r/politics • u/southpawFA Oklahoma • 9h ago
No Paywall New pro-Democrat ad praised as masterclass in skewering GOP’s “creepy fetish” for policing bathrooms. “Americans want their elected officials to lower gas prices and end the war in Iran, not follow them into the f**ing restroom,” said the ad’s creator.
https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2026/10/new-pro-democrat-ad-praised-as-masterclass-in-skewering-gops-creepy-for-policing-bathrooms/348
u/southpawFA Oklahoma 9h ago
The 30-second ad from the Progress Action Fund (PAF) depicts a white-haired man in a suit sitting inside a bathroom stall. A young girl trying to use the bathroom then opens the stall door and screams upon seeing him.
“I’m your Republican Congressman,” he tells her in a raspy voice. “Now that we’re in charge, I’m checking to make sure there’s no trans people in the wrong bathroom.”
The girl responds, “Bathrooms are private. Don’t you have anything better to do?”
“I won the last election, and this is my priority,” the Congressman replies. And in perhaps the most powerful moment, the ad ends with a close-up of the generic Republican’s face as he creepily says, “Now let’s make sure you’re really a girl.”
The ad will air on television in both Texas and Ohio as part of a broader $1 million ad buy. Many are praising it as a masterclass in responding to anti-trans attacks, as it calls out not only how ridiculous it is that Republicans are focused on trans people instead of actual problems facing the country, but also how inappropriate and invasive the party’s anti-trans policies are – for both cis and trans people alike.
Joe Jacobson, a former Obama Administration intern and PAF’s executive director, told the Hill the ad is meant to highlight exactly those two messages.
“Americans want their elected officials to lower gas prices and end the war in Iran, not follow them into the f**ing restroom,” Jacobson said. “Republicans are creepy as hell. Democrats need to grow a spine and call Republicans out for their creepy fetish of monitoring children’s bathrooms.”
Perfect. This was absolutely perfect as an ad.
Christian nationalists are so obsessed with trans people. I mean, we know red states have the highest usage of trans porn than anyone. They just are bizarre with that. It's about time Democrats start pointing out how weird that is.
When I go into the bathroom, I'm not concerned about who's there. All I'm concerned about is getting done and washing my hands. Everything else doesn't matter.
Christian nationalists are so intent on being the morality police, and it is creepy. Republicans have assaulted more people in bathrooms than trans people, and your kids are safer at a pride parade than at church. That's a fact.
Trans rights are human rights, and trans people are our friends. They just want to live and be happy. To be against that is to be anti-American.
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u/MattinglyBaseball 8h ago
The bathroom is a place of privacy. You will never question my child about their genitalia you creepy Republican weirdos.
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u/triplenested 8h ago edited 8h ago
I imagine red states have the highest consumption of trans porn because they are the highest oppessors of any public expression/acceptance of trans/queer sexuality. you can't expect people to just not have orgasms because they're in fear of their life.
Edit: to the person that got angry about the fact that I needed to bring up porn "for some reason" and then immediately blocked me, I suppose you didn't read basically anything of what I responded to, because the comment I replied to states "Christian nationalists are so obsessed with trans people. I mean, we know red states have the highest usage of trans porn than anyone." Weird reaction when I did not bring up the topic.
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u/Un1CornTowel 8h ago
Oppressors of a subculture also tend to fetishize that subculture. See orientalism, "jungle-fever", repressed homosexuality, etc. It's a relevant piece of information in determining that the goal is oppression and it has nothing to do with safety or "gross-ness".
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u/GenericRedditor0405 Massachusetts 1h ago
Nobody thinks about genitals more than Republicans. It’s fucking weird.
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u/Seldomsought 46m ago
There's a ballot measure right now in this election cycle in Washington state that asks whether people should inspect girls genitals to determine whether they are eligible to play in school sports.
I'm not kidding.
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u/Significant_Cup_238 9h ago
Exactly, don't go on the defensive. Don't explain why your position isn't as extreme as republicans say it is. Ignore their framing and go on the offense.
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u/southpawFA Oklahoma 9h ago
Take a page out of Abdul El-Sayed's playbook. Don't even entertain the bigot's framing. Point out how that bigot is against America.
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u/Snakesandrats 9h ago
Yep.
Defending Trump, Epstein, Ramaswamy... republicans have lost their damn minds.
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u/AdAstraBranan 7h ago
"Republicans care more about what's in your pants then what's in your pocket."
Idk why democrats aren't marketing that slogan. Seems a natural and easy slogan to take to them.
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u/A_Messy_Nymph 9h ago
You underestimate how many people desperately want permission to be blindly and violently hateful towards something. They have been given permission by society to make it us trans people. I’m so tired, but I’m not hopeful for an improvement.
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u/ElectricalAd1533 7h ago
You are absolutely correct. Republicans want to police bathrooms, badly. They want to check the genitalia of children in public, seeing as they've been doing it privately for decades. I have MAGA family and this ad will only get them to support Republicans more. They want to be violent to people they hate more than anything. They are the American Y'all Qaeda.
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u/lonelyturtlegirl 1h ago
The point is, instead of trying to appeal to the center by capitulating to right wing framing, the response should be to actually stand up for trans people and be honest about the fact that this is all based on bigotry and conservative degeneracy. Stop pretending you can negotiate rights with people who don’t believe in human rights. The fact is, republicans are creepy, they want to control people’s bodies, they are scapegoating a vulnerable minority, and instead of saying “well I do agree with you on this”, it has to be shut down and called out for what it is. This won’t change anyone’s mind who already has conservative brainrot, but it does serve as an example to people who actually support trans rights but don’t know how to respond to whatever the GOP is doing these days.
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u/angelar_ Texas 8h ago
It's just as easy to say you underestimate how many people are just normal. I have my flair, but the only time I have ever gotten agony about this issue is online.
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u/CorrectPhilosophy245 8h ago edited 8h ago
It's so sad and insane that instead of appealing to people's better angels and having an educated electorate voting on issues that actually matter (like the ever widening wealth gap, government corruption, greedflation, regulatory capture, climate change, systemic inequality and equal access to affordable housing, healthcare, and education, just to name a few) our politicians try their damndest to keep us focused on genitalia and skin color.
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u/Aldren 9h ago
Sadly this isn't limited to American GOP, but to most extreme right-wingers. Canada has a 'Media' outlet called Rebel News (temu Fox) which followed people into bathrooms in order to 'investigate' their gender
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u/southpawFA Oklahoma 9h ago
Isn't Rebel News the one founded by white supremacist Faith Goldy? That would not surprise me. Christian nationalism is a hate group and blight unto the world.
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u/monkeyamongmen 3h ago
I know someone associated with them. She never used to be like that. You could say she transitioned into being a bigot.
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u/Pour_Me_Another_ 8h ago
I think it's a good idea to call out the obsession with the contents of our underwear. It's really inappropriate and hardly a priority with the state things are in. Even if things were good, what's in my pants is my business and the same goes for everyone else.
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u/Steve120988 8h ago
The ad should end with a QR code linking the video where a dad takes his daughter to bathroom to wash her hands and another man, clearly a brainwashed republican bootlicker, calls the cops on the dad.
Republican policy at work.
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u/lonelyturtlegirl 1h ago
that would be pretty frickin smart however I feel like that family doesn’t need more attention
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u/Unfair_Web_8275 7h ago
Democrats have too long treated trans people as a sort of albatross that they would like to avoid. In their defense, Republicans were able to seize on these people to their advantage and make anyone who sought to make safe places for them seem "insane", and Democrats were overeager for that "moderate" vote.
But my hope is that a decade of attacking trans women (because no one wants to talk about trans men) has revealed that what .00001% of the population does in bathrooms doesn't affect the price of housing.
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u/BadlyTimedFarnsworth 8h ago
Conservatives have always justified their perverse fantasies by claiming to be outraged at the idea.
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u/RobCoxxy 7h ago
This would go a lot harder if Dem candidates weren't also adopting and/or backing the anti-trans positions chasing "moderate votes"
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u/windwatcher01 8h ago
Appropriatly horrifying ad, but it's taken them a thousand times too long to push back like this. I fear it's too little, too late.
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u/lonelyturtlegirl 1h ago
that’s my fear like this should have been their response all along instead of falling for gotcha questions about bathrooms and sports
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u/Future-Bunch3478 4h ago
I think we are overdue anyway to revamp restrooms to offer more privacy for everyone
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u/thebestdaysofmyflerm Ohio 9h ago edited 9h ago
Who is that actor? He looks familiar.
Edit: I think it’s Steven Bartlett: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm2882595/
He did a great job playing a corrupt pastor in a music video for Wavves.
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u/lonelyturtlegirl 9h ago edited 8h ago
sigh, don’t think this will work. I remember similar ads from the 2024 election. Americans know that republicans are creepy, but they still vote for them.
edit: not sure why I’m being downvoted lol. I’m sorry if being trans and not having much hope for the future bothers you. I’m not more optimistic just because someone made an ad that says what we all already think. I need to see something change for real.
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u/blu-bells Florida 8h ago
The harris campaign itself never actually responded to the Trump anti-trans ad campaigns and it was seen as a big mistake.
It may not work, but it's significantly better then doing nothing and accepting Republican framing on the topic (and significantly better then going "they're wrong, we're transphobic too.")
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u/AsphaltSailor 8h ago
It won't work for the base, but I could see it either swaying an independent, or motivating someone to actually go vote. The Dems need this on hard rotation in all the in-play states.
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u/RootBeardGuy 5h ago
You remember incorrectly. Democrats largely didn't respond at all to anti trans ads in 2024 so you made that up. Before you get at me for talking over you as a trans person like your edit implies, I'm also trans and not here for your doomer bullshit based on a false memory.
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u/lonelyturtlegirl 1h ago
You’re right that they didn’t respond at all to the anti trans ads. I didn’t mean that they used ads like this about trans people specifically. I do remember seeing lots of ads about abortion rights that focused on how creepy republicans are. Like this one. That is what I was referring to and I’m sorry it was unclear.
My point is that the “look how creepy republicans are” didn’t seem to work in 2024 so I’m not super optimistic it will work now that it’s being applied to trans rights. I do keep hearing that the anti trans stuff isn’t working as well this year, so who knows. Maybe republicans are finally tired of hearing about it. I guess we’ll see in a few weeks.
I like the ad, to be clear, and think it’s still important to get these kinds of messages out there. I may just be frustrated that it took this long for someone to come up with an effective response to years of anti trans attacks. I don’t really mean to be a doomer, it just feels a little bit underwhelming to me at this time.
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u/ThatNewSockFeel 8h ago
Yep. These ads are for Democrats and people that already agree with the point of view. It’s like the “weird” thing. They stopped doing to because the data showed it only appealed to people who already thought they were weird, it wasn’t changing anyone’s mind.
At least in this ad they framed it as they care about this stuff instead of the cost of living and the war.
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u/lonelyturtlegirl 8h ago
I think it’s still better to attack anti-trans folks as weird instead of capitulating. But this isn’t going to change anyone’s mind into voting differently.
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u/feedmerooster 5h ago
Just because it didn’t work last time (and I’m not sure it didn’t) doesn’t mean it won’t work now in new context. People have had years more of MAGAt barbarity. It adds up. I think far more people might be ready to ‘get it’ than then. 🤞🤞🤞
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u/gmen6981 4h ago
That's actually an old ad. I remember seeing that one during the 2024 cycle. Or one just like it.
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u/DoesntMatterBrian Texas 5h ago
I'm just going to take my licks from the hive mind on this one, but I have to say it.
This whole fucking culture war around trans kids, on both sides, has become unhinged. This ad is fucking weird and the Republicans are fucking weird. I don't like it. Can we please talk about the budget, cost of living, and healthcare again?
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u/RomanBlue_ Canada 3h ago
Yes, but they are talking about bathrooms in the ad, and nothing about ending the war in Iran or how they will lower gas prices. Proactively naming a problem is good but you have to be more proactive then that. If you want to lead, you have to lead.
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u/Financial-Desk-669 9h ago
Maybe not talk about bathrooms at all in an election that is all inflation, the economy, and corruption?
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u/blu-bells Florida 8h ago
Not responding to the GOP on this topic at all is one of the mistakes that the Harris campaign made in 2024.
It let's the GOP control the entire narrative on the subject, and they are known to both over exaggerate and outright lie. It shouldn't be a dem focus, but it shouldn't go unmentioned either. Pointing out the absurdity in what the GOP is saying like they're doing here is the way to go.
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u/Powerful-Scholar8268 8h ago
We can talk about both trans rights and inflation, the economy, etc. We shouldn't just throw trans people under the bus and let conservatives attack them without any push back
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u/Unfair_Web_8275 7h ago
That's not the worst idea, but here's an anti-Talarico ad.
There is, unfortunately, a good number of voters who don't recognize the weirdness of the GOP's attention on trans issues.
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u/RootBeardGuy 5h ago
You can do both. You can successfully push back against the lies about trans people while still saying people don't care about this when they're concerned about the economy.
El-Sayed has been asked countless times about his support for trans rights and trans youths. His response is "that's a decision for doctors, patients and if the patient is a minor, their parents. Government should not be making your health care decisions and I'd rather focus on improving the economy..." before turning it into a pitch on economic reform and Medicare for all.
It's so simple to come up with a solution that it's hard to believe you aren't okay with sacrificing trans people for your own comfort when you say shit like this.
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