“I have gay friends who voted for Trump because they are tired of being told they have to date trans people,” says Marcus, a 45-year-old event planner in Chicago. “It’s ugly to hear, but it’s real. They feel like the trans community is demanding attraction, not just tolerance. And that feels like a violation of the gay identity.”
Gen Z does not separate sexuality and gender in the same way their predecessors did. According to a 2022 Pew Research study, nearly 5% of young adults in the U.S. identify as transgender or nonbinary. For them, the “LGBTQ culture” is not a historical artifact; it is the default water cooler.
This schism—the tension between “respectability politics” and radical existence—has defined the relationship ever since. For much of the 1980s and 90s, as the AIDS crisis decimated gay communities, the transgender community (particularly trans women of color) was relegated to the margins of the margins. The mainstream gay rights agenda focused on “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” and marriage—issues that largely benefited cisgender, white, middle-class gays and lesbians. Trans people, who were fighting for the right to exist in public without being killed, were often told to wait their turn. The last decade was supposed to be the “Transgender Tipping Point.” In 2014, Time magazine declared a “transgender moment.” Laverne Cox was on the cover. Caitlyn Jenner graced Vanity Fair . Television shows like Pose and Transparent brought trans narratives into living rooms. luciana blonde shemale
In the popular imagination, the gay liberation movement was led by white, middle-class men like Harvey Milk. But the actual foot soldiers of the early riots were trans women. Marsha P. Johnson, a Black trans woman and drag queen, is often credited with throwing the “shot glass heard round the world” at Stonewall. Sylvia Rivera, a Latina trans woman and co-founder of STAR (Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries), had to be physically dragged off the stage at the 1973 Christopher Street Liberation Day rally because the gay establishment didn’t want “drag queens” making the movement look bad.
This is the lie that splits the community. The trans movement has never demanded attraction. It has demanded respect. But in a culture where sex and gender are inextricably tangled, the confusion is weaponized. LGBTQ culture has historically been defined by its physical spaces: the gay bar, the lesbian coffee shop, the community center, the bathhouse. These were sanctuaries from a hostile world. “I have gay friends who voted for Trump
The transgender community is not the gay community. It has its own bars, its own dating culture (where “disclosure” is a life-or-death negotiation), its own medical struggles. To conflate them is to erase the specific violence of transphobia, which is rooted in the violation of the sex binary, not just the taboo of same-sex desire.
In 2023 alone, over 500 anti-LGBTQ bills were introduced in U.S. state legislatures. The vast majority targeted trans youth: bans on gender-affirming care, bans on trans athletes, bans on drag performances (a direct attack on gay and trans expression). The far right has successfully painted the transgender community as a grooming cartel. And that feels like a violation of the gay identity
The question is not whether the LGBTQ culture will survive the inclusion of the T. The question is whether the LGB can survive the abandonment of it.