Summary
Marcy Rheintgen, a 20-year-old transgender college student, was arrested at the Florida State Capitol after intentionally entering a women’s restroom in protest of the state’s transgender bathroom law.
Civil rights lawyers say it is the first known arrest under such laws in any U.S. state.
Rheintgen faces a misdemeanor trespassing charge and could face up to 60 days in jail.
Florida is one of only two states to criminalize such acts.
“I wanted people to see the absurdity of this law in practice,” Rheintgen told The Associated Press. “If I’m a criminal, it’s going to be so hard for me to live a normal life, all because I washed my hands. Like, that’s so insane.”
She’s an absolute legend. Thank you to her for her activism.
Bathroom laws are unenforceable and largely function instead like: “conform as closely as possible to gendered expectations of appearance and presentation or get the shit kicked out of you”.
This mostly affects cis women. Having broad shoulders and short hair is all it takes really. The more these laws are promoted, the more cis women who don’t conform to social body standards for women will suffer. Wearing a skirt and growing your hair long and wearing makeup every single day could legitimately become a matter of your own safety.
Biological gender essentialism is just gender roles all over again. They’ve packaged it as a way to force trans people out of society, and it does for anyone who can’t go stealth. But far more than it affects trans people, it affects cis people. They know that. That’s actually the point in the first place. They want to socially enforce patriarchy. The goal is to force women to submit to men and male scrutiny of their gender.
She did this as an act of civil disobedience and let them know in advance she was coming and was going to use the women’s restroom.
But imagine she didn’t. Instead she went to the capitol, and, following the law, used the male restroom. Just look at her. Do you think she wouldn’t have been harassed or possibly arrested for doing so?
In practice, trans bathroom bans work like this:
Use the restroom the law requires you to: get harassed, beat up, and possibly arrested.
Use the restroom that matches your presentation: violate the law, hope no one clocks you, and you don’t get arrested.
I’m a trans woman myself. You wouldn’t know it if you saw me in public. And I don’t even have any ID documents with an “M” on them. If I wanted to obey the Florida bathroom law, I would have to use the men’s restroom. But then when I inevitably caused a scene, I wouldn’t even be able to show an officer that I was just complying with the law.
Trans bathroom bans are ultimately just a means of driving trans people from public life entirely. Comply with the law? Get assaulted by some chud who thinks you’re violating the law. Disobey the law? Risk arrest for actually violating it.
There’s a reason labeling this a genocidal movement is not hyperbole.
