In this chapter, Manion touches on--but doesn't fully explore--a couple of key differences between the trans-masculine experience in England and in America. English social structures around marriage, employment, charitable support, and rights to residence were deeply embedded in an assumption of static location. The parish you were born into was obliged to support you if you were indigent, which meant other parishes could be hostile to if they felt you might be (or become) a burden. Marriage laws were in a state of flux, but relied on communal familiarity with the couple's history to validate their status (reading the banns). But in America, everyone was on the move and many were very recent arrivals to the continent, to say nothing of a particular community. Changing one's presented identity in any respect was easier. And if people were not always automatically taken at face value when they showed up in a community, the residents were often willing to let their deeds and work speak for them. You were what you could do, whether it was a specific occupation or a gender. Americans also seemed a bit more willing to shrug and accept the situation when it turned out someone had a different background than originally believed. But in contrast to all that, the increasing professionalization of the police force, and social suspicion of "others", whether along class, nationality, race, or religious boundaries, meant that official scrutiny was often turned on the details of someone's life if they were morally suspect, not simply if they were legally suspect. This legal interest in controling gender presentation would increase across the 19th century and well into the 20th.
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