It seems concerns for the trans community ahead of Donald Trump’s second term were unfortunately warranted, following news that Capitol Hill will restrict the use of bathrooms for transgender people.
Actress Laverne Cox was among those to respond to the news, which was first announced by House Speaker Mike Johnson. In his statement about the issue, Johnson said that trans people will not be allowed into Capitol Hill restroom facilities that do not correspond with their sex assigned at birth. Johnson — continuing his recent streak of disappointment ranging from McDonald’s feasts on Trump Force One, to blocking the release of the Matt Gaetz investigation — said restrooms in Capitol Hill are “reserved for individuals of that biological sex.”
The House Speaker said the rule also applies to changing rooms and locker rooms, adding that “women deserve women’s only spaces.” Reacting to the news — which came just two weeks after Sarah McBride became the first openly transgender person elected to Congress — Cox said the decision is “about scapegoating trans people [and] eradicating us from public life.” The trans actress, known for her role in Orange Is the New Black, spoke of the restrictions during an interview with CNN.
She recalled Trump’s 2018 attempts to more narrowly define gender as determined only by genitalia at birth, saying the president-elect “wants to make biological sex the law of the land.” The actress also mentioned commentator Michael Knowles, who last year called for the “eradication of transgenderism,” before speaking more broadly of the ramifications that come when trans people are dehumanized. “When we dehumanize people, we dehumanize ourselves,” Cox said, while citing the work of academic and researcher Brené Brown.
Elsewhere in the interview, Cox said that the move to restrict bathroom use in Capitol Hill is one that “emboldens people who are anti-trans,” and cited the sharp increase in calls to LGTBQ crisis hotlines in the wake of the election. Cox has long spearheaded conversation around the exclusion of trans people from public restrooms, saying in 2017 that discriminatory bathroom bills are not about supposed privacy concerns, but about “trans people’s right to exist in a public space.” For her part, McBride also reacted to Johnson’s announcement in a post on social media.
“Like all members, I will follow the rules as outlined by Speaker Johnson, even if I disagree with them,” she wrote on X. “I’m not here to fight about bathrooms, I’m here to fight for Delawareans and to bring down costs facing families.” The move is unfortunately predictable for many trans people, since Trump’s presidential campaign leaned heavily into curbing transgender rights and making the trans community an election issue and scapegoat.
The former president’s closing argument focused in part on the topic of transgender people, while his Republican party spent over $200 million on anti-trans ads during the election cycle. Also throughout his campaign, Trump proposed bans on federal funding for gender-affirming care, and fear-mongered with repeated false claims that children were undergoing transgender surgery during the school day. Johnson found support in his decision from the likes of Marjorie Taylor Greene, who I’m guessing doesn’t even use bathrooms, or at least mirrors, if her outfits are anything to go by.
