Texas Transgender Woman Fools Governor With Stealthy 'Bathroom Bill' Protest

AUSTIN, TX — Before returning to Austin to start the work week, the governor stopped by San Antonio on Friday to announce his bid for a second term. It proved the perfect setting for Ashley Smith to quietly make a political statement of her own, yet unbeknownst to the governor and everyone else at the gathering.

Until she got to her Facebook account, that is. Smith approached Gov. Greg Abbott for a photo for which the governor happily posed, as the San Antonio Express-News reported. What the governor probably didn't realize at the time once concluding his speech is that Smith is a transgender woman not exactly supportive of a so-called bathroom bill he's forcefully championed.

“How will the Potty Police know I'm transgender if the Governor doesn't?” she wrote as the caption to the photo alongside the governor, which she's since posted on her Facebook account. The reference is to a proposed bathroom bill seeking to control transgender people's public bathroom use.

Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick has been the most vocal proponent of a bathroom bill, while Abbott has emerged as its most prominent supporter. The issue fizzled out during the regular session of the Legislature without a vote before Abbott called for a special session this month for lawmakers to decide on the measure and a slew of other unresolved measures.

The bathroom bill aims to monitor bathroom use, barring transgender individuals from using bathrooms labeled with the gender of their personal identity. Instead, they would be forced to use the bathrooms matching their gender listed on their birth certificates.

By that logic, Smith would be forced to use the men's room. Scroll down to see her photo to realize how very incongruous her presence there would be.

Patrick has framed the issue as one involving public safety with the safety of women and children in mind to protect them from rapes or sexual assaults by transgender people, as he originally posited while on a national media circuit promoting the plan. He's since toned down that rhetoric and re-framed his bathroom bill support as one centered on privacy issues.

Despite the altered messaging, the effect on transgender people would be the same. A longtime LGBTQ activist in San Antonio, Smith told the newspaper she wanted to not only air her stance on the measure but also to deftly convey how unenforceable it would be.

"I did not think it (shouting) would work, or that I would be heard and was more interested in the getting the photograph and not getting thrown out," Smith told the Express-News.

If the aphorism is true that a picture is worth a thousand words, Smith made her own point abundantly clear for the world to see.

At last check, the photo's garnered more than 4,200 likes and has been shared more than 1,500 times. For his part, Abbott hasn't responded to multiple media outlets' requests for comment.

>>> Read the full story at San Antonio Express-News

Image via Wikimedia Commons