Trans Activists Occupied Bathrooms in the US Capitol

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On Thursday, December 5th, protesters took to the US Capitol bathrooms across from House Speaker Mike Johnson’s office on Thursday to protest the recently enacted policy banning trans people from accessing bathrooms that align with their gender identity.

Just a day after the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in a case that may upend gender-affirming care for children and adults across the United States, dozens of trans people and their allies raised banners demanding Congress “stop pissing on our rights” and urging supporters to “flush bathroom bigotry.”

Organizers said about 15 people were arrested for crowding and obstructing, including Chelsea Manning, the whistleblower who leaked troves of classified government records about Iraq and Afghanistan to WikiLeaks. According to The 19th, Capitol police threatened protesters with sexual misconduct charges, although a Gender Liberation Movement spokesperson said no such charges were filed.

The demonstration, which Raquel Willis, co-founder of Gender Liberation Movement and one of the organizers of the demonstration, said was inspired by civil rights sit-ins of the past, was in response to the efforts spearheaded by Rep. Nancy Mace, a South Carolina Republican who, weeks after the election, vowed to propose a trans bathroom ban to target the first openly trans person elected to Congress, Democrat Sarah McBride from Delaware. After Speaker Johnson announced that bathroom access would be restricted—which he did on the Trans Day of Remembrance—Mace went still further, announcing that the ban she proposed would be extended to include all federal property, including museums and national parks.

After the protest, Mace called protesters an anti-trans slur in an X post.

"It was important to show up in a radically defiant way and let the world know, and let our electeds know, that we are not going to allow this disrespect and this disregard for our lives,” Willis told Mother Jones. “Trans folks deserve access to the restrooms like anyone else.”

#transgender #LGBTQ #nancymace

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