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Episode 142 -- Nancy Mace (Patreon)

Published:
2026-06-30 04:08:29
Imported:
2026-09

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Content

[Sorry, dear Patreon listeners, that this one is coming so hot on the heels of our previous episode! We had hoped to space them out, but our editing process had other ideas!]

For this episode, Moira walks Adrian through the troubled and troubling story of congresswoman Nancy Mace -- a moderate who became MAGA, a vicious transphobe, and then became a gendered apostate from that movement (while remaining hugely transphobic). Trigger warning: While we initially thought this would be a light-hearted, acerbic deep dive into a MAGA politician, the portrait that emerged was instead was pretty complicated, and Mace's story turned out to be incredibly dark. Please skip this one, if that feels like too much.

Comments

Devin Rooney

It's like Christmas on the last day before July!

Bea

You're Wrong About did an episode on Shannon Faulkner where they did a deep dive into the Citadel. I think it's a good accompaniment to this episode - it's hard to believe how awful the place is. It's a school that takes pride in torturing its students, and passing the torture down the generations.

Wu Wei Wolf

I am online enough that I've thought about Nancy Mace way too much, and yet I still have to admit that when this episode dropped, I was like "Who is this Nancy Mace character?" because for whatever reason I didn't expect you to cover someone this topical and this disconnected from reality, so my brain assumed there was some other unhinged Nancy Mace out there. Anyway, looking forward to the episode now.

Astraea

Tl;dr - I see a lot of my own PTSD experience in Mace and also I detest damn near everything she's done in her professional life. Sorry for the novel-length rant. Proceed at your own discretion. I am in the extremely weird position of hating everything this woman does and also having endless empathy for her as a person. It sounds to me like she's unraveling in a way that feels *extremely* familiar. I have PTSD. It was not induced by sexual assault, but actually by something I didn't even know *could* produce PTSD. I spent more than a year just putting one foot in front of another, just trying to survive, and getting increasingly hypervigilant and anxious because my brain was trying to keep me safe the only way it knew how. I also spent that time actively hiding my symptoms from my therapist, because I thought I was actually going insane and I was afraid she have me involuntarily committed. (I wasn't and she didn't, but again: anxiety and hypervigilance.) I can absolutely see how the recent assaults, the awful response from the SC AG and her own staffers, the lack of response from fucking anyone to her floor speech . . . all of that combined with her being a Citadel graduate and a sitting Congresswoman who thought she had made herself safe from such things . . . all of that is enough to just shatter you. You've built a life where you thought you were safe and fully human, and then all at once, you discover you are not safe and are apparently not fully human to any of the people you thought would protect you. That kind of shattered worldview takes a long time to manifest, longer to get help for, and even longer to heal from. NONE of this excuses her choice to actively put trans people in danger. I also want to be incredibly clear that this is NOT a "traumatized people actually are crazy, go ahead and write them off" statement. Trauma isn't insanity, even if it felt like it sometimes to me. But crucially, I was dealing with *unacknowledged* and *untreated* trauma, and I wouldn't be shocked if Mace is dealing with that as well. I hope she's getting treatment, but in an environment where *your own employees* say that it's "selfish" to tell your own true story of assault, I can see how taking to a professional might not seem safe either. And as long as trauma goes untreated, your brain will protect you however it can, and that can sometimes look very odd both to you and to other people. (Side note: I will be finding every one of those staffers and giving them a punch in the nose. Fuck those assholes.)

Charley

I honestly think you hit the nail on the head regarding some cis women’s attraction to anti-trans bullying. They’re trying to get back against the stuff they’ve endured and they’re picking on the ones they see as more vulnerable than themselves. It’s bad what they endured; it’s equally a morally egregious and cowardly response.

Kim

I would say that I’m thrilled she isn’t my congressman, but mine is Ralph Norman and he’s not much better. 😭

Sarah B

If Southern Charm has taught me anything, it’s that Charleston is full of middle aged frat boys behaving terribly

OhLordyAmina

I’m glad you’re still with us and hopefully managing. I have seen so many people whom I loved and supported me in my youth fall into madness due to MAGA. I don’t know what it is and I don’t think it’s up to anyone in particular to save them.

Laura Cullen

Oboe is so much more unhinged! It's got twice as many reeds!

Astraea

Thank you. I'm managing much better these days - it turns out telling your therapist about your severe mental health symptoms is a good idea that leads to effective treatment. (Who knew, right? :P ) To be clear, what's familiar to me about Mace is the hypervigilance and odd-seeming behavior. Her going MAGA is maybe related, maybe not, but that's not the part that feels familiar - I was never anywhere near the MAGA train. I don't know what the MAGA madness is either, and I too can't really bring myself to believe it's the job of anyone specific to save them. On a practical level, we collectively would be better off if one third of the country weren't completely disconnected from reality. But also . . . these are adults. They made their own choices. I'm tired of pretending (as the news media loves to do) that they were deceived or confused or desperate - if you repeatedly choose to hurt people, it is *definitely* not up to the people you hurt to provide you with free therapy until you stop hurting them.

Astraea

Oboe SLANDER!! :P (Also I played both clarinet and oboe when I was a kid so I guess I just never had a chance of being hinged....)

Laura Cullen

Upon further reflection, it's probably the flutes who are the most unhinged. They're the ones who have to have special lips. Which I know because I was told at age nine that I did not have the right lips to play the flute, even though I'm pretty sure I already wanted to play the clarinet because that's what my Dad had played, but thanks for making me feel inadequate, ma'am.

JanaKat

With the horrors she's been through at the hands of men, I almost can't blame Nancy Mace for being terrified of sharing spaces with women like me who "used to be men". And not at all for wanting the strength and power that men take for granted. How much less awful would the world be if men didn't have a universal near monopoly on the capacity for violence? Both personal and institutional?

OhLordyAmina

I’m finally gonna be seeing a therapist again after a year of no health insurance at all. It’s gonna be scary to start this affair all over again but I’m looking forward to having someone to help guide me through these hard times.

Astraea

I know the context was completely innocent, but telling a nine year-old "You don't have the right lips for this" just feels all kinds of weird. Also like . . . nobody has the right lips for oboe, either, because the necessary embouchure is weird as hell. This is why we practice!

sonorasgirl

As a survivor who deeply empathizes with her responses (in the sense of PTSD, not excusing the awful behavior) while choosing to listen to trans folks and hating the harm she’s causing, I really appreciate this. It’s empathy that I fully wouldn’t blame if you didn’t give her. With that being said, as a cis woman, I think getting stuck in the TERF mindset is just recreating my victimization onto other people, and that’s really abhorrent to me; I wish all survivors recognized this and directed their (completely justified) rage at the people who deserve it. It sounds like she has in some ways but fell off the tracks and went into TERF, and that’s both harming trans folks and dividing the attention she could and should be giving to fighting SA and patriarchy.

Astraea

Good vibes and good luck. It is very hard to start over, but very worth it, in my experience. I hope it helps!

Amanda Marcotte

It is deeply sad that you had to beg people to understand rape is wrong, even if the victim sucks. Feminists used to understand this. Social media breaks people’s brains. Anyway, Natalie Wynn has interesting theories about how some cis women displace anger at male violence onto trans women. Mace is a good example.

Athina

Thank you educating us on this, Moira. Turns out the real dunking was the GOP apathy we met along the way.

Maxwell

Not that it’s necessary but, as a South Carolinian, can vouch for the extreme cultural conservatism. There’s just so much casual hostility towards any opinions to the left of Strom Thurmond and towards any and every minoritized population. It’s in the damn water. The Good Old Boy gentry run *everything*. Pride last weekend was nice, though.

Megan Gregor

As a victim of rape and other acts of sexual violence I have a lot of empathy for her experiences. Absolutely no to be deserves to be raped and the non response of the people in power to what her ex fiance did is inexcusable. Simultaneously, again as a rape survivor, I find it beyond disgusting that she is choosing to leverage her power to thow other women under the bus, especially when those women are *even more likely* to experience sexual violence as a result of the laws and policies she is pushing. Thank you for this episode

Olivia

As a North Carolinian I concur with your anti-South Carolina prejudice. We are the superior Carolina and everybody knows it. 😉

Rissa

Lately I’ve found myself really mad at the fact that some of the most beautiful places in the US are controlled by extremely conservative state governments

Masie McCandless

Moira, I just wanted to say thank you for how you handled this episode. As one of I'm sure the many trans listeners, I was really nervous when this episode started. But wow, what a journey and you handled it with such grace and I felt appropriate takes and a deep understanding. I don't know. I don't quite have the right words for what I want to say, but what an intense and well done episode. You really do amazing work. (Also Adrian I played the clarinet and the side comment was mean but totally accurate. /s)

Sally

Charlestonian here! I love this episode, and I have one note. Charleston is a messy place. Worth considering though, South Carolina/ the South have large and vibrant Black communities. I often hear very well meaning people with good politics say the South shouldn’t exist. I also used to say things like this. But I have not personally heard Black Charlestonian say things like this. The reason I stopped saying this was that the South includes more than just my seer-sucker suit, Lindsey Graham loving family. Anyway, sorry to be fun police. Love you guys ❤️

Emily Benson

I do want to correct that The Citadel is a military college but not a Federal Service Academy. It’s not officially affiliated with the DoD/US military. It’s like an intense cosplay military college, you don’t gain rank upon graduation unless you choose to do ROTC (just like any college with a ROTC program), mainly it’s one of those that has a way higher acceptance (and lower academic standards) rate than actual military a academies.

Astraea

Thank you for clarifying this! I was really confused when they said Mace graduated from the Citadel and then became rudderless again for a while. I was trying to square that with, say, Annapolis, where I'm pretty sure you legally cannot just peace out and do whatever you want upon graduation.

amh

The Citadel has a very dark history. I will say, there are people there now on the academic side especially who are fighting to make it a better place. It's made some progress in certain areas since Mace graduated, but there's still a lot of work to be done.

Bea

It was a school that was explicitly created to uphold white supremacy and it's still doing that. I know it will never happen but it would be far better to close it down and start again than spend another 150 years trying to make it less awful.

Joanne Scutero

It seems to me that in Nancy Mace, we have the classic story about a person who feels rage over being bullied turning into a bully themselves (first at The Citadel, and then, more brutally, by the men in her life), but with females, they may never be able to acknowledge --even to themselves-- the rage they feel, because most women are taught from an early age that feeling anger or rage isn't ladylike (so therefore, it's not acceptable to feel that way). It's much easier for a woman like Mace to simply 'punch down', and go after socially acceptable targets (at least, acceptable to her friends, family, colleagues, and anyone else whose opinion/esteem she values).