The relationship between the transgender community and broader LGBTQ culture is not always peaceful. It has been marked by betrayal, as when Sylvia Rivera was booed off a stage in the 1970s. But it has also been marked by redemption, as when the same community posthumously honors Rivera and Johnson with monuments in Greenwich Village.

If LGBTQ culture has a distinct aesthetic—irreverent, campy, brave, and deeply expressive—it owes much of that vocabulary to the transgender community.

When HIV/AIDS decimated the gay male population in the 1980s, the transgender community, particularly trans women who had sex with men, faced a dual epidemic: the virus itself and systemic healthcare exclusion. Trans people were often denied entry to gay-led AIDS service organizations because of their gender identity. In response, trans activists built their own infrastructures. This era cemented a core tenet of LGBTQ culture: . To be LGBTQ was no longer solely about sexual orientation; it was about resisting all forms of state and medical violence.