Many people today, including LGBTQ people, consider queer and trans visibility to be a progressive and liberatory goal. One rationale for this conviction is the idea that if queer and trans people are more widely seen, they will become more widely accepted. A 1996 study at the University of California, Davis, supported this idea: the psychology researchers showed that people tend to have more positive attitudes about gay men and lesbians if they know someone from those groups.[1] In many ways, this idea served as the backbone for mainstream gay and lesbian rights activism in the 1990s and early 2000s, which coalesced around the fight for so-called “same-sex" marriage. That battle seemed to have been settled by the U.S. Supreme Court’s Obergefell v. Hodges decision in 2015, which established a federal right to marriage equality.

At the time of this writing in October 2025, the permanence of the Obergefell victory is less certain. Kim Davis, the county-clerk-turned-political-celebrity who famously refused to perform marriage ceremonies for queer couples, recently submitted a petition to the Supreme Court requesting that it overturn the ruling. Davis is not alone in this effort: in June, the largest Protestant denomination in the United States, the Southern Baptist Convention, voted to actively seek to overturn the ruling.[2] Queer and trans Americans must wait with bated breath to see if any of these efforts will be successful.

The challenge to Obergefell is only the most recent example in a vast nationwide backlash against LGBTQ people generally, and trans people specifically. After several years of upticks in anti-trans legislation at the state level and a marked decrease in public support for trans rights as evidenced by surveys, President Donald Trump embraced transphobic rhetoric and policy decisions.[3] Most recently, in the wake of conservative activist Charlie Kirk’s assassination in September, attacks on gender nonconformity crystalized into repeated accusations from the administration that trans people are violent and dangerous.[4] The Heritage Foundation, the think tank that has most significantly influenced Trump’s policies, suggests that “Transgender Ideology-Inspired Violent Extremism…has played a role in the majority of mass shootings at schools,” a clear example of disinformation, in order to urge the Federal Bureau of Investigation to target “transgender terrorism.”[5]

There are clear parallels between the current moment and the time frame that this exhibit addresses: the omnipresent potential of violence, state-sponsored backlash against gender and sex nonconformity, attacks on civil rights, and the increasing inaccessibility of trans medicine.[6] Returning to these histories enables a timely and vital interrogation of the costs and benefits of being seen as gender nonconforming in times of social backlash.[7] Thomas Oliver Mapes, Pauli Murray, Gladys Bentley, and the two “Billys” all became part of history, but not always on their own terms. The two Billys risked financial expense, mockery, refusal, and risky and painful medical procedures to pursue self-actualization from a field with little interest in them. Thomas Mapes’s family knew about his gender because he transitioned while living with extended family. To them, he was visibly gender nonconforming. However, being discovered by others played a definite role in his horrific death, weather he committed suicide or was murdered. Bentley and Murray experienced the intersectional peril faced by gender nonconforming people of color, meeting their own times with a strategic and responsive politics of visibility. They chose visibility when the political landscape allowed for subversive expression, and they concealed their identities when doing so offered needed protection. These experiences collectively demonstrate risks and benefits of being erased, being made visible, and exercising one’s political and historical agency through selective self-censorship.

These strategies might not neatly correspond with the needs of the present, but their examples invite gender-nonconforming people today to seek dynamic strategies of visibility and invisibility in hopes of protecting trans life in this moment and the ones to come.

[1] Gregory M. Herek and John P. Capitanio, “‘Some of My Best Friends’: Intergroup Contact, Concealable Stigma, and Heterosexuals’ Attitudes Toward Gay Men and Lesbians, Personality & Social Psychology Bulletin 22, no. 4 (1996): 412-24, https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167296224007.

[2] Ruth Graham, “Southern Baptists Endorse Effort to Overturn Same-Sex Marriage,” New York Times, June 10, 2025.

[3] Pew Research Center, “Americans Have Grown More Supportive of Restrictions for Trans People in Recent Years,” February 26, 2025, https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/02/26/americans-have-grown-more-supportive-of-restrictions-for-trans-people-in-recent-years/; Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, “ADL and GLAAD Report: More Than 350 Anti-LGBTQ+ Hate and Extremism Incidents Recorded as Anti-LGBTQ+ Rhetoric Soared,” June 22, 2023, https://glaad.org/releases/adl-and-glaad-report-more-than-350-anti-lgbtq-hate-and-extremism-incidents-recorded-as-anti-lgbtq-rhetoric-soared/; Brandon Wolf, “Right-Wing Labs: How State Legislatures Are Driving Anti-LGBTQ Attacks at Federal Level,” Human Rights Campaign press release, April 11, 2025, https://www.hrc.org/press-releases/right-wing-labs-how-state-legislatures-are-driving-anti-lgbtq-attacks-at-federal-level.

[4] The White House, “President Trump Isn’t Backing Down from Crushing Radical Left Violence,” September 21, 2025, https://www.whitehouse.gov/articles/2025/09/president-trump-isnt-backing-down-from-crushing-radical-left-violence/.

[5] The Oversight Project, “Urge the FBI to Designate Transgender Terrorism," accessed October 8, 2025, https://oversight-project.revv.co/urge-the-fbi-to-designate-transgender-terrorism; FactCheck.org, “Few Mass Shooters Have Been Transgender,” September 16, 2025, https://www.factcheck.org/2025/09/few-mass-shooters-have-been-transgender/.

[6] Nikole Hannah-Jones, “How Trump Upended 60 Years of Civil Rights,” The Daily, performed by Michael Barbaro, New York Times, October 21, 2025, Podcast, 40:03, https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/21/podcasts/trump-civil-rights-dei.html?searchResultPosition=2.

[7] Ezra Klein, “Trump Is Building the Blue Scare,” New York Times, September 24, 2025.