Sarah McBride is the first openly transgender person elected to the U.S. Congress, but she is not the first transgender politician to be barred from using the bathroom of her choice by hostile colleagues. do not have.
In 2006, when Vladimir Luxulia, a newly elected member of Italy’s parliament, was sworn in as a member of parliament, he was temporarily banned from using women’s toilets. She said her heart breaks for McBride, a Democrat from Delaware.
“They did that to me,” Luxulia, 59, told NBC News in a phone interview from her home in Rome. “What’s happening to Sarah McBride is class politics.”
The question of which bathroom Mr. McBride would be able to use in the next Congress came up last week when Representative Nancy Mace, Republican of South Carolina and an ardent supporter of President-elect Donald Trump, asked members of Congress and the House of Representatives. This was when a resolution was submitted to prohibit employees from using private toilets. -Sex facilities other than those corresponding to biological sex. ”
Asked if the move was specifically in response to McBride, Mace said, “Yes, of course, and then some.” Shortly thereafter, House Speaker Mike Johnson, a fellow Republican and Trump supporter, said he supported restricting “gender-segregated facilities” in the Capitol, including restrooms, to “individuals of their biological sex.”
“Every day, Americans go to work with people who are on different life journeys than our own, and we interact with them with respect,” McBride wrote in a post on X. I hope they will come together.”
Luxuria, an actress and activist who left parliament in 2008, follows in the footsteps of the late New Zealander Georgina Beyer, who became the world’s first openly transgender MP when she was elected in 1999. was inherited.
Poland’s Anna Grodzka is the only transgender woman to serve in parliament, elected in 2011 and serving one four-year term.
Luxuria had endured “atrocities” throughout her life, but when Elisabetta Gardini, an Italian lawmaker and supporter of then-Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, confronted her “outside the women’s toilet.” He said he was still in shock.
“I always went to the women’s bathroom because if I tried to use the men’s bathroom, they would get embarrassed and demand to know what I was doing there,” Luxulia said. “So when I came outside, I was surprised when Gardini started screaming, ‘What are you doing here? It’s a man!’
Mr Luxuria said Mr Gardini was “very angry” but determined not to back down.
She allegedly told Gardini, “Okay, I’m a trans woman. But if you don’t want to see me here, just use the men’s room.”
Luxuria said Gardini left in a huff, but soon “the issue of where he could go to the bathroom became a debate in the council.”
“I was lucky because in the end the legislators decided that I could use the women’s restroom,” she said. “But it was embarrassing that it became an issue.”
Luxulia said she wondered why Gardini, who was a well-known actress and popular TV personality before entering politics, pursued her.
“I think Mr. Berlusconi’s party wanted to use this as an issue to attack my party, which was in opposition,” she said. “So I feel very sorry for Sarah McBride.”
Mr. Gardini did not respond to an email requesting comment.
Luxria noted that Mace has previously described himself as an LGBTQ-aligned social moderate, noting that Mace’s attacks on McBride have divided the Democratic Party and left many Americans still “offended.” He said he believed it was part of a larger plan to get him to defend the issue.
“The aim here is to create hatred for political purposes,” Luxulia said.
McBride and Mace did not respond to NBC News’ requests for comment.
Following Vice President Kamala Harris’ loss to Trump, some Democrats and experts have pointed to the Biden administration’s support for transgender rights as one reason for the Republican victory.
They said Republicans spent more than $200 million on network TV ads that highlighted Harris’ past support for taxpayer-funded gender-affirming care treatments and aired repeatedly during NFL and college football games. He pointed out that.
During her four years in the Polish parliament, Grodzka also faced verbal attacks and was repeatedly misgendered by fellow Polish lawmaker Krystyna Pavlovicz. In a 2013 interview with Pink News, a UK-based LGBTQ digital news outlet, Grodzka mostly brushed off transphobic comments.
“Christina is a very conservative person, so I think I’m probably a little too much for her,” Grozza said. “She has an imaginary idea of a (perfect) person who is supposed to go to church. In that case, I’ll ruin her photo, so that’s why she attacks me. It will be.”
As anti-LGBTQ sentiment grows on Poland’s right wing, Grodzka has occasionally faced personal attacks from Polish lawmakers in recent years, even nearly a decade after leaving parliament.
In the 2002 documentary about Mr. Beyer, “Georgie Girl,” Mr. Beyer said he often faced questions about his gender identity that other politicians would not have to endure.
“I get asked questions that other politicians would never have to answer,” she said. “As for the surgery. ‘Did it hurt?’ Or, ‘Is having sex as a woman different than having sex as a man?’ Well, honey, of course. ”
