Florida’s Anti-Trans Bathroom Law Spurs Harrowing Vigilante Attacks
Rajee Narinesingh was dining at a Florida restaurant with friends in October when a woman stopped her in the women’s bathroom and told her to leave.
“You don’t belong in this bathroom,” she said. “You need to get out.” Narinesingh told The Daily Beast that the other diner looked at her like she was the “scum of the earth.” “If looks could kill, I’d be 18 feet under the ground,” she said.
The two of them were alone in the bathroom, and Narinesingh feared the worst might happen—especially having transitioned during the 1980s, an even less tolerant time than today. Right before she started taking her first steps into womanhood, she was pulled off a city bus in Philadelphia at 18 years old and beaten by six men who brutalized her as bystanders watched.