In Kansas, there is a law requiring people to use the bathroom according to the sex assigned to them at birth. A group of trans men decided to obey it exactly as written.
They call themselves the “compliance crew” and enter women’s bathrooms in libraries, swimming pools, and water parks across the state. They don’t do it secretly: they do it so that the discomfort and confusion they cause are laid bare for everyone to see.
It is a strategy with a name of its own, “malicious compliance”: following the letter of an absurd rule until its own absurdity becomes impossible to ignore. The law sought to erase trans people from public spaces. It ended up giving them the perfect stage to demonstrate how poorly conceived it was from the very beginning. 🏳️⚧️
