Drag performance (which is distinct from being transgender, though many trans people have roots in drag) serves as a bridge. Shows like Pose and RuPaul’s Drag Race have brought ballroom culture—a scene founded by Black and Latinx trans women and gay men—into living rooms worldwide. The "ballroom" vernacular (voguing, "realness," categories) is now a global language of dance and fashion.

The trans community has taught LGBTQ culture that pride is not about assimilation into a rigid system, but about the radical act of being authentically oneself. They have taught us that gender is a spectrum, that identity is sacred, and that the most beautiful form of resistance is living your truth out loud.

In an era when "cross-dressing" laws were used to police anyone who did not conform to rigid gender norms, trans women and drag queens were on the front lines. Their presence at the Stonewall Inn was not incidental. For them, the ability to exist in public without fear of arrest was not a matter of sexual privacy but of .