Laverne Cox shares her thoughts on the progress of LGBT rights

Hollywood Unlocked

Trailblazing actress and LGBTQ+ advocate Laverne Cox reflects on the remarkable strides made in the ongoing fight for LGBTQ+ rights.

Transcript

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.

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