John Oliver discusses why trans athletes seem to be at the center of U.S. politics right now, the nuances around competition and safety, where the conversation could be headed, and what The Rock would do in a barre class.
Does this keep us safe? What harm does washing her hands cause? What is more traumatic, a passing trans person in the bathroom washing their hands or the police barging in and arresting someone in the bathroom. I can see the mistake she made. She thinks they know in their hearts that it is wrong to make bans on trans people. No they are sure their god, one with the same name as her own god, but their god is the hateful vengeful fundamentalist Old Testament god while her is a loving Jesus. Hugs.
Left – Wikimedia Commons, Khrystinasnell // Right: Marcy Rheintgen, selfie
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When 20-year-old college student Marcy Rheintgen made her yearly spring break trip to her grandparents’ property in Florida, she said she felt at peace — until March 19, when police escorted her out of the bathroom of the State Capitol Building and placed her in handcuffs. Evidently, Rheintgen had violated a 2023 state law criminalizing trans people who use government-owned public restrooms that align with their gender.
Tampa Bay Times reporter Romy Ellenbogen accompanied Rheintgen to the Capitol. When they arrived, several officers were stationed outside the women’s restroom doors. They warned her not to enter the women’s restroom. Draped in a white, frilly dress and a pink bow, Rheintgen went in anyway and washed her hands.
That’s when police entered the restroom and told Rheintgen she was being detained. A devout Catholic, she had wanted to take a moment to pray the rosary, but she never got the chance.
After spending less than 60 seconds in the women’s restroom, Rheintgen said, she was charged with trespassing with a warning.
Meanwhile, her rosary was confiscated as an officer from the Florida Department of Law Enforcement handcuffed and detained Rheintgen, searched her person and her vehicle, and then shuttled her to the Leon County Detention Facility, where she stayed overnight in the men’s ward. If convicted, she could spend up to 60 days incarcerated.
The FDLE did not respond to a request for comment.
About a week before her trek, she sent about a hundred and sixty print letters to Florida lawmakers announcing she would engage in the time-honored practice of civil disobedience: She would use the women’s restroom at the Florida State Capitol. She named her date and time.
The letter sent to Florida legislators. Image courtesy of Marcy Rheintgen.
“I know that as a transgender woman, this means I will probably be arrested. I am violating laws because I personally believe it to be wrong.
“I’m not a political activist,” she told Erin in the Morning. “I’m just a normal college student who thinks this law is wrong.”
The letters included a photo of herself so that officials could identify her. “I understand I could go to jail for up to sixty days in a men’s prison, where if the statistics are true, I would likely be raped.”
She writes that going to jail would “uproot her life,” but this was a risk she was willing to take:
“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.”
Signing off, she added: “Pray for me.”
“I’m a really religious person,” she told Erin in the Morning. She’s a devout Catholic who describes herself as a political centrist, with an appreciation for “family values” but a soft spot for Dorothy Day, the prolific Catholic leftwing activist.
A police affidavit she shared with Erin in the Morning — with her deadname (blurred out below), and the wrong pronouns listed — otherwise corroborates most all of her story.
Photo Rheintgen’s affidavit, but her deadname has been blurred out for privacy. Image courtesy of Marcy Rheintgen.
Rheintgen’s telling is also corroborated by reports from the Tampa Bay Times journalist who accompanied Rheintgen to the bathroom.
A selfie. Image courtesy of Marcy Rheintgen.
“I actually wanted to move to Florida when I was older, growing up, but I don’t know if I can do that now, ” she said. She fondly remembers her favorite beaches and bologna sandwiches with her grandparents. But now, it seems, her “home away from home” isn’t safe for her.
“I don’t want attention. I just want people to see this law and how crazy it is to put people like us in jail. I was so terrified,” she said. She admits she hadn’t consulted legal or advocacy organizations before the endeavor; she didn’t know what to expect. “They were treating me like I murdered someone — but I just used the wrong bathroom.”
Rheintgen said she was motivated to act after seeing the anti-trans legislation surge throughout the United States, and when she read about Hunter Schafer, the Euphoria actress, who was issued a “male” passport despite being a woman. “She’s a personal hero of mine,” Rheintgen said. The fear and the vitriol she saw play out over the news cycle brought her to a breaking point.
While bills like bathroom bans and drag bans have been sweeping the country in recent years, the criminalization of gender diverse people is by no means new. Black and brown trans women, especially, have been routinely criminalized for decades under the guise of “solicitation” or “loitering” ordinances, even in a so-called liberal stronghold like New York. The phenomenon is so pervasive that it has been dubbed the “Walking While Trans Ban.”
Jon Harris Maurer, Public Policy Director of Equality Florida, emphasized that the bathroom bans are just the latest attempt by the state’s GOP to eradicate trans people from public life. “These are hard working, tax paying individuals who are our family, neighbors, and colleagues,” he told Erin in the Morning. “Weaponizing bathroom access in a place like the State Capitol is an antidemocratic effort to block them from directly participating in government while simultaneously stripping their rights behind closed doors.”
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My question is who decides if a hair cut conforms to gender stereotypes / norms. I somehow doubt the 1970s /1980s long shoulder length but parted and swept back blow dried hairstyles for guys would pass the test if religious conservatives get to say what is acceptable? What about women with cancer who are taking treatments for that cancer and lost their hair or are growing it back? Can the doctor be sued who prescribed the treatments? It is like trans people using the bathrooms of gender identity, who decides if that woman is feminine enough for the girl’s bathroom or that man manly enough for the boy’s bathroom? I have told everyone while the hell spawn could have any hair they wanted including long hair I was required to have a crew cut or nearly bald hairstyle as punishment for even existing in a time when everyone was wearing their hair long. What about parents rights? You know the reason all media with LGBTQ+ content must be removed from schools and all libraries, because some parents complain their kids might see it? Do the progressives or the former hippies get to allow their boy children to have long hair or their girls short hair? See how this can’t work, can’t be allowed. People lose all autonomy and individual rights to express themselves as they want to. It is again an attempt to return to the straight cis white Christian male dominated society of the 1950s. Women were subservient to men and needed their permission for most things outside the home. Raping your wife, forcing her to have sex against her will was legal as she had to perform her wifely duties. Non-white people knew their place and stayed there. The entire LGBTQ+ were hidden in their closets too frighted to be found out to demand their equality and rights. That is the world they want and are trying to create using the cover of trans people are harming the children. It is why they attacked drag queens so violently, they violate that 1950s norms. They are desperate to enforce a nearly religious observance of their preferred way to live based mostly on religion. Look at the bios of nearly every one of the republicans pushing these things and you see they are from a fundamentalist conservative religious faith that wants to control how other people live. Not to bring others closer to their godlike Rev Ed Trevors does, but to make themselves feel better about things and the idea that if they make all the people they don’t like, all the acts they don’t like to go away their god will praise them, give them an afterlife life, and their god will be so please with them he will come back right away to get them. Their god is a god of anger and smiting. He is not a loving god who loves people as they are or want to be. Hugs
Republicans in the Arkansas state legislature have introduced legislation that would make it effectively illegal for hairdressers to give gender-based haircuts to people of the opposite gender. The bill would allow the hairdressers to be sued if the haircut given does not conform with the gender assigned to a person at birth. This is reminiscent of the government-approved haircuts in North Korea, and equally as oppressive. Ring of Fire’s Farron Cousins explains what’s happening.
Sam and Emma in the fun half. Normally there is only two ways to watch the fun half. You can be a member which they admit that some people can not afford which they have a way to get free membership if you need it. Or you can catch the first half while it is playing live and in the description box will be a link to the free fun half. If you click on that you can watch the entire thing. If you save it like I do for later you can go back and watch it at any time because if you don’t the link will disappear so you can’t see it. They make the second half private. Hugs
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Hello Everyone. Before I turn you over to Ethel to watch her informative video on the same group attacking trans people making up lies about furry’s to try to attack trans people through them. Of course according to the hate group anything not cis straight that they don’t understand is attacking children somehow. But my good news I won’t have to dump my main computer. I figured out what was causing two of my programs that I need to refuse to work. I combed through the setting of both programs. I then dumped the video computer. I later realized I did not have to. There was a setting that said make this program work with the VPN (paraphrased) Then the other side of that said make programs not work with VPN. So I had placed the switched it to work with VPN. For two days I couldn’t get the two program. This morning at 3 am I dumped the computer, resetting it, then loaded up the two programs and kept changing settings and things until suddenly everything works. Then I check to make sure the VPN was not leaking my location with the settings that way. The switch should have said this way bypasses the VPN, this way makes the program use the VPN. Why do I need the VPN? I live in Florida, a republican nanny state that thinks adults in the state need permission to visit sites labeled NSFW if you get my meaning. Anyway. Now I have to reload all my programs on the video computer. Now to the video. Hugs
Scottie's Playtime 