A transgender actress and model raised eyebrows on Saturday by baring her breasts on the White House lawn at an event to celebrate Pride.
Rose Montoya, 27, was one of hundreds invited to the White House for the festivities where she met the president and first lady — before unbuttoning her dress and shaping her bare breasts on the South Lawn.
“Are we topless in the White House?!” says the person recording the clip, as Montoya moves her hands up and down, grinning.
Montoya shared an Instagram montage of the day with her 103,000 followers on Monday, seen dancing to the DJ and striking poses in front of landmarks like the Washington Monument and the White House Truman Balcony.
Montoya also meets Jill Biden and tries to take a selfie with the president – mistakenly using the camera on video instead of photo.
During her meeting with President Biden, she also said, “Trans rights are human rights.”
Rose Montoya, 27, attended a Pride party at the White House on Monday and posed topless
Montoya is seen with Joe Biden and declares: ‘Trans rights are human rights’
She captioned the video: “I had the honor of attending the White House Pride, the largest in history where the Pride flag flew for the first time.
“This is trans joy. We are unashamedly trans, queer and brown here in the White House.”
When Montoya’s topless video went viral, she pointed out that being topless in public wasn’t illegal in Washington DC.
She published a second video in which she declared, “Free the nipple!”
The Idaho-born model, who began her transition in 2015, films how she meets her hosts.
“Hello, Mr. President!” she says when greeting Joe Biden.
‘Hello how are you?’ he answers.
She says, “It’s an honor. Trans rights are human rights.’
In another part of the clip, Jill Biden tells the audience, “You are loved, you are beautiful, you are heard, you belong.”
Joe Biden calls them “some of the bravest and most inspiring people I’ve ever known.”
The president celebrated Pride Month and the LGBTQ+ community by unveiling the Pride flag between two American flags.
But Twitter users were quick to criticize Biden, arguing that the US flag should be at the center of any display featuring multiple national flags or pennants, according to the US Flag Code.
Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch, tweeted, “To advance the revolutionary transgender agenda aimed at children, Biden violates the basic principle of the US Flag Code and disrespects any US service member buried under his colors.”
He mentioned the US Flag Code §7. (e) which reads: ‘The flag of the United States of America shall be at the center and at the highest point of the group when a number of flags of states or localities or pennants of associations are grouped and displayed from staves. ‘
Dr. Roger Marshall tweeted that the display is “a disgrace.”
‘This is a disgrace. Not only does it violate the American Flag Code, but it is a glaring example of the White House’s incompetence and insistence on putting their social agenda above patriotism,” he wrote.
The Idaho-born model is also seen with Jill Biden dancing with the trans flag
President Joe Biden and his administration are being criticized online for violating the US Flag Code after displaying a rainbow-colored Pride flag between two US flags at the White House
The president celebrated Pride Month and the LGBTQ+ community with an unveiling of the exhibit
A participant uses a rainbow flag to keep cool at a Saturday Pride Month event at the White House in Washington, D.C.
Montoya has been open about her breast augmentation in September 2020, tracheal shave in November 2020 – to remove an Adam’s apple, and genioplasty in March 2021, which makes the chin more feminine.
Montoya has not had buttock surgery.
After her latest surgery, Montoya went viral after denouncing airport controls, calling them insensitive and inappropriate.
Montoya was flying from Phoenix to Los Angeles when she was stopped by security after the full-body scanner detected an “abnormality” between her legs.
Can we talk about how horrible it is sometimes to travel while being transgender? I always have a huge fear of going through security,” the Spanish model explained in her viral TikTokwhich has been viewed 19 million times.
“And this means I fully acknowledge the privilege of having all my documents correct,” she continued.
“So, for example, the gender marker on my driver’s license says female.
“But when we go through the scanner, there’s a male scanner and a female scanner in the TSA checkpoint.”
Montoya shared the humiliation she faced at airport security when she flew from Phoenix to Los Angeles in March 2021
When a traveler enters the scanner, a TSA officer presses a button that denotes a gender, male or female, based on the traveler’s appearance, according to the TSA website.
The system does not take trans people into account, making travel difficult and sometimes traumatic for members of the trans community.
“If you look at me, you know I look like a woman and I am a woman. So that’s great. I like having systemic privileges when I feel unsafe, and that’s in an airport,” Montoya continued.
“But when I go through the scanner, I always have a ‘deviation’ between my legs that sets off the alarm.”
Montoya, who has more than 481,000 TikTok followers, uses her platform to educate others about the difficulties transgender people face.
“Getting pulled over by the police or going on a trip is terrifying for many of us because our documentation is wrong,” she explained in a follow-up video.
“This is a big problem because there are a lot of gatekeepers.
“Sometimes it’s really hard to change your documents,” she noted.
“Many states require you to have surgery, which is also difficult to access in the first place. Most states don’t allow non-binary people to have a genderless marker on their identification documents.”
Montoya said the state of Idaho, where she was born, still doesn’t allow her to change her birth certificate, but all of her other legal documents have been changed to reflect she’s female.
Montoya said she felt disrespected and disrespected at the airport, stressing that “TSA needs to remove gender settings from their scanners”
Montoya said TSA should believe her if she tells them she’s a trans woman and doesn’t want to be petted by a man or scanned as a trans woman
“So while my legal documents are being changed, I really hope that in the future it will be easier for transgender people to change their documents,” she said.
Montoya revealed in another video that she found it easier to fly back home because she used a ‘Tuck Kit’ to tape her groin, which allowed her to go through the TSA scanner without setting it off.
Many people asked her what TSA can do better, and she pointed out that the problem is systemic.
“There is transphobia rooted in every power system in this country, so the root solution is to just believe trans people when they tell you who they are,” she said.
“TSA needs to remove the gender settings from their scanners, and they also need to believe me when I tell them I’m a trans woman and I don’t want to be petted by a man or scanned as a man because I’m not one.”