A video from last December of a young lesbian woman being dragged out of a women’s washroom has recently gone viral.
Posted by prominent Black Lives Matter activist, Tamara McDaniel, who referenced North Carolina and Mississippi’s recent transphobic “bathroom laws,” the video has been igniting debate around the issue on McDaniel’s Facebook page.
Although it is unclear from the video where it was filmed, new laws in North Carolina and Mississippi require people to use the washroom that corresponds with the gender they were assigned at birth. The laws have raised fears that police will abuse the power to discriminate against trans people, or those who challenge gender norms, as the video exemplifies.
The laws in the two states also prevent the passing of new anti-discrimination laws that could protect the LGBTQ community.
In the video, a male police officer yells “You’re a man!” to a woman dressed in baggy clothes who yells back that she’s a girl, with a small crowd of people repeatedly insisting the same.
He then asks her if she has ID. After she says no, he retorts “Get out! Get out!” at her. At this point, the officer forces her out the door and her friends leave in solidarity.
Republican lawmakers, in defense of the new bathroom laws, have denied that they’re discriminatory and that asking for ID to go to the washroom is to protect people’s “privacy.”