Indeed, and in a broader view, humanity has literally always had trans people as long as it has had a concept of gender. So “in the 80s” is emphasizing the cultural lie that acceptance is a recent phenomenon, when actually bigotry about it is the recent phenomenon. The 80s were certainly not an amazing time for LGBTQ folk, but Playboy at least would have been sex-positive and accepting.

So this isn’t a “stopped clock is right twice a day” situation, because sex-positive spaces and media would have been more reliable clocks than the culture at large, when it came to this subject.