For #LGBThistorymonth I will be posting an #lgbtq #womaninhistory every day. Today is Lucy Hicks Anderson, a chef, socialite and prohibition-era entrepreneur who became the first trans woman to defend her identity in court.

From a young age, Anderson knew she was a girl and insisted on wearing dresses to school. After a doctor reassured her parents that this was fine, she changed her name to Lucy. After leaving home at 15, she used her talent for cooking to prepare and host lavish dinner parties for the wealthy families in Oxnard, California. She saved her earnings and purchased a boarding house where she ran a successful brothel and, as it was the era of prohibition, a speakeasy. Anderson’s position in the community initially protected her from persecution, in one instance she was arrested for selling liquor only to be bailed out by the town’s leading banker, who would have had to cancel his dinner party if she were in jail.

In 1944, she married Reuben Anderson. The following year, an outbreak of venereal disease in the Navy was traced back to Anderson’s brothel. All of the women employed there were medically examined, and the Doctor revealed his findings to the public. Anderson was forced to defend herself in court after she was charged with perjury for ‘lying’ on her marriage license. She insisted that a person could appear to be of one sex but actually belong to the other, stating “I defy any doctor in the world to prove that I am not a woman. I have lived, dressed, and acted just what I am—a woman.” Both she and her husband were given jail time, and once this was up they were forced to leave their home in Oxnard. They settled together in Los Angeles, where they led a quiet life until Lucy’s death in 1954.