Were there any laws that affected trans people at all, though? There were laws against homosexual sex (covered by LGB), but I don't recall any laws about expressing gender identity.
Were there any laws that affected trans people at all, though? There were laws against homosexual sex (covered by LGB), but I don't recall any laws about expressing gender identity.
> The birth of anti-cross-dressing laws (also known as masquerade laws and the three-article rule)[31] stemmed from the increase in non-traditional gender expression during the spread of America's frontier, and the will to reinforce the two-gender system which was threatened by those who deviated from it.[32] Some of the earlier cases of US arrests made due to cross-dressing are seen in 19th century Ohio. In 1848, Ohio passed a law which prohibited its citizens from publicly presenting themselves "in a dress not belonging to his or her sex," and during the 1850s, over 40 cities in the US went on to pass anti-cross-dressing laws.[33] By the time the US entered WWI, over 150 cities had passed anti-cross-dressing ordinances.
> The problem is, the law technically never existed. Instead, accounts suggest that police generally used old, often unrelated laws to target LGBT people throughout the 1940s, ‘50s and ‘60s.
1st hit: https://www.history.com/news/stonewall-riots-lgbtq-drag-thre...
> Anti-cross-dressing laws were the exclusive province of local governments, and no state or federal legislature directly outlawed this type of dress. Several states did, however, pass anti-disguise or masquerade laws that encompassed cross-dressing when enforced. In 1845, for example, New York’s state legislature passed an anti-disguise law that made it a crime to appear in public with a painted face or when wearing a disguise designed to prevent identification. Passed in response to rural workers who wore women’s dresses and masks while participating in anti-rent protests, the law was later used to criminalize a wide range of cross-dressing practices.
> Similarly, in 1874, California’s state legislature passed a masquerade law in response to gambling saloon dealers who wore disguises to avoid identification by undercover police. As with New York’s anti-disguise statute, local police repurposed California’s masquerade law to arrest multiple people for public cross-dressing over the next one hundred years.