This Isn’t the First Time Conservatives Have Banned Cross-Dressing in America
The recent spree of cross-dressing bans has a precedent in the harassment, imprisonment, and deportation of so-called sexual deviants in the US since the 19th century. Civil rights campaigners defeated reactionaries in the ’60s. They can do the same today.
Drag Queen Brigitte Bandit laughs with supporters during a story-time reading at the Cheer Up Charlies dive bar on March 11, 2023 in Austin, Texas. (Brandon Bell / Getty Images)
Two weeks ago, Tennessee passed a new state law that limits drag shows. Under the law, male and female impersonators who appeal “to a prurient interest” are classified as adult-oriented entertainers and banned from performing on public property or in places where children might be present. Similar bills are pending in at least fourteen states, and more are likely to come.
These bills are the latest in a recent wave of attacks on trans and queer communities, emerging in the wake of multiple state laws that restrict trans people’s access to public bathrooms, school sports, and gender-affirming health care, and that ban teachers from discussing sexual or gender identity with elementary school students. Drag bans, however, also have clear connections to earlier laws against public cross-dressing that swept the nation in the nineteenth century and terrorized queer and trans communities in the 1950s and 1960s. The history of anti-cross-dressing laws provides useful context for understanding how gender nonconformity was policed in the past, and how similar laws might be challenged today.
Nineteenth-Century Cross-Dressing Laws
During the second half of the nineteenth century, multiple cities across the United States passed laws against public cross-dressing. The first appeared in St Louis, Missouri in 1843, followed by Columbus, Ohio in 1848 and Nashville, Tennessee in 1850. Over forty US cities passed similar laws before the end of the nineteenth century, and by the 1920s nineteen additional cities had adopted cross-dressing laws of their own.
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