The transgender community has a new cover girl. Featured on Time magazine, transgender actress Laverne Cox has become the new face of a community that has long been associated with transvestites and male prostitutes dressed as women.

Cox, who plays a transgender prisoner in Netflix's "Orange Is the New Black," represents the emergence of transgender people who are more visible, more vocal and more active in pressing for gender equality. The transgender community is where the gay community was in 1970s — only now it's about gender identification instead of sexual orientation, said Nadine Smith, executive director of Equality Florida, a gay-rights organization.

"When I see trans people who are visible and in leadership roles, what I see are profiles in courage," she said.

But gays have not always been natural allies of transgenders. "Transphobia" is just as real in the gay community as in the straight community, said Alaine Jolicoeur, a 23-year-old transgender Rollins College graduate from Miami.

"I think the gay community has been one of the bigger barriers," she said.

Jolicoeur said she was ostracized by her gay male friends when she realized in high school that she wasn't gay, but transgender.

"They said, 'Are you a man or a woman?' It became an issue because I couldn't fit into any group," she said.

Gina Duncan, who served as the first transgender person to head the Orlando gay community's Metropolitan Business Association, said she has never considered herself gay.

"A [board] meeting would not go by without someone saying, 'We should be able to get a consensus. After all, we are all gay here.' And I'd say, 'Not necessarily,'" said Duncan. "I'm a heterosexual female."

Much of the resistance to transgender people among gays is the same as from the straight community: misconceptions and a lack of understanding, Duncan said. Gays and straights are often unsure who and what a transgender person is: male or female, he or she. Are they either or both?

Beneath the large "trans" umbrella are transvestites, transsexuals, transgenders, female impersonators and cross-dressers — any of whom can be heterosexual, homosexual or bisexual.

"There is a lot of confusion because there is so much ambiguity," Duncan said.

Gays and transgenders also have had different agendas and political priorities. While gays are focused on marriage equality, transgenders are more concerned about employment discrimination.

"Our main priority is not marriage. It's the economic difficulties we face," Jolicoeur said.

Some within the transgender community think the gay community has sacrificed them in the past when it came to anti-discrimination laws. Too often, they contend, "gender identification" was dropped from the bills to make sure "sexual orientation" stayed in.

"There has been and continues to be some underlying animosity between gays and lesbians and the transgender community when it comes to getting legislation and nondiscrimination ordinances passed," Duncan said.

But that animosity is beginning to change. Equality Florida created an outreach program a year ago, headed by Gina Duncan, to educate companies about transgender employees. Orlando's gay community center has also reached out to make the "T" in the GLBT feel more welcomed and accepted.

"We have pretty much ignored the issues of the transgender community that are just as valid and just as important," said Randy Stephens, executive director of The GLBT Community Center of Central Florida. "It is time for us to concentrate on transgender issues."

What unites both communities is the belief that sexual orientation and gender identification aren't choices or lifestyles, but a biological imperative. Both think they were born this way.

Just as gays and lesbians say they felt an attraction to the opposite sex early on, transgender people say they felt as children they were girls trapped in boys' bodies or boys inside girls' bodies.

"It's not about sexual orientation. It's how you see yourself in your soul, how you feel inside," Duncan said. "It's not a choice."

As they come to better understand each other, there is a realization within the gay and transgender communities that what they share is more important than their differences. Both have experienced discrimination, bullying and hate crimes, Smith said.

"Being in a community is like being in a family together. Not everybody gets along, but we understand our fates are tied together," she said. "My safety comes from creating a world in which trans people are safe."

jkunerth@tribune.com or 407-420-5392