[pessimizer]

> When describing the Stonewall Uprising, the website now reads: "Before the 1960s, almost everything about living openly as a lesbian, gay, bisexual (LGB) person was illegal, but the events at the Stonewall Inn sparked fresh momentum for the LGB civil rights movement!"

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.

[delecti]

Yes. Raids on queer bars would round up people up, and arrest any gender non-conforming people wearing fewer than three articles of clothing of their assigned sex. Terminology was different at the time, but people we would probably now describe as trans men or trans women were some of the main targets of those arrests.

[emilamlom]

There were laws in many places in the states that banned "crossdressing" which was applied to trans and gay people alike. While the specific term "transgender" hasn't been around very long, the gay community has always included a lot of gender-nonconformity. It's part of the reason gender is lumped in with sexuality in the first place. Anti-homosexuality laws would've applied to trans people as well. I still remember how in the 90's trans women were considered feminine gay men by people outside the community. I can look up the sources if you like, but that's my understanding.

[pessimizer]

I was asking about any law that made gender expression illegal. Using any kind of terminology.

[emilamlom]

In that case, yes there were. They were generally worded as anti-crossdressing laws, but that is what they were. Here's a quick excerpt from the wikipedia article on cross-dressing that sums it up well:

> 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.

[earthboundkid]

Impersonating a woman/man was a crime. See the intro to this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X__VKNw0XiI&t=234s

[gumby271]

The most obvious example is the "Three Article Rule" that enforced that you must wear at least 3 articles of clothing that "match" your assigned sex at birth. These were easy rules for police to use to justify arresting people. I'm sure others more in the know can provide similar laws and ordinances that affected trans and cross dressing people.

[pessimizer]

If that's the most obvious example:

> 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...

[gumby271]

I never said it was a law, it's a rule of thumb used by police to harass and arrest gender non-conforming people. You seem determined to find some formal law that made their existence illegal, and I'm curious why.

[kevingadd]

https://jacobin.com/2023/03/cross-dressing-law-united-states...

> 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.