FFS Friday: Nancy Mace

November 29, 2024

FFS (Female Free Speech) Friday honors women and girls who are speaking out about the harms that “gender identity” poses to women and girls as a sex class. FFS Friday posts are free and shareable. If you would like access to content that delves deeper into the movement to protect the sex-based rights of women and girls and to stop the abolition of sex, please consider a paid subscription.

This week’s FFS Friday honors Nancy Mace, a Congresswoman from South Carolina who has taken a strong stand in support of female-only spaces.

Photo: ABC News

Nancy Mace is a Republican Congresswoman from South Carolina. She dropped out of high school, took a job at a Waffle House, and earned a high school diploma by taking classes at a local technical college. She went on to become the first woman to graduate from The Citadel, one of the toughest military academies in the United States, and did so magna cum laude. She also earned a master’s degree from the University of Georgia.

On November 18, she announced her plan to introduce a resolution banning men (including men who call themselves women) from women’s bathrooms in the U.S. Capitol. Later, she announced that she was extending this to include legislation to ban men (including men who call themselves women) from women’s bathrooms on all federal properties. This would include every federal property, not only in Washington, D.C., but across the country.

This is great news to women and girls across the country.

As regular readers know, I am a Democrat. I have been a Democrat since I turned 18, except for a few years when I was a registered Green. So why am I using these pages to sing the praises of a Republican Member of Congress?

Because this issue does (or should) transcend party lines. All women and girls (regardless of race, religion, political affiliation, or any other categorization) deserve rights, privacy, dignity, and safety. We deserve to have male-free spaces like bathrooms and locker rooms.

I know there are things she and I disagree on. I firmly support abortion rights. Mace personally opposes abortion (though she does not support a national abortion ban). But there are also things we can agree on. For example, Mace supports same-sex marriage and has voted for it at least twice.

A few days after she made her announcement, I realized she was following me on X. I sent her an article I had published in The Hill, titled, “Will the Democrats finally start listening to the TERFs?” She responded immediately, and we exchanged a few more DMs.

Later that day, I was at a restaurant with a friend, and telling him about the exchanges I’d been having with Mace online. As we were leaving, a man got my attention. I went over to him and he said, “I'm sorry, ma'am, I couldn't help but overhear your conversation. If you are in direct personal contact with Representative Mace, would you please tell her that there are so many of us out here who support her? I have nieces in high school sports and I hate the idea of them having to compete against boys or share a locker room with boys.” I told him I would share his message with her, and I did. Then she reposted my post about it.

She doesn’t know this, but I have been following her career for a while. One of my favorite moments in recent U.S. political history came in December 2022, during a hearing of the House Committee on Oversight and Reform concerning extremist online rhetoric. One of the six witnesses was Alejandra Caraballo, a clinical instructor at Harvard Law School Cyberlaw Clinic and a man who calls himself a woman.

Mace asked the witnesses whether they believe "rhetoric on social media" is a problem and a threat to our democracy and all of them (including Caraballo) said yes. Then she asked if rhetoric targeting "officials with violence for carrying out their constitutional duties" should also be considered a threat to democracy and all six (including Caraballo) said yes again.

Mace then showed an image of one of Caraballo's X posts from June 25, 2022, about the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs that overturned Roe v. Wade (which was written by Justice Samuel Alito). Caraballo had posted, “The 6 justices who overturned Roe should never know peace again. It is our civic duty to accost them every time they are in public. They are pariahs. Since women don't have their rights, these justices should never have a peaceful moment in public again.”

Mace then showed an image of another X post from Caraballo, where he posted, “It’s so clear that Justice Alito is corrupt and SCOTUS as an institution is compromised. This is not a legitimate court issuing decisions. It's an organ of the far right that solely follows outcome determinative logic rather than any reasoned jurisprudence.”

A video of the exchange is available on Newsweek. Mace later posted, “If you're gonna be a hypocrite who advocates for violence online, you probably shouldn't do it before testifying in my committee.”

I will never forgive the Court for overturning Roe v. Wade, but as anyone who has been active in discussions about sex and gender in recent years knows, Caraballo is an absolute menace who deserves to be called out for his hypocrisy.

After her announcement about protecting female-only spaces, she received the typical abuse. One man threatened to kill her. He said, “I hope that one day I do find you in that women’s bathroom and I grab your ratty looking f*cking hair and drag your face down to the floor, while I repeatedly bash it in until the blood’s everywhere and you’re dead.” Her response: “To all of the bullies online: good luck. You only make me work harder. We are going to #HoldTheLine and protect women.”

Representative, today’s FFS Friday is for you.