The storming of the Capitol bathrooms

Former US army intelligence officer Chelsea Manning (formerly Bradley Manning) was first arrested in 2010, for passing classified documents about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to Wikileaks. He was sentenced to 35 years in prison in 2013, before US president Barack Obama commuted his sentence, leading to his release in 2017.

Manning has now been arrested for a second time – this time over a protest about where men like him should take a leak. On 5 December, Manning and a group of about 15 protesters, led by the ‘Gender Liberation Movement’, stormed the women’s bathrooms on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC.

In a somewhat masculine territorial takeover, the activists filmed themselves dancing around the sinks and leaning out of cubicles, while others stood behind banners reading ‘Congress, stop pissing on our rights’ and ‘Flush bathroom bigotry’. The stunt was apparently planned to make the point that men ought to be allowed to use the women’s toilets if they feel like it. It seems, however, that Capitol police did not look favourably on the lavatory invaders and promptly arrested them.

At the heart of this toilet tantrum is a bill introduced by newly elected South Carolina representative Nancy Mace to ensure that women’s toilet facilities on Capitol Hill are restricted to women only. Representative Sarah McBride, a man who identifies as a woman, grudgingly accepted this rule. Predictably this sparked the ire of fellow trans activists, some of whom now regard McBride as a traitor. Chants at Thursday’s Capitol Hill protests included ‘Democrats, grow a spine, trans lives are on the line’, perhaps signalling that they consider the Republicans a lost cause.

But while the mewling trans activists might claim to be shattering gender stereotypes, it’s Mace who truly defies expectations. A Republican and a feminist, this bravely ebullient woman is authentic in a way her detractors can only dream of being. After telling a reporter that she had experienced rape and domestic abuse, Mace explained:

‘I have PTSD from the abuse I’ve suffered at the hands of a man, and I know how vulnerable women and girls are in private spaces… so I’m absolutely, 100 per cent going to stand in the way of any man who wants to be in a women’s restroom, in our locker rooms, [or] in our changing rooms.’

Yet oddly, despite sharing her own traumatic experiences, Mace has not received so much as a sympathetic head-tilt from the #BeKind brigade. When confronted with a genuinely strong woman, a politician who refuses to be cowed, trans activists piss their frilly pants. Unused to being told ‘no’, they are left making spurious claims about why their lives are at risk if their identities aren’t validated.

One of the Gender Liberation Movement bathroom protesters, Hope Giselle-Godsey, told Gaye magazine, ‘It always starts with things that people feel are insignificant, like public restrooms, but it never stops there’. Indeed. Over the past decade trans activists have claimed they ‘just want to pee’ in the ladies’ lavatories. Yet, it hasn’t stopped there. Across the US rapists are now routinely imprisoned with women, girls are losing out on sporting scholarships and children are being sterilised, all thanks to trans activists.

Reducing the threat from trans ideology to a battle about bathrooms is a sneaky tactic that trivialises women’s fears about safety and loss of dignity. The sly insinuation that women who don’t want to share their space are hysterical and petty is straight from the ‘How to be a misogynist’ handbook. This is why Mace’s approach has been so refreshing. She has refused to be shamed and hasn’t stopped at the bathrooms in her Washington workplace – she is now fighting for men to be removed from women’s prisons.

Manning may fancy himself a dissident, but in truth, these trans-activist antics are nothing more than whinging at the fag-end of the dying Biden administration. Meanwhile, women like Nancy Mace are the real change-makers, refusing to let hard-won protections for women be flushed away. As Manning’s arrest shows, there’s only so far you can go before the consequences of your actions catch up with you – something he, after being sent to jail for leaking classified information, should already have known by now.

Jo Bartosch is a journalist campaigning for the rights of women and girls.