Today, that culture has gone global. The television series Pose (2018–2021), which employed the largest cast of trans actors in series history, dramatized the AIDS crisis and the housing crisis faced by trans youth. It showed how trans women of color built families (Houses) to survive rejection from their biological relatives.

In practice, the have always been intertwined because they share a common enemy: heteronormativity and the gender binary. A trans woman attracted to men was initially classified as a "homosexual male" by pathologists. A non-binary person dating a cisgender person defies easy labels. Historically, the police who raided gay bars were often just as violent toward trans women. The bathroom bills targeting trans people today are rooted in the same fear of "gender inversion" that fueled the persecution of gay men in the 1950s.

Marsha P. Johnson (a self-identified drag queen and trans activist) and Sylvia Rivera (a bisexual trans woman and founder of STAR—Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries) became the matriarchs of the movement. In the years immediately following Stonewall, the nascent "gay liberation" movement often tried to distance itself from "gender deviants" to appear more palatable to mainstream society. Rivera famously crashed a gay rights rally in 1973, shouting, "You all go to bars because of what I did for you!"

Why is this happening now? Many sociologists argue that after losing the battle against gay marriage, conservative movements pivoted to trans people as the "last acceptable target." This has placed the broader in a difficult position. Allies within the LGB community must decide whether to stand in solidarity with the "T" or to accept a "LGB without the T" compromise to gain conservative approval.