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.
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…
Bathrooms just need to be single person use. Then neither side could complain. Who wants to go to the bathroom with other people anyway?
I got a food truck bazaar near me with only one bathroom with a placard that shows the typical man/woman then a half half, and an alien reading. " Whatever, just wash your hands."
Best break down I’ve ever seen on this dumb ass debate.
Yes, I would also rather not have aliens in the restroom with me.
First the extraterrestrials come for our toilets, but then what?? You have to take a stand.
It’s just the Bolians I have an issue with. Their waste literally is corrosive and, as a simple janitor, I am just not equipped to dealing with the mess.
Seriously this. I’ve been to other places that have it figured out (Sweden in my case) and it is better in every possible way.
Well, unless you are a landlord who wants the up-front construction costs of the restrooms to be as cheap as possible regardless of how it will affect the decades of use. Or if you live in a country with no healthcare and can’t let people have privacy in the restroom because you’re afraid they’ll OD in there.
I’m here, sweden is better in literally every possible way.
Watching the US from this vantage point is like watching 50 great whites start tearing into each other because someone threw blood in the water.
Or if you live in a country with no healthcare and can’t let people have privacy in the restroom because you’re afraid they’ll OD in there.
I don’t even want to look that up. It sounds so real it could be.
Just like removing benches in public spaces to prevent use by homeless people.
That and hostile architecture is why I believe it
What I had in mind while making that comment was past stories of establishments putting blue light bulbs in their bathrooms to make it harder to find veins. :/
https://www.npr.org/2019/09/03/756976676/blue-lights-may-deter-intravenous-drug-use-in-public-spaces
Wow, I have never heard of that, but interesting idea!
If there’s no other people, what the hell would be the use of the glory hole?
You mean the laundry hole?
So you’re the one who keeps shoving dirty socks in my mouth!
Actual TERF argument I’ve seen multiple times: trans men using gloryholes are rapists, because someone putting their dick in one must be expecting a cis man.
not every location is capable of supporting single user bathrooms. im pretty pro-unisex bathroom anyway
If only there was some kind of “stall” they could put in that would allow multiple people to be in the same restroom and maintain their privacy…
Um, you just add a door to the bathroom if it doesn’t have one. Then you put a lock on it, and a new sign. Very easy to do.
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.
Send in the biggest, burliest, hairiest ftm trans dudes into busy ladies rooms, the room that the state insists he must now legally use.
I mean, that’s what we’ve functionally done. The distinction is that the biggest, burliest, hairiest dude isn’t ftm trans, he’s a fucking cop.
In an exclusive interview with The Advocate, Morton detailed the humiliating and distressing encounter. She said that she had entered the restroom with her ex-girlfriend, who handed her a tampon, when two male deputies stormed in, shining flashlights into the stall and demanding she exit. Morton, still using the toilet, was stunned.
“They were flashing lights on our feet and saying, ‘You have to get out of here. You have to come out. We need to talk to you,’” Morton said. “I’m telling them, ‘I’m still using the restroom. I’m sitting down, I’m peeing. What is the issue?’”
When she finally exited the stall, she said she lifted her shirt to prove she was not a man, expecting the ordeal to end. Instead, she said one deputy continued to question her appearance, insisting she “looked like a man.” Morton started recording, later posting a 9-second clip to TikTok, where it has since been viewed more than 3.7 million times. “They came in here in the girls’ restroom because I’m a girl and they didn’t think I was a girl, so they tried to come take me away,” she says in the video.
Like, this is the fucking future. The problem is that - outside of specifically LGBTQ media like The Advocate - it gets virtually no press. Cops terrorizing women in the restroom and demanding that they prove they aren’t Transgender just aren’t something the deeply conservative and heavily Trump-pilled local media oligarchs want appearing on TV.
You get stories like OP’s instead, specifically because they do feed into the “Men are trying to sneak into the women’s room to attack your daughter/wife/girlfriend”
Idk if its any fairer to send trans men in. Plus a pretty girl garners more sympathy.
Realistically trying to make them enforce them with genital inspections is the only thing that will make the public think about the ramifications
Edit: I’m not going to advocate saying this but I think the funniest take would be to say gender restricted bathrooms are part of the gay agenda and if girls and boys can use the same restroom at home they can use them in public.
You gotta understand that they don’t see a pretty girl. What they see is a freak, a pervert, or in my moms words “a demon from the pits of hell”.
Ah they did say the demons of hell could take a deceivingly pretty appearance 🤔
Idk andrew tate - who is a freak and sex predator attuned to right wing sentiments- begs to differ.
No. No he doesn’t, he plays to their “boys will be boys” montra
Even genital inspections aren’t a catch all
“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.
Brave as fuck. I’m terrified for her.
They were a nobody before, now they will be a champion of liberalism.
They probably went from nearly unemployable like the rest of us, to guaranteed a good job at a nonprofit or other company that is proudly pro trans rights. There’s no shortage out there.
They just have to survive the judicial system and the penal system, with all the free legal representation coming their way they have a shot at avoiding any jail time, and who knows how the appeals will go after florida can’t secure a settlement or guilty plea.
This is bravery, not a career step. The part about surviving of what’s comming next is too scary. Trans people in jail are already being transported to prisons of their birth gender. She’s risking a lot.
Right? The framing of that comment is very strange. Suspicious even.
Bravery or suicidal?
She told the cops ahead of time what the plan was. Did she expect it to go some other way?
She could’ve moved up to mass, i’m positive if she posted online someone would have taken her in to help her get a leg up in a part of the nation that isn’t full of bigoted ignorant dumpy lovers, but she didn’t.
I can’t see Florida, land of the insane, to rule anything on her side. That leaves appellate court or the supreme court… and I don’t see those going her way either.
In extreme times like these, bravery and suicidal go hand in hand. She wanted to make a point and she did, despite knowing what’s going to happen. She was not interested in saving her ass, even though she could do it - she chose not to and deserves respect. Some people feel it’s worth it to risk and perhaps even lose their lives for the chance the others will be better off for it. It’s a completely different level of bravery than most people are capable of. Sometimes others get offended by that, because they don’t understand it or feel like it sets a moral standard they cannot fulfill. The truth is, not everyone has to be this way. But let’s at least appreciate it.
Shes publicly trans in Florida.
She will be an obituary and at best a martyr.
Some of you people really still can’t understand the south is just this side of the taliban.
The article uses she/her pronouns, which seems a reasonable choice. Any particular reason you’ve gone with they/them?
Weird to assume she is unemployable too, tbh.
Seeing that entry level jobs want 5 years of experience (not hyperbole for my industry), nobody is employable.
That anecdote has been around for a long time. But they all hired somebody. Probably somebody without 5 years exp.
Usually a friend or relative of some higher up.
This.
nearly unemployable like the rest of us
i think they meant she was just another interchangeable employee “like the rest of us” rather than that she’s particularly unemployable for whatever reason
That’s also weird, though. “Like the rest of us” means nothing, plenty are employable, a vast majority are actually.
So, to assume they “probably went from unemployable” to winning the job lottery with a nonprofit is certainly a take.
I think (though i’m not certain) it was hyperbole. Emphasizing that the median resume would look unemployable to, like, a high paying consulting firm, like the sort that does work in DC.
Sorry, have two in laws living with me who have been applying for jobs for 14 months without success. If they can’t get jobs here in boston, i’m guessing florida is even worse.
Has nothing to do with her in particular, just the state of how fucked this nation is. Just like what I said originally.
Sorry, have two in laws living with me who have been applying for jobs for 14 months without success. If they can’t get jobs here in boston, i’m guessing florida is even worse.
Has nothing to do with her in particular, just the state of how fucked this nation is. Just like what I said originally.
Some people are gender abolitionists and prefer they/them for anyone who doesn’t specifically preclude they/them.
I dunno, still seems like misgendering someone, just with a different reason for doing so.
well yes, gender abolitionists misgender 99% of the population intentionally. That is the philosophy behind gender abolitionism. You can’t break an omelette without eating eggs or something idk.
Yeah, i’m not that deep into gender politics. I was just talking about somebody I don’t know, have never spoken to, have never met, and i’ve been relying on OP’s news article as my source of truth for all information about her.
She made the choice to be where she is. Here’s hoping she has an actual plan and she’s not just victim #1 like everyone replying to me is implying.
If she was just using the restroom without sending out a press release ahead of time so that cops would be there this would almost certainly not have happened. I just don’t know what this is supposed to accomplish in florida, land of the batshit insane people, especially with everything else bombarding us in the news. I get and agree with the desire to change things back to sanity, but I also know that my opinion is worth about as much as anyone on here.
They is gender neutral I thought and completely valid when talking about a third person regardless of their gender.
My understanding, and I’m by no means an expert, is that they/them would be used for an unknown gender, or for someone that has chosen those as their preferred pronouns. But in this case, the article and discussion is about a woman, so I think she/her would be the preferred choice.
Using they when you aren’t specifying is fine and any indication otherwise is just virtue signaling. If someone used they despite knowing I use he/him because they don’t know me well, regardless of whether or not it’s stated, it’s not an insult.
You aren’t much more virtuous for using someone’s preferred gender just as you shouldn’t be demonized for not knowing someone doesn’t use “traditional” gender ideology.
Absolutely, and I think jumping on people for making honest mistakes doesn’t help anyone, as with most things it’s the intention that’s key. In this particular case though, I don’t think there was too much ambiguity, and she/her seems to me like the safer bet.
They stopped that woman from peeing in a toilet.
Good job. The children are safe.
From her.
Not from school shooters tho. They are still in terrible danger from them.
But at least they won’t have to deal with that woman using the wrong bathroom.
…using the “wrong” bathroom…
FTFY
Also not safe from being assaulted by a Republican politician in a women’s bathroom, which has happened tons more than by trans women - especially since there’s no recorded incidents of a trans woman assaulting anybody in a women’s bathroom and the group behind the claim openly said that they made it up in an interview 15 years ago.
Well it’s illegal to shoot up schools too but people still do it. I guess laws really don’t matter anymore.
I mean… just look at the president. He does whatever the fuck he pleases with no consequences, regardless of how illegal or immoral it is
::tummy grumbles::
::continues to sharpen pitchfork::
*The right bathroom.
“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)
She’s got a lot of faith I’ll tell ya that much.
A lot more than seems reasonable given her targets for the letter.
Someone needs to start printing up massive numbers of posters with that picture of her face and in large bold lettering: “ARRESTED FOR ENTERING A WOMEN’S RESTROOM”
Plaster that shit all over the state. Let people see just how ridiculous and cruel the law is.
“He was posing as a women for years, just so he could get into ladies rooms to rape our beautiful MAGA women!” -MAGA Nazis.
Why does he need to “pose” as a woman to do that? Every rapist I’ve ever heard of was able to practice their hobby without going trans.
Why are you guys trying to find some logic in this?
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.
Trans bathroom bans are ultimately just a means of driving trans people from public life entirely.
This is not an exaggeration, the anti-trans movement literally aims to “eradicate [trans people] from public life entirely”, those are their words.
Here are some citations, numbers, and evidence to back up what you’re saying and why we should view trans bathroom bans as genocidal rather than about safety, like anti-trans activists claim:
When laws permit transgender people to access sex-segregated spaces in accordance with their gender identities, crime rates do not increase. There is no association between trans-inclusive policies and more crime. As one of us wrote in a recent paper, this is likely because, just like cisgender folks, “transgender people use locker rooms and restrooms to change clothes and go to the bathroom,” not for sexual gratification or predatory reasons.
Conversely, when trans people are forced by law to use sex-segregated spaces that align with the sex assigned to them at birth instead of their gender identity, two important facts should be noted.
First, no studies show that violent crime rates against cisgender women and girls in such spaces decrease. In other words, cisgender women and girls are no safer than they would be in the absence of anti-trans laws. Certainly, the possibility exists that a cisgender man might pose as a woman to go into certain spaces under false pretenses. But that same possibility remains regardless of whether transgender people are lawfully permitted in those spaces.
Second, trans people are significantly more likely to be victimized in sex-segregated spaces than are cisgender people. For instance, while incarcerated in facilities designated for men, trans women are nine to 13 times as likely to be sexually assaulted as the men with whom they are boarded.
…
In society at large, between 84% and 90% of all crimes of sexual violence are perpetrated by someone the victim knows, not a stranger lurking in the shadows – or the showers or restroom stalls. But trans and nonbinary people feel very unsafe in bathrooms and locker rooms, though others experience relative safety there. In fact, the largest study of its kind found that upward of 75% of trans men and 64% of trans women reported that they routinely avoid public restrooms to minimize their chances of being harassed or assaulted.
These laws aren’t designed to protect cis women, they are designed to police gender (this impacts cis people too!) and eliminate trans people.
From Project 2025
“Pornography, manifested today in the omnipresent propagation of transgender ideology and sexualization of children, for instance, is not a political Gordian knot inextricably binding up disparate claims about free speech, property rights, sexual liberation, and child welfare. It has no claim to First Amendment protection. Its purveyors are child predators and misogynistic exploiters of women. Their product is as addictive as any illicit drug and as psychologically destructive as any crime. Pornography should be outlawed. The people who produce and distribute it should be imprisoned. Educators and public librarians who purvey it should be classed as registered sex offenders. And telecommunications and technology firms that facilitate its spread should be shuttered.”
They want trans people existing to not be protected under the First Amendment.
Jesus. Breaking the law is genuinely safer for you… What insanity.
Yeah, in practice, I simply refuse to travel to any state with a bathroom ban.
and then there are the opposite cases, where in order to comply with the law, manly masculine men would be forced to use the women’s restrooms.
you know, with women.
especially the easily frightened at everything because they have been societally coddled and protected for the entire history of this country white women.
i don’t know. I’m not ever going to personally deal with that, but I think that if all trans people were going to comply with these idiotic and pointless laws that don’t protect the people they are written to protect the trans women probably would have it easier than trans men. I really don’t see too many men being seriously traumatized seeing a woman in the men’s room (especially when cis females have used men’s rooms with men in them regularly at places like concert venues when the line to the women’s room is long or too far away).
but then again I don’t really give a shit, just flush and wash your hands.
It’s funny how everyone forgets trans men.
My state has had a bathroom bill for K-12 schools. Every day I went to work I committed a misdemeanor that could have cost my school funding and sent me to jail.
I’ve been told that I can be comforted by the fact that trans women are the target - which, yeah, they don’t want to kill trans men. They just want to drive us out of public life and force us to either detransition or be dependent on the generosity of cis men.
can I just say as a cis male how weird it is how everyone forgets trans men exist and that everything they say that applies to trans women also applies to trans men. I’m surprised how no one has ever brought up a 14th amendment equal protection clause argument against these laws because clearly the the intent of the laws and the language of these laws was written exclusively for trans women.
We don’t really “exist” in the fucktard framework. Trans women are evil “males” (farenghi voice) who want to peep on ladies in the restroom, because that would somehow be a smarter route to being a sex pest than becoming a youth pastor. Trans men are crazy - we get a status of being perpetual teenage girls. “Tomboys” that are refusing to grow up.
They want to kill or imprison trans women, they want trans men to either be institutionalized or forced into submitting to a cis man (the number of gay trans men with boyfriends that misgender them is fucked up.)
The harassment and danger is the point. It’s meant to drive trans people away from public spaces. It’s disgusting.
“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.
Marcy was absolutely right to protest this bullshit the way she did, but that’s part of the plan. It’s literally win win for conservatives. They draw attention by proposing, and enacting a bullshit law that fuels hate, the affected people go out and protest it, and draw attention to it. And in the process, fueling hate through no deliberate means. People on the fence will fall one direction or the other over this, and will always do, every time something like this happens.
That’s why this gets reported, but not millions on the streets yesterday.
It’s both. They’re not pretending to be bigots.
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.
I do NOT want that girl going in a man’s bathroom!! If any woman’s going to be attacked in a bathroom, it’s her… she’s young, petite and gorgeous. It’s so wrong
I don’t want people being attacked in bathrooms period. Men’s bathrooms are not supposed to be lawless dens of brutal violence, just places to fucking pee, poop and wash hands.
I’ve seen girls that looked below 10 in men’s bathroom. The women’s had a massive queue. Literaly no one cared, she went into cubicle, came out, washer her hands and left. No drama.
But I guess I live in civilised world.
Simple, those girls aren’t “different”
In hopes someone new sees this…
It’s never about the children. It’s a scape goat.
I don’t understand the argument for attacks in restrooms. How often does that happen in America?
And how is it that separate washrooms are supposed to prevent it? If a man is going to attack a woman ina restroom, is a sign saying they aren’t allowed in really going to stop them if no one else is around?
These laws are stupid and pointless, full stop. There are already plenty of existing laws against doing the sort of things that would actually be harmful. Just having a law to stop someone from entering the “wrong” restroom is stupid because there are plenty of reasons why someone might need to do so, even if they aren’t trans or intersex or whatever. Just entering a restroom is not harmful to anyone. And as you point out, this law doesn’t stop them if they have the intent to do harm. All it serves to do is give the people in authority an easy way to punish a group they’ve identified as “bad”.
She is gorgeous, but let’s not create a false bar of its ok if you’re pretty. We also have a story circulating right now in Florida about a very tall cis woman being harassed for using the women’s bathroom and BEING FIRED FROM HER JOB FOR NOT REPORTING IT RIGHT.
We all need a place to take a shit. Pretty or not.
It’s not that, it’s the fact that she can easily become a target because she’s young, petite and gorgeous. It can happen to anyone, and the law is wrong full stop.
she’s young, petite and gorgeous
That’s a weird thing to say
there’s always an incel trying to be a white knight….
“oh m’lady, you’re so young, petite, and gorgeous, i will protect thee!”i will add that, trans women are much more vulnerable and at risk in a men’s bathroom than a cis woman is with a trans woman in the women’s restroom…
That is how many cis men think, and we are talking about her risk going into a space where there frequently won’t be any other witnesses.
It is not a weird thing to say, it is a relevant point.
Going on a certain kink site made me realize just how fucked dudes are in the head lmao.
It makes her vulnerable. It’s hard for a woman that size to defend herself against someone far bigger.
she’s young, petite and gorgeous. It’s so wrong
They deliberately choose that pic so you can sympathize
In real life you can tell she’s a trans and not that pretty (by female attractiveness standards)
https://www.advocate.com/news/transgender-woman-arrested-florida-bathroom
Um
Disagree
Disagree about what?
The difference between the picture used by article in OP and the second in my link is undeniable
Taste is subjective matter of course but in one pic you can barely tell she’s transexual while in the other you can clearly tell she was a man.
I think she’s really pretty in the 3 pics I can see. Subjectively of course.
Land of the free eh?
Transfolk are absolutely their next big target after they’re finished removing the immigrants.
And then the gays.
And then their allies.Anti-trans is just the foot in the door.
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.
Wearing a skirt and growing your hair long and wearing makeup every single day could legitimately become a matter of your own safety.
Damn. I hate how spot on this sounds.
Short hair, yup. Short thick curly hair, hat, unique voice… Once spoke with someone for an hour and was shocked when their friend the bartender gendered them.
They might’ve been conservative too who even knows. Super important point I hope* someone popular and wealthy relays to the US president frequently. “Nobody wants
creepsin the bathroom Mr. President but my mom has broad shoulders…”(*Hopefully at +13hr after I’m safe from someone taking my hope in a reply)
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.
