Is it a right or privelege? when the law forbidding it is gone?
I think neither. It is not in the Constitution that women can wear pants or men skirts. It is forbidden in the Bible - but that rule only is for orthadox Jews.
Is it a “right” or “privelige” for “men” to wear pants?
Neither.
As one of the original womens libbers, and an avid womens historian, I can tell you that it was illegal!!! for women to wear pants in most states until the 1970’s.
It was considered “sexual perversion” by everyone for any woman to wear, or want to wear pants, or for that matter, for any man to wear a skirt, until Marlene Dietrich started wearing pants in public in the 1930’s.
A few states legalized pants for women and skirts for men in the 1960’s, but most of them did not actually repeal those laws that forbid women from wearing pants or men from wearing skirts(crossdressing) until in the mid-1970’s.
My own state legalized pants for women in 1974. My church admitted pants wearing women in 1972. The nicest restaurants in my location, started admitted women in 1969, the last one in gave up forbiding women in pants in 1973.
World war 2, allowed many women to wear pants without being arrested, as long as they were going to work, or engaged in some activity that could be used as an “excuse” as to why we needed or wanted to wear pants(work, snow skiiing, hunting, etc).
Starting in the 1940’s, and increasingly thru the 1950’s, women were arrested less and less frequently up until the 1960’s, when arrests virtually ended.
Wide spread crossdressing of many many women in the 1950’s, and esp. after the 1960’s, made further arrests and convictions of pants wearing women nearly impossible once the 1960’s began.
The last arrests and convictions that I remember, in the 1960’s, were of women who were wearing slacks that had zippers in the front(clearly not womens slacks, or so the court said).
Prior to 1974, women wearing were legally refused entry into churches, restarurants, were suspended from school, and were fired fom their jobs if they showed up wearing pants. I witnessed it. Even famous female movie stars were refused entry into the classiest restaurants in California up thru the late 1960’s and early 1970’s.
The women who I personally knew, who were fired or refused entry into restaurants had no “legal recourse”, they could not sue, or complain to the union, because the company, the church, or the business, was just “following the law”.
Women are now allowed to vote(1850’s-1920), smoke(1920’s), go into a bar(1920’s), wear pants(1970’s), ride astride a horse without a sidesaddle, go to medical school, etc. You could say that voting is a right, but I dont think it is a “right” to ride a horse without a sidesaddle.
These are more accurately called social mores or social customs, not rights, nor priveleges, and is what is considered “perversion” by our state legislators.