This talk presents aspects of my ongoing ethnographic research with queer and trans communities in Zurich (Switzerland) and Hyderabad (India), focusing on both possibilities and limits of cross-cultural comparison. Comparative perspectives have been fundamental for the discipline of Social and Cultural Anthropology, but they have also been the object of intense methodological critique. I engage with this critique by looking at their specific application in scholarship on so-called ‘non-normative’ genders and sexualities and by examining how concrete ethnographic research may offer productive ways forward. While comparative approaches are often understood in terms of space, where ‘cultures’ are mapped onto geographic areas, this talk explores the potential of shifting our attention to the importance of time and temporality.