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“It is,” Mara said. “But look at this scarf. Look at this food. Look at this view.”

Mara remembered those wounds. She had been denied housing in a “gay-friendly” building in 2012 because the landlord, a cisgender gay man, said “the other tenants might be confused by you.” She had been told by a lesbian support group that her “male socialization” made her a threat. And she had watched as a beloved trans elder, a woman named Celia, died alone in a hospital because no LGBTQ hospice existed that understood her needs. shemale pantyhose pic

Below them, the city hummed—a place still full of danger, but also full of doorways that had been nailed shut and were now, slowly, being pried open. “It is,” Mara said

In the 2010s, as trans visibility exploded— Orange Is the New Black , Laverne Cox on Time magazine, Jazz Jennings on TV—a new tension emerged. Some cisgender gay men and lesbians worried that “T” was taking over. “Why is everything about trans people now?” became a muttered refrain at Pride planning meetings. Meanwhile, some trans activists argued that mainstream gay culture had become too focused on assimilation—on weddings, on military service, on respectability politics—while trans people were still fighting for the right to use a public bathroom or see a doctor. Look at this view

For decades, the transgender community fought alongside gay and lesbian activists at Stonewall, at Compton’s Cafeteria, in the early HIV/AIDS crisis. Trans women of color—Marsha P. Johnson, Sylvia Rivera—were on the front lines. Yet when the movement professionalized, when marriage equality became the shiny goal, trans people were often sidelined. Mainstream LGBTQ organizations dropped “transgender” from their names. Some gay bars banned drag kings and queens who weren’t “performers.” Lesbian feminist spaces questioned whether trans women were “really women.”

Jamal took a long drag and exhaled. “Sounds like a lot of work.”