ABSTRACT
If bisexuals have found an uneasy acceptance within the queer community, transgender and gender-nonconforming people still often face outright hostility. This is in some ways ironic, because throughout most of recorded history, homosexuality has been seen as inextricably linked to gender variance. Moreover, the early radicals in the gay activist movement were often transgender. Of course, transgender people existed in the United States despite the laws that made it difficult for them to be public in any way. Not only was the likelihood of ‘passing’ as a woman an important criteria for gaining access to medical care, physicians counseled and sometimes required their patients to avoid socializing with other transsexual individuals. The 1990s became a turning point in transgender activism and the beginnings, finally, of the merger of the transgender community with lesbian, gay, and bisexual groups. Since the dawn of the twenty-first century, activists have secured substantial civil rights gains for transgender people.
