Guest Opinion: 'Know Our Place:' The wrong subtext for the Transgender District
As a 30-year resident of San Francisco — who is also a transgender woman — I was elated when I first saw, in 2017, that the city had designated an official and legally-recognized Transgender District, centered at Turk and Taylor streets.
That's the site of the landmark 1966 Compton's Cafeteria riot, which predated the Stonewall riots by three years, and is slowly being recognized as the first documented uprising of transgender and queer people in United States history.
This newly-christened district stretches along a six-block sliver of the Tenderloin, and includes two blighted blocks of Sixth Street as well.
As most everyone knows, it's not exactly the best neighborhood, plagued with poverty, drugs, and crime. But this is where an important piece of queer history took place, and it deserves to be recognized.
