LGB people often leave trans folks behind in times of struggle. Let’s not let this happen again.

The T in LGBTQ+ is not an inconvenience. It never was. And the fight for our shared humanity is not a fight any of us can win alone.

Jordan Olsen, Executive Director of the Transgender Strategy CenterJuly 15, 2026, 12:00 pm EDT

(Read the commentary at LGBTQnation.com)

“The gays hate us,” said the young trans woman of color on the other end of the phone. She was calling to ask for help starting her own organization. Then she added, “They steal our words, our culture, but don’t want to help us when we’re literally fighting for our lives.”

We at the Transgender Strategy Center have been conducting capacity-building intake calls like this since 2019. We hear from trans leaders and allies across the country, and we really listen to their stories. That call stuck with me because she said out loud what a lot of trans elders have known for decades, long before the Stonewall Riots were repackaged into a feel-good narrative: When times get hard for the queer community, trans people get left behind.

And times have never been harder.

Right now, trans people are being labeled as domestic terrorists by sitting politicians. Hundreds of anti-trans bills have been introduced in state legislatures in recent years. Funding for trans-specific services is evaporating as government grants are reversed and philanthropy tightens its belt. And in the middle of all this, the silence from large parts of the gay community is deafening.

It is frustrating to scroll through social media and see cis gay men post about “protecting the dolls” for likes, only to dig deeper to find their circles don’t include a single trans person, let alone one of color. It is more frustrating to learn that for every $100 philanthropy gives to LGBTQ+ issues, only about three cents goes specifically to trans issues, according to the 2024 LGBTQ Funders Tracking Report. That was the landscape even before this administration took office.

At a national health conference not long ago, I sat through a panel of mostly cis gay men bragging about fighting executive orders to recover millions in funding. When I asked how the trans community was involved, the room went quiet. Eventually, the answers came: Trans people are “hard to work with,” “hard to find,” and “should be at the table.”

In three decades of the HIV/AIDS movement, the largest organizations received funding for trans programming but almost never elevated a trans person to executive leadership. Many of the trans leaders we’ve served at the Transgender Strategy Center started their own organizations precisely because of that gap and because no one else was going to fill it.

We have been told by philanthropic advisors to consider removing the word “trans” from our funding applications. We have been told to consider changing our organization’s name entirely. We have been told that not everyone will survive this funding crisis, and that small, boots-on-the-ground organizations – the ones doing the unglamorous work of health outreach to the most vulnerable – are the ones most likely to disappear.

A comedian once joked about seeing people at a Pride parade waving the newer Progress Pride flag with its trans, nonbinary, and people-of-color stripes, alongside others waving the old rainbow flag. “Is the old rainbow flag like the gay Confederate flag?” he asked. “Is there a gay civil war?” It lands as a joke, but it stings because it’s not entirely wrong. There is a segment of the LGB community that seems to say, “Everything was great until they came along.”

But here is what gives me hope.

In the face of escalating attacks, true allies are stepping up – not with hashtags, but with action. Pedro Pascal has been unrelentingly vocal in defense of trans people, using his platform to push back against erasure. Ariana Grande made a significant donation to trans and queer organizations, putting real resources behind the rhetoric. These aren’t isolated gestures. Across the country, I’m hearing from gay men who are showing up at city council meetings, who are calling their representatives, who are writing checks to trans-led organizations when no one is watching.

Some are offering more than money. They are offering protection — literally. In cities where trans people face harassment and violence, I’ve heard stories of gay men walking trans women home from bars, standing between them and hecklers at protests. Organization allies like Funders for LGBTQ Issues are opening their professional networks to trans organizers like us who have been locked out of every other door.

That solidarity is not new. At the height of the AIDS epidemic, trans women, lesbians, and cis women cared for the gay men who were being wiped out by a disease the government refused to acknowledge. That history of mutual care is the real story of our community, not the sanitized version that edits out the people who were there from the beginning. Trans people have existed throughout history and across cultures. We have been at every uprising, every movement, every fight for dignity. We contribute to society as much as anyone else. And we are not going anywhere.

To the gay men who are showing up: We see you, and we are grateful. To those who haven’t yet: now would be a good time. The T in LGBTQ+ is not an inconvenience. It never was. And the fight for our shared humanity is not a fight any of us can win alone.

Keep the “protect the dolls” posts. But back them up with something real. Speak up for us when we can’t be in the room. Walk alongside us at protests. Give your financial support directly to trans organizations.

The Transgender Strategy Center will keep doing the quiet, unglamorous work of empowering trans leaders and organizations to survive this moment and serve their communities. But we cannot do it alone – and we shouldn’t have to.

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