Trans Man Detained After Using Women’s Restroom in South Carolina

Anti-trans lawmakers want to force trans men to use the women's restroom. Here’s what happened when one did.

Photo via Erin in the Morning

A 25-year-old South Carolina trans man has gone viral on TikTok, saying he was accosted in a bar by staff, called slurs, and detained by police after using the women’s restroom.

Luca Strobel, who posts under the Tiktok handle @FulltimeCowboy, said he had gone to pick up his friend, Caroline Frady, also 25, at Sand Dollar Social Club in Folly Beach on the night of Friday, May 16, to be her “sober ride” home.

After a lengthy drive to the bar, Strobel said he stepped inside to use the men’s room. However, there were no stalls—only urinals, rendering it inaccessible to him as a trans man.

At first, an employee warned both Strobel and his friend against entering the bathroom of the “opposite” sex, but after a brief back-and-forth, Strobel said he believed he had permission to do so. He also said he and Frady were the only two people in the restroom, which Frady confirmed to Erin in the Morning.

That’s when a man who said he was the bar owner burst into the women’s room, peering over the stall to look at Strobel as he used the restroom.

“They're looking over the top of the stall at me without my clothes on,” Strobel said in the video. “They can fully see me naked other than me having my shirt on, and they just start screaming that there's ‘a man’ in here.”

He said the owner and employee ejected him and his friend from the bar—grabbing and pushing them out as they reportedly called Strobel anti-trans slurs. The police were waiting at the door, Strobel said.

The officer cuffed him “so tight that I can't even feel my fingers,” Strobel said. “I still have a bruise on my knuckle.” Meanwhile, his arresting officer allegedly kept calling him a “little girl.”

“We didn't get booked, but we did get cuffed, and when we got to the station, we were asking a bunch of questions that they refused to answer,” Strobel said. “They just kept saying, ‘Take it up in court, take it up in court, take it up in court.’”

Sand Dollar Social Club could not be reached for comment. The Folly Beach Public Safety Department did not respond to a request for comment.

In a follow-up video, Strobel said he was released on $500 bond, hit with a trespass notice barring him from entering Sand Dollar Social Club, and issued a ticket for public intoxication and disorderly conduct. Frady said she received the same.

In an interview with Erin in the Morning, Strobel emphasized that he had not consumed a single drink—he was there for the sole purpose of being the designated driver. He says officers did not breathalyze him.

There is no state law in South Carolina preventing a trans man (or any man) from using the women’s room in public accommodations, such as a bar. However, there has been an avalanche of anti-trans bills nationwide seeking such mandates, including in South Carolina, where lawmakers enacted a version of this policy targeting schools in 2024, and re-introduced it in 2025.

In other words, Strobel was using the bathroom that many conservative lawmakers and anti-trans pundits want to force him to use—and he got arrested anyway, seemingly because of the panic surrounding gendered bathrooms.

This kind of harassment is no stranger to trans and gender nonconforming people—in April, a trans girl in Florida was arrested for using the women’s bathroom in an act of protest against that state’s anti-trans bathroom bill. She washed her hands in the sink before being escorted out by police. In February, cisgender lesbian in Arizona made headlines after documenting her own experience having police interrogate her gender while she was using a women’s restroom.

Erin in the Morning’s 2025 anti-trans legislation risk map designates South Carolina as a “high risk” state to travel. Last year, Governor Henry McMaster signed a trans-affirming health care ban for minors into law.

Strobel says he believes the bar staff knew he was trans because his shirt revealed his top surgery scars. Nonetheless, he said he refuses to “go stealth,” or hide his trans identity, because he believes that trans visibility in the South is important.

“Of course my safety is important to me, but at the end of the day, I want people to know that we exist,” Strobel told Erin in the Morning. “I want people to know that it's OK, that just because you live here doesn't mean that you can't be who you are.”

On the other hand, Strobel said this recent incident has made him feel that he may no longer have a choice; that the risk of further transphobic violence is too great to remain. Strobel said he is raising funds to relocate somewhere that he can finally, after all these years, not just feel authentic, but be safe.

This article contains embedded videos. To view them in full, follow the link below.

---

(c) 2025, Erin in the Morning

https://www.erininthemorning.com/p/trans-man-detained-after-using-womens