Although Sarah McBride is the first openly transgender person elected to the U.S. Congress, she is not the first trans politician to have a hostile fellow member forbid her from using the restroom of her choosing.
When Vladimir Luxuria was elected to the Italian Parliament in 2006, she was temporarily prohibited from accessing the ladies’ room. She expressed her sympathy for Delaware Democrat McBride.
“They did that to me,” Luxuria, 59, stated over the phone from her Rome home to NBC News. “What is happening to Sarah McBride is rank politics.”
Last week, Rep. Nancy Mace, a Republican from South Carolina and a fervent supporter of President-elect Donald Trump, introduced a resolution to forbid lawmakers and House staff from using single-sex facilities other than those that correspond to their biological sex. This raised questions about which restroom McBride will be allowed to use in the upcoming Congress.
“Yes and absolutely, and then some,” Mace responded when asked if the move was solely a reaction to McBride. Shortly after, House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Republican and Trump supporter, stated that he is in favor of limiting the use of restrooms and other single-sex facilities in the Capitol to members of that biological sex.
In a response, McBride wrote on X: “I hope members of Congress can muster the same kindness.” “Every day Americans go to work with people who have life journeys different from their own and engage with them respectfully.”
Following in the footsteps of the late Georgina Beyer, a New Zealander who was elected as the world’s first openly transgender member of Parliament in 1999, Luxuria, an actor and activist, left Parliament in 2008.
Poland’s Anna Grodzka, elected in 2011 and serving a single four-year term, is the only other transgender woman to have served in a national parliament.
Luxuria claimed that despite having lived through a lifetime of “cruelty,” she was nevertheless taken aback when she was challenged “outside the women’s toilet” by Italian senator Elisabetta Gardini, a supporter of then-Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi.
“I always went to the women’s bathroom because if I even tried to use the men’s toilet they would be embarrassed and demand to know what I am doing there,” Luxuria stated. I was taken aback when Gardini started shouting at me as I emerged, asking, “What were you doing in here? “You’re a man!”
Gardini “was very angry” but Luxuria was not going to back down.
She claimed to have said to Gardini, “All right, I’m a trans lady. However, you should use the men’s restroom if you don’t want to see me in here.”
Luxuria said Gardini walked off in a huff and in no time “the matter of where I could go to the bathroom became a debate in Parliament.”
“I was lucky because, in the end, the members of Parliament decided I could use the women’s bathroom,” she stated. “But it was embarrassing that it became an issue.”
Luxuria said she has her suspicions about why Gardini, who was a well-known actress and popular TV personality before she got into politics, went after her.
“I suspect Berlusconi’s party wanted to make this an issue to attack my party, which was in opposition,” she said. “So I am very sympathetic to Sarah McBride.”
An email for comment from Gardini was not answered.
Noting that Mace once described herself asa pro-LGBTQsocial moderate,Luxuria said she thinks Mace’s attack on McBride was part of a bigger plan to try to divide Democrats and force them to defend an issue that still makes many Americans “uncomfortable.”
“The purpose here is to generate hate for political purposes,” Luxuria stated.
When NBC News reached out to McBride and Mace for comment, they did not respond.
In the aftermath of Vice President Kamala Harris loss to Trump, some Democrats and pundits have pointed to the Biden administration ssupport for transgender rightsas one reason Republicans prevailed.
They noted that the Republicans spent more than $200 million on network television advertisements that underscored Harris past support for taxpayer-funded gender-affirming care treatments and that repeatedly airedduring NFL and college football games.
During her four years in the Polish Parliament, Grodzka also faced verbal attacks and wasrepeatedly misgenderedby fellow Polish lawmaker Krystyna Pawlowicz. In aninterview with Pink News, an LGBTQ digital news outlet based in Britain, in 2013, Grodzka largely brushed off the transphobic comments.
Krystyna is a very conservative person, therefore I guess I am probably just a little bit too much for her,” Grodza said. She has an imaginary idea of a [perfect] person who is supposed to go to church, etc. In that case I ruin her picture, therefore it s a reason for her to attack me.”
In recent years nearly a decade after she left Parliament Grodzka is still occasionally on thereceiving end of personal attacksfrom Polish lawmakers, as the country’s right-wing has embraced anti-LGBTQ sentiments.
In a 2002 documentary about Beyer called “Georgie Girl,” Beyer said she commonly faced questions about her gender identity that other politicians would not have to endure.
I get asked questions no other politician would ever have to answer,”she said. “Regarding the surgery, you know. Did it hurt? or, When you have sex now as a woman, is it different to how you had sex as a man? Well, honey, obviously.
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