The language of ballroom—words like shade, read, slay, tea , and werk —has since migrated into mainstream internet slang, largely via the reality show RuPaul’s Drag Race . While drag is distinct from being transgender (drag is performance; being trans is identity), the two communities have historically overlapped in nightlife and activism. Many famous drag performers, such as Monica Beverly Hillz and Peppermint, came out as trans women on the show, forcing the drag community to confront its own issues with transphobia and misogyny. While LGB rights historically centered on decriminalizing homosexuality and legalizing same-sex marriage, the transgender community has fought a parallel but distinct battle: healthcare and legal recognition.
But the story begins even earlier. In 1966, three years before Stonewall, transgender women and drag queens fought back against police harassment at Compton’s Cafeteria in San Francisco’s Tenderloin district. The was one of the first recorded transgender uprisings in U.S. history. These events prove that transgender resistance is not a recent addition to LGBTQ+ history; it is a foundational pillar.
To understand modern LGBTQ+ culture, one cannot simply look at the surface of pride parades or legal victories. One must dig into the bars, the riots, the ballrooms, and the clinics where transgender individuals have fought not just for sexual freedom, but for the fundamental right to define their own gender . Popular history often marks the Stonewall Riots of 1969 as the birth of the modern gay rights movement. However, a closer examination reveals that transgender activists—specifically trans women of color like Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera—were on the front lines of that rebellion. Johnson, a self-identified drag queen and trans activist, and Rivera, a founding member of the Gay Liberation Front and the Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries (STAR), threw the now-legendary "shot glass heard round the world."