Vice President Kamala Harris welcomed gay and transgender activists into her ceremonial office on Wednesday, expressing her preferred pronouns during her remarks.
“I want to thank you and welcome you for being here,” she said. “My pronouns are she and her.”
Harris spoke in front of a placard that put her preferred pronouns after her name.
She suggested she was the first vice president to welcome gay activists, alluding to the past under former Vice President Mike Pence and even former Vice President Joe Biden.
“You are the voices of so many who probably never have walked into this room, and over the course of time probably weren’t thought to be invited into this room,” she said.
Harris spoke about the attack on transgender youth in the United States, including Republican-led attempts to prevent biological males from competing in women’s sports.
“We know the issue in terms of the experiences our transgender youth are having around the country,” she said.
She said there were 250 proposed bills across the country that were anti-gay and anti-transgender, “including prohibiting transgender youth from receiving medical care and participating in sports, the prohibition on transgender people using the restroom, voter rights.”
Harris also noted under President Joe Biden the Department of Veterans Affairs would now cover the costs of “gender confirmation surgeries” of veterans and military service people.
“We’ve come a long way and there’s still so much work to get done,” she said.