‘Some Guy Wearing A Dress’: Bloomberg’s Past Comments On Trans People Spark Outrage On the Left

Dan Montanaro | February 19, 2020
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It seems that ever since Democratic presidential hopeful Mike Bloomberg started becoming more and more of a contender in the 2020 race, past comments he’s made -- that are, at best, in poor taste, and in some cases downright offensive and insensitive -- have started coming out of the woodwork.

Most recently, Bloomberg sparked outrage and controversy among those in the transgender community for comments he made at a forum hosted by the Bermuda Business Development Agency in March of 2019, during which he referred to transgender women -- i.e., men who think they're women -- as just “some guy wearing a dress” and “it,” according to a video first reported by Buzzfeed News.

“If your conversation during a presidential election are about some guy wearing a dress and whether he, she, or it can go to the locker room with their daughter, that’s not a winning formula for most people," Bloomberg said. "They care about health care, they care about education, they care about safety, and all those kind of things.”

The former mayor went on to seemingly dismiss the issue of transgenderism as unimportant, saying, "We’re focusing on a lot of things that have little relevance to people who are trying to live in a world that is changing because of technology and communications and things like that.”

People from all over the Twitterverse fired back at Bloomberg, including Human Rights Campaign President Alphonso David, New York Magazine writer Sarah Jones, former CNN host Reza Aslan, and actor and filmmaker Andrew Keenan-Bolger, all of whom criticized the former mayor for “using language that demoralizes and dehumanizes members of our community” and calling his comments “appalling” and “completely unacceptable.”

And this is not the first time Bloomberg has made such comments about the trans community. At an event in Oxford back in 2016, Bloomberg said a pro-trans message would never play well in the Heartland during a campaign.

“If you want to know if somebody is a good salesman, give him the job of going to the Midwest and picking a town and selling to that town the concept that some man wearing a dress should be in a locker room with their daughter. If you can sell that, you can sell anything,” said the presidential candidate, according to a story by NBC News.


(Cover Photo: Mike Bloomberg)

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