The modern voguing and ballroom culture—immortalized in the documentary Paris is Burning—was a sanctuary for Black and Latinx transgender women and gay men. In balls, participants walked categories like "Realness" (passing as cisgender, straight professional) and "Face." This culture gave birth to slang like shade, reading, and werk. While gay men popularized it, transgender women like Pepper LaBeija and Dorian Corey were its matriarchs. Today, shows like Pose (which centered trans actresses like Mj Rodriguez and Indya Moore) have brought this intersectional culture to the global mainstream.
The alliance between transgender individuals and the broader LGBTQ movement was not born out of convenience, but out of shared persecution. In the mid-20th century, police raids on gay bars did not discriminate between a gay man, a lesbian, or a transgender woman. They arrested anyone who defied rigid gender and sexual norms.
When we recount the birth of the modern LGBTQ rights movement, the Stonewall Riots of 1969 are often cited as the catalyst. However, mainstream history has frequently erased the central figures of that uprising: transgender women of color. shemales gods
Marsha P. Johnson, a Black transgender woman, and Sylvia Rivera, a Latina transgender woman, were not just participants at Stonewall; they were frontline fighters. Rivera famously threw one of the first Molotov cocktails. In the aftermath, they co-founded Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries (STAR) , one of the first organizations in the United States dedicated to sheltering homeless LGBTQ youth—specifically trans youth who were rejected by their families and often alienated by mainstream gay organizations.
For years, the "T" was an afterthought. Early gay liberation movements, seeking social acceptance, often distanced themselves from "gender deviants," fearing that trans people were "too radical" and would hurt their chances of assimilation. This tension—the fight for respectability versus the fight for radical inclusion—remains a thread woven through LGBTQ culture. Today, shows like Pose (which centered trans actresses
The most persistent myth in LGBTQ history is that the 1969 Stonewall Riots were led exclusively by "white gay men." The truth is far more diverse—and far more transgender.
The first brick thrown, by many accounts, was thrown by a Black transgender woman named Marsha P. Johnson. Alongside Sylvia Rivera, a Latina transgender activist and drag queen, Johnson resisted police brutality at the Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village. Rivera, co-founder of the Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries (STAR), fought tirelessly for homeless transgender youth—a population largely rejected by mainstream gay rights groups of the era. They arrested anyone who defied rigid gender and
Despite their heroism, Johnson and Rivera were often pushed to the margins of the mainstream gay rights movement in the 1970s and 80s. At the 1973 Christopher Street Liberation Day rally, Rivera was booed and silenced when she tried to speak about the plight of transgender and gender-nonconforming people in prison. The gay establishment at the time viewed trans activists as "too radical" or "embarrassing."
This tension—between the "respectable" LGB mainstream and the radical trans fringe—has never fully disappeared. But the lesson of Stonewall is clear: Transgender people were not latecomers to the LGBTQ movement. They were its architects.