Trailblazing actress and LGBTQ+ advocate Laverne Cox reflects on the remarkable strides made in the ongoing fight for LGBTQ+ rights.
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00:00 If you really look at what's happening around you in the world with policies being formed,
00:03 not only just for trans, LGBTQ, but black people, women, the right to choose whether
00:09 or not they want to have an abortion.
00:10 Why are people not angry in this country about the attacks that we see very clearly online
00:14 every day?
00:15 I mean, I just recently said this on Jamila Jamil's podcast, that what ... This is all
00:23 a distraction.
00:24 At the end of the day, what they call culture war issues, which are really civil rights
00:29 issues and human rights issues, become a distraction and that come from mostly Republicans.
00:34 There are democratically identified people who are anti-trans and anti-LGBTQ plus, but
00:39 I think for the Republican Party specifically, who are pushing public policies on the state
00:44 level that are banning gender affirming care, banning trans people from sports, et cetera,
00:50 it's a distraction because the Republican Party does not have any kind of economic message
00:55 for poor and working people.
00:56 We have a homeless crisis here in Los Angeles and all over the country.
01:00 There's no plan for that.
01:02 The environment is being decimated and corporations basically want to be able to be unregulated
01:08 so they can destroy our environment without any kind of regulation or recourse.
01:14 We can have all this distraction around, there's a trans person on television or there was
01:19 a performance that was satanic at the Grammys or whatever as a way to distract people from
01:26 the reality that their lives are actually not being made better right now because corporations
01:30 who are bribing politicians are screwing everybody over.
01:35 Okay, where did this journey of becoming so articulate on the issues, educated on the
01:42 issues start?
01:43 Did it start back in Alabama when you first identified that you were born in a body that
01:49 you may not have felt was completely who you were or when did that start?
01:55 It started with my mom.
01:56 It started with my mother being a teacher and emphasizing education and critical thinking.
02:02 My mother was raised in the segregated South and so very early on my mother made it very
02:07 clear to me what it was like during segregation and what her situation was before schools
02:14 were segregated and what it's like afterwards and that there was a care that black teachers
02:19 have for the black kids that they were educating that the white teachers didn't have.
02:24 And so because of my mother I had this historical perspective already and because education
02:32 was something that she so deeply valued it became something that I valued and so I continue
02:37 to educate myself.
02:38 I continue to ... I love reading.
02:40 I love history.
02:41 I love thinking critically and I actually think it's so important right now when Ron
02:46 DeSantis in Florida wants to ban AP African American history.
02:52 For those of you that don't know who that is, that's the governor that's trying to
02:54 just ... Is he the governor or senator?
02:57 He's the governor.
02:58 He's the governor of Florida.
02:59 He's doing the most.
03:00 He's horrible.
03:01 Yes.
03:02 He's doing the most.
03:03 But the deep thing to me about ... I mean they're banning books all over the country
03:06 and it's the Republican Party.
03:08 They're banning books and they're authors that I love who they want to ban and I think
03:13 when I think about that I think it's important particularly for black folks to remember
03:17 that-
03:18 Slaves.
03:19 Exactly.
03:20 That they did not want us to be able to read.
03:23 They did not want us to get an education because the enslavers, the colonizers understood that
03:28 education was a pathway to freedom.
03:32 And so for us as black folks, for us as Americans, even if they try to take a ban books and keep
03:39 us from reading this and this, it is paramount that we educate ourselves and that the education
03:45 never stops and that education is about thinking critically because there's so much media
03:50 coming at us, so much misinformation online and our critical thinking skills are paramount
03:56 to this fight that we're engaged in right now for really our human rights.
04:02 Because I think when it's so important for us to understand that yes they're coming for
04:08 trans people but Ron DeSantis who's come really hard for trans people, for LGBTQ+ people is
04:13 coming hard for black folks and AP, African American, they're coming for all of us.
04:18 And we're really in this together.
04:21 I was on MSNBC a few weeks ago and I made this, it's always very tricky to make correlations
04:30 or comparisons to the Holocaust but the reality, the truth is that the Nazis, that Hitler burned
04:36 books at Magnus Hirschfeld's Institute for Human Sexuality, Magnus Hirschfeld was this
04:44 dude, this German dude who started an institute for human sexuality in like 1920, 1919, 1920
04:51 and they studied trans folks, they studied LGBTQ+ folks, Lily Elbey, I don't know if
04:56 you know that movie Danish Girl, she had her first gender affirming procedure at Magnus
05:01 Hirschfeld's clinic and this is one of the first things the Nazis did, were burn all
05:07 the research materials at Magnus Hirschfeld's clinic.
05:10 We see the famous photo of books being burned by the Nazis, it was Magnus Hirschfeld's
05:15 clinic and his papers that were being burned there.
05:18 And that's just because they felt that you'd be a threat if you're educated.
05:22 Educated but they were anti-trans, they were anti-LGBTQ+, they were gay folks, trans folks
05:28 in concentration camps with pink triangles stamped on our bodies.
05:33 We were made aware of this when the pink triangle became a symbol of AIDS activism in the late
05:37 80s and early 90s, it was a reminder that LGBTQ+ folks were in concentration camps.
05:44 So as we fight anti-Semitism and white supremacy and racism, we have to understand if we have
05:52 a historical perspective that liberation for LGBTQ+ folks, all of our liberation is tied
05:58 together.
05:59 Let me ask you this, I still want to go back to your childhood because ...
06:01 This got way more serious than I thought it would.
06:04 I thought we'd be kiki-ing.
06:05 Oh, the kikis are coming.
06:06 The kikis are coming.
06:07 The kikis are coming.
06:08 The reason why it's important is because one, you're a huge advocate for the trans community
06:13 and I know my audience and my audience needs to be exposed to the knowledge, the education
06:17 and the fight that you do for the trans community.
06:20 I even feel within the LGBTQ community, there's a necessary emphasis needed to be placed on
06:28 the advocacy for trans even within that community.
06:31 Have you noticed that?
06:32 I mean, I'm sure you've-
06:33 Absolutely.
06:34 There's a long history.
06:35 I mean, again-
06:36 Why is that?
06:37 Why is that?
06:38 Why is that an alphabet?
06:39 Not enough time.
06:40 There's not, I mean, so there's a few different ways we can look at it.
06:44 When we think about Stonewall, the Stonewall Rebellion that kick-started the modern LGBTQ
06:51 civil rights movement that happened in 1969, there were anti-cross-dressing laws.
06:55 They're trying to ban cross-dressing now.
06:57 In fact, with all the anti-drag legislation that's happening, it's like basically anti-cross-dressing
07:04 laws 2.0.
07:05 Did Trump just push the reset button on everything to just bring it all back?
07:09 Well, he just had a speech about it, but it's happening on the state level.
07:12 So really what's happening in the state legislatures, we have to be paying more attention to because
07:16 it's happening.
07:17 No, I mean, him being president, did that set the tone for the resurgence of all this
07:20 to just come up all over the place?
07:21 I think so.
07:22 I think in part.
07:23 I think in part, absolutely.
07:24 People feel way more emboldened to just say it.
07:27 Before they were dog whistles.
07:28 Now it's a bullhorn with the racism, with the transphobia, with all of it.
07:32 But when, so it was trans folks, it was really non-conventional folks who started the Stonewall
07:39 Rebellion.
07:40 But then by the early 1970s, gay folks were like, "Well, we need to be taken seriously
07:45 and we need to be respectable.
07:46 And these trans people and drag queens, well, that's not a good look."
07:50 And so they were pushed to the margins of a movement that they helped to start.
07:54 There are, I can go through countless examples throughout history where we've seen us being
07:59 pushed to the side because we weren't seen as respectable enough because folks were trying
08:03 to have a respectability narrative.
08:05 And so I think within, and the truth is for a lot of gay, lesbian, bisexual folks, they're
08:12 like, "Well, this is about my sexuality.
08:13 This trans thing is about gender."
08:16 They are different, but historically, they are different things and in a way we shouldn't
08:21 be lumped together.
08:22 But historically, in the imagination of the oppressor, it's all the same.
08:26 So it's almost like saying white supremacists looking at black as light skin is different
08:31 than black, dark skin.
08:33 It's black.
08:34 It's people of color.
08:35 We're all black.
08:36 We don't like none that ain't pure white.
08:38 To the white supremacists, we're all black.
08:40 We're all black.
08:41 And so I think that yes, we are different.
08:43 Yes, our experiences are different.
08:44 And there's different issues.
08:45 And there are different issues.
08:46 But when it comes to the oppressor, they're coming for all of us.
08:50 And we see it now.
08:51 I mean, we're seeing it very clearly.
08:53 And I think it's like we within our community, just as black folks, and I don't think we
08:58 talk enough in the black community about internalized racism.
09:01 And I don't think we talk in the LGBTQ+ community about internalized transphobia and internalized
09:05 homophobia.
09:06 We are all raised in a culture that is anti-black.
09:09 We all are.
09:10 I grew up internalizing anti-black things, anti-classist things, transphobic things as
09:17 a black person, as a gender nonconforming now trans person.
09:20 I internalized the same values that teach taught me that I was less than because I'm
09:24 black, less than because I'm trans.
09:25 We all internalize that.
09:27 So our work is to unlearn that, to come to critical consciousness around that.
09:32 And so just because you're a gay man doesn't mean that you have an internalized homophobia
09:35 and transphobia.
09:37 And so it's work that we constantly have to do on ourselves.
09:40 Because I really believe when we have issues with somebody else existing, that's an issue
09:48 with me.
09:49 There was a moment in my life, I went to the restaurant called Lucky Chang's in New York
09:53 for many years.
09:54 And it was a drag queen themed restaurant.
09:57 Not a drag queen.
09:58 There's a difference between drag queens and trans women.
10:00 Some trans women do work in the context of drag though.
10:03 And I did to make a living at the time.
10:05 And there would be this one brilliant woman named Veronica.
10:08 She had a school called Miss Vera School for boys who want to be girls.
10:13 And most of her clients were straight married men who loved to cross dress.
10:20 It was kind of fetishistic for them.
10:23 You know there's going to be so many little parts of this interview where people are going
10:26 to have to pause and rewind to understand that.
10:28 Because I don't think people can wrap their minds around that there are people who identify
10:31 as straight who have fetishes or who have-
10:34 Oh girl.
10:35 I know.
10:36 Girl, that's a whole ... girl.
10:38 They're there.
10:39 And if you're a trans woman on any dating app, they're messaging you.
10:43 And if you're on OnlyFans, they are in there asking for requests for sure.
10:47 I mean I don't know about the OnlyFans.
10:50 But I believe you.
10:52 But so Miss Vera ... so after a while ... so it was a charm school.
10:56 So they would let these straight men would learn how to sit like a woman, whatever that
11:00 means.
11:01 But they would give feminizing lessons.
11:03 And then their big sort of graduation was that they would get dressed up in drag.
11:07 And they would cross dress and they would go out on the town.
11:10 And so they would often come to Lucky Chang's for a night.
11:13 And the girls who worked at Chang's were so vicious to these lovely cross dressing folks
11:20 from Miss Vera's school.
11:21 And I found myself participating once and being really shady to these cross dresses
11:27 who came in.
11:28 And then I caught myself-
11:29 Why were you being shady?
11:30 Why were you being shady?
11:31 Thank you.
11:32 I caught myself and was like, "Laverne, what are you doing?
11:35 This is the same thing that they do to us."
11:37 And what that moment was about for me when I analyzed it was like, "I don't want ... " They
11:42 were very obviously men in drag, men cross dressing.
11:49 There was nothing really very feminine about them.
11:52 They were like men in wigs.
11:55 And I didn't want the world to see me that way.
11:59 So I needed to distance myself from that.
12:01 So I distanced myself from that by making fun of them.
12:04 And at the end of the day, there are people who are going to be watching this who are
12:08 going to say, "I'm a man in a wig," who are going to say the same things about me that
12:12 I was saying about them.
12:13 So that was a reflection of my own internalized transphobia that I had to interrogate and
12:18 let go of.
12:19 And it was a me issue.
12:21 It wasn't an issue with them.
12:22 It was I needed to work on myself and my own internalized transphobia.
12:27 And I think that's the work we have to do.