In the early 1990s, no one talked about transgender people, and no one knew one. We were not on TV or in movies. What formed the visible part of the trans community – overwhelmingly white, urban, and middle class – was overwhelmingly focused on conferences, surgery or hormones and cisgender acceptance. This was still a determinedly non-political population, often in defensive crouch because it was also constantly under attack by the media, police, local legislatures, feminists and even LGB-but-never-T advocates. They were a group that still thought of themselves as a collection of separate individuals, not a movement, mostly ignored or despised by mainstream society. But all that was about to change. This is the inside story of how, in just a few years, a handful of trans activists came together from the very margins of society in the face of enormous opposition, to launch what would grow into the modern political movement for gender rights.