29 a.m.

• United States

Even before she became the first transgender woman elected to the U.S. Congress, Sarah McBride expected to spark a backlash. She wasn’t wrong.

“They might try to misgender me, they might try to use the wrong name, they’ll do whatever you can predict they’ll do,” she told the podcast TransLash last month before her sweeping victory on Nov. 5 as Delaware’s House representative.

“They’re going to do it to try to provoke me, and my job is to not give them the reaction they want,” the 34-year-old Democrat added.

Transgender rights are a hot-button issue in the United States, the latest in a divisive culture war. country.

Sarah McBride’s election has already caused a stir among Republicans, even though the new Congress won’t be sworn in until January 3.

A Republican lawmaker has introduced a resolution to block transgender women from using the women’s restroom at the Capitol. “Just because an elected official wants to wear a miniskirt doesn’t mean they can go to the women’s restroom,” said South Carolina Rep. Nancy Mace.

House Speaker Mike Johnson supported the ban, saying that “all single-sex facilities” were “reserved for people of that biological sex.”

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The person concerned responded in a statement that she would respect the regulation even “if she did not agree with it”. “I’m not here to fight about bathrooms,” added the congresswoman, who began her gender transition at age 21 and announced her decision to her parents on Christmas Day in 2011.

Rights and Diktat

The presence of transgender people in the public debate, their participation in women’s sports competitions and access to transition care before the age of majority are acrimonious debates in the United States.

Democrats call for the protection of LGBTQ+ rights while Republicans rebel against what they consider to be a diktat of political correctness.

Donald Trump, the Republican winner of the presidential election, has constantly raised this explosive topic during the campaign in an attempt to appeal to undecided voters, promising to “clean out this transgender madness from our schools and stop men from participating in women's sports.”

Sarah McBride, a longtime advocate for LGBTQ+ rights, campaigned for a law banning discrimination in Delaware, earning herself the label of a “monster” and “the devil incarnate.”

“Having to hear all that was humiliating and dehumanizing for my child,” her mother Sally told the Washington Post in 2018. “I’m still struggling to get over it.”

That didn’t stop her daughter from becoming the first transgender senator in the Delaware legislature in 2020.

In her 2018 memoir, Tomorrow Will Be Different (Tomorrow will be different), she tells of her childhood in the shoes of a boy named Tim.

“I remember that as a child, I prayed in my bed at night to wake up the next day as a girl,” she said in 2016.

“Doing Justice”

Sarah McBride first came to prominence in 2012 with an open letter announcing her transition while studying at American University in Washington.

She also met Joe Biden, also from Delaware, for the first time while campaigning locally in that state.

After interning at the White House under Barack Obama, she was invited to speak on stage at the Democratic Party convention in 2016.

It was at the White House that she met the man who would become her husband. A transgender man and activist like her, Andrew Cray died of cancer two years after they met.

Today, she says her goal is to be an effective congresswoman, focused on everyday concerns.

But she knows she can’t completely escape the role of spokesperson for the LGBTQ+ cause.

“I can’t do justice to the trans community if I don’t give my best to Congress for Delaware,” she said.

“That’s the only way people can see that trans people can be good doctors, good lawyers, good educators, good elected officials.”