While the term "transgender" only gained widespread recognition in the 1960s, gender-diverse individuals have existed across cultures for millennia.

She thought about the arc of the LGBTQ+ culture she was a part of—not just the rainbows and parades, but the gritty, relentless, beautiful machinery of survival. It was Henri’s rice-cooker spaghetti. It was Marcus’s mutual aid basement. It was Fatima’s baklava, proof that faith and queerness could coexist. It was a seventeen-year-old in a leather jacket finding a couch for the night.

“In the 2000s, the strategy was: ‘We’re just like you, except we love the same gender,’” recalls Marcus, a 55-year-old gay trans man who transitioned in the early 2000s. “Trans people threw a wrench in that. We said, ‘Actually, we don’t fit your categories at all.’ A lot of gay men and lesbians who fought for marriage equality didn’t know what to do with us.”

While a gay person fights for marriage or adoption rights, a trans person often fights for the right to use a public bathroom or access a doctor who won't mock them. The stakes are different.