According to the Human Rights Campaign, at least 80% of reported homicides of trans people in the last decade have been Black trans women. This is not a coincidence. It is the intersection of transphobia, misogyny, and anti-Black racism.
The overlap occurs because trans people have historically found refuge in gay and lesbian spaces. Furthermore, many trans people also identify as gay, lesbian, bisexual, or queer post-transition. The lines are blurred—and that blurriness is exactly where the magic of LGBTQ culture lives. The popular narrative of the LGBTQ rights movement often begins with the Stonewall Inn in 1969. But for the transgender community, the war started earlier.
The mainstream narrative often sanitizes Stonewall, but the two most famous figures who threw the first punches were Marsha P. Johnson (a self-identified drag queen, trans activist, and sex worker) and Sylvia Rivera (a Latina trans woman and co-founder of STAR—Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries). They fought for homeless queer and trans youth when no one else would.
A full three years before Stonewall, transgender women and drag queens in San Francisco’s Tenderloin district fought back against police harassment at Compton’s Cafeteria. At the time, police routinely arrested trans women for "female impersonation" or "masculine attire." This uprising, largely forgotten by mainstream history, was led by trans women of color.
