Delaware Rep. Sarah McBride was misgendered in Congress this week during a hearing of the House Foreign Affairs Committee and as a result, the hearing of the Europe Subcommittee on Arms Control, International Security, and US Assistance to Europe was summarily adjourned. Rep Keith Self, chair of the subcommittee on Europe, acknowledged McBride thus: "I now recognize the representative from Delaware, Mr. McBride."
McBride, who transitioned around 2012 and came out to then-Vice President Joe Biden while serving as an intern in the Obama administration, took it in stride, responding "thank you, Madame Chair," but before McBride could engage with the witnesses in the hearing, Rep Bill Keating butted in to white knight for McBride.
As a result of Keating's outburst in defense of what he likely saw as McBride's honor, the entire hearing was adjourned, McBride could not ask the witnesses any questions, and the people's business was not completed—all because Keating was aghast that a man would be called mister by a conservative congressman.
"Mr. Chairman," Keating said, interrupting the freshmen rep. from Delaware, "could you repeat your instruction again please?"
"Yes," said Self, "it's a, we have set the standard on the floor of the House, and I am simply—"
"What is that standard, Mr. Chairman?" asked Keating. "Could you repeat what you just said please when you introduced a duly elected representative from the United States of America, please?"
"I will," Self said, "the representative from Delaware, Mr. McBride."
Keating was beside himself at this point. "Mister? Chairman, you are out of order. Mr. Chairman, have you no decency?" McBride looked on, perhaps embarrassed, perhaps simply wanting to question those witnesses who were now observing this spectacle. "I've come to know you a little bit but this is not decent," Keating said.
"We will continue this hearing," Self tried to say before Keating again interrupted, defending a representative who had already taken care of the matter to their own satisfaction, by calling Self "madame" after he addressed McBride as "mister." Tit for tat.
"You will not continue it with me," Keating said, as though McBride were some hothouse flower that needed tender care, "unless you introduce a duly elected representative the right way."
Self banged the gavel. "This hearing is adjourned," he said.
Social media had a field day with the exchange, with those on the left slamming Self for the "misgendering" while those on the right applauded Self for sticking to his guns and identifying reality, which is that McBride is male, albeit one who has undergone sex change and presents in a feminine manner.
But the real culprit in this case is Keating, who got up on his high horse and would not get down, despite the fact that both Self and McBride were perfectly ready to continue doing the people's business in the House. McBride would have questioned the witnesses. Self would have chaired the hearing. Hell, they might both have had a laugh about it at some point, but not with Keating, the "ally," who could not stand by and let business continue as usual out of fear that his colleague had been too offended and might cry or something.
McBride held a press conference afterwards, flanked by female House reps, and used the opportunity to slam Republicans, even though it was her Democrat colleague who got in the way of the hearing and caused it to be shut down.
"I appear to live rent free in the minds of some of my Republican colleagues," McBride said, not acknowledging that in this case it was the allyship of Keating, not the commentary of Self, that got in the way of the hearing. "I wish that they would spend even a fraction of the time thinking about me, thinking of how to lower the costs for American families. I wish they would spend a fraction of the time they spend thinking about me figuring out how to make government actually work better rather than making it work worse in order to prove that government can't work."
"They are obsessed," McBride went on, "with culture war issues. The Republican Party is obsessed with culture war issues. It is weird and it is bizarre." Democrat women nodded along in the background, letting the man speak. "And the American people deserve serious legislators, serious elected officials, who are focussed on bringing people together to deliver real results for the American people, not to play games and not to engage in school yard taunts."
McBride, of course, is a walking culture war issue. McBride is transgender, was born male, went through college male, and later underwent a sex change. This is not an identity that McBride wears casually, either. McBride has taken their own trans story to elementary schools where the now-Delaware rep. has read storybooks about gender transition to small children and explained that doctors can get a baby's sex "wrong" at the time of birth.
In the clip of story time shared by Libs of TikTok, McBride is surrounded by propaganda supplied by the National Education Association, the largest teachers union in the country, promoting the story of Jazz Jennings, a young man who was sex changed early in life and grew up unable to have normal sexual function and has been unable to experience normal romantic relationships as an adult. Jazz was given puberty blockers, cross sex hormones, and castrated at the age of 18. McBride presented this as totally normal to the school children who had been gathered for the indoctrination session.
In explaining the book, McBride said "she [Jazz] went with her family to the doctor and the doctor said that she should, she's a girl and everyone should see her and treat her like a girl. Which is to say that they should call her Jazz and treat her with respect and be nice to her."
But that's not all, McBride goes on to say, "so that journey that she had, from people thinking she was a boy, and the fact that Jazz knew she was a girl, to her parents and her friends accepting her as the girl that she is, that journey is called being transgender. And as Jazz said, that makes her a little bit different from some of the other kids. And Jazz at the end talks about how being different is good, right?"
This is the message Keating got, that being trans is defined as good, and that's why he was unable to let it go when Self, instead of going along with McBride and Keating's fantasy, stated the fact of McBride's maleness. Keating felt compelled to express what he saw as his own goodness in refusing to allow himself or McBride to do their jobs. McBride may be a fantasist, but it was Keating, trying to step up and do what he thought was the "right thing," who caused the most disruption and chaos.
