Note: For the purposes of this essay, cisgender women will be referred to as women and trans women will be referred to as trans women.

Let me start off by declaring there is nothing like the unique bond and space Black women and Black gay men occupy. It is sacred. It is safe. It is fly and fierce. And my God, it is love. My male gay friends are some of the most important people in my life. Period. I’ve always been seen by them. Affirmed by them and even protected. I have gay male friends that will open my doors and pay for my drinks when we’re out. And I have gay male friends that will twerk with me in the mirror to Trina while we’re getting ready to hit the streets. It is a years-long bond for me and I seriously don’t know what I would do without them. I don’t have very many close trans women friends yet—besides TS Madison whose been a friend in my head for the past eight years—but I see trans women out and about in New York and LA from lash lounges to festivals and for me, it’s always respect with the show of a wink. “I see you, sis. Do your thing.”

But there is a discourse brewing in the streets of Twitter, YouTube and Tiktok overwhelmed by misdirected vitriol hurled at Black women that stands to threaten a historically shared advocacy our two communities share.

There’s understandably a reason for Black gay men and trans women to be outraged. There continues to be an alarming number of violence targeting trans women in American Black communities. And even with the rising presence of pop cultural figures like rappers Lil Nas X and Santana, there still remains deep-seated homophobia engrained in Black cultural spaces—most prominently the Black church and hip hop music. But trans violence by women hardily ever occurs, and larger institutional injustices the LBGTIA communities experience are constructed by a power structure not driven nor led by Black women—the single most disenfranchised demo in America.

Now, are there homophobic Black women out in the world? Absolutely. Black gay men and trans women have experienced discrimination, dismissiveness and disrespect from women in their own families and the churches they grew up in. But be clear, Black women didn’t invent homophobia and structurally we do not support at scale or drive the systemic injustices that prevent gay and trans people from living safe, healthy lives with the basic civil rights hard fought and earned due to the protest tradition and resistance sophistication of Black America.

Black gay and trans people have lived on the periphery of femme culture for too long when they’ve added an immeasurable value and today they’re simply over it. Somehow, however, Black women have become targets of some Black gay men and trans women because Black women for them, are easy, accessible targets. This is deeply unfortunate and hurtful.