When the magistrate noted that the state’s masquerade law was intended only to criminalize costumed dress used as a cover for another crime, the police were forced to let the man go. In Brooklyn in 1913, for instance, a person who we would today call a transgender man was arrested for “masquerading in men’s clothes,” smoking and drinking in a bar. That these laws were often ill-suited to the task didn’t matter. recounts in his encyclopedic book Gaylaw, “by the beginning of the 20 century, gender inappropriateness… was increasingly considered a sickness and public offense.”Įxisting laws against costumed dress, even if they didn’t specifically mention cross dressing-collectively referred to as “masquerade laws”-were increasingly pressed into service around the country to punish gender variance. The state originally intended the law to punish rural farmers, who had taken to dressing like Native Americans to fight off tax collectors. It declared it a crime to have your “face painted, discolored, covered, or concealed, or otherwise disguised… in a road or public highway.” New York’s, dating back to 1845, was one of the oldest. Laws criminalizing cross-dressing spread like wildfire around the United States in the mid-19th century. How the Stonewall Riots Sparked a Movement Masquerade Laws Revived to Target LGBTQ
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