I fear that women-only spaces will become increasingly rare as transgender rights clash with women’s rights.

When I was home in Oregon visiting family last year, I used the restroom at a brewery along the beautiful Pacific coast. When I came out of a stall to wash my hands, I was somewhat startled to see my cousin’s husband standing there, washing his hands.

Did one of us end up in the wrong place? Nope.

The bathroom had been refashioned since my last visit to the brewery as “all-gender,” meaning it’s open to everyone.

It was uncomfortable to me. And I fear that women-only spaces will become increasingly rare as transgender rights clash with women’s rights.

The bathroom wars were reignited last week, after the election of Sarah McBride to the U.S. House. McBride, a Democrat from Delaware, will be the first openly transgender member of Congress.

Rep. Nancy Mace goes on the offensive

That didn’t sit well with U.S. Rep. Nancy Mace, R-S.C., who last week introduced a resolution prohibiting the use of any “single-sex facilities” by anyone whose “biological sex” doesn’t align.

In other words, Mace, a rape survivor, doesn’t want McBride to use the women’s bathroom.

Mace has a propensity for grandstanding, so at first I thought that may be what she was doing.

But I think she’s right about this: “Women and girls shouldn’t have to give up their safety or privacy just because the Left wants to win points with their activist base,” Mace said in a statement. “This isn’t controversial – it’s common sense. I’m going to continue defending women and girls from these harmful, out-of-touch, and straight-up weird policies.”

Mace doubled down on her resolution by introducing a bill that would offer similar privacy protections for women’s spaces on all federal property.

House Speaker Mike Johnson announced a new bathroom policy at the Capitol, in response to Mace’s concerns. The policy mandates that all single-sex facilities, from bathrooms to locker rooms, be reserved for “individuals of that biological sex.”

“We have single-sex facilities for a reason, and women deserve women’s only spaces,” Johnson told reporters. “And we’re not anti anyone. We’re pro-woman, and I think it’s an important policy for us to continue.”

The House speaker underscored that House members have private individual bathrooms and that there are unisex restrooms around the Capitol.

It seems like a fair policy.

Preserving privacy and fairness for women is a worthy goal

McBride has called the bathroom dustup an “attempt to misdirect” from more pressing issues.

Yet, I think Americans do care about this set of issues. And it’s part of why former President Donald Trump won reelection.

Many women and girls are sick of being treated like their rights don’t matter, and they’re standing up for themselves. Female college athletes earlier this year sued the NCAA for forcing them to compete against – and share locker rooms with – transgender athletes.

Opinion:These women say transgender rules discriminate against them. So they’re suing the NCAA.

Montana Rep. Zooey Zephyr, a Democrat and “progressive, bisexual trans woman,” chimed in about the McBride-Mace controversy by claiming that transgender women are “every bit as ‘biologically female’ as cis women.”

That caught the attention of “Harry Potter” author J.K. Rowling, who has for years risked getting “canceled” by leftist activists regarding her views about safeguarding women’s spaces.

“If a man is a woman, there’s no such thing as a woman,” Rowling wrote on X. “You’re desperate to be categorised as female, but by entering the category, you destroy it. You know that, which must suck for you, but not as much as it sucks for the women & girls fighting to retain their rights and spaces.”

She’s right. The “female” category is being destroyed, with businesses that don’t want to bother with bathroom squabbles offering shared, gender-neutral restrooms, like the one I used in Oregon.

That’s a loss for women. Wherever clothes are coming off, whether a bathroom or locker room, is a situation where we as women are at our most vulnerable.

These are spaces where privacy matters, and it’s not bigotry, as Democrats have alleged, to want to preserve that for women.

Ingrid Jacques is a columnist at USA TODAY. Contact her at [email protected] or on X: @Ingrid_Jacques