How Jake Anjeli’s Attire Connects To America’s Racist Past and History of LGBT Discrimination
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AZ Central writes of Anjeli: “Among the supporters of President Donald Trump who mobbed their way into the U.S. Capitol on Tuesday, one – unmistakable in his fur, horned hat and painted face – was Jake Angeli, a QAnon supporter who has been a fixture at Arizona right-wing political rallies over the past year. Angeli was seen in photographs from Washington, D.C., amid protesters who turned violent and stormed the building, causing both chambers to suspend their intended action of the day: certifying the results of the presidential election for former vice president Joe Biden.”
One of the fastest rumors to circulate among the right wing was that the person running around DC wasn’t Anjeli at all, but an actor paid to look like him.
And there is an actor running around who sometimes plays him, or rather a parody version on his OnlyFans. His names is @Illuxx1.
#JakeAngeli Last one! pic.twitter.com/9KhqKkDGXN
— Illuxx (@Illuxx1) January 8, 2021
Gonna start calling this dude Dumpster John Snow #DumpsterJohnSnow pic.twitter.com/REiKnQgUjS
— Lizz “Watch my special @ Vimeo On-Demand” Winstead (@lizzwinstead) January 9, 2021
“Being masked or in any manner disguised by unusual or unnatural attire or facial alteration, loiters, remains or congregates in a public place with other persons so masked or disguised, or knowingly permits or aids persons so masked or disguised to congregate in a public place; except that such conduct is not unlawful when it occurs in connection with a masquerade party or like entertainment if, when such entertainment is held in a city which has promulgated regulations in connection with such affairs, permission is first obtained from the police or other appropriate authorities.”
Trump’in savunmasını @RudyGiulianli yapacakmış
What about cute Jack Angeli ???
#JakeAngeli arrested https://t.co/KtbG2DzAFv
— Mel ???? (@Bluegiilllsnfzs) January 9, 2021
Angeli, in a 2020 interview with The Arizona Republic, said that he wears the fur bonnet, paints his face and walks around shirtless with ragged pants as a way to attract attention. Then, he said, he is able to speak to people about his beliefs about QAnon and other truths he says remain hidden.
The outfit stems from a common practice among late 17th and 18th century American insurgents who dressed in this way to parrot indigenous styles because they literally would kill tax collectors sent from Washington.
— David Begnaud (@DavidBegnaud) January 9, 2021
There’s a fascinating connection to LGBT history in Anjeli’s story. To combat the insurgents, the government passed a bunch of “masquerade” laws making it illegal for men to wear make-up. By the mid 20 the century, there were few active members, but law enforcement had a new menace: queer men and trans women who became the target of the laws.
Rusty Brown started dressing as a man, first as a disguise to get a factory job since she lost her war-time position as a machinist at the close of World War II, then in order to work as a drag king. This is when her troubles began.
“I have been arrested in New York more times than I have fingers and toes,” she told an interviewer from the San Francisco Lesbian and Gay History Project in 1983, “for wearing pants and a shirt.” At that time, she says, “you had to have three pieces of female attire” in order to avoid being arrested for cross-dressing.
In LGBTQ circles around the country, this was known as the three-article rule—or the three-piece law. It was referenced everywhere—including in reports about arrests in Greenwich Village in the weeks and months leading up to the 1969 Stonewall Riots.
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.
Masquerade Laws Revived to Target LGBTQ
The state originally intended the law to punish rural farmers, who had taken to dressing like Native Americans to fight off tax collectors. But as scholar William N. Eskridge, Jr. recounts in his encyclopedic book Gaylaw, “by the beginning of the 20 century, gender inappropriateness… was increasingly considered a sickness and public offense.”
Existing 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.
Laws criminalizing cross-dressing spread like wildfire around the United States in the mid-19th century. New York’s, dating back to 1845, was one of the oldest. It declared it a crime to have your “face painted, discolored, covered, or concealed, or [be] otherwise disguised… [while] in a road or public highway.”
The smile. The wave. The mugshot. pic.twitter.com/GvkoSDInbT
— David Begnaud (@DavidBegnaud) January 9, 2021
“I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose voters”
Donald Trump 1/24/16 pic.twitter.com/IqTfu89SLl— David Begnaud (@DavidBegnaud) January 11, 2021
real name: Jacob Anthony Chansley Angelshttps://t.co/rUYudF0iyG
— F.Micheli (@franki_kuka) January 9, 2021