Historically, society did not distinguish between a man who wore a dress because he was gay and a man who wore a dress because she was a woman. The law, the police, and the medical establishment lumped "gender inversion" and "homosexuality" into the same basket of deviance. Because of this violent overlap, the transgender community and the LGB community were forced into the same underground spaces, creating a shared culture of resistance.

A transgender person can identify as straight, gay, lesbian, bisexual, asexual, or pansexual. Solidarity and Friction

: Many Indigenous cultures, such as those in North America, historically held less binary views of gender, which were later disrupted by colonial binary gender systems.