Trans student’s arrest for violating Florida bathroom law is thought to be a first

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.

- Why is it confusing? The woman who was arrested, Marcy Rheintgen, is a conservative Catholic who thought when push came to shove, they wouldn't actually arrest her ...
- When I was a younger man and lived on the road I exclusively used the women’s restrooms to shit.
  They were usually cleaner.
  Except for Philly. Philly punkes 20 years ago seriously used to have no rules. Or clean bathrooms.
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
- Sorry, are you advocating for people to follow bullshit laws like bathroom bans? Because that’s how your comment reads.
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.
...using the "wrong" bathroom...
FTFY
- Well the toilet is different so of course.
*The right bathroom.

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.
from: https://theconversation.com/baseless-anti-trans-claims-fuel-adoption-of-harmful-laws-two-criminologists-explain-206570
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.
- Michael Knowles has a seriously punchable face
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.
The harassment and danger is the point. It's meant to drive trans people away from public spaces. It's disgusting.
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.
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.

“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.

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 ~~creeps~~ in 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)

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...

Conservative bitches are jealous that Marcy is hotter than all of them.

🙄OMG, let's turn the tables and ban these conservative trolls from ALL bathrooms! Why should they have the privilege of relieving themselves when they're relieving us of our basic human rights? They can hold it in until they burst, for all I care. Trump is literally kill ing trans people. What's next is he gonna TARIFF them as well? 🙄
Trans girls are the true embodiments of womanhood, and these closed-minded fools are just scared of what they don't understand. Their fear is a pathetic attempt to maintain a fake sense of power. Let's give them a taste of exclusion and see how they like it.
Everyone else can go bathe in their own bigotry. #TransRightsAreHumanRights
- What’s next is he gonna TARIFF them as well?
  Hey now, don't give them any ideas, they might tax the fuck out of HRT drugs

“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.

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.
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.
- 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.
- 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.
If there's no other people, what the hell would be the use of the glory hole?
- You mean the laundry hole?
- 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....

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".
- Even genital inspections aren't a catch all

“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.

That’s why this gets reported, but not millions on the streets yesterday.
- Wat?
  https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/global-hands-off-protests-donald-trump-elon-musk-rcna199847
  https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/hands-off-protests-across-country-protest-second-trump-administration/vi-AA1CoMLe
  https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2025/04/05/hands-off-protests-locations-date-time/82854825007/
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.
It's both. They're not pretending to be bigots.

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.

Call your friends up for a posse when you do!!
Barge in
Woman runs out screaming to her boyfriend
RIP
[edit mainly for intl readers, this place def has some gun action going on, like anywhere but feels especially dangerous state for this civil rights experiment, as domestic readers will intuitively understand]

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?

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.
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.
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".
Right? Had to make sure that this wasn't some stock photo, she's drop dead gorgeous
she’s young, petite and gorgeous
That's a weird thing to say
- 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.
- 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

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

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.
This keeps me up at night.

Considering the other places with bathroom bills had cis women attacked by cops...

Honestly I hope they can figure something out for her, Marcy will not survive 60 days in prison

She shouldn't have to, and I hope she is safe, but I also wouldn't underestimate what Marcy is capable of surviving. But, Imagine all the good she would be bringing into the world if we didn't force her to spend her time doing this.
- Considering how air headed her statements are, if she's not in solitary during that time she's not going to be ok 😒
  Florida will make an example of her, and they're going to dead name and parade her around like they're doing their evil god's work.

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.

Being arrested certainly brings awareness to the real threat, but she didn’t think she’d be arrested. Maybe the protest would’ve been more successful by going in with a group of women saying that one of us is trans.

I believe she did think she would be arrested. But her letter points out all the reasons arresting her is biggotry. So she took away their ability to deny the bigotry of it.
This is exactly the purpose of civil disobedience.

Gotta be fascist AF to think this is some kind of legitimate oppression.

“When you’re accustomed to privilege, equality feels like oppression.” – Franklin Leonard
How is that fascist?
Fascism (/ˈfæʃɪzəm/ FASH-iz-əm) is a far-right, authoritarian, and ultranationalist political ideology and movement, characterized by a dictatorial leader, centralized autocracy, militarism, forcible suppression of opposition, belief in a natural social hierarchy, subordination of individual interests for the perceived
What you are, is uneducated
- I think they're talking about oppressing trans people, not about a woman using the woman's bathroom.
- I’m sorry, what? Is it not a ultranationalist political ideology to write laws oppressing people because they are different than you and constantly using America as your belief system (Make America Great Again)? Laws that quote “natural social hierarchy” of men and women when science and nature prove constantly that there are variations?
  No. No. I think it is you who is the uneducated one. The one without critical literacy or a lens to see the enactment of fascism. Germany was not the first or the last, and this is just another rise to the idea of fascism.

Normies (unenlightened): Uses Male/Female Bathrooms (reminiscent of racial segregation in the US 🤮)

Me (enlightened): Why not have gender-neutral bathrooms? 😎

(Seriously, why do we still have gendered bathrooms? What next? Gendered bus-seating?)

Some of it is just based on logistics. A sports venue for example would have a hard time converting their bathrooms to gender neutral, and the reality is that "men's rooms" can be more space efficient due the focus on urinals.
But I find it completely ridiculous when a restaurant has two single occupancy bathrooms, one marked men and one marked women.
- That's not the logistical nightmare you make it out to be.
A lot of them are gender neutral nowadays. I see them all the time, though I do live in a very progressive and queer-friendly neighborhood and city. When my local university tried to do this in a new dorm, a bunch of far-right idiots from out of town tried to start a big stink about it.