๐ณ๏ธโ๐๐บTrans on trial / Kansas
๐ณ๏ธโ๐๐บ2-Gay in History๐บ๐ณ๏ธโ๐
In 1945, a Black woman named Lucy Hicks Anderson stood in a California courtroom and proudly proclaimed the gender she had lived as all her life as her own.
Born in the 1880s in Kentucky to a former slave and assigned male at birth, Lucy insisted from childhood that she was a girl. A doctor advised her mother to raise her as one and Lucy grew into a confident, stylish woman who ran a boarding house in Oxnard, hosted lively social gatherings, and married men.
At nearly age 60, the government discovered her assigned sex at birth and charged her with perjury for signing a marriage license as a woman.
Her response became one of the earliest recorded declarations of trans identity in American history. (The absolute earliest is from 1836 when Mary Jones, a black woman in NYC, was arrested)
Lucy testified, โI defy any doctor in the world to prove that I am not a woman.โ
The court gave her no justice. She was convicted in 1945, imprisoned, and forced out of the life she had built.
Last month Kansas enacted a new law, which invalidates all trans peopleโs drivers licenses and birth certificates that accurately reflect their gender and mandates that all state records only reflect assigned sex.
But it goes much further by restricting trans people from using restrooms and locker rooms consistent with their gender identity and allows private citizens to report trans folks for a $1,000 bounty. Meanwhile trans people are forced to pay $1,000 per violation and face up to 6 months in state prison where they will be denied medical care and housed as the incorrect gender.
To all our Trans friends, get out of Kansas if you possibly can, and stick to blue states, though nowhere will be safe for any of us if this continues to escalate, and it will.
