>>17996747
I think the main thing is a complicated matrix or economic and technological changes (particularly the internet) and the rise of massive urban megacities, although the cultural and social changes occur a bit later, or it lags a bit. So the "infrastructure" for transgender people to become more visible was laid down in the 90s (or even before) and it took a little while later to catch up.

Gays in the 60s/70s could congregate in gay bars that would cluster in specific neighborhoods in big cities, and economic growth + urbanization not only caused the cities to grow larger, it freed people up (fewer people working on farms) to live more autonomous sexual lives, so there was enough gays in enough numbers to sustain these businesses. Also speaking of technolgyo, this for example is a gay music video specifically aimed at gay audiences from the 1980s but to make that possible first required the technology to make this video and distribute it to begin with, and a large enough gay population in London to watch it from screens played in a nightclub:
https://youtu.be/d-aPzPvj4ys

You get a lot more "lifestyles" emerging in general including youth subcultures (like living a heavy metal lifestyle if you want to). Transgender people though continued to live in the margins, often working as street prostitutes. But I think the internet has allowed them to form their own groups. Also we live increasingly virtual lives (even more for younger people) with endlessly customizable avatars where traditional gender roles don't make as much sense. The Bronze Age Pervert is also playing with gender on the internet that doesn't *quite8 match his biology (proving Judith Butler's assertion that gender is a social construction). Also human biology itself is becoming more alterable. Of course there's a reaction to this, and the one result of that is that the transgender identity becomes politicized in a way that it wasn't before.

>>17997106
That's also an interesting theory.