But institutions require categorical names in order to function—the guys at the CDC can’t be writing a new grant or reworking studies every time a nancy starts calling herself a nelly. So they assigned a name to this population: the umbrella term “transgender”—and since transgender women wanted access to resources, that’s what we ended up calling ourselves. But make no mistake, HIV and the invention of transgender women are inextricable. Transgender is the name selected to recognize a vector of disease.
