Historically, transgender and gender-nonconforming individuals have been the vanguard of the movement. At the Stonewall Inn in 1969, figures like Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera—women of color who existed outside traditional gender norms—were instrumental in turning a police raid into a revolution. Despite this, the decades that followed often saw the mainstream gay and lesbian movement distance itself from trans issues in a bid for "respectability." This tension created a dual struggle: fighting for legal rights in a cisnormative society while carving out space for gender identity within a culture initially focused primarily on sexual orientation.