Transgender Texan Ashley Smith just trolled Texas governor Greg Abbott in a the classiest way possibly.
On Friday, the republican governor, who has been pushing for an anti-transgender "bathroom bill" in private sessions, announced that he would be running for a second term in a speech in San Antonio. After he was done, he snapped this seemingly innocuous picture with his constituent, Ashley Smith, a self-proclaimed "architect, trans-woman, activist & snowflake."
Notice anything weird about the photo? There really isn't! That's the point.
Smith wanted to highlight the irony that if Abbot couldn't tell that Smith was trans when she was standing mere inches from him, he should not be telling trans people which bathroom to use.
"Once I had the photo, I was eager to get on social media just because I wanted to make a point," she told the The Houston Chronicle. "We're about 1-in-300 people, we're all over the place, we're your friends and your neighbors. Some of us are not immediately obvious as trans. And the idea that you are going to be able to enforce a bathroom bill, I mean the enforceability is just not there."
Smith uploaded the picture onto Facebook with the caption "How will the Potty Police know I'm transgender if the Governor doesn't?" She also added the hashtag #BATHROOMBUDDY over the photograph.
"I hope the photo I took with the governor illustrates the ridiculousness of passing a bathroom bill and lets more people see that transgender folks are just ordinary people who live and work among everyone else in our community," she says. "The state legislature should focus their attention on issues that matter to Texans, such as lowering our property taxes and fixing school finance."
