Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2022
Abstract
Scholars are still unsure why American cities passed cross-dressing bans over the closing decades of the nineteenth century. By the 1960s, cities in every region of the United States had cross-dressing regulations, from major metropolitan centers to small cities and towns. They were used to criminalize gender non-conformity in many forms – for feminists, countercultural hippies, cross-dressers (or “transvestites”), and people we would now consider transgender. Starting in the late 1960s, however, criminal defendants began to topple cross-dressing bans.
Scholars are still unsure why American cities passed cross-dressing bans over the closing decades of the nineteenth century. By the 1960s, cities in every region of the United States had cross-dressing regulations, from major metropolitan centers to small cities and towns. They were used to criminalize gender non-conformity in many forms - for feminists, countercultural hippies, cross-dressers (or “transvestites”), and people we would now consider transgender. Starting in the late 1960s, however, criminal defendants began to topple cross-dressing bans.
Disciplines
Civil Rights and Discrimination | Law | Law and Gender | Sexuality and the Law
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Recommended Citation
Kate Redburn,
Before Equal Protection: The Fall of Cross-Dressing Bans and the Transgender Legal Movement,
40
Law & Hist. Rev.
679
(2022).
Available at:
https://scholarship.law.columbia.edu/faculty_scholarship/4654
Included in
Civil Rights and Discrimination Commons, Law and Gender Commons, Sexuality and the Law Commons
Comments
© 2023 The Authors. This article has been published in the Law and History Review and is free to view and download for private research and study only. Not for re-distribution or re-use.