Trans Woman Arrested, Sent to Men’s Jail For Entering Florida Capitol Bathroom
Trans Woman Arrested, Sent to Men’s Jail For Entering Florida Capitol Bathroom
“I’m not a political activist,” she maintained. “I’m just a normal college student who thinks this law is wrong.”
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Relevant facts:
- she self identifies as a "moderate conservative", also identifying as a "centrist" who cares about "family values"
- she is a devout Catholic
- she lives in Illinois and traveled to Florida just to do this
- before going to Florida, she sent letters to lawmakers stating her intention to break the law, including when and where she would and a photo of herself (police were thus posted at the location and time she indicated, hence why she was arrested)
- she explicitly identifies as not a "political activist"
- she is breaking the law because she thinks it is wrong (she is engaging in civil disobedience), though she did not expect to actually be arrested
- she didn't consult any legal or advocacy groups before doing this
- she was arrested upon going into the restroom and washing her hands, after cops posted at the bathroom told her not to; she was held in the men's ward of the Leon County Detention Facility overnight, and she faces 60 days of incarceration if convicted
- she is back in Illinois but will have to fly back to Florida for hearings
- she didn't expect to be arrested and regrets doing it
source: Tampa Bay Times (archive.ph link)
I.... Am I the only one that is shocked by the fact that there are cops posted at BATHROOM??????? The fuck??? (Also wtf do they have a law that say you can do prison if you step in the wrong bathroom????)
The cops were only there because she sent the letter telling them when and where she would be doing this. Also a 60 day sentence would not be served in prison, but the county jail (they are different).
If someone sent me a letter saying they were going to use a bathroom I would ignore it, not send cops there. Your sentence is phrased like they simply had to be there which is just validating, if inadvertently, the idea that going to the fucking washroom should be a crime. I do agree that prison vs jail is probably something we should be more careful with but the fact remains that she never should encountered any resistance at all, period.
She explicitly said in the letter that she was going to break the law. Here is one of the letters she wrote:
I understand that if you're receiving this letter, you're part of the Florida Bicameral Legislature, which means you're probably one of the people who wrote this law or voted for it. I know that you know in your heart that this law is wrong and unjust. I know that you know in your heart that it's wrong to arrest me and jail me for sixty days for simply using the bathroom. I know that you know in your heart that transgender people are human too, and that you can't arrest us away. I know that you know in your heart that transgender people are no different from you or anybody else. I know that you know in your heart that the same people that go to church with you, eat in the same restaurants, go to the same schools, root for the same sports teams, watch the same movies and pray to the same God as you cannot be all bad. I know that you know that I have dignity. That's why I know that you won't arrest me.
She made an emotional appeal to the Florida legislature and hoped they wouldn't arrest her in an act of civil disobedience. Instead, they sent police to dissuade her from violating the law, and then had her arrested when she broke the law anyway.
If someone sent me a letter saying they were going to use a bathroom I would ignore it, not send cops there.
I guess you're not a Florida legislator, huh? She didn't send the letter to the reasonable, average person - she sent them to the people who voted in the law that bans trans people from using public restrooms. What is relevant here is what the people who did receive the letter would likely do in response?
Your sentence is phrased like they simply had to be there which is just validating, if inadvertently, the idea that going to the fucking washroom should be a crime
void_turtle's phrasing is accurate, the cops were only posted at that particular bathroom at that particular time because she gave advanced warning she was going to be there, they absolutely weren't going to let a trans woman flagrantly violate the law they passed (even if that means enforcing a ridiculous and immoral law - the fact they passed the law is a reason to think they wouldn't mind enforcing that law too).
void_turtle isn't implying this was the right thing for the Florida lawmakers to do, only that it is a reasonable outcome to expect from sending the letter.
she never should encountered any resistance at all, period.
She looks cis passing to me and probably wouldn't have encountered resistance if she hadn't intentionally notified the lawmakers of her intent to violate their law at a particular time and place. That's what got her arrested.
That said, many trans people don't have the passing privilege she has, and the law most impacts those people who anyone would spot as visibly trans, and thus would be at most risk of arrest. Marcy Rheintgen is engaging in civil disobedience she likely wouldn't otherwise be subject to, and it would make a better story of self sacrifice if she wasn't an ignorant reactionary who admitted she didn't actually think she would be arrested and now regrets doing it, lol.
You wtote so much and yet somehow deftly missed the entire point by a good half-mile so all I have for you is:
“Ok.”
haha, that sounds like me - sorry for the essay 🙈
It’s ok to get lost in the weeds.
The point is that the VoidTurtle had no reason to say what they did, nor in the way they said it, except to try to remind us that “actually she broke the law so gotcha!”. This is true, but the law here is complete, hateful nonsense designed to validate the mistreatment and erasure of trans people and does not help protect anyone from anything. The state sent cops there to arrest her for washing her hands. It doesn’t help that cops have a history of not taking actual crimes seriously enough so that doesn’t help their case knowing that they seemed to have had no issue finding people to go do this job.
The underlying lesson is that if someone does something awful because some fucked up law permits them to do it then they still did that terrible thing and should be called out for it anyway. It was once perfectly legal to treat black people like less than full human beings but enough people said “no” while it was legal to get that changed. Imagine if someone was talking about how they helped lynch an escaped slave and when you challenged them on that VoidTurtle walked in like “actually that’s legal maybe the slave shouldn’t have tried to escape if they didn’t want to get killed.”
Legality does not equal morality, it simply often coincides with it and many times does not.
I hope that clears things up.
oh, no - I understood your position then
I think you're wrong that void_turtle, whose account has black flag waving and who makes comments defending leftist activists and is clearly anti-police, is taking the position that the law is morality and that she deserves to be arrested ... there are context clues, and I'm not sure why you don't see them but your response to void_turtle seems unreasonable to me.
Rereading void_turtle's comment:
The cops were only there because she sent the letter telling them when and where she would be doing this. Also a 60 day sentence would not be served in prison, but the county jail (they are different).
This response does not read to me as a defense of her arrest, but an explanation as to why she was even arrested in the first place. It's a clarification, not a condemnation of her or a "gotcha" to justify her arrest. I don't see how you could read it that way, to be honest.
Anyway, if I'm not mistaken, we're all on the same page here, we all agree: fuck this law, fuck the cops, and this arrest is immoral.
Nobody here is arguing the law is moral or that breaking the law morally justifies arrest.
Because we know why she was arrested, it’s in the article. And frankly, even though she failed to understand it herself, I understand why making one’s civil disobedience known can be important. The question was about why cops were posted outside the bathroom and phrased with clear exasperation at how we’ve gotten to the point where we take the threat of handwashing so seriously.
What does VoidTurtle’s comment actually add to the conversation? I know what they said but I’d like to know why they felt the need to say it, and why they said it so coldly.
This was your comment:
I… Am I the only one that is shocked by the fact that there are cops posted at BATHROOM??? The fuck??? (Also wtf do they have a law that say you can do prison if you step in the wrong bathroom???)
This was void_turtle's response:
The cops were only there because she sent the letter telling them when and where she would be doing this. Also a 60 day sentence would not be served in prison, but the county jail (they are different).
Here's how I interpret this:
- you are shocked cops would be posted at the bathroom
- this indicates you don't understand why cops would be posted at the bathroom
- void_turtle clarifies the reason: because she told them when and where she would be so they could arrest you
I do not experience void_turtle's comment as cold or as inappropriate, they aren't responding to your moral outrage, they are clarifying a fact and potential misunderstanding.
I also thought your original comment was confusion about why cops were posted, not just moral outrage that cops were posted in response to the letter.
void_turtle and I both seem to have interpreted your comment as being ignorant to the relevant facts, that she told anti-trans lawmakers where she was going to violate one of their anti-trans laws, which explains why the cops were posted there.
The response was nothing more than clarification, I really don't interpret their comment as coldly dismissing your moral outrage, truly as only clarifying something they thought you didn't know. We thought you hadn't read the article, we thought your response indicated you didn't know why the cops were posted to arrest her. (The article made it clear: the cops were posted because the anti-trans lawmakers asked them to arrest her if she broke the law she declared she would violate.)
Your moral outrage is justified (I'm with you - it's insane), but I can't tell if you are genuinely confused as to why anti-trans lawmakers would do something as immoral as assign cops to guard a bathroom and enforce a bathroom bill they passed?
If someone sent me a letter saying they were going to use a bathroom I would ignore it
This is rational, but the fascist pigs who passed and enforce that law are not.
Your sentence is phrased like they simply had to be there
That's a very bizarre reading of my comment, which was not phrased in that way whatsoever. The commenter I was responding to seemed to think the cops were posted there routinely for the purposes of enforcing that law. I was correcting the misunderstanding by pointing out they were only there because she sent a letter beforehand. Obviously they didn't "have" to be there, in the sense that they are individuals with free will who could have woken up that day and decided to stop being fascist pigs. But they didn't, and expecting them to is going to lead to disappointment every time because if "don't be a fascist pig" were in the cards for them, they wouldn't be cops in the first place.
It's still fucking absurd.
It is Florida. Nothing shocks me coming from there.
Police were there because she sent letters in advance telling them when and where she would use the restroom in violation of the law. Otherwise not only would police not have been guarding that particular bathroom, but she would have likely passed as a cis woman and used the restroom without incident.
Idiot: ✓
Identifies as moderate conservative, but is mostly apolitical: ✓
What a surprise.