Trans student’s arrest for violating Florida bathroom law is thought to be a first
Trans student’s arrest for violating Florida bathroom law is thought to be a first
Marcy Rheintgen, 20, faces a misdemeanor trespassing charge punishable by up to 60 days in jail and is due to appear in court in May.
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.
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.
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.
What you people fail to realize is that this will fix the economy, once all trans people are in jail everything is going to be fucking dandy, no more overpriced eggs, no more wagestealing, no more corruption...
“I know that you know in your heart that this law is wrong and unjust,” she wrote in her letter to lawmakers. “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 that I have dignity. That’s why I know that you won’t arrest me.”
She wrote a letter and sent to 160 lawmakers letting them know she was going to be doing an act of civil disobedience. Let's elevate this full letter. This is much better than any article about it. (Article is fine)
“The arrest of Marcy Rheintgen is not about safety,” Smith said. “It’s about cruelty, humiliation and the deliberate erosion of human dignity. Transgender people have been using restrooms aligned with their gender for generations without incident. What’s changed is not their presence — it’s a wave of laws designed to intimidate them out of public life.”
It's not. I'm sure the conservative assholes are delighted by this aspect, but the real goal is to distract the plebs with ragebait non-issues so they don't get upset at the actual loss of all the rights, benefits, and government services they rely on.
Trans activists are going about this all wrong. Instead of sending someone like Marcy in to violate the law, they need to do this:
Send in the biggest, burliest, hairiest ftm trans dudes into busy ladies rooms, the room that the state insists he must now legally use. And record the reaction of the women and girls leaving for broadcast media. Because by focussing on mtf trans in ladies rooms, I really feel the dipshits that make these laws haven't thought their cunning plans through very fully.
I've said this before but I really want to hear some stories of trans men using the womens bathroom in these places. Big muscular men with bald heads and beards, barging in pissing everywhere and leaving toilet seats up.
I want to see the meltdown when people find out they're just following the law. Please trans bros do this for me.
Fuck Florida. FUCK Florida.
You know what is so ironic about this? Right wing jackasses were talking about bring oppressed by transpeople and how they would be arrested and jailed for pronoun errors, but in all the years of the laws being in effect there was not a single arrest of such a thing.
But now within barely a few months of their shit being in power they actually do all the shit they accused others of wanting to do. It really was projection all along.
Segregated bathrooms were done away with by the civil rights laws of the 1960’s
You know they have no actual reason for this law aside from intimidation, threat, and leverage for the weak minds who need something to be mad at.
If anyone really cared, they would just make the hand-washing area open, and private stalls for people to do their business. No need to have Mens/Womens. Many places I have been to do this, and it just works.
But then again, there really is not a problem to solve, and the "solution" is removing trans people from society and has nothing to do with bathrooms.
Land of the free eh?
She should have pissed on their capitol’s floor.